Volunteers

We had a very successful children's activity here at Thornham Walks yesterday. Around 35 children built bat boxes from kits to take home and put up in the garden. We also provided a fact sheet on the best place to site a box and how to encourage bats into your garden, (plant night-scented flowers such as Evening Primrose to attract moths if you are interested).

We have two volunteer teams meeting on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We are looking to boost numbers on our Wednesday team so if you are interested please get in touch. The work is very varied. In the winter months we may be planting new hedges:

During the summer we manage a variety of wildlife sites such as wildflower meadows and churchyards:

Or it could be creating or managing wildlife ponds:

If you are interested in joining the Wednesday team please give my colleague Tim Page a call on 01379 788008. He will be able to give you a lot more information on future tasks and would be delighted to hear from you.

Birds seem to be singing everywhere now that we have some milder weather. At Thornham the Great Spotted Woodpeckers are busy drumming away and Nuthatches are singing from the tops of oak trees.

Hedgerows

The New Year has started on a very cold note with a long spell of snow and frosts. As soon as the ground thaws we will start work on hedge planting and hedgerow management. We have been planting hedges for the last 20 years along the Valley to try and replace some of those lost when fields were enlarged in the second half of the 20th Century. The Waveney Valley is an ancient landscape - some of the hedges around Scole and the Saints villages near Bungay may be 2,000 years old - so we are keen to keep or restore as much as possible with local landowners' help.

Here are some students from Bungay High School planting a new hedge in the Saints:

The clear plastic spirals over the young hedge plants protect them from nibbling rabbits and deer, and also act as mini greenhouses to stimulate growth. After about three years they can be removed to let the hedge thicken up.

A mature hedge also needs some management or it will get tall and leggy and may collapse. Most hedges are now cut back with flails but in the past they were either coppiced or laid to promote strong, thick growth.

Here are our volunteers coppicing an old mature hedge in the Saints:

It may look drastic cutting right back to ground level but the hedge quickly regrows.

Hedges are very important for wildlife and soon the first Hazel catkins will be flowering, closely followed by Primroses and other spring flowers:

More soon.

Autumn in the Valley

Cold weather over the last couple of weeks has turned the leaves to gold. Oaks and maples are looking stunning - a pity we have not had much sunny weather to bring out the best colours. Easterly winds have brought in large flocks of winter thrushes so fieldfares and redwings are greedily feeding on hawthorn berries. Waxwings have arrived on the coast so we may have these colourful visitors with us soon.

Last night we held our first wildlife quiz at Thornham. It was a very successful event with fish and chips for everyone. See how you can do by solving the following anagrams of butterflies commonly found in the Waveney Valley:

TINGLER

COKE CAP

BULLY HOLE
MINOR BEST
WE ARE LIGHT
I PRANG TOE
LARDER MAID
A WOMB WONDER
WEE DOLLY COULD
A TINY PADDLE

Answers next time!

We are always keen to see new volunteers on our teams going out every Tuesday and Wednesday. They do a tremendous amount of work from digging new wildlife ponds, planting trees to managing wildlife sites. If this sounds like you then please give Tim Page a call on 01379 788008.