A tree guard a day keeps the rabbits away!

Countryside management students made use of the college supply of willow this week by making tree guards. This task tested the skills and the patients of the group as the intricate weaving of the willow rods was tuff to master. Angus and Rob demonstrated great greenwood skills with their tree guard taking shape by the end of the task.

 

 

A ‘Shrew’d Observation

The harvest mouse search carries on, and so far students have trapped everything but the target organism with wood mice, common shrews (see pictures, where HE students Joe and Neil seem to look rather proud of their find!) and bank voles all turning up in the live capture traps. The search continues……

Where do Hedgehogs go at Night?!

Well, BSc Land Management student David Wallis is involved in a project to find out. Through an established staff link with Shepreth Wildlife Park, David and a small team of zoo staff and academics are working on developing some GPS technology to monitor what happens to hedgehogs when they are released into the wild. Many of these animals are found by members of the public who take them to animal sanctuaries. It is hoped that with more thought given to the suitability of release sites, more of these hedgehogs will expand their ranges and once again become a common site in the farmland and gardens of England.

 

The project was recently featured in a BBC news article which you can read about here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-22112672

 

The Great Crested Newt Hunt

Great crested newts are fully protected under the Wildlife & Countryside Act 1981 and until now the only individual ever found at the College was a lone stowaway found in the folds of some waders from a netting session at Foxholes Fisheries near Crick some years ago. These amphibians are highly elusive so a combination of cunning and somewhat bizarre survey methods need to be employed to find them.
 

Using a combination of manual netting, egg searching, live capture trapping (using homemade ‘bottle traps’ made from fizzy drinks bottles) and nocturnal torch surveying animal studies and countryside management staff have managed to find a small breeding population in a pond on the eastern margins of the estate. The site will now be re-fenced to protect from livestock and dead wood piles created to provide terrestrial refugia for the population.
 

 It should be noted that these animals are protected by law and handling or trapping them normally requires licensed permission from Natural England.
 

Picture shows newt egg laying evidence – great crested newt eggs are laid singly in the folded leaves of marginal vegetation and have a cream coloured embryo.

 

 

Dead hedge comes to life…..

Countryside management students continued their work on the coppicing coupe at Hardwick’s wood. As the trees were felled they were processed with all the unusable material being packed into the dead hedge. As you can see from the pictures the dead hedge continues to grow in size each week providing an excellent habitat for the inhabitants of the wood.

"The Simpsons" Biodiversity Index....

Countryside Management students got out in the glorious sunshine today to carry out a survey on the college hedgerows. The idea of the survey is to record the range and abundance of the species growing in the hedgerows and then using the Simpson Biodiversity Index calculate the wildlife value of each of the hedgerows.

Not even the recent snow stops the countryside Management students....

A group of intrepid countryside management students were treated to a winter survival skills session from Countryside lecturer Geoff Guy. Having lived in Sweden Geoff is very knowledgeable on the topic of keeping warm in freezing conditions. The students followed Geoff’s instructions and soon had themselves a cosy little igloo…..