Connecting with Nature through Volunteering

Behind the stunning landscapes and happy visitors to the Eastern Moors, is an activity that quietly continues, less known but highly prized. That activity is volunteering.

The Eastern Moors Partnership, a joint initiative between the National Trust and the RSPB, manages the site, looking after it for people and wildlife.  They are a small team with a tall task, one which they cannot do alone if they are to make the Eastern Moors a place that can 'look after itself'. Volunteers however, can help them to achieve just that.

Adult Volunteering
Volunteering on the Eastern Moors comes in all shapes and forms. Ecological monitoring for those who enjoy venturing out across the bog in search of bog asphodel and sundews, stumbling over tussocks in the hope of glimpsing a camouflaged curlew nest and searching the skies for whinchat and the crags for ring ouzels.  Hardy volunteers braving all weathers building dry stone walls, bracken bashing and pulling up ragwort during mid-week work parties. With visitors to the moors being a high priority, imaginative volunteers help create innovative events and activities and ensure the moors are accessible for all.

Family Friendly Muck In Days
Recognising the valuable contribution that people of all ages can make to the upkeep of the Eastern Moors, Muck In Days offer family friendly volunteering where up to three generations have been known to spend their precious weekend tree felling, pond surveying and spreading heather seed across the moors.

Youth Rangers
Within an age that so often gets bad press, teenagers full of enthusiasm and energy get stuck in as Eastern Moors Youth Rangers. Proudly donning their badges as official volunteers, they know their ongoing contributions are recognised and valued.

Turning up once a month on a Sunday afternoon the Youth Rangers get stuck in to tasks that have included ripping out redundant post and wire fencing, pulling up ragwort and surveying wildflower meadows.  Tasks directly deliver the Eastern Moors Management Plan, ensuring their efforts are never tokenistic, but real.  In return for their commitment, Youth Rangers receive training in the skills of a countryside ranger, including navigation, leading guided walks, wildlife surveying and running events.  Sessions deliver 'on the job' experience which the young people can transfer to other areas of their lives such as developing their academic and future career profiles.

The Youth Rangers are a great bunch of youngsters with similar interests and a shared enjoyment of spending time outdoors.  Carrying out tasks which involve team-working, enable the young people to develop their personal and social skills, form friendships and enhance their knowledge and awareness of the natural world, and in turn become better connected to nature.

Guardians of the Moors
The Eastern Moors, a place high above the city of Sheffield, proudly looking over the rural Peak District, inspires community ownership.  The Eastern Moors Partnership can only ever do so much to look after the site, but it is the people who live and work nearby and spend their time enjoying the site's benefits, who naturally become the guardians of the moors.  Making sure the Eastern Moors is protected and celebrated for its endless recreational possibilities, its value as an upland habitat for wildlife, a carbon sponge developing its capacity to hold carbon dioxide within its peat depths, a site teaming with cultural heritage.

Volunteering is at the heart of the Eastern Moors, and with nature deficit disorder banded as the 'illness of the 21st century', for adults and young people alike, local outdoor volunteering may well be just the tonic to help people reconnect with nature, benefiting both people and wildlife.

If you would like more information about becoming a volunteer on the Eastern Moors email enquiries@easternmoors.org.uk. You can also visit our website www.easternmoors.org.uk, 'like' us on Facebook www.facebook.com or add your photos to Flickr www.flickr.com/easternmoorspartnership

Close of curlew monitoring

With the onset of summer (a real summer no less, with actual sunshine!) many birds are on the move already, and wader migration peaks earlier than most. Curlew are no exception, and it’s been a good week or two since I’ve heard one over the moors – the majority of birds have finished breeding and are moving to lowland and coastal feeding grounds.

Big Moor looking green, and light on curlew, late in the season.

Our nest and productivity monitoring has therefore come to an end and I’ve swapped fieldwork for data analysis – what have we learnt?

The curlew population on the Eastern Moors appears to be stable – both this year’s standardised and more intensive survey efforts indicate around 20 breeding pairs, similar to previous surveys dating back 10 years. The productivity analysis supports this view, with curlew producing just above the number of young which is needed to maintain a stable population. This is good news at a time when the national (and international) picture is one of decline.

A chick trying (and failing!) to flatten itself to the ground during a productivity survey.

However, this comes from a sample of a small population – we found nests for six pairs of birds, plus an additional three pairs where the young were located but not the nest. We therefore know the nesting outcomes for around half of the Eastern Moors population – but a small number in absolute terms.

Of the six pairs whose nests were located, two pairs failed to hatch chicks (due to egg predation) and one pair the chicks were predated shortly after hatching. In a fourth pair the eggs were predated, but they successfully hatched three chicks in a second clutch.

Foxes predated two clutches of eggs and the chicks shortly after hatching, with a badger taking the third clutch of eggs. I previously blogged about a possible crow-predated nest, however after looking at both predated and recently-hatched egg remains this is much more consistent with the latter.

Recently hatched eggshell remains.

We found curlew across a range of habitat types across the Eastern Moors, with a wet grass/rush dominated area generally being preferred as a nest location and fewer birds in heather dominated areas. Surprisingly birds often nested (successfully) in areas close to roads and footpaths, areas which may be considered relatively disturbed, even with much less-disturbed habitat available - there seems plenty of scope for the area to support a larger population.

Undisturbed habitat among the cotton grass in the middle of Big Moor.

It’s difficult to draw any wider conclusions based on one year’s intensive survey effort of a small population, and with a 2-3 year time lag before birds return to breed (assuming fledglings return) data needs to be collected over a number of years to see the impacts of year-to-year variations in productivity – which may not necessarily be reflected in breeding population size.

The wider South Pennines is one of the few areas in the UK where curlew numbers are not declining, and the Eastern Moors appears to be following that pattern. It’s important we keep monitoring and looking at ways in which we can maintain, and hopefully increase, curlew numbers – a little help to buck the wider downward trend.

Kim L.

Longshaw and Ramsley dragons and damsels

2 very different days doing dragonfly surveys

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152301905589022.1073741860.643444021&type=1&l=3593e59801

Roger.

Snipe and other Ramsley residents

4 snipe in Ramsley old reservoir this morning.  I seem to see at least 2 every time I go there - which is quite often!
2 lapwings also seem to have made this their home.
Dragonflies are a little disappointing so far but I have seen 2 emperors in the long pool and several 4 spotted chasers.  Graham advises seeing a blue tailed skimmer and a golden ringed in Ramsley.  What I really want to see is the chunky broad bodied chaser, but time is running out!  Not seen one anywhere on the Eastern Moors this year.  Anyone else seen a dumpy blue dragonfly that looks like a mini jumbo jet?
Roger.

Just after dawn

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152290558874022.1073741859.643444021&type=1&l=ba3a2155fe

What a way to start a day!