Red Deer Quiz Answers

For those of you who came along to our totally mad Bolving Competition this weekend, please find below the answers to the Red Deer Quiz. Hope you all enjoyed yourselves and we'll see you again next year. 12 months to work on those bolves!

1.     Which species of deer are native to the UK? Red Deer and Roe Deer

The Windhover

A few weeks ago, we had a call from our friends at the BMC after a climber had reported a kestrel nesting on Curbar Edge.

I headed down to have a look, and was tiptoeing towards the nest site when a female kestrel swooped low with a vole to the base of the crag. She disappeared from view before flying off, minus the vole, several seconds later. A chorus of screeching struck up, the unmistakable sound of hungry young birds of prey. I crept closer, and was surprised to see a bundle of feathers perched contentedly on a boulder beside the footpath, chugging down the remains of the unfortunate vole, freshly flown in just moments earlier. 

"What are you looking at?"

I suspected that this chick had fallen from the nest. It was a good sign that it was still being fed, but it was very exposed, and I wondered if it would make it through the night's perils and predators. Up in the crack, two more bundles of fluff looked down at me keenly, before shuffling back comically into a sheltered crevice.

When I returned the next day the young fallen chick was no-where to be found and I began to fear the worst.

Summertime in the meadows

Self heal

Summer is here and the wild flowers are looking great as we have already seen in the recent orchid post. During the summer we carry out monitoring in the meadows so that we can get them in the best condition possible.





Youth rangers helping with meadow monitoring at Curbar

This habitat has been created over time by human management and the assemblage of plants and the wildlife they support depend on the continuation of this management. If these areas are over grazed then many of the plant species can be lost as they are unable to reproduce as they are not given the chance to flower. If abandoned courser grasses will out-compete the wild flowers and succession will eventually lead to development of scrub.

Curlew monitoring - a final update

I am very pleased to report that the curlew breeding season this year has been very successful, with all the nests that we have monitored hatching chicks. The eggs in the forth nest began hatching on Monday, when I went to change the batteries on the camera I could just see tiny cracks beginning to appear in the eggs.

I returned to the nest on Wednesday to find the nest camera knocked over, the nest was right next to an obvious track through the vegetation so the camera could quite easily have been knocked over by an animal passing through.

Welcome to the world little ones

Some great news from curlew cam this week, we have three chicks, hatched over the last couple of days. The chicks are from the third nest found, the nest was one of two nests located last week, making 4 nests, 12 eggs and 3 chicks.

Three chicks in the nest

So nest monitoring is now in full swing, each nest camera recording unit is checked every three days, this is how long the battery power and memory on the SD cards will last.

The Ring Ouzel

It's early on a bright May morning, and I'm standing in a holloway beneath a gritstone edge once known as "Wildmoorstones". Around me, the bracken is beginning to push through the peat and unfurl, and purple lanterns of bilberry flowers are blooming. The scent of peat is in the air, as is the distinctive sound of a ring ouzel in full song.It is a song that is at home here, in this landscape of rugged crags, blanket bog, windswept heather and running water. A wild sound that compliments the acoustic qualities of quarries past. A sound that ricochets off boulders and forgotten millstones, and is echoed down in the gurgle of Burbage Brook. It is a sound that flows from high places and floods to pool in the natural ampitheatre of the valley.

The gritstone edges of Derbyshire support a localised population of this rare and beautiful bird. Known to many as the “mountain blackbird”, the ring ouzel can be easily mistaken for it’s more common relative of the thrush family. But look closer, and you will see a telltale white crescent, or “gorget” adorning it’s breast. Silvery wingstreaks and a piping song as clear as mountain springwater distinguish it as the blackbird's secretive, upland cousin; a ring ouzel.

A male ring ouzel 

Bill

Just over a year ago, I met Bill Gordon, North Lees and Stanage ranger with the Peak District National Park.

Our curlew monitoring season has begun once again. This year we are supporting the RSPB national curlew management project that aims to understand the recent declines in population and aims to redress this.

Eurasian curlew, Numenius arquata   

The UK has an estimated 66,000 pairs of curlew, which are Amber listed in the UK due to recent decline. Globally the species is classified as near threatened by the IUCN red list due to the declining population trend.

Clearing up a fallen giant

This week the wardens went to deal with the fallen oak tree in the last post:

Windblown trees like this can be dangerous to clear up as the root plates can move when you sever the main part of tree, and sometimes even stand back up in the hole, but due to the immense weight of the oak stem, this one was stable:

A snowy day

As a warden on the Eastern Moors you are never quite sure what the day will bring, you may have a plan but often unexpected things crop up. Today I was greeted by a beautiful sunrise and a small group of deer grazing by the snowy track over the moor to the office.

Since the snow fall my days have been taken up checking the car parks and the boundary walls for damage as well as walking the main routes to check for fallen trees. You may remember last year that a large number of trees were uprooted due to the strong winds. This time round it is the weight of the snow which has brought down limbs and trees.

So this morning I set off around the woods below Curbar edge to check the paths with Buddy, my trust companion. It wasn’t long before we were dragging fallen birch branches out of the snow and off the paths. Many of the larger birch branches had snapped with the weight of snow, while some of the smaller trees had been bent over with snow covering their tops which were now frozen to the ground, creating little archways. So braches were cleared and trees were freed while Buddy scampered around and sniffed at deer tracks in the snow.

Eventually were came across something that would be a bit more of a challenge, more than a warden, a dog, and a bowsaw could tackle. One of the lovely large oaks had decided it’s time was up, and lay uprooted on the pipe track. It was one of my favourite trees on the estate, a gnarly oak with character that only hundreds of years can produce. Dealing with this will take the whole warden team kitted out with a winch and chainsaws, lets hope the guys come back feeling fit after the Christmas break. But the story for this oak isn’t over, once moved out of the way, this fantastic big tree will take decades to break down, during which time it will provide valuable habitat for a whole range of wildlife. Whilst it decays, the space it has created in the canopy will allow light to reach the woodland floor, and a new generation of trees will take advantage of this opportunity to takes its place.

Happy new year everyone, Kim.

Looking back to warmer days....

As we head into the cooler months we review the ecological monitoring information that we gathered during the spring and summer of 2014. Monitoring is an important part of the work we do as it allows us to look at the potential affect that our management may have on habitats and wildlife. It also means we can build up a clearer picture of what species use the estate and in what ways so that we can target our management to be as beneficial as possible. Some projects have been well documented on the blog, the Curlew project being one of our focuses for this year, but many other things are counted, measured and recorded.

Female black darter at little Barbrook reservoir.

Some monitoring is carried out annually such as upland and woodland birds, snipe, woodcock, ring ouzel, whinchat, dragonflies, and red deer. While some is carried out every 3-4 years, vegetation recording for example, changes in habitat are slower and working in this way means we have more time to focus on different habitats by studying them on a 3-4 year rotation. During 2012/13 we recorded the upland vegetation; looking at the plant species and the structure of vegetation over the moorland as we battled through Molinia tussocks and traversed ditches.



Flowering hares tail cotton grass

In 2014 we started studying  woodland structure; recording features such as tree species and size, canopy cover, presence of shrubs and deadwood, as well as the ground flora. This time the challenge being head high bracken and midges.

 

 

Other specific species may be looked at if they become of increasing importance, Willow tit for example, were added to our monitoring early this spring as the RSPB were keen to learn where they are breeding due to concern about their decline.

We even have data that is recorded every 10mins 24 hours a day, luckily we have some clever gadgets which do this automatically for us! This kit is used to study the hydrology on the mire and uses pressure to record data on flow rates and water levels. We simply have to find the kit on the mire every few months and download the data.

 

Some of our data feeds into national databases; our bird data is entered into a national RSPB database and so informs the national picture of what is happening to our birds. Other data is used in local landscape partnerships, such as our hay meadow recording, where we pass our data onto the NIA (Nature Improvement Area) a grant which funds different projects in the area, including our hay meadow restoration.

Bee on yellow rattle in Curbar meadow.

Needless to say we could not possibly run such a comprehensive programme of monitoring without our volunteers who put in hours of hard work. Many came to us with fantastic skills such as bird identification, which we have put to good use, while others, new to monitoring, have been trained to enable them to use their new knowledge to contribute to our understanding of the estate. We are also increasing the work we do with groups that have been carrying out their own monitoring in the area before the partnership existed, such as Derbyshire amphibian and reptile group.

 

It is still too early to draw any conclusions about long term trends between our management and the impact it has on the habitats and wildlife of the estate, but we continue to use all the new information to inform our decisions on what we want to achieve and how we are going to get there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Totley scrub clearance

This week the wardens have been removing scrub from the mire habitat on Totley Moss.

Silver birch are wonderful trees and very characteristic of the Eastern Moors - we have lots of them! However we have been removing a small number of self seeded silver birch scrub from the south-west corner of Totley Moss, which is mire habitat. This is to allow species more typical of mire such as sphagnum mosses, cotton grass, cranberry and cross-leaved heath to increase and is part of other works such as ditch blocking to promote re-wetting of the area - i.e. getting it nice and boggy! The trees currently obstruct this by drying out the ground, and when they are removed the wetter conditions should stop them returning, but this will need to be monitored with potential follow up work to remove any young scrub that returns. There are also several stands of willow, but these will be left as they support a lot more birds and invertebrates and are less likely than birch to spread across the mire.

Shane surrounded by birch:

As you can see the terrain was pretty rough and boggy, so it was hard work traipsing across with chainsaws and all our kit. Some of the trees were densely packed but a lot were very widely spread which meant a long trek between each tree. To help us get around and thereby reduce the time spent on the job we had the help of this machine and Buddy, its expert driver:




















It's called an Argocat and is specially designed for traversing wet, boggy ground - it has very low ground pressure so doesn't get stuck or damage the terrain. Apparently you can drive it into a lake and it will float but none have us have dared to do that yet!

Kim at work:

Before:

After, you can see the patches of willow that remain:

We managed to get it all done in two days which was faster than we thought. Hopefully now the mire can start to develop into a soggy paradise.

Volunteer Dragonfly Walk

Today (Monday 18th August), Roger Temple led a group of Eastern Moors volunteers on a dragonfly walk around Ramsley Reservoir and Jack Flat. The volunteers identified many species of dragonfly and damselfly, including the Common Blue, Azure and Emerald damselflies, and the Common Darter, Black Darter and huge Common Hawker dragonflies. A grass snake and an adder were even spotted! At first, there were concerns over if the weather would affect the amount of dragonflies flying, but it brightened up in time for a lovely lunch watching dragonflies at Jack Flat. A plant was found that puzzled us all, which was later identified as Sneezewort!

Claudia Smith, work experience

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.

Work experience on the Eastern Moors

I’ve been doing my work experience with the Eastern Moors Partnership. There’s been a lot of things for me to do, like dry stone walling, fencing and vegetation monitoring also there’s been a lot of smaller jobs like changing bridleway signs and helping to collect cut grass. Also all the people who work and volunteer here are friendly and wont leave you with nothing to do.  This week has been really fun and I’ve learnt a lot a lot about the local wildlife by doing things and asking questions as its a really interesting and nice place to be in. I’ve seen a lot of the local wildlife that you wouldn’t see in city like red deer and swallows.

Linden

Curlew Update

I think I had to wait for some good news to go with the bad news before updating the blog again as it's been three weeks now since my last post.

So bad news first from the start of the month. Nest 4, with four eggs, was predated with just a week or so to go until hatching - and unfortunately the camera had been bumped and moved slightly (by one of the Highland cattle, I think!) so we missed catching the culprit. We know it happened in the night, so it's likely to be fox or badger again.

Adult curlew on the eggs at 21:44.

The next image captured is the bird returning to the empty nest at 04:14.

A few days before, Mike Gillett found a nest which was most likely predated by a corvid - the remains of eggshells still present in the nest cup.

Eggshell remains.

This left us with only one confirmed chick from five nests found - not very promising!

But all is not lost - we've had a couple of pairs pretty active around Barbrook over the last month, which started to become very vocal and agitated at anyone and anything moving through the area. This was a sure sign they had chicks nearby - three of which duly appeared scampering down the track as I left the cottage last week! Three adult birds were also wheeling about trying, with little success, to encourage the youngsters back to cover. I'm not sure if this was one pair joined by a third wandering bird, or if two pairs had chicks in the area - either way it looked like they had their work cut out!

And then in the last few days Rachel and I have been finishing off our last upland bird survey squares, and have managed to track down another nest with four eggs being incubated, which we put a camera on:

Nest 6. Probably at least two weeks in to incubation.

And also a nest we were (happily!) too late to put a camera on. Three chicks, probably only just hatched as they were surrounded by fresh egg shell remains, still in the nest cup. You can only just make out two, which flattened themselves to the ground as I passed, but this one obligingly stood up for a better view of what was going on:

Pretty cute, no?

So all in all, looking much more promising again now with at least seven chicks hatched, and another potential four on the way, from eight nests. This might not sound like a lot considering each nest could typically hatch four eggs, but bear in mind that (as a rough guide) in order to maintain a stable population only one chick per two nests needs to be fledged (which takes around 30 days from hatching).

With any luck we'll be seeing some more chicks before the month is out...

Kim L.

Curlew ups and downs

Since I last blogged on our curlew project we've been battling both the weather and ever-sneaky curlew behaviour to find more nests. Rachel and I even spotted a pair mating, "Aha!" we thought, but despite many hours watching these two they're not giving up the nest location just yet. We're therefore still monitoring just the two nests, after the failure of the first two.

There were three eggs in the morning when I found our fourth nest, and on returning to set up the camera that afternoon, a fourth had been laid - our first full clutch so far. With 28-30 days incubating time we should expect the eggs to hatch around the 14th June - fingers crossed!

A full clutch of four eggs in our fourth nest.

Mixed news from our other remaining monitored nest  - as you may have seen from our facebook page, our first chick hatched on 21st May which was great to see - but unfortunately the other egg failed to hatch from this clutch of only two.

Success! Our first chick shortly after hatching.

For the first few days after hatching the adult birds were very visible alarm calling and chasing off crows in the nest area - a good sign of the continued presence of the chick. However when I visited yesterday there was no sign of the birds - hopefully they have just moved on from the area as the chicks are very mobile very quickly. We will be carrying out follow-up surveys over the coming weeks to pick up these signs of adults with chicks, to try and get a rough idea of chick survival rates, and presence of chicks from nests we've not managed to find.

Kim L.

Setting the gold standard

At first sight this is not an article about the Eastern Moors.  Well it isn't... but they do get a great mention in the second column! According to the Friends of the Peak District, Eastern Moors have set the standard by which all similar organisations will be judged!
 I think a word of congratulation is due to all staff and volunteers for making EMP a success.
I for one, hope it continues that way..

This article is copied from the Spring 2014 edition of the Peakland Guardian and is published by the Friends of the Peak District in association with the CPRE South Yorkshire.

Migration time is upon us

Migration time is upon us and our spring bird survey season is getting underway. Willow warblers and chiffchaffs have been around for a little while now, swallows are becoming more frequently seen and wheatears have returned to the lawns here at Barbrook Cottage. I recorded my first redstarts of the year last week on Ramsley (and, excitingly, a passing firecrest!) and we’ve had reports of pied flycatcher back already in the woods at Froggatt. I’m still awaiting my first cuckoo of the year though – have you heard one over the Eastern Moors yet? Let us know in the comments section.

Ring ouzels are returning to the moors and we are hopeful that a pair which has been spotted around White Edge will remain and breed. If you are lucky enough to spot one (or hopefully two!) of these often shy birds while out on the Eastern Moors then please let us know so we can keep track of their progress. Also on the moors we have had golden plover passing through and curlew returning from the coast to their summer breeding grounds.

Curlew productivity and nest monitoring is the main focus of my work this spring. With the help of the rest of the Eastern Moors team and volunteers I will be trying to identify as many of our curlew territories as possible and monitor their progress throughout the breeding season. Curlew populations in the UK are of international importance and have significantly declined in recent years. The RSPB is undertaking research to help establish the factors involved and the extent to which the declines may be linked to moorland habitats and land management, and our work will help contribute to this.

Kim

Kim Leyland, Research Assistant, Eastern Moors Partnership

Letting the Oaks breath

Thursday 14^th November 2013

On Thursday the sun was shining and our volunteers joined us for a day clearing Birch trees in the Millennium woodland below Curbar Edge. The Oak woodland was planted to mark the millennium, and during it’s time since has been taken over by Birch trees which are blocking a lot of light out for the Oaks.

We started the day by finishing off a section from a previous work party and everybody was enthusiastic to get stuck in. Using bow saws the team cleared Birch trees from around the Oaks, providing them with the space they need to grow. There was evidence of Deer activity in the area with lots of deer tracks through the woods and one of our volunteers (Mark) even came across and antler where he was working!

In the second half of the day we started in a new section with the sun still shining down on us and although we managed to clear a lot of trees during the day, there are still many more to go, so who knows we may even see you next time!

I would like to say a big thank you for all your hard work!

 

Coming soon for summer 2013............

Our dedicated volunteers have been putting in the hours in preparation for the opening of a new concessionary bridleway on the Eastern Moors. Works have been underway for the past few weeks to improve the condition of the track surface by filling in puddles, wet hollows and ruts.  The route through Barbrook valley, currently a concessionary footpath, will open as a concessionary bridleway this summer. We have still to fit the new access gates and once that is done the route will be open. We hope you can come along to our launch day later in the year, keep your eyes on our facebook page, website and blog for up to date progress.



Loading the trailer with stone





 

Filling in the ruts and puddles

The final result