WORK PARTY - Sunday 16th July - Noakes Grove
It's back to the usual third Sunday of the month
Noakes Grove: Come any time after 10am and before 3pm.

Dragons & Damsels

Three species of dragonfly and four of damselflies have been spotted this year.

The blue male and brown females of the broad-bodied chaser dragonflies are easy to see flying over the new pond near the sheep-feed barn. This pond has also attracted all four of the damselflies: the large red damsel flies were common a month or more ago but their flight season is now over. The common blue damselflies (and the very similar azure damselfly) are out now: often the blue males are seen flying in tandem with the brown females. The blue-tailed damselflies (both sexes are dark bodied with bright blue near the end of their abdomen) are also fairly common.

The other two dragonflies are less common: four-spotted chasers and southern hawkers are more often seen flying above the paths rather than over the ponds – although they must visit the ponds to lay their eggs.

Gift of hay

Thanks to Keith Glover, our hay barn once again has a good stock of hay for the winter needs of our sheep. Keith cuts and bales hay for local people with paddocks that need mowing. He can often arrange for hay to be given to us.

photo David Corke

No-Snow-Berries

When we bought Noakes Grove (15 years ago) there was a small patch of snowberry in one part of the ancient wood. The patch grew quickly and, because it is not a native shrub, we decided to cut it back and dig up the roots.This should slow its growth rate and give the native shrubs and wild flowers a chance to recolonise the snowberry patch. All the snowberry bashing was done by Andrew Urquhart – thank you Andrew.

Are we rewilding?

It depends what you mean by “rewilding”. To some it means anything that is even vaguely “nature conservation” (like making a pond or installing a nest box). Proper rewilding (like that at Knepp, Sussex, which we visited a few years ago) is creating an imitation of an early habitat dominated and managed by the large animals themselves. So direct habitat management by humans is not necessary. This requires a very large area of land and good replacements for the wild animal species that once lived in a Stone-age wild landscape.

If someone gives us a few thousand acres of Essex and a decent stock of stand-ins for mammoths, aurochs and wild horses, we'll try rewilding.

Here's what a rewilded bit of Essex should look like, based on fossils from the Ilford area.

Artwork by Alan Harris

Is farming rewilding?

Our aim is to recreate a small farm, like they were a century ago: wildflower meadows, lots of birds and butterflies and people helping manage the land or just enjoying some real countryside. Traditional farmland, rich in wildlife, requires hard work to keep it that way. Our great-grandparents were paid little as farm workers: now we depend on our volunteers who are paid nothing.