Category Archives: Field Trips

Hi

Thanks to everyone who came and helped check the bat boxes in the forest. The Cropton boxes had a little bit of use from some Noctules but no bats present yet. Otherwise we managed a total of 81 bats. The highlights were 7 Noctules in a box at Pexton east and the several boxes at Keldy Ponds that had clusters of Natterer’s.  A few lucky people also bagged their first sighting of a UK beaver in Cropton Forest. Luckily the weather men were a little pessimistic.

It is now moving into the surveying season and there a few surveys already planned on the calendar plus the Pot luck supper at Throxenby Mere to look forward to.

Hope to see some of you at a few of these.

Nick G

Six people headed off on the Rosedale walk to look for Ring ouzel and Redstart. From the car park Red grouse were calling and throughout the day were plentiful and amazingly tame. A lot of displaying and chasing and calling by numerous males were witnessed.  Surprisingly there were no Wheatear present around the kilns but it was not long before we found two males in pristine condition on a meadow. At the same time a Redstart was singing from the hanging woodlands but refused to show itself. While attracted to the Redstart a pair of Ring ouzels were spotted at the far end of the meadow, Rob picking up their distant song. Before we could get really close they were disturbed by some other walkers and cyclists but did not go far and we then closed up and had better views. An odd call was bothering us which we eventually confirmed as the call of a Ring ouzel when later in the day we watched on calling from a clump of heather.  As we walked a further pair of Ring ouzel was then detected further north with much better views. Golden plover were calling and a singleton and a pair were seen as we progressed along the track and a further pair of Ring ouzels flew out of some rushes to the east of the track. Greylag geese  came flying over from the south, not quite a moorland bird! Just as we approached our lunch stop near the mine shaft it started to rain and waterproofs were donned. During lunch a Sparrowhawk put in a brief appearance on the southern crest of the hill. The walk was a bit swifter in the wind and rain but stopped before we got back to the cars giving us ample time for further good views of Ring ouzel, one of which had a yellow ring on its left leg. Redstarts were again singing but as before there was no sign of them. A great day out.

I think we were all thrilled at the wonderful day in Cropton. Andrew and his friends with a few additional SFNS eyes found  total of 38 male adders, 2 Slowworms and a juvenile Lizard despite the weather not being ideal. The colour variation in the adders was quite dramatic from almost black to a pale green/cream background. The colder weather seems to have kept the Lizards and Slowworms a bit lethargic and had not come out to ‘sun’ themselves. Apart from the reptiles frog spawn was found in many of the shallow pools and wheel ruts and a male toad almost got stood on. The birds were also quite impressive with a quite good numbers of Siskin and Repoll, including a flock of 40-50 of the latter species.  We were surprised to have a Raven cr0aking mid morning and the day was rounded off with a chattering Goshawk and also a group of 11 Crossbills, including 2 juveniles, that came and sat in a small dead tree right above our Well done Andrew – we thought we would be lucky if we saw 2 or 3!

Thanks to a break in the weather we managed to complete the bat box checks across the whole forest. A grand total of 72 bats of 6 species were recorded – Common and Soprano pipitrelle, Daubenton’s, Natterer’s, Brown long-eared and Noctule. Brown long-eared was an extra species to or spring checks and were found at Wykeham and Keys Beck. The latter site produced a total of 3 bats this time which was a nice surprise after a complete blank in the spring check.  During the checks we also managed to add replacement boxes in both Wykeham and Broadhead to replace the damaged ones removed during the spring.

We plan to do some repairs on the hibernation boxes at Broadhead soon and also add some replacement boxes to Pexton Ponds area where there are only a few good boxes left at present. The Broadhead hibernation boxes clearly contain a maternity colony during the summer as there was 5-6cms of droppings in the bottom of both of the boxes and a Noctule was still present when we did the check.

At Dalby Beck we found a male Natterer’s with a ring on – Y2833. A quick ask around of John Altringham and John Drewitt originally lead us to believe we had misread the ring as there was a male Natterer’s, Y3833, ringed at the windy pits in 2003. It later transpired that the bat had actually been rung at Ellerburn church in 2013 and Y2833 was the correct number. It has been recorded at the church each year since it was ringed.