Our 4th Woodland Volunteer morning this year got off to a bit of a soggy start, but somehow the wet weather brought out around 16 volunteers, most of whom stayed all the time. Although it feels still cool, and with the recent poor Easter Bank Holiday weekends weather in everybody’s minds, it was nice to see that trees were slowly starting to come in to leaf.
We had our third 2018 volunteer day today – the first opportunity after the snow. Main activities were working on the new trench at the bottom of the mound, to develop a more varied habitat in that part of the wood, planting some native yews and building and putting up some new nesting boxes. Here are some photos of that, just to prove that it is not only a bunch of old folk doing this. Also a little video to show that our bees have woken up.
Thanks to all the volunteers for their hard work and, as always, to Frank for tea, coffee and biscuits.
Our second volunteer session of the year was very well attended with committee members, regular volunteers and new volunteers. This morning’s event started earlier than usual as the group undertook, under the leadership of local expert naturalist Joe Beale, an early morning bird survey. Full results will soon be available on the website, but the list included gold finches, robins and a sparrow hawk made their names to the list.
Continue readingNovember 2017 – Earlier this year it was announced by our former committee member and vice chairman, Frank Smith, that he has decided to step down from his post. Frank has been without doubt one of the key participants in driving the Westcombe Woodlands project forward from the early days of 2011, to its current status as now being part of the Woodland Trust. Frank’s valuable contributions to the smooth running of the Westcombe Woodlands can not be underestimated, from the organisation of newsletters, funding opportunities, liaison with Greenwich Council for grants, setting up a bank account, to hosting the committee’s regular meetings, to being ever present with refreshments on the volunteer mornings and to being a regular member at our open days, it would be hard to think that without his skills and diligence the project would never have got this far.
Although he is leaving his position, Frank will still be joining us on our monthly volunteer mornings and appearing on the twice yearly open days.
In honour of his achievements, in mid-November, past and present committee members had an enjoyable dinner in a local Greenwich pub, and as can be seen in the photos below, a good time was well and truly had by all!
The first volunteer session of 2018 took place last Saturday morning. Despite the temperature of just 4 degrees, several committee members and volunteers arrived. Today’s theme was to assess potential projects for later in the year, taking advantage of the dry weather and trees that have lost leaves to consider new places for new trees to be situated, as well as thoughts on new areas that can be planted up.
Although winter has only just started, already in places there were signs of Spring flowering plants already starting to appear, including the bluebells and primroses we’ve previously planted. We also found a foxglove which looks like it has arrived without being planted, a good sign of the potential seed-bank in the “mini Glade” area.
