Glen Orrin Scrub Clearance Work Party - April 3rd 2016

For the first branch event of 2016 the weather forecast was awful but thankfully it was wrong! There was a great turn-out of volunteers - thirteen folk gathered to remove invading gorse and broom from a track and adjacent hillside to improve the habitat for Pearl-bordered Fritillary. This butterfly is monitored here through the season by means of a transect so hopefully the impacts of this management work will be quantified 

A range of plant sizes were tackled using a range of techniques. Small plants were pulled up by hand (by those that had strong backs), slightly larger plants were cut with loppers, still larger plants were cut with bowsaws and three different sizes of our latest weapon - tree-poppers - were employed to good effect.   

In between this activity there was some good chat, plenty of tea and coffee and four different types of home-made cake and muffins! We even recorded the same number of moth species – Beautiful Plume (Amblyptilia acanthadactyla), Common Flat-body (Agonopterix heracliana), Red Birch Slender (Caloptilia betulicola) and Northern Eggar caterpillar. And just for the birders, we had a singing chiffchaff.

It was a satisfying day’s work and hopefully the fruits of our labours will be rewarded by seeing Pearl-bordered Fritillaries on the May 22 field trip.

Back-breaking work at Glen Orrin, below.

 

Scrub Clearance team at Glen Orrin