'Pearing up'

In the last week or so, we have been experiencing some glorious spring weather, with clear blue skies providing a striking back-drop to emerging blossom and leaves.

The clouds of white flowers on the orchard pear trees at Martins' Meadows really caught my eye -  particularly when pictured close-up.

Even now, at this early stage in the year you can already see  the immature pears taking shape behind the blousy flowers.
Not possible to show on a blog - but when I visited, the blooms were alive with the sound of bees - so hopefully there will be  good pollination and the promise of a good harvest if the sharp night frosts didn't catch the trees.

Midsummer in Midwinter

Over Christmas and New Year, I have been helping out with checking the Suffolk Wildlife Trust livestock.

With the grass no longer growing, it is necessary to supplement the grazing with hay. Most of the hay we are feeding was harvested from the  SWT hay meadow reserves back in July.

On a cold and frosty or wet and windy morning in December - the warm sunny days of hay-making are  rather a faded memory - but as you cut open the bales into the in the hayracks, it is like cutting into a slice of midsummer in the midwinter. The scent of the hay and the  many flowers and grasses clearly visible momentarily  recapture July. Knapweed, clover, yellow rattle, sweet vernal grass, meadow barley and crested dog's tail are all easily discernible - the plants of summer immortalised in a bale, providing a welcome hay feast.

Winter colour

During the short days of November and December when the skies are often wood pigeon grey - it hardly seems to get light. Low light levels seem to make the world a rather drab place and it becomes harder to find inspiration and solace. However, look closely and both can still be found - all but on a subtler scale than during the blousy, carefree days of summer.













Vibrant lime-green mosses seem to almost shine in the grass, re-hydrated and easier to see in the shorter aftermath grazed sward. The bare branches of shrubs and trees are more clearly visible now the leaves have fallen and mosses and lichens are much more apparent.

Micro-carpets of mosses are almost like velvet on tree branches and lichens appear like splashes of yellow ochre or flaking Verdi-gris - all providing winter colour on a micro-scale.

Multi-tasking

Whilst checking the sheep at one of the meadows recently, I was very struck by the amazing structure of some teasel heads in the ditch and how they have evolved to be so 'multi-purpose'.
Earlier in the season, the tall stems carry the flowers aloft, advertising the tightly packed flowers to passing insects for pollination. The close packing of the flowers seems optimise the number of flowers over a given surface area - all interlocking with not an air gap to see.
The sharp spines on both flower heads and stem protect the flower from grazing and the hollow stems given strength but with economy of structure.
After pollination, the seed heads act as shakers and rattles for dispersing the seed ( if the flocks of goldfinches don't get there first).
On dewy autumn mornings, intricately worked spiders' webs are clearly visible, the spiny framework of the flower heads providing an ideal support over which to drape over the sticky snares.

In the aftermath of summer

After the summer hay cut, the meadows quickly green up and begin to grow again - putting on 'aftermath' growth.
In most years, it helps site condition to late summer or autumn sheep graze this aftermath.
The timing of  grazing varies from site to site and season to season, but generally the first meadow to be aftermath grazed is Fox Fritillary meadow.  The meadow is on relatively fertile floodplain alluvial soils and so quickly 'springs' back into growth after the haysling.
We delivered a flock of SWT Hebridean sheep to this meadow in mid August.  At first their task looked like a daunting one, but they soon set about nibbling back and revealing the fence lines, as well as tackling the tall herbs along the edge of the ditch and any docks or thistles that try to creep into the sward.
The sheep do an excellent job in encouraging the grass to 'tiller', which tightens the sward and helps prevent bare patches where undesirable  plants like ragwort, creeping and spear thistle might otherwise establish.
Although the sheep do generate a certain amount of nutrients as dung, the overall effect of aftermath grazing is a second harvest of the meadow. There is net movement of nutrients off the meadow in the form of nutrients that have been assimilated into the fabric of the sheep -  so when the sheep leave the meadows so do the nutrients!
The sheep dung is also a useful source of organic matter and can  be important for soil and dung invertebrates.
The grazing means that the sward is low at the beginning of the next growing season. This tends to favour wildflowers that are intolerant of shading and competition from taller grasses. The snake's head fritillary pushes up its delicate leaves before the taller grasses get going, giving it a head start in the photosynthesising stakes. Low growing plants like adder's tongue, bugle and cowslip which would soon be engulfed by large grasses also take advantage of this early window.

Seeking a refuge

Hay-cutting is a very necessary and important part of the management of the meadow reserves - but from the perspective of a grassland insect, the hay cut must be a very dramatic change of scene!

Obviously we need to cut the hay to maintain the wildflower diversity of the meadows on which the insects in part depend, but we can reduce the impact by leaving uncut refuges for insects, particularly pollinators like bees.

 

On each of the hay meadows, we leave an uncut refuge strip of about 5-10m wide.  Aftermath grazing by the sheep helps trim these uncut areas up later in the year, but we also vary the  location of the strip each year to prevent scrub invading the  blackthorn is particularly quick to silently creep into the meadow
 when the cutter or sheep have turned their back!

The refuge strips also provide a graded and gentle edge to the meadow, which adds structural diversity and increases the range of habitat niches.


Hopefully many species benefit from these strips, though I think the field vole may question their value when the barn owl hovers overhead finding the strips very convenient quartering!

 

 

On bale

What a contrast the weather has been this year compared to last for haymaking.
A wet summer really hampered the 'haysling' last year, whereas this year a run of fine, dry weather has allowed the process to go relatively smoothly with our hay harvest from the meadows safely cut, baled and stored by the end of last week. My thanks to the great team who worked so hard to make it all happen.
There was even time to step back and admire our hard work and I could not resist this picture of Ellie, triumphant on bales at Martins' meadows  or to put it another way - she is 'out on bale for good behaviour!'