A slight delay in reporting on the last balsam bash, but there are a few upcoming events that I wanted to
let everyone know about...read on to find out more.
Our post today revolves around the three B's:
Firstly we had a great second day of balsam bashing:
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| Goslings speed testing the river the morning of the bash |
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| The usual suspects and a few new faces |
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| The danger zone - balsam up stream of our renaturalised bank at Knights Park |
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| John having fun pulling up the balsam |
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| Lauren managed to keep her feet dry as she crossed the river to tackle the other bank. |
we managed to get fairly far downstream, tackling balsam on both our side of the Hogsmill and on the opposite bank, clearing a lot of the balsam and everyone's hard work was rewarded by a brilliant KUSU picnic.
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Stockpiled Balsam before bagging up
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| Sarah and David bagging up the balsam |
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| The end of three mini balsam bashes a pile big enough to lie-down on |
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| A slap up KUSU picnic |
But we were only able to get so far, the main issue with the
balsam is that we have a continuous source of seeds coming to our site from
upstream. We have a constant battle to stay on top on our own plants as do
other organisations who work along the river.
The Wandle Trust have found the source of the balsam on the
Hogsmill and are organising a big balsam bash to help reduce the amount of
seeds coming down stream. This will have to be a yearly thing to have any long
term impact, but it’s a great opportunity for people to get involved in a
project which will have a large scale impact on the catchment as a whole, as
well as helping KU sites which abut the Hogsmill.
Follow
this link to yesterdays post for more
information.
Have you've been walking by the re-naturalised
bank and noticed something looks different, but can't quite put your infer on it?...
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| Orange fencing to trap the rubbish off the terrace |
As the amount of litter has reduced a lot, it was time for the orange fencing to be removed.
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| Toby from S.E.R.T. adding duck flaps to the fencing |
We also cut some openings into the chicken wire fence to allow the ducks into the bank by the duck flaps rather then clambering over as some enterprising water fowl were doing.
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| Looks like this mallard has a blue heart on his head - maybe its his way of showing he 'hearts' KU! |
Unfortunately the chicken wire fence has to remain in place for a while, as the high nutrient levels in the water and the high levels of the water have meant that the plants aren't having to work as hard to put down roots - a bit like plant steroids.
To help the planting, we did some supplementary planting of 115 irises in the areas where some of the sedges had failed; we also renewed some of the signs that had been
damaged and trimmed back a as much of the false watercress which was
overwhelming some of the neighbouring planting.
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| Placing the plants within reach of our work area |
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| Planting up the irises |
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| The swan eyeing up a new target |
The male swan was eyeing up Bill and had to be drawn away by
throwing some of the algae that we were clearing from the embankment further up
steam to peek his interest.
We've seen lots of wildlife making their home on the
embankment including
butterflies.
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| Grey heron taking flight |
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| Male banded demoiselle sitting on the watercress |
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| Mother and baby feeding in the hogsmill by the embankment |
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| Small white (Pieris rapae) resting on the watercress in the embankment |
Can you help us by spending 15 minutes doing a big butterfly
count between the 19
th of July and the 10
th of August?
We’re planning on
getting one person from each campus/halls of residence etc. to spend 15 minutes
taking part in the big butterfly count – we are hoping to get a record for each
one of our sites, and amalgamate and send these through to Butterfly
Conservation.
If you are interested, all the information that you need to
take part can be downloaded from their website. If you can email me at
biodiversity@kingston.ac.uk to
sign up and let me know which campus/site you will survey we can see if there
are any gaps and let people know so that someone could sign up for a site.
We’re hoping to take part each year, and it would be great
if in the long term, we end up seeing changes in the species compositions that
we find on our sites.
So far I have one person covering the renaturalised riverbank,
and one person at St Georges.
If you work/study/live at Penryn Road, Seething Wells, Kingston
Hill, Roehampton Vale, Cooper House, River House, Swan House, Kingston Bridge
House, Tolworth Court or any other sites not listed here; and would like to take
part, please email me your details and site preference to
biodiversity@kingston.ac.uk
Phew, I think that's all for now :)
Bye
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