Urban Nature Reserve

Last Friday we cleared the already trodden paths of weeds and laid down woodchip. This was on a nature reserve that we manage, tucked away at the back of the Laisteridge Lane University of Bradford Campus.

The most exciting thing for me was when I hit stone under the soil with my fork along a few metres of the path. It was buried under a thick mulch of woodland matter but I scraped it back and voila!: there was one ready made section paved with stone! I have yet to find the extent of it but it seems quite wide. It could even turn out to be a sort of patio rather than just a narrow path. More digging next time!

The site has been through different uses. Long ago it was farmed and before we started managing it as a nature reserve it had been run as a garden. This has sparked my interest in it's history and I will try and find out more.

The Robins on the site are always completely unflustered by our presence. One landed at my feet as I was talking. It paused a while and then hopped into the undergrowth. We also saw a red damselfly and an azure blue damselfly. We can identify these after we invited an expert down to our open day last week. Children who turned up from the local community had a great time. One family was literally the nearest flat which was part of the university halls of residence. They particularly seemed to enjoy the pond dipping and they also made bird feeders and lacewing hotels. They didn't want to touch the huge and rather alien looking dragonfly nymphs though!

Pond Platform part 2.

On Friday we finished off the dipping platform in fantastic weather. It was hard work but we are really pleased with the results. The platform juts out into the pond so that the edge is already in quite deep water. Once we stopped concentrating on work and began to look into the water at the edge of the platform we were immediately amazed at the amount of extra wildlife activity you can see. Newts pop up regularly to grab air and there are loads of pond snails which crawl over the pond weed. Previously, children had to scoop the snails out with nets to see them at which point the creatures would hide in their shells and stay there. Now you can see them in the clear water as they move about.

We were helped by University of Bradford students who were taking part in national volunteers week. They got loads of vegetation cleared so that access to the wooded area is massively improved. Hope to see you next week too, guys! For the second week running the Telegraph and Argus photographed our efforts. If anyone spots us in the paper, please let us know and keep us a copy!