Ye who have a spark in your veins of cockney spirit, smile or mourn acccording as you take things well or ill;— Bold Britons, we are now on Shooter's Hill!
The Friends of Eaglesfield Park will be hard at work next Sunday, 18th August, tidying and weeding at the Lilly Pond starting at 11.00am. The pond will also be open for some pond dipping. They would welcome any assistance with the tidying, as Madeleine from the Friends writes:
We really would welcome your help and support to ensure that the pond and wildlife meadow continue to flourish. If you can spare some time to help with weeding or litter picking it would be very much appreciated. We know from comments received from visitors to the park that the pond area provides a wonderful focal point and is much valued by the local community. It is also attracting a wide range of wildlife. I like to think of it as “the little oasis on the hill” and believe there is so much potential for further development. It would be really terrible if everything became overgrown and neglected.
We are meeting Sunday 18th August between 11 am and 1pm to carry out pond and meadow tidying up. Could you join us, whatever time you can spare will be helpful?
Pond Dipping will also be available, we have the equipment – so bring the family !
Hannah, the Education Officer at Woodlands Farm, wrote with details of their Summer Holiday Activities for children and about a series of bat walks at the farm in the next couple of months. The children’s activities are:
Orienteering Wednesday 21st August 10am – 2pm
Come and have a go at our orienteering course at Woodlands Farm; can you find your way around without getting lost?
£1 per child, accompanying adults free. Drop in any time between 10am-2pm.
Corn Dollies Friday 23rd August 2pm-4pm
Have a go at this traditional craft, to make lovely corn dollies to take home with you.
£1 per child,
Explore Woodlands Farm Day Tuesday 27th August 11am-3pm
Drop by Woodlands farm to have a go at craft activities, meet our animals and have a go at our milking challenge. This event is free and you can drop by any time between 11am-3pm to join the fun!
Farmer for a day Wednesday 28th August 10am-12pm and 2pm-4pm
Ever fancied seeing what it is like to be a farmer? Join us as we have a go at feeding and weighing our animals as well as walking our fields to check all our animals. This event is only suitable for children over 8 years. Booked is essential to book call 0208 319 8900
£2 per child, accompanying adults free
Farm Storytelling and crafts Friday 30th August 10am-12pm and 1pm-3pm
Come along to the farm for a day or crafts and storytelling. The farm is a place full of wonderful stories so come along to hear some lovely farm stories and take part in our craft activities.
£1 per child, accompanying adults free
The Bat Walks are on Thursday 22nd August 2013 at 7.45pm, Wednesday 28th August 2013 at 7.45pm and Tuesday 10th September 2013 at 7pm. Booking is essential, and you’ll need to be quick as I hear places are filling fast. Hannah’s e-mail said:
Join us for a bat walk around Woodlands Farm. We have a number of different bat species living on the farm so this is a great opportunity to find out more about bats and see what we can find. You will need sturdy footwear, suitable outdoor clothing and a torch. This activity is not recommended for children under 6. £2 per adult and £1 per child. Booking is essential. To book call 020 8319 8900.
Snippet from the Bat Conservation Trust’s Big Bat Map
Shooters Hill is a great place for bat spotting, and they have been seen or detected at various locations around the hill as can be seen in the Bat Conservation Trust‘s Big Bat Map, Shooters Hill snippet above. As well as the Common and Soprano Pipistrelles seen in Shrewsbury Park on the Friends’ bat walk, the two Pipistrelle species, Noctules and possibly Leisler’s bats have been detected in Oxleas Wood and Soprano Pipistrelles regularly forage over Eaglesfield Park Lilly Pond. Woodlands Farm contribute to the National Bat Monitoring Programme annual survey, which means they look for bats on a transect route of 12 walks and 12 stops at the beginning and end of July each year. This year they detected quite a few Common & Soprano Pipistrelles and Noctules, which bodes well for their bat walks.
There are likely to be other species of bat in the area, and it would be interesting to know which of the UK’s 18 species are here. At the end of the nineteenth century 8 species were recorded in Woolwich and West Kent according to the 1909 Woolwich Surveys by Grinling, Ingram and Polkinghorne. Their section about mammals starts with a list of bat species that had been seen:
This list is compiled from the “List of Mammalia” in the “Fauna of Blackheath,” published in 1859; the “List of the Mammals of Bromley, Kent,” published by the Bromley Naturalists’ Society in 1895; a ” MS. List” from A. S. Kennard ; and a “MS. List” from B. W. Adkin. It will be interesting to note that several species, now very rare or extinct in the area, were at one time even common in the heart of the district.
Probably if more lists were available from the outlying part of the area, a better view of the distribution would be obtained. The contractions used are as follows :
B.W.A. = B. W. Adkin.
A.S.K. = A. S. Kennard.
Fn.B. = Fauna of Blackheath.
B.L. = Bromley List, mainly A. S. Kennard’s records.
CHIROPTERA.
VESPERTILIONIDÆ.
Vesperugo noctula, Schreb. Great Bat. Common all over district, Hayes (A.S.K.) ; Lewisham, rare (B.W.A.).
Vesperugo pipistrellus, Schreb. Common Bat. Hayes (B.L.) ; Blackheath and district, very common (Fn.B.) and (B.W.A.).
Vesperugo leisleri, R.- Hairy-armed Bat. Chislehurst (A.S.K.).
Vespertilio mystacinus, Leis. Whiskered Bat. Chislehurst (Fn.B.).
Vespertilio nattereri, R. Natterer’s Bat.Chislehurst (A.S.K.).
Plecotus auritus, L. Long-eared Bat. Chislehurst (Fn.B.) ; Hayes (B.L.) ; Lewisham, fairly common (B.W.A.). ; Beckenham,. 1903 (A.S.K.).
Synotus barbastellus, Schreb. Barbastelle. Chislehurst (Fn. B.) ; Dartford (A.S.K.).
RHINOLOPHIDÆ.
Rhinolophus ferrum-equinum, Desm. Greater Horseshoe Bat. Hayes, 1904 (A.S.K.).
Some names have changed: the Noctule is referred to as the Great Bat, which is fitting for one of the UK’s largest bats, the Pipistrelle is called the Common Bat which is also apt as it is the most common in the UK and Leisler’s bat is the Hairy Armed Bat. Also at that time it wasn’t known that there was more than one Pipistrelle species, and that the Common Bat was two species: the Common and Soprano Pipistrelles. That wasn’t certain until 1997 when it was confirmed by DNA analysis. The Long-eared Bat was “fairly common” in the 1909 Woolwich Surveys, and the Brown Long-eared is still common throughout the British Isles. It is quite difficult to detect because its echolocation calls are very quiet, and my bat guide says it is more often seen than heard on bat detectors. They are such amazing looking creatures, with ears that are almost as long as their bodies, that they are definitely one to look out for on bat walks in the woods.
Congratulations to the Friends of Eaglesfield Park! It was announced yesterday that environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy had awarded the park a Green Flag, a national award which recognises and rewards the best green spaces in the country. Eaglesfield is one of 1266 parks and greens spaces in the UK that have received the award in 2013. This included 11 parks in the Royal Borough of Greenwich: Avery Hill Park, Charlton Park, Eaglesfield Park, East Greenwich Pleasaunce, Eltham Park South, Fairy Hill Park, Horn Park, Maryon Park, Sutcliffe Park, The Tarn and Well Hall Pleasaunce.
The awards have been running since 1996 and are seen as the “benchmark against which our parks and green spaces are measured”. They are decided by expert judges who assess the parks against a set of eight criteria following a site visit. The criteria include the park being a welcoming place and being healthy, safe and secure and also that it has a Marketing Strategy and a Management Plan. The Community Award is assessed against similar criteria, but excluding marketing.
The Green Flag award is well-deserved recognition of all the hard work that the Friends of Eaglesfield Park have put in over the last few years.
Friends of Eaglesfield Park working at the Lilly Pond
“That’s about 2 days worth of recycling”, said our guide, Danny Easton, pointing to the massive pile of rubbish that had been emptied from the Borough’s recycling trucks. We were at the start of a tour of the Greenwich Mirf, as the Materials Recycling Facility in Nathan Way is known. We’d already seen where the compostable material from the green bins is deposited, and learned that the methane from the composting waste is piped off to the gas grid.
I’d been trying to get a tour of the MRF for a while, wanting to know how the mixed-up contents of our blue top bins were separated out, but had been told that the old regular tours no longer run. A couple of years ago, in lieu of a visit, I was sent an interesting DVD describing how the recycling centre operates, but it’s not the same as seeing it for real. An enquiry card dropped into a box at the recent Great Get Together/Armed Forced Day event solved the problem, leading to an invitation to a personal guided tour.
The technology at the MRF is very impressive, and it utilises a wide variety of forces to sort the different materials: gravity, vibration, magnetism, induced electrical currents, infra-red, optical recognition and compressed air are all part of the process. The Veolia web site describes the technology and processes really well, so I won’t repeat it all here. I was most impressed by the the huge Trommel near the start of the process, after the bag splitter. The Trommel looks a bit like a massive tumble drier, 3 meters in diameter and 12 meters long, which rotates 12 times a minute separating containers from paper and cardboard. Then later on the infra-red auto-sort for plastic bottles which is able to detect the difference between coloured, clear and opaque plastic bottles whizzing past on a conveyor belt at 30-40 mph and adjust a blast of compressed air to direct them to different places. Amazing!
The MRF undergoes maintenance for 20% of the time, though it can usually be run safely at the same time. Partly this is for routine, scheduled work – for example the moving parts on the conveyor belts need to be cleared of dust and broken glass particles – but sometimes the machinery is stopped by material that shouldn’t have been put in the recycling. Textiles are a problem, particularly for a machine called the V Screen which separates mixed paper. Also old VCR tapes get broken and release hundreds of feet of tape that gets wound up in the mechanisms and need staff to come in on Sunday to cut it away with Stanley knives. So we can help by not putting VCR tapes and textiles in our blue top bins, and by removing the caps from bottles and tetrapak cartoons so they can go to the appropriate place in the MRF.
Separated bales at the other end of Greenwich MRF
As much as possible of the separated waste is sent on to UK companies for further processing, though some does go abroad: for example old tyres are shipped to Holland. Greenwich waste that cannot be reused, recycled or composted mostly goes to the South East London Combined Heat and Power energy recovery facility near Millwall Football Ground, where it is burnt to generate electricity. The train into London goes right past the SELCHP site. This means that Greenwich has one of the lowest figures for the percentage of waste that gets put into landfill in the country. For 2008/9 an FOI Request revealed that “Greenwich Council sent less waste to landfill than any other local authority in the UK. This was around 3% of the household waste generated.” However 2011 data on recycling on the Guardian Datablog indicated that Greenwich was the third lowest council for “Percentage of municipal waste sent to landfill”, with a figure of 6%.
The Guardian Datablog data also shows that Greenwich is a middling performer on amount of waste recycled, at 37%. The best council in London was neighbouring Bexley at 51% and the worst our northern neighbour Newham with just 15%. However the Greenwich percentage has shown quite an increase from the 11.5% in 2003 when it was agreed to build the MRF. There is still a way to go to meet the requirement in Chapter 5 of the London Plan to exceed exceed recycling/composting levels in municipal solid waste (MSW) of “45% by 2015, 50% by 2020 and aspiring to achieve 60% by 2031.” Greenwich is working with other South-East London boroughs to achieve this.
Snippet from Guardian Datablog: Recycling in England: the map
Another interesting thing I learned during the tour was what drove their efforts to improve recycling quality and quantities. As well helping to save the planet, obviously, the need to meet European directives is important, but also economics plays a major role. For example the best grade of recycled paper currently fetches £150 a ton, and aluminium is £700 a ton. This makes it worthwhile to recycle waxed tetrapak type cartons which contain a thin layer of Aluminium. I remember from school chemistry how energy intensive it is to extract Aluminium from Bauxite, so this is a benefit on many levels.
It was a very interesting tour and we were buzzing with fascinating facts when we handed our safety helmets and protective glasses back to Danny on the way out. Some amazing technology, and key to decreasing the amount of our rubbish that gets buried in landfill sites and increasing how much is reused in some way.
Disposal of Rubbish in England from Guardian Datablog
The Friends of Eaglesfield Park have launched a new blog to keep us up to date with what’s happening in the park, such as the recent pond dipping and tidying event. They mention that the next opportunity for pond dipping will be at the Eaglesfield Park Neighbourhood Watch Scheme 2013 Community Fête on Saturday 15 June between 1 and 4 pm, and that they are planning to hold a Parkfest Event on Saturday 13th July.
I’ve added the new blog to the local links list on the right.
Madeleine from the Friends of Eaglesfield Park wrote with the latest news about the pond, and about a Pond Dipping event this Sunday, from 10am to 12.00 Noon. This will be combined with the first weeding and tidying session of 2013 for the wild flower garden around the pond.
Madeleine wrote:
Finally Spring (and the sunshine) have arrived and we can continue the development and tidy up of the pond and meadow. The pond life seems to be flourishing, including newts, frogs, water boatman, water skaters, dragonfly with plenty of other interesting creatures we have yet to identify! The meadow has “greened up” well, but we need to reduce the invasive “weeds” and grass so that the wildflower seeds planted last year have a better chance of survival. We also have more seeds to sow and will be adding further plants. By now it is “old” news that there are up to a dozen ducks that regularly visit the pond. I also understand that bats have been seen hunting around the pond. We would like to thank everyone for their support and hard work in transforming this once forgotten part of Eaglesfield Park into a beautiful focal point for wildlife and the local community.
We are meeting on Sunday 19th May between 10.00 am and 12.00 noon to carry out litter picking, weeding and planting and would very much appreciate your help – whatever time you can spare would be a valuable contribution. Sorry, but could you bring your own tools (spade, fork, trowel, builder’s bucket) and don’t forget to wear old clothes, wellies and gloves. It won’t be all hard work though, we intend to have a bit of fun! We will be POND DIPPING as well.
So, why not bring the family to try POND DIPPING and help identify the various pond creatures. We will supply pond dipping nets and information for identification.
We do hope you will pop round to see us.
Whilst writing, some news in brief:
– We are still working with Royal Greenwich and the Lottery Fund and hope to have new signage in and around the Park in the very near future.
– IT access is currently being updated and we will keep you informed. Meanwhile, if you have queries or comments, I am happy to help.
– We are in the early stages of planning park events.
On a personal level, I have lived on Shooters Hill all my life and have been a member of Friends of Eaglesfield Park (FOEP) since it was set up in 2006. I remember the pond as a beauty spot that everyone visited but which over the years became overgrown, a dumping area and eventually a dried up scrub. In fact many people did not realise the pond had ever existed! I do hope you agree with me that the restored wildlife pond and meadow is a wonderful opportunity to study nature in a tranquil setting. If you would like to know how you can help the FOEP, please get in touch. We really could do with some extra help!
The pond is looking good at the moment. I notice that a new tree has been planted where the Mulberry that fell over during the pond work used to be. I hope it’s a replacement Mulberry!
Bats are just amazing creatures; flying mammals that are superbly adapted to their nocturnal lifestyle. And much maligned – they are not vampiric blood-suckers, swooping down to latch onto a jugular vein. Admittedly a few Central and South American bats do feed on the blood of livestock such as pigs and cattle, but they lap up the blood coming from the cut they make in their prey’s vein rather than sucking it out. Even this has a good side: a drug has been developed from the enzyme in the bats’ saliva that prevents the blood clotting, which may, one day soon, be used to treat people who have had a stroke. A scientist with a sense of humour has called the drug Draculin.
The Friends of Shrewsbury Park are bat lovers. Their bat walk has become an annual event, and the next one is on Friday 17th May, meeting at 8.00pm at the car park off Plum Lane. Last year’s walk took place on one of the few dry spring days, and attendees were rewarded with detection and sightings of a number of hunting pipistrelles. Hopefully the long, cold winter hasn’t had too much effect on the bats and this year’s walk will be similarly successful. The walk will pass by the bat boxes the Friends constructed and, with council assistance, attached to trees in the park last year. Sometimes it is a year or two before boxes are inhabited, and bats move between different roost sites at different times of the year, so it will be interesting to see on Friday if the park boxes have any occupants.
Putting up bat boxes in Shrewsbury Park
Bats are a priority species in the Royal Borough of Greenwich Biodiversity Action Plan, which says in the species action plan for bats:
Many bat species roost in loft spaces in houses and this sometimes causes people concern, as there are many misconceptions about bats:
• Bats are not rodents, and do not gnaw at wood, wires or insulation.
• All British bats consume insects and therefore their droppings are dry and crumbly, they do not putrefy like mouse droppings.
• Bats do not nest and therefore do not bring bedding material or insect prey into roost spaces.
• Bats are clean, and spend many hours grooming.
• No species of British bat feed on blood.
Aims for Greenwich:
• To protect and enhance the present population through increasing the provision of roost sites in Greenwich.
• To protect and enhance linear landscape features and wildlife corridors for bats to commute between roost and feeding sites.
• To increase the abundance of insect prey available for bats.
Pair of Pipistrelles under a thumb
A good way to find our more about bats is to go along to the Bat Fest organised by the Bat Conservation trust and the Natural History Museum, which this year runs over the weekend of 1st and 2nd June at the museum in South Kensington. Volunteers from the London Bat Group will be on some of the stands. Last year it included various batty activities for children, some more detailed technical stuff about echolocation and a series of Nature Live talks. Also there was the marvellous Jenny Clark, a bat carer who has converted part of her home in Forest Row, Sussex into a bat hospital. She brought along some of the rescue bats that couldn’t be released back into the wild because, maybe, they were unable to fly or had been hand-reared from babies. It was a rare chance to get close to live bats, and to learn how cute and fragile they are, and that they purr when stroked.
If you share my fascination with batty matters, take a look at these Youtube videos of bats in action. First, on BBC’s Top Bat, a sequence showing Daubenton’s Bats hunting at Fountains Abbey in Yorkshire.
I just love this video of the Long Eared Bat silently stalking moths using its hypersensitive hearing.
Spring has sprung at last and our green spaces are shooting and blooming. Parts of Oxleas Wood are carpeted with Wood Anemones, and the first Bluebells have appeared. Next Sunday, 5th May, there are two opportunities to enjoy a walk in our woodlands guided by experts.
In the morning, starting at 10.15am Woodlands Farm are hosting a Late Spring Wildlife Walk. As their poster says:
Sunday 5th May 2013 10.15am – 12.30pm
Winter was not behind us when we had our last spring walk. But at last the blossom is out in the hedgerows and lambing is finished! So put a spring in your step and enjoy a community countryside and wildlife walk around Woodlands Farm. Led by members of the Woodlands Farm Trust. Please wear appropriate clothing including sensible footwear. The walk will probably be a bit challenging for buggies but supervised children are very welcome.
£1 per person (under 18’s free)
Free for farm volunteers and members
Meet at the Education Centre
The Woodlands Farm Trust
331 Shooters Hill, Welling, Kent DA16 3RP
Website: www.thewoodlandsfarmtrust.org
Email: wildlife@thewoodlandsfarmtrust.org
Tel: 020 8319 8900
Then in the afternoon, meeting at 2.00pm at the Oxleas Cafe, there’s a Bluebell Walk guided by the London Wildlife Trust. If it’s anything like last year’s walk participants will learn about much more of the flora and fauna of Oxleas Wood than just the Bluebells. It is expected that the walk will last 1 to 2 hours, but participants can join or leave at any time.
Those who have lots of energy could do both walks, maybe fortified by a bacon butty from the Oxlea Wood Cafe.
It was a cold dry morning during the week when a group of children from Timbercroft School headed over to Shrewsbury Park to help Royal Borough of Greenwich Tree Officers put some new bird boxes up in the trees there. The boxes were built by Friends of Shrewsbury Park, several of whom also came along. A total of 13 boxes were fixed up on trees in the park, and should be just in time for this years’ nest building and breeding season.
The bird boxes are the first step in a number of improvements that the Friends will be making to the park over the coming months. Work has already started on fabricating the wheelchair-friendly gates that will be erected at the park entrance near the Garland Road end of Dothill, and a sculptor is creating a carved noticeboard to stand at this entrance. Once the weather improves part of the Dothill path which is susceptible to flooding will have a new drainage system and will be resurfaced. There are also plans to plant wild flowers alongside the path: the Friends will be looking for volunteers to help with this.
The improvement work is mainly being funded by a grant of over £11,000 from the The Veolia Environmental Trust, with the council also providing some support.
Dothill – to be resurfaced and have a new drainage system
Preparations have started for the Friends’ Summer Festival which will be held on Saturday 6th June. Previous summer festivals have been great fun. The Friends are looking for assistance with the festival, in particular: donations of books and bric a brac; leafleting local roads over the weekend of 18th and 19th May; setting up and running the bric a brac or books stall; and providing music. You can contact them on fspdog@hotmail.com.
They will also be leading a bat walk around the park again this year, on Friday 17th May. It will follow a similar route to last year’s successful night-time stroll, when lots of pipistrelles were detected with the bat detectors and seen swooping just above head-height, hunting midges and other food using their high frequency echolocation system. This year the walk will take the opportunity to check the bat boxes that were put up last year for signs of bat inhabitants.
Greenwich Park Ranger John Beckham will be talking to the Shooters Hill Local History Group on the subject of “Birds of Rye Harbour and Surrounding Area” on Thursday, 21st February. The presentation will take place at Shrewsbury House, Bushmoor Crescent starting at 8.00pm. John regularly gives presentations on ornithology to local groups and is one of the leaders of Greenwich park tours and rambles.
It should be an interesting talk. A very wide variety of different birds are seen at the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, and their January sightings included: over 2500 wigeon, 972 teal, 2130 brent goose, bittern, a smew, 68 white-fronted goose, 10 goldeneye, six pintail, two great white egret, a little egret, large numbers of curlew, lapwing, golden plover, snipe, a flock of 26 ruff, 220 dunlin, 180 knot, 120 sanderling, 61 grey plover, three avocet, a bar-tailed godwit, several woodcock, five jack snipe spotted redshank, three marsh harrier, merlin, peregrine, a buzzard, a hen harrier, brent goose, red-throated diver, 75 gannet, 70 guillemot, 120 razorbill, three slavonian grebe, Mediterranean gull, 180 fieldfare, 45 redwing, 235 skylark, corn bunting flocks, a raven, a firecrest and the highlight, a hawfinch.
