OCTOBER 2012 VOLUME 2, ISSUE 3. Message from the Chairman. So for now join me in welcoming the new trustees and looking forward to a great future.

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1 Business Name Wildlife Matters OCTOBER 2012 VOLUME 2, ISSUE 3 Message from the Chairman Photos Dave Hill Dear Members I would like to take this opportunity to say hello. It is with great pleasure that I take over the role of Chairman from Robert (Bob) Lee who has for many years served us well in various roles and most recently as Treasurer and Chairman. I would like to thank Bob for all his hard work over the years and hope to continue to see him around. Thank you Bob. I would also like to thank Stephen Brown for continuing as a trustee to help some of us rookies find our feet. Just a little about me. I am a mid-forties Business specialist working for one of the big Banks, I have a wife and 2 children and have lived in Caerwys for the past 16 years. I have been interested in nature all my life, previously doing voluntary work with the RSPB and Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, this is my second year as a member of NEWW and when the call went out for new trustees I was keen to get more involved. I personally feel that we need to get children more involved with nature, as too many are not allowed to explore at an early age and before you know it there are other distractions like game consoles and Face- book. I also believe that local conservation charities have a vital role in shaping our future landscape by tapping into the wealth of expert knowledge within their membership, by gaining a greater understanding of effective land management techniques and by working with local communities for the benefit of everybody. There were 6 new trustees including myself appointed at the general meeting on the 30 th June, what was evident to me during the meeting when we all had to get up and give a little introduction, was the wealth and diversity the new trustees bring to the board. The skills on the board include accountancy, ecology and land management, graphic design, business, HR to name just a few. This I feel puts NEWW in a strong position for the future. In the near future I hope to bring details of how we will fulfil our aims, but rest assured NEWW and its members will always be at the heart of these aims So for now join me in welcoming the new trustees and looking forward to a great future. Kind regards Phil Lovell Chairman Inside this issue: Run Wild 2 Reserve Walk 2 School vivits 2 Traditional Skills 3 Upcoming events 3 Lane End update 4 Rhydymwyn update 4 Volunteering news 5 Christmas raffle 5 Focus on Brandie Brook 6 Diary of Spon Green 7 Favorite pictures 8

2 WILDLIFE MATTERS Page 2 Run Wild Holiday Club Reserve Walk Wild play was the theme of this summer s holiday club. Based at Rhydymwyn Valley Nature Reserve, the sessions ran from 10am until 12pm on Thursdays throughout the school holiday. Activities included following and creating trails, nature walks, shelter building and making necklaces out of elder. The club finale was toasting marshmallows over a group-built campfire. The summer term brought 13 school groups to Rhydymwyn with almost 500 people visiting the site as part of our education programme. Pond dipping was particularly popular with every school opting to have it as part of their visit. Other topics included, food School Visits A great time was had by all with up to 13 families taking part on some or all of the weeks and 118 visitors on site over the course of the programme. Contact NEW- Wildlife, or visit our website to keep up to date with future events. chains, mini beast hunts, habitat studies and wildlife walks. During one very wet session the children even had a competition to see who could find (and jump in) the biggest puddle on site. We were very pleased to work with so many local schools throughout the season and hope to continue doing so in part through our current project, Lessons in Landscape. For more information contact Rachel Bailey, At the end of July Newwildlife gave visitors the opportunity to Discover Rhydywmyn with a guided site walk. A group of 15 adults, some of whom had not visited the reserve before, enjoyed a dry and bright afternoon learning about Rhydymwyn s history, as well as about the wildlife NEWWildlife are collecting adult s and children s clothing, soft toys, paired shoes, hats, belts and handbags in partnership with Bag2School. For every bag received, money is donated to NEWWildlife. For more information or, if collecting bags are needed, please contact the office. Well the children are back to school, it s time to think Christmas! With bookings already being taken for this year s Santa Trail, we are appealing for donations of foliage for our grotto. Please contact the office for more information, or if you have any donations. that now make it their home and the management that takes place to maintain and enhance the ecology of the site. NEWW was happy to receive very positive feedback from the walk and intend to arrange similar events in the future. Special points of interest

3 WILDLIFE MATTERS Page 3 Traditional Skills Weekend On the weekend of September 14th and 15th Newwildlife and Outback2Basics delivered a weekend of training in traditional skills. We were able to offer the event free of charge to participants due to Countryside Council for Wales funding. 17 people attended the event, with adults and children enjoying the activities, carving burn spoons, Using a combination of During Saturday Morning, the group learnt all aspects of camp fire lighting including, fire by friction, using a flint and steel and even lighting tinder with a magnifying glass! Next was learning how to weave a grass rope, (see left, above) after which there was a tug of war to test its strength, (see left). After lunch participants created their own felt pouch or tennis ball from Shropshire wool, (see right, above). On Sunday, the morning was spent along the woodland trail making shelters, which were put to the test with a watering can rain shower, (see below). During the afternoon, the group were shown how to boil water using hot rocks, (see right, above), before finally finishing with knife carving and using coals from the fire, each of the participants was able to create their own spoon from hazel to take home (see below). The weekend was a huge success and NEWW hope to arrange another weekend with Outback2basics in spring next year. Upcoming Courses and Events Halloween Event Wednesday 31st October 1pm until 4pm Join the NEWWildlife team at Rhydymwyn Valley Nature Reserve for a variety of spooky activities both indoors and out including, making woodland monsters, spooky scavenger hunts and pumpkin carving. Feel free to dress up! This event is free of charge, but booking is essential. Felting Workshop Saturday 24th November 10am until 4pm Santa Trail handbag to present to a loved one at Christmas. Saturday 8th December 10am until 2pm Christmas Crafts 25pp including materials Saturday 1st December Using festive colours you will learn how to make handmade felt for small Christmas stockings, tree decorations and small presents, even make a small felt Christmas tree which you can hang. You will be able to decorate your felt with simple embroidery, beads and sequins. Alternatively, make your own purse or small 10am until 2pm Join NEWWildlife at Rhydymwyn s Field Studies Centre for some seasonal crafts, mince pies and hot chocolate. We will be weaving Christmas wreaths among other activities. With bookings already being taken, this ever popular Christmas event is set to be another enjoyable day. Join us at the Rhydymwyn Nature Reserve for a seasonal trail, festive refreshments (at a small charge) and that all important visit to Father Christmas This event is free of charge, but booking is essential

4 Page 4 VOLUME 2, ISSUE 3 Lane End Update Remani Jones, Reserves Officer In August the Knowle Hill nature reserve in Buckley was host to an open day for local residents. Children and parents enjoyed a day in the woodland making shelters, carrying out woodland activities and eating marshmallows by the campfire. There were also wildflower and history walks around the reserve. Many thanks to NEWW staff and volunteers as well as the Buckley Society and Sarah Slater (Flintshire s Biodiversity Officer) who worked hard to make the day a success, with many children and adults visiting the reserve for the first time. We have extended the woodland skills theme and will be hosting a number of Forest School sessions with John Summers High School and Mountain Lane Primary School this autumn. The children will learn about woodland management and how to respect and enjoy with their local woodlands, whilst working towards nature conservation. A few interesting species have been seen at Lane End lately, a tawny owl, polecat and, earlier in August, a grayling butterfly. Linnets are starting to return and The new habitat creations are coming on well, with the grasslands becoming established and the aquatic vegetation doing really well. Plenty of dragonflies and other invertebrates are using the ponds for breeding. Rhydymwyn Reserve update Karl Martin, Senior Ranger Well as I m sure you noticed but this has been a really wet summer! As a result of this it has, in general, not been the best year for wildlife with flowers not flowering as well and bees, butterflies and other insects not being as obvious. However, despite that, it s not all been doom and gloom. You would expect that with the weather being so awful that our birds would have been really suffering with their breeding attempts. Well at Rhydymwyn the bird recorders have just compiled their records from their nest box monitoring. In total 81 nests were monitored and these resulted in only 18 failures (22.2%). Over the 9 years that monitoring has taken place this is actually the 4 th lowest failure rate. Where butterflies are concerned, although overall there have been less to see, on those days when the sun has been shining it has been excellent. On one day in July our volunteer surveyors at Rhydymwyn counted over 100 butterflies of 7 different species and they stated that Rhydymwyn is the best site out of all the ones they surveyed this year Not bad for a wet year! At least the weather is probably good news for amphibians. This mild, damp weather will have allowed the amphibians plenty of foraging opportunities both in the ponds and on land. Certainly when I ve been flailing our meadows on our reserves I have seen lots of frogs and toads. On the flip side I have seen very few small mammals which possibly indicates that it has been a poor year for them. Certainly our small flying mammals, the bats, have had a poor year. With wet weather and fewer insects about it has not been a good year for them with not many recorded out foraging. We will have to see if this is reflected in the local hibernation surveys. Now autumn is creeping rapidly upon us and the leaves are starting to change colour. We have already had the first of our frosty mornings and we will shortly be working on the bird hide area at Rhydymwyn and making sure that our feeders are topped up regularly to help our small feathered friends in case of a harsh winter. Karl Martin Senior Ranger

5 Volunteering News Kate Wilson, Volunteer Officer We have been working hard over the summer, although we have not seen the sun much! We have created a fabulous short film about Rhydymwyn with help from Derwen Primary School and Glyndwr University, which we hope will be put on to our website soon. We have also been travelling further afield, carrying out practical tasks on some of our other sites such as repairing the bird hide at Glascoed near St.Asaph, removing typha heads and carrying out tree management at Brandie Brook near Wrexham, and ditch clearance at Maes y Grug, near Alltami. We have spent a lot of time in water recently with volunteers and North Wales Wildlife Trust as part of a county wide project to rid the river Alyn and its tributaries of Himalayan Balsam, Impatiens glandulifera. Although this plant is very good for bees as it produces a a sweet, sticky nectar, it is highly invasive and can take over whole riverbanks. It has a method of dispensing its seeds, by exploding them out of the pod to a distance of up to 23ft. We also had a group from Lloyds bank join us for a team building day, and we built some dry stone steps for our dipping ponds. They will not only be much easier for kids to reach the edges of the pond, they also look fabulous! Volunteering with us does not have to be all about conservation tasks however, we would also love to hear from you if you have an interest in helping with events, surveys, fundraising, writing funding bids, helping with school visits, becoming a trustee, photography, Welsh translations, writing a blog, even letting us know what flora and fauna you saw on our reserves... We would love to hear from anybody who would like to develop some nature leaflets for some of our sites, or some fun worksheets for a kids page on our website we are trying to create. We would like the nature leaflets to take the visitor on a tour of the site, with info on where is the best place to see a certain species, ideally separate trails for birds, butterflies, mammals and flowers. For the kids page on the website, we will need to decide on a mascot (most likely a newt character!) and have games, worksheets and colouring sheets, any pictures and ideas will be most welcome. All experience levels welcome, whether you re available for the whole day or a few hours, individually or in a group your help is greatly appreciated, we can even cover reasonable travel costs. If you feel that you would like more information, me on: volunteer@newwildlife.org.uk Events To book any events or courses, please contact Rachel Bailey on, Events are free of charge unless specified At NEWW, we are continually planning new events and activities. A list of all current events and training is available on our website, Please be aware that certain events may be unsuitable for pushchairs or wheelchairs. Christmas Raffle Donations Well we re already planning for Christmas in the NEWW office and more specifically Rhydymwyn s Christmas Santa Trail. We would like this year s event to include a raffle and would love any donations from Wildlife matters readers. If you do have any prizes to offer, please contact the office at Rhydymwyn.

6 The pond at Brandie Brook There will be an opportunity to take part in a volunteering experience day in December when we will create an artificial hibernation site or hibernacula for amphibians. There will be a chance to join the Ranger, Remani Jones on a New Year Wildlife Walk around the reserve next January. For both events please book in advance. Meet at the gates to the reserve at the rear of the flats car park and wear warm clothes and good boots and bring waterproofs. For more information call Remani on Focus on Brandie Brook The Brandie Brook Nature Reserve forms part of the Johnstown Newt Sites Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and the Stryt Las a r Hafod Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). These designations are mainly due to the presence of Great crested newts, with the Johnstown area being a stronghold for the species in Europe. There is more information about the site on a new interpretation board placed on the gate into the reserve at the rear of the car park at Pant Glas. Events coming up We have a wildlife pond on the reserve and this year it has attracted a wealth of life from mallard ducks to smooth newts as well as smaller invertebrates such as water boatmen and dragonflies. Many flying insects such as dragon and damselflies, stone flies, caddis flies and mayflies live in ponds for most of their life, emerging from the water to find a mate and colonise new areas. Algae has been left on the water s surface to provide food and cover for the smallest of the aquatic invertebrates. Bulrush, however has been managed as this can easily swamp a small pond, leaving it dry. As the autumn temperatures start to drop, amphibians, including newts start to seek out safe places in which to hibernate. Log and rubble piles, underneath flag stones and sheds are often ideal places for amphibians to find a winter home. The temperature and humidity here will stay relatively constant compared to that of the surrounding environment. This enables amphibians to conserve energy over the winter months when there is very little food around. Householders wanting to attract amphibians at this time of year can create log or stone piles in garden borders and avoid the use of slug pellets that can affect amphibian and hedgehog populations. With the help of volunteers we have carried out a variety of conservation tasks on the reserve this year. As well as management work on the pond we have carried out maintenance work on our new hedging trees Amphibian Hibernacula - December 5th pm - Brandie Brook Nature Reserve creation New Year Wildlife Walk - January 12th pm - Brandie Brook Nature Reserve For information on how you can become a volunteer with NEWWildlife please contact Kate Wilson on or vol@newwildlife.org.uk Page 6 as well as removal of grass and other encroaching vegetation along the fence boundary with the flats. Litter picks have been carried out and seeds collected from yellow hammer, a parasitic plant on grasses. The seeds will be used on other NEWWildlife sites to create wildflower meadow areas to attract pollinating insects. Other interesting flowers growing at Brandie Brook include carline thistle, centaury, common spotted orchid and wild carrot. collected. The site is good for wildflowers and yellow rattle, a parasitic plant of grasses grows here in good numbers. Dave Hill Common spotted orchid

7 Diary of a conservation worker at Spon Green This small site is on the edge of Buckley is managed for the conservation of the Great crested newt and other wildlife of these habitats by monitoring and improving the ponds and meadow/grassland. This reserve has a good wildflower population and the ponds encourage amphibian breeding. The flora on site is mainly common grassland species with Bluebells at the right time of year and hedgerow species including Hazel, Willow, Alder and Purging buckthorn. Birds seen commonly are Magpie, House sparrow, Robin and Blackbird with occasional sightings of Chiffchaff, Blackcap and Grey heron. Amphibians include Common frog, Common toad, and Great crested, Palmate and Smooth newts, Grass snake may visit on occasion. One grassland cut was carried out in September to remove the dominant grass, and allow meadow flowers a chance to grow. Two of the ponds at Spon Green had not been holding water during recent years, Pond 1 being dry all year round and Pond 2 dried up during the amphibian breeding season. Page 7 On completion of lining pond 2 water was pumped back into it and the frogs were placed near to their pond. Both ponds were re-profiled with an excavator before lining with a Bentomat liner, which is pre-lined with clay to contain the water. Three volunteers helped with the works, which could not have been done without them, especially helping to put the Bentonite liner in A dozen adult frogs were found to be overwintering in the mud at the bottom of the pond and were rescued and taken to safety. place in the excavated pond. And now...

8 Page 8 Our favorite pictures of 2012 We would love you to send some of your pictures to use on a Wildlife Matters in the future. North East Wales Wildlife would like to pay special mention and thanks to our funders DEFRA and the Countryside Council for Wales who have made all courses and events advertised possible. North East Wales Wildlife, 17 Nant Alyn Rd, Rhydymwyn, Flintshire. CH7 5HQ info@newwildlife.org.uk or visit: