Remember me?

Hello, good afternoon and welcome. It has been a while since a new blog post has appeared and a lot longer since I’ve posted one. Due to unexpected and expected personal circumstances I have been very busy for the last 18 months and until the last week or two have only visited The Cluster a couple of times. ‘Stuff’ has been happening tho as Liz has explained (and hosted) , albeit on a small scale compared to our big planting of early 2023.

So how have our newly planted trees faired? One word sums up our thoughts on this… badly.

Unfortunately we had an exceptionally dry spring (less than 50% of average rainfall), which coupled with thin soils meant there simply wasn’t enough moisture to get the saplings to grow. We have surveyed for losses and it is just over a third across the whole site. Shrubby species did particularly poorly as did birch. We are about to start planning for next winter so we can replant the failures, possibly with a few changes?

That has certainly been a big negative but there has also been some wonderful positives.

Barn Owls are now regularly seen. There has been an increase in numbers in the two dales in recent years but the longer grass on The Cluster is proving quite a magnet for them. Talking of plants, we have seen quite a change in the diversity and number in the last two years. It’s difficult to put a lot of this change into words as much is subtle (it would also take this poor typist too long). The place also ‘feels’ different. It seems settled somehow, still changing but happy with itself.

So as it’s beyond my physical and literary skills to convey what I’m on about, it might be best if I just show you what I mean. So if anyone fancies a 2-3hr wander in the next week or two, get in touch and we will try and organise an informal wander around so I can show you what I mean.

So this week has seen a bit of wandering around and discovering things. In one of our new scrapes (dug last summer) we found this freshly emerged Broad Bodied Chaser. Quite the beast!

We also found some Water Violet which is very unusual locally. The nearest record is the other side of Catterick (The Cluster roughly marked with a blue circle). It is declining nationally due to the loss of wetlands, hence us creating more!

Below is a photo of what Water Violet flowers look like.

We have had an amazing year for Cowslips too. Although these have now finished flowering the seed heads are easy to see. Theres lots more Quaking Grass than previously seen too.

I’ve been on hands and knees looking at very small plants too and found a couple I haven’t seen (or heard of) before, including Procumbent Pearlwort and Slender Parsley-Piert. They’re not rare just easily overlooked.

It’s nearly the summer solstice and I’m sat at home typing this blog with it raining, and with the temperature scraping into double figures. We had our bird ringer around earlier in the week and The Cluster’s nest boxes have faired similarly to many many others we’re told. Lots of failures with dead chicks still in the boxes. Not surprising as there have been very few insects about for them to eat. My moth trapping in Fremington has been the worst I can remember with very few specimens caught (not just me btw). And butterflies… very few seen also. Let us hope this is purely weather related.

Many of these sightings and their location end up on iNaturalist which is what we use as our recording tool. It is free and easy to use. We have set The Cluster up as a ‘Project’ on there (search ‘Projects… Heggs-Castle’ and I’m on there as ‘User… martinww’ where I put up lots of other local and not so local sightings). Any records that anyone enters that were seen and photographed (with a phone) within our project boundary are automatically put into our ‘project’ as phone pix contain a geo-reference.

So I’ll love and leave you. I’d go and find some more flowers but I haven’t dried out since being out on The Cluster earlier. That chaser must be wondering why it bothered!

TTFN

MWW