OPAL (the Open Air Laboratories network) has produced a simple and clear booklet on 9 common trees and means for their identification. It’s worth a look if you’ve forgotten the basics! It can be downloaded here.

In spite of the inclement weather of the preceding days, Sunday was fortunately quite reasonable for volunteering. There was a very good turnout for the time of year with over 15 present.

The task was to cut down the small trees and and scrub in Gelvert Marsh. It was fairly boggy but nothing that a pair of Wellington’s couldn’t handle.

As you can imagine, lots of sawing was required, both for cutting the trees down in the first place (top photo) as well as removing the major branches.

Some of the cut trees were put together to provide a habitat for small animals and insects (as seen in the front of the photo immediately below) and the rest were burnt (bottom photo). All in all, a good morning’s work!

Eight bat boxes were put up recently in the wood just west of the Green.

We are hoping to provide roosts for brown long-eared bats, pipistrelles and who knows what else?

This year’s FPS Photography Competition (deadline 31 December 2009) has three categories:

1. Work or Play
2. Sunrise or Sunset
3. Birds

Here are some tips for taking stunning pictures of sunrises and sunsets (full details and a few more tips can be found here):

• Think Ahead – scope out good places and find out when the sun will set or rise
• Shoot At A Variety Of Focal Lengths – do you want a sweeping landscape shot or something zoomed in?
• Silhouettes As Focal Points – think of an attractive point of interest incorporating silhouettes
• Rule Of Thirds – it’s often good to place key elements off-centre
• Shoot At A Variety Of Exposures – abandon auto-mode and take some shots in aperture or shutter priority mode at different exposures
• Keep Shooting – until you’re sure it’s all over!

I hope you find these tips helpful and we’re looking forward to your creative submissions!

Picture credit: Vicki Jull

Baby Toad Found In The Leaf Litter

Colin Gray writes:

Fleet Pond volunteers returned to Fugelmere Marsh for the October task to extend the clearance of alder and sallow scrub.  This large open marsh has become a small forest of regenerating scrub; some almost young trees now. It was a damp day so the volunteers were open to muddy water below and drizzling rain from above ensuring we were all very wet at the end of the day.  Never the less a lot was achieved and the volunteers have opened a wide vista across the marsh to the reedbed beyond.

David Buckler, leader for the day, has a herbicide license and was able to treat a lot of the scrub stumps which will hopefully constrain further regeneration.  Herbicide has usually been around 60% successful thus reducing manual labour in following seasons.

Photo credit: Michelle Salter (taken at the related volunteer event on Sunday 13 September).