Roydon Woods - notes from the warden's diary
Warden's notes
Warden’s Diary, Dec 2011
Hello from deepest darkest Roydon Woods, firstly a plea does any one know what’s happened to Jack Frost? The weather is giving us the run around at the moment. It would be nice to have some proper weather, be it cold or wet, but at least we would get the feeling that winter was here.
The autumn has been very kind to us allowing us to get a head start on our winter work, in one of the wettest parts of the reserve. A job we were not really looking forward to is nearly done thanks to no rain (we do need it though). The fungi that we were worried about in the last diary seem to have found some moisture and have done well. The grass has kept growing so we have only just had to start feeding the cattle in the last week, we are in the process of deciding which cows to sell off to down size the herd!
Apart from the day to day problems of managing a Nature Reserve of this size, we have had people camping in the woods leaving mountains of rubbish and fire sites large enough to cook a Dinosaur! It’s the state of the area that they leave behind that is most irritating not to mention illegal, as is riding a motocross bike all over parts of the reserve leaving gates open so our stock could, if not found promptly, have walked out on to a busy road!
On a lighter note the two coups of hazel that we are coppicing this year are looking great and on schedule to be ready for the felling to start in January.
The deer are already playing the elusive game with us making the cull a challenge, I would like to think that we are getting to the position that the longer rotation coppice may not need to be fenced as it can afford one year of being knocked back!
The work that we had planed for the Commons is finished, apart from a couple of hours with a chainsaw. So now the extra work that has been on the back burner for a while might now get done!
Mike Boxall has now left the Trust, but still sends us updates from his new home. This is his latest set of notes from Northumberland.
