Peat Surveys, Electrofishing and Raking

Over the past two months I have had the opportunity to work on a variety of different projects. In August I assisted members from the North Pennines AONB Partnership's Peatland Programme with various surveys and field assignments. These tasks included eroded peat surveys, mapping of active drainage grips in the blanket bogs around Alston and carrying out quadrat surveys around blocked grips. Healthy blanket bogs are important for many reasons including: carbon sequestration and storage, as a habitat for many specially adapted plants and animals, flood mitigation, reduction in water treatment expenditure, as a record of climatic change, preservation of items of archaeological importance and they support rural industries like grouse shooting.




The moorland at Dufton Fell


Since we were working in the mountains we were subject to more interesting weather conditions than the dales below. So while Stanhope might be bathed in sunshine we would be shrouded in mist, like being hugged by a cool wet sponge. Luckily we were usually too absorbed in the work to notice.


A particularly grim day on the fell - Emma Taylor


Nearly a third of England's remaining blanket bog is found in the North Pennines so this work is important to assess the effectiveness of restoration methods applied in damaged areas and to help the AONB Partnership to advise landowners on sustainable management of their peatlands.

Assessing species cover beside a blocked grip - Emma Taylor



Early in September Alistair (last years North Pennines AONB Partnership trainee) and  I got to participate in an electrofishing session with Steve Hudson from the Wear Rivers Trust. Electrofishing is a method of sampling streams, rivers and lakes which allows the size and age structure of fish populations to be determined within the sampling area. This is important information for assessing the status of fish stocks for example. In electrofishing, an electric field is applied to the water (using a backpack mounted device in our case) which causes fish in the vicinity of the field to become immobilised for easy capture with hand nets.




Electrofishing in Ireshopburn - Alistair Lockett

 The netted fish are then placed in a bucket of water until they are ready to separated into species and measured. If done correctly electrofishing has a good capture efficiency for fish whilst resulting in minimal harm to the animal. This is achieved by altering the voltage on the device to account for the conductivity of the sampled stream, not placing the anode (the hooped rod inserted into the water to stun the fish) too close to the fish and by returning the fish to the river as soon as possible to reduce stress.



Electrofishing is particularly good at sampling fish which hide amongst stones, vegetation and beneath overhanging banks - Alistair Lockett


Over the course of the day we sampled four 30m stretches in two rivers in Weardale. We caught many Brown Trout of various ages, including a nice specimen which probably weighed over 2lbs, which is a good indication of the ecosystem health in the headwaters of the River Wear.

Later on that week I had my first volunteering session with Durham Wildlife Trust at Low Barns Nature Reserve. Our task for the day was to rake up cut grass on a meadow and once collected it remove it from the site. By removing the grass cuttings the nutrient content of the meadows soil is steadily reduced. This allows the plant species adapted to low nutrient conditions to recolonise the meadow and increase its value as a habitat. The piles of grass, which were placed in a small wood, would also provide a temporary habitat and food source for invertebrates.



Clearly all the manual handling courses I have participated on have yet to sink in - Alistair Lockett







Hoovering a Munro

As part of my training with the North Pennines AONB Partnership I can participate in a number of courses to further my continuing professional development. So first up was an Invertebrate Surveying Course with the Field Studies Council at Kindrogan in Scotland. Kindrogan is an old manor house hidden away in mixed woodland on the banks of the River Ardle. Over the course of four days my fellow course participants and I would get to utilise several survey techniques to look for mini-beasts in several different habitats in and around the venue. We would also get the opportunity to have a go at identifying the collected insects and arachnids down to family level and species level in some cases. Our tutor was Jeff Clarke an experienced ecologist who runs his own consultancy/environmental education/wildlife watching business. Jeff also had numerous anecdotes about his work as a countryside ranger from which we learnt valuable lessons such as avoiding surveying alone at night and if you are wearing a hi-vis jacket people tend not to ask questions about what your doing.

Some of the techniques we used were familiar to me, such as sweep netting and moth trapping. However Jeff had some novel techniques for sampling tricky habitats. For example high tree branches can be sampled by tossing an angling weight attached to a rope over said branches and then tugging down vigorously on the ropes to dislodge the attached insects onto a sheet below.  The pièce de résistance of sampling methods was the suction sampling method which used a converted leaf blower to suck invertebrates from vegetation into a collecting net located at the nozzle. While this may seem like overkill for invertebrate sampling it has numerous benefits over sweep netting. Firstly it sampled the vegetation, in the words of a famous shampoo advert, “from root to tip”; sweep netting tends to under sample invertebrates dwelling near ground level or in thick vegetation. Secondly suction sampling doesn’t damage the sampled invertebrates unlike sweep netting. Thirdly suction sampling can be used in vegetation where it is impossible to use a sweep net e.g. brambles or other thorny plants which can shred nets. Finally unless you are using two handed method sweep netting can result in a repetitive strain injury like tennis elbow, not so for suction sampling.

One obvious drawback of suction sampling is that it is more awkward to lug the leaf blower around the place than a net, which is what we did on the second day of the course when we carried it up Glas Maol, a Munro and ski resort. We attracted plenty of funny looks from walkers and clearly knackered adventure racers as we hiked up the track from the car park to the summit. The effort was worth it and we were rewarded with views of the distant Cairngorm Mountains and sightings of Ptarmigan, Mountain Hare, Golden Plover and Dotterel. I got a go at using the converted leaf blower too which probably ranks as my most unusual experience on a mountain. The arachnid specialists on the course also managed to unearth a Pseudoscorpion on the summit, a small predator that lacks the tail of its more famous namesake and has instead venomous claws.

The centre itself also had wildlife in abundance. Red Squirrel's were commonly seen darting across the lawn in between the trees and numerous garden birds such as Blue Tits and Coal Tits could be seen at the bird feeders. The centre staff also placed peanuts and peanut butter out on a log pile on the outskirts of the centre which attracted nocturnal visitors like Fallow Deer, Pine Martens and a hybrid Scottish Wildcat. One evening Jeff placed a motion triggered night vision camera at the log pile which produced delightful shots of the three species feeding there at various times of the night. We also got to see the moggy in the flesh from the comfort of the centres minibus hide, which Jeff described as being 50% Wildcat and 50% peanut. A purer strain of Wildcat is known to inhabit the wooded hill above the centre but seldom ventures close to human habitation.

All good things come to an end and the course was over before I knew it. I am left with plenty of fond memories of my Scottish experience (but no photos as my camera is possibly lying in the substratum of the Lincolnshire Fens) and new skills to draw upon in my future career.



Scottish Wildcat and Kitten -Peter Trimming






 

Meadow surveys and flash floods

 A large part of my work with the North Pennines AONB Partnership has been my involvement with the Hay Time-North Pennines Project. Hay Time-North Pennines aims to restore upland hay meadows throughout the North Pennines by harvesting seeds from species rich meadows and spreading them on species poor meadows. The reason these hay meadows are worth conserving is because they are an extremely rare habitat in the UK, with about 40% (400ha) of them being found in the North Pennines AONB. Outside of the North Pennines the intensification of agriculture, such as application of inorganic fertilisers, drainage, silage cutting etc, has lead to the conversion of these habitats into species poor grasslands.




Upland Hay Meadows on a suspiciously nice day in Weardale


I have been assisting the Haytime Project Officer Ruth Starr-Keddle with hay meadow surveys in order to assess the quality of hay meadows in the scheme. If the surveyed meadow is species rich it may act as a donor to restore species poor meadows found in the same valley. If the surveyed meadow is moderately species rich, but is lacking a few species typical of hay meadows, it can be enhanced by spreading seed on it from meadows that contain these species. In a typical survey Ruth and I would walk across a field in a W pattern recording all wildflower and grassland species we came across and noting features such as species rich banks, undesirable species like cow parsley and rushes, field entrances and wet areas. At the completion of the walkthrough suvey we would then estimate the abundance of each species according to the DAFOR scale (Dominant, Abundant, Frequent, Occasional and Rare).



Idealistic but an inaccurate depiction of hay meadow surveying


Now hay meadow surveying sounds pretty idyllic and it probably conjures of up images of bursting into song while prancing through the fields and making clothes for Austrian children out of old curtains. The reality (at least this year) has been far different with torrential rain, thunderstorms, floods and not a single Julie Andrews song. At one point my car was marooned on a farm as the ford I had driven across earlier had turned from a trickle into a raging torrent in a matter of hours.




Typical survey conditions in the North Pennines

   Ruth and I persevered though and all the surveys were completed on schedule despite the poor weather. More importantly I was reunited with my car which was a very emotional moment.





Yellow Rattle- A typical hay meadow species

 

Hit the ground running

Starting off a new job can always be a bit nerve racking, especially in my case as I had never met my future colleagues before (I did my interview over skype a weird experience which I highly recommmend) and I wasn't entirely sure what my role entailed. Fortunately the staff in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) Partnerhip turned out to be sound I was given a warm welcome. The first couple of days were pretty much devoted to admin and orientation. Lesley my supervisor took me through some of the things I would be doing over the few weeks. It turned out I could have a lot of input into what I learned over the coming months so I could get the most out of the traineeship. Aside from the work shadowing and project work I would be doing with the AONB Partnership staff unit, I also had a fund to spend on any training courses in the UK I would like to attend such as botany, bird I.D etc.

Sunset in Weardale

For my first solo field assignment I travelled to Cowshill in Weardale to check whether a route listed in the AONB Partnerships birdwatching guide required any updating. It was great to get out in the field after two days in the office, it also me gave me the opportunity to see some of the wading birds that the area is famous for, including Lapwing, Redshank, Curlew and Oystercatcher. The abundance of these birds is very high in the AONB as a result of predator control on the moors managed for grouse shooting. The route I surveyed turned out to be fine and it was also a valuable opportunity to become reacquainted with my map reading and navigational skills. Which is a nice way of say I got a bit lost in the fog.

On Wednesday my housemate Alistair and I participated in a Riverfly training event in Low Barns Nature reserve hosted by Ceri Gibson and Lizzie Willows from the Tyne and Wear Rivers Trusts respectively and Rebecca O’Connell from the Environment Agency. Riverfly monitoring is a simplified type of biological monitoring which allows river users to quickly assess the condition of rivers and streams. In a nutshell if the surveyed river had a low diversity and abundance of indicator mayflies and stonefly larva then the river would be likely to polluted and vice versa. These invertebrates are sampled from the riverbed using a technique known as kick sampling and collected using fine meshed nets for I.D and counting. This is something I am familiar with since I did a lot of this sampling during my undergraduate degree so I had a bit of a head start over the other trainees and thankfully the midges stayed away. At the end of the training we were given local rivers to survey and I was assigned to monitor a small tributary of the River Wear called Waskerley Beck outside of Wolsingham.

Low Force Waterfall In Teesdale

On Saturday I took part in an AONB Partnership event entitled “Haytime, Tea and Tales” led by interpreter Neil Diment. Neil led a group of us on a pleasant walk from Bowlees through some hay meadows and across the River Tees and talked about the history of mining and agriculture of Teesdale. We finished up with tea and nibbles in Low Way Farm in Holwick, where the owner Karen talked about traditional farming methods in the hay methods and positive and negative aspects of modern agricultural methods. On the way back I spotted Holwick Scar, a local rock climbing crag which recently had restrictions lifted from it by Natural England. I filed it in the memory bank as a place I’d like to climb should I find a climbing partner in the region.  

Holwick Scar

Hay Meadow in Upper Teesdale

Lift off

Hello, I'm Gearoid and this is my blog about my Landscape Conservation and Management Traineeship in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Partnership. I'll be updating it regularly and talking about my experiences in this beautiful part of the English countryside.