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September 2022 September 2022

WILD WOODBURY surveys carried out almost exactly a year ago, to see how the land has changed.
The preliminary results from which are all looking positive! More on that to come
next month, when we’ve sorted through all the data.
As with most of the country, Wild
Woodbury has been taking the Throughout the Summer holidays I am, and will be working further, with a summer
full force of the dry, hot weather school group who have been using the site to come and enjoy the wealth of
recently. Fields are parched and invertebrates to find. A broad age range of children descended into one of the
cracking, the agricultural ditches fields recently, and immediately started catching grasshoppers and crickets with
are almost all completely dry, their hands – much quicker than I’ve ever managed to! Whilst some were rightfully
and any water monitoring has distracted by the ripening blackberries in the hedgerows, others scoured the
had to be put on hold. This thistles and fleabane for bees, spiders, bugs and beetles. As ever, it is great to see
lengthily dry spell reminds us children enjoying themselves in nature and engaged with the wildlife it holds. I
about how much our waterways look forward to more of these groups in the future!
have been altered by human Seb Haggett
activity; straightening rivers,
adding in field ditches and trying Shaggett@dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk
to get water off the land as soon
as possible have all lead to the
resilience of our waterways decreasing massively. Our Stage-0 River Restoration,
which begins next month, will create around 100 acres of wetland on site, helping
to increase this resilience and keeping more water on the land.
This month I have shown around a couple of ecological consultancies who were
interested in the site. LC Ecological Services, who are based near Corfe Castle,
visited on a couple of occasions and have offered to carry out some dormice
surveys across the whole site. By placing several nest tubes and boxes in strategic
positions, they will be able to come and look for dormouse evidence, be it a nest,
droppings, or a dormouse itself! I can’t find any historical records of them being
present, but there is certainly plenty of suitable habitat, so it will be great to
confirm their absence or presence. Don’t forget, you need a licence to survey
and handle dormice, so if you come across any tubes, please don’t touch them.

Our normal suite of volunteer survey monitoring has continued this month, with
more species still being added weekly. A bird ringing session last week was
successful, with our common
migrant species, such as blackcap,
whitethroat and willow warbler all
putting in appearances amongst 30
birds. The best result, however, was
ringing 7 juvenile tree pipit! Whether
these bred on site or are dispersing
from neighbouring land we can’t be
sure, but the fact they’re using the
site is fantastic. We have also
recently had a team recording day
on site, repeating a couple of

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