The Woodlander Sydenham Hill Wood’s seasonal newsletter

Autumn/Winter 2012

In the this issue: Local birder Dave Clark on autumn’s birds, Workday update by volunteer Richard Grimshaw,

Photos of bats at Sydenham Hill Wood And…celebrating 30 years of nature conservation

Shaggy parasol, Oct 2012

All photographs by D.Greenwood

unless noted.

Protecting London’s wildlife for the future

Registered Charity Number: 283895

www.wildlondon.org.uk

The Woodlander – Sydenham Hill Wood – Autumn/Winter 2012

Lilac bonnet, Mycena pura

Open day celebrations On Sunday 9th September London Wildlife Trust staff and volunteers held an open day to celebrate Sydenham Hill

Wood’s 30 years as a nature reserve. Volunteers made cakes and donated tombola items which were then sold and raffled.

All the money raised on the day has gone towards managing the wood, paying for training for volunteers such as First Aid and for tools to keep the woodland in good health. Deputy

CEO Mathew Frith led a history walk, Dave Clark a bird walk and David Warwick a tree walk. It was a beautiful and very

warm day. Keep an eye out for more information on upcoming events. The Sydenham Hill Wood open day

Sydenham Hill Wood News

Fungi fun With the damp, autumnal conditions, Sydenham Hill Wood’s

fungi sprung to life. A survey on Sunday 28th October found trooping and clouded funnel, hen-of-the-woods, giant and

birch polypore, common, clustered and lilac bonnet, turkey tail, hairy curtain crust, the deceiver, dead man’s fingers and more. On Saturday 20th October Dr. Mark Spencer of the

Natural History Museum led a group of more than 50 people around the wood. We learned that fungi has been around for

3 billion years and is more closely related to animals than plants. Please note: many species of mushroom are poisonous and it is

easy to confuse the edible and inedible. Due to Sydenham Hill Wood’s urban location and high number of visitors, foraging is not

allowed.

Mark Spencer leads the walk

Crystal Palace High Level Walk On Saturday 27th October Deputy CEO Mathew Frith led a

group of 20 along the old Crystal Palace High Level railway line. The train closed in 1954, once upon a time carrying

punters between Nunhead and the Crystal Palace, which was lost to fire in 1936. The line was built through what is now Sydenham Hill Wood, the trackbed making up one of the

wood’s most popular pathways. Stations at Lordship Lane, Honor Oak (Wood Vale), and Upper Sydenham are now

gone. Follow this link to view photos of the walk on Flickr.

Follow London Wildlife Trust on

Twitter and Facebook

www.wildlondon.org.uk

The Woodlander – Sydenham Hill Wood – Autumn/Winter 2012

Massive bird declines Since the 1960s the overall breeding bird population of the UK has decreased by an estimated 44 million - or one fifth of the population - as published in State of the UK’s Birds 2012. The reasons for this shocking state of affairs are numerous although habitat loss,

reduced food availability (predominantly invertebrate population crashes) and climatic change are likely to be having the most impact.

The species showing the largest long term trend declines (1970-2010) were all once common and include species like lapwing, herring gull, turtle dove, cuckoo, lesser spotted woodpecker,

willow tit, marsh tit, skylark, house martin, starling, song thrush, spotted flycatcher, house sparrow, tree sparrow, yellow wagtail, meadow pipit, linnet, lesser redpoll, yellowhammer and corn bunting. These species are predominantly traditionally farmland or specialised woodland

birds with a few exceptions suggesting that these habitats are those that have degraded the most. Read this article in full on our website.

London Wildlife Trust news

Britain’s ash trees threatened by fungal infection

London Wildlife Trust is alarmed that ash dieback, a fungal pathogen (Chalara fraxinea) new to the country, appears to have become established in a number of England’s woodlands. As of 15th November 2012 200 sites in the UK had reported Chalara presence including counties around the capital, although there

has been no verified infection of Chalara in London. Read the article in full.

Back to Chalk London Wildlife Trust is set to further

improve the condition of the lowland calcareous grassland (chalk grassland)

habitat at four of its reserves in Croydon and Bromley - Hutchinson’s Bank, Chapel Bank, Saltbox Hill and

West Kent Golf Course – with a new restoration project. This project has

been made possible by generous funding awarded by SITA Trust (£97,737). Read more. Small blue at Hutchinson’s Bank

www.wildlondon.org.uk

The Woodlander – Sydenham Hill Wood – Autumn/Winter 2012

Protecting the next generation Volunteer Richard Grimshaw looks back at autumn work in the wood

Autumn heralds the start of heavier maintenance work at Sydenham Hill Wood, although much dead-hedging and path-edging has continued

throughout the summer. This was possible as there was a supply of materials cut in past winters, in particular holm oak and hazel. Now that we are into the seasons when our trees are dormant, cutting has recommenced. This has

included felling some small ash and coppicing hazel.Some long stretches of dead-hedge have been installed in the large triangle clearing (on the upper-

path behind the main glade) and across the Ambrook outfall from the Dewy pond, amongst other locations. Path-edging by the Dulwich Wood border has continued throughout and we are nearing completion of that stretch. For both

tasks, a large number of wooden stakes have to be cut prior to driving them into the ground. This has sometimes proved hard work, particularly when

we’ve been reduced to using hornbeam which is a very dense, hard wood. And the bill-hooks have needed frequent re-sharpening (using wet-stones) to be at their most effective.

The large number of visitors to the wood is testimony to its success as a

nature reserve and amenity space. So much of the practical work and maintenance is concerned with managing and mitigating the impact of the

high footfall (both human and canine) by encouraging people to stay on the designated paths and blocking and preventing the opening-up of unofficial paths. The aim is to prevent trampling of the herb and under-storey layers of

woodland and to allow its regeneration where it has already suffered. In addition, dead-hedges can provide refuges for small birds, amphibians and

mammals and acts as habitat for invertebrates and fungi.

www.wildlondon.org.uk

The Woodlander – Sydenham Hill Wood – Autumn/Winter 2012

Anyone who’s helped on the task of resurfacing parts of the main paths will testify that the most strenuous job in the wood is transporting the wheel-barrow loads of path material from the Peckarman’s Wood gate to the actual

worksite, sometimes as far as the steps down to the footbridge on the top-path. While we haven’t kept count of the number of barrow loads moved, we

can report that the mound of hoggin is now almost depleted, and the paths are much improved. The other main autumn task has been the annual cutting back of the summer growth in the main glade and the smaller tennis-court

clearing.

This has been achieved entirely with the use of hand tools (slashers, grass

hooks and loppers) with no resort to the use of the petrol-driven brush-cutter (so more healthy exercise for all involved and less carbon emissions from fossil fuel). Before the cutting started, slashers and grass-hooks all needed

sharpening with the use of wet-stones. Cut material (which included rosebay willow herb and clematis/traveller’s joy/old man’s beard was then raked-up,

some of which was used to top-up dead-hedges. The reason for the cutting back is to give spring-flowering herb plants, such as red campion, a chance to grow and set seed next spring. Now all we have to do is sit back and wait.

And don’t forget, with their rich flora and more sunlight the glades attract the biggest range of butterfly species in the reserve.

Volunteers building a dead hedge to

protect young woodland from

trampling and erosion, August 2012

www.wildlondon.org.uk

The Woodlander – Sydenham Hill Wood – Autumn/Winter 2012

Scandinavian invasion!

Local ornithologist Dave Clark on autumn’s migrating birds

Autumn is a more conservative time for our birds, the days of plenty, of lush

fruits and buzzing insects is over. Now the natural larder is arguably more prosaic, with seeds and berries at the heart of nature’s menu. Enter the finches and thrushes. Our resident populations start to flock and seek food in

greater numbers and are joined by rural individuals and Northern and Scandinavian cousins. As we walk in the woods and local parks and spot our more sedentary blackbird, song thrush and chaffinch populations they will be interspersed

with birds that have come from far afield seeking richer pickings in our comparatively warmer settings. Additionally, new species arrive and stay until

spring before returning to their breeding grounds.

Just as the chiffchaff and swallow are signatures of the arrival of spring and

the temptation of summer the redwing is a herald of colder, more austere

times; the flash of red on their underwing is a welcome relief on our shorter, greyer days. Taking a similar migratory route from Scandinavia and Siberia, fieldfare are

equally easy to identify with their distinctive blue tinged grey head. Their

English name equates to the `traveller over fields` aptly describing their nomadic nature which takes many of them on a 7500 mile round trip.

As with most bird species these thrushes have the ability to see part of the ultraviolet spectrum which means that even on the greyest of days, the waxy

skins of berries and apples appear as bright beaming beacons and are easy for the birds to locate; rowan and hawthorn bushes being particular favourites,

A migratory hobby in Sydenham Hill

Wood, destined for warmer climes. Photo

by Thomas Glen

www.wildlondon.org.uk

The Woodlander – Sydenham Hill Wood – Autumn/Winter 2012

and as the early morning frost clears they can also be seen feeding on the softer ground for worms.

As this Scandinavian invasion proceeds during late October and through

November look out for flocks perched on mature trees in the wood, the glade often provides a good vista, and mistle thrushes aggressively defending

berry yielding yews, perched at the top of the bush, screeching out their

strangulated alarm call, whilst blackbirds, redwings and fieldfares dart in to surreptitiously gorge themselves. After the snow disappears hundreds of

redwings can be seen, dotted with fieldfare on open ground, places such as Dulwich Park and Peckham Rye, desperately restoring their lost fat reserves.

Enjoy their autumn presence, a sign that despite human pressures there are some natural processes that are still working. Admire their resilience of a

journey for food that has taken them thousands of miles over often hostile and inhospitable territory.

Redwings near Sydenham Hill Wood,

February 2012

www.wildlondon.org.uk

The Woodlander – Sydenham Hill Wood – Autumn/Winter 2012

23 bats found roosting

Clockwise from above: one of the

Leisler’s bats; Huma Pearce checking a bat box; the Leisler’s

bat found roosting there

On Thursday 27th September 2012 bat ecologist Huma Pearce surveyed for bats with the help of Sydenham Hill Wood volunteers.

The bat box check is an annual survey. We found 23 different bats roosting in boxes which were put up in 2009 to support bat populations in the wood. We discovered 4 Leisler’s and 19 soprano

pipistrelles. This was good news. Due to the wet spring and summer it is believed that bats have had difficulty feeding, therefore struggling

to raise new broods. Our bat transect, a set walk of the Sydenham Hill and Dulwich Golf Club, Dulwich Wood and Sydenham Hill Wood, has been very disappointing. So it was great to find so many bats

roosting. For our transect we find in bats in flight by using bat detectors, a black box which fits in the palm of the hand, acting like a

bat radio, picking up different bat calls on certain frequencies. Almost all bat calls are of too high a pitch to be heard by humans, though Leisler’s bats’ social calls can be audible if your hearing is good

enough.

Bats can only be handled by professional ecologists like Huma who hold a license. Gloves must always be worn to protect from any possible bites. Some bat species are known to carry rabies. Bats are

an animal protected from harm and disturbance by law.