We are looking for an enthusiastic candidate to assist with the delivery of our two-and-a-half-year National Lottery Heritage Fund project ‘Ure Connected – Engaging People with Nature in the Lower Ure Valley’.
Take a look at last year’s monthly birding highlights in The Nosterfield Nature Reserve Bird Report 2023. The Systematic List of data for 2023 is also available to download within the report.
Written by Andy Hanby and edited by Jill Warwick.
In 2018, LUCT will be applying for Heritage Lottery Funding to assist us with an improved visitor experience, better volunteer facilities and the expansion of reedbeds.
We are holding an open meeting on January 30th at 1pm, which you can RSVP to on the form below. Come along and have your say on the future of Nosterfield LNR.
It may be some time since the last update but we've barely paused for breath!
Despite the cold weather, work continues apace and we've been busy on both the quarry and the reserve. Simon has been overseeing aerial surveying, meeting with geologists, archaeologists and ecologists. He and Jill are now jetting off to Costa Rica to enjoy Christmas in the sun.
Our volunteers have been using locally harvested willow to create refuges for fish (ensuring a food source for waders over winter). We've fixed sluice gates, coppiced trees and expanded our propagation centre. One of our cabins now sports a very fitting 'green roof', which is already sprouting grasses and collecting water for us to use.
Our next volunteering date is January 2nd, 2018 if you fancy braving in the cold. We'll meet in the quarry car park.
We've welcomed Joe to the team who is to be our project manager, helping sniff out new pots of funding and helping put in place new formats for dreaded risk assessments and training. All being well, he should have some more exciting projects soon! Hopefully Simon should have his hands free for yet more meetings and planning sessions for the future of our beautiful nature reserve.
We are in the early stages of putting together a Heritage Lottery Fund bid to help us create new reedbeds and expand the wetlands habitats on the reserve and quarry. The establishment of the propagation centre has been a real boon, we are now growing plants at capacity and will be hoping the HLF can help us to expand this exciting resource.
We also enjoyed our Christmas luncheon at the White Bear, Masham. You can spot a few of our volunteers enjoying themselves!
We are looking to apply for some Heritage Lottery Funding, which will help plant new reedbeds and pay for volunteer training. We are meeting on January 30th so if you want to join us and feed in to the project then please get in touch.
Figures from the North and East Yorkshire Ecological Data Centre so far show there were:
So a big, big thank you to all those “experts” and “volunteers” who joined us during an eventful 24-hour period on the 12-13 July. There were more than 50 involved altogether, including a school party of 15. Of the latter, they had never heard so much Latin spouted in all their lives! Hopefully a new generation has been enthused.
How many living species can you find on a 240-acre nature reserve? 100? 200? perhaps.
Not just birds and mammals but flowers, bugs, beetles, dragonflies, moths - in fact anything that moves or grows. 300 then, or even 400?
Well, the truth is the Lower Ure Conservation Trust just doesn't know what the figure is for its Nosterfield Nature Reserve, a rich wet grassland habitat, which lies between Ripon and Bedale in North Yorkshire.
So for a 24-hour period in July the Trust is attempting to find outby invitinganyone who is interestedto come to the reserve and adjoining quarry and reedbed to help find out.
The “blitz” will start at 5pm on Thursday the 12th July and end exactly 24 hours later. “We'll begin with a guided bat walk, we have an expert on gulls who will identify as many species as possible in the nightly gull roost and we will look at how many moths frequent the area” explains LUCT director Simon Warwick.
“That'll take us close to midnight. Then of course there are all those nocturnal creatures which are active at night and we miss during the day.”
It will get even busier the following day, with guided walks into parts of the reserve which are usually closed to the public, to look for butterflies, dragonflies, beetles, spiders and flowers, with a host of wildlife and botanical experts on hand to identify those species eagle-eyed members of the public spot during the various walks.
Then on Thursday evening all the totals will be totted up to find out just how many diverse creatures inhabit Hambleton's only nature reserve,. And it promises to be more than 400!
Join us – perhaps not for the entire 24 hours but a part of it. More information can be found at http://www.luct.org.uk/events
The money will go towards the erection of ‘wet beds’ and protective fencing in a corner of Flask Lake. Once they are up and running we will be producing well over 600 plants in the first year from seed of local native provenance, ready to be transplantedto other parts of the reserve. It is all part of our “Fabulous Fen” project which aims to recreate “boggy” habitat in the Vale of Mowbray. From detail historical evidence, we know it was here in abundance in the Middle Ages; it is our intention to bring rich habitat back and with it the animals and birds which thrive among locally native sedges and other fen pants. Total cost of the project is around £5,500 of which Postcode lottery is generously giving us more than £4,000.
The Postcode Local Trust is a grant-giving charity funded entirely by players of People's Postcode Lottery. You can learn more about the organisation and how it helps energetic charities like LUCT by going to www.postcodelocaltrust.org.uk
You may remember last autumn we sourced a number of bog-loving plants at Kilgram close to the River Ure at Jervaulx and volunteers spent two days harvesting the seed of such species as meadowsweet, angelica and great fen sedge. It is as a result of those efforts that we now have the raw material to begin this exciting new project - plus the money from the Postcode Lottery.
An encouraging ten species of dragonfly were identified on the reserve during the year along with 147 species of bird. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, we were unable to add to the total bird species list which is the first year that has happened since the reserve was established 20 years ago. With close to 230 species seen over the years, our luck had to run out sometime.
The high point, however, was the discovery by ecologist and long-time friend of LUCT Martin Hammond of a new species of orchid for the reserve – two specimens of Autumn lady's tresses (Spiranthes spiralis). Not only was this small white flowered, grey-green plant new to Nosterfield but it was the first time one had been recorded in North Yorkshire for 60 years – the last time in West Tanfield parish! What a find!
Of our target bird species, 46 pairs of lapwing bred fledging a minimum of 38 chicks; there were ten pairs of redshank, two of curlew, 11 of avocet and 8 pairs of shoveler.
Breeding success was, generally mixed and the volatile water levels during 2016 undoubtedly played a part in that. Visitors to the reserve at the beginning of 2016 were confronted by a blanket of water which stretched unbroken from the West Tanfield tide to nigh on the edge of Nosterfield village. And yet 2016 overall was a dry year. Water levels fluctuated by a staggering 3.32 metres. By the end of 2016 levels were at an all-time December low and they have receded even further since.
The liaison meeting heard one piece of disappointing news.
Our dipping pond, constructed more than two years ago, has not developed in the way that we hoped and expected. Despite the fact that we intentionally minimised plant introductions, , the invertebrate species list is meagre.
The most likely reason is that a few dogs are being allowed to jump in and have a splash about. The dogs are most likely to have been treated for fleas with a well-known brand of flea killer which is retained on the nape of their necks and miniscule droplets of the treatment are being left in the water to drug and kill the pondlife.
It only takes a few parts per BILLION in the water for the destruction to occur.
As a consequence, the Lower Ure Conservation Trust is faced with a dilemma. We would like to keep the access for people as free as possible but we cannot allow the poor natural diversity within the pond to continue. So we are reluctantly being forced to consider fencing off the area.
Dogs on leads are welcome on the reserve. But the irresponsibility of one or two owners is something to disappoint all who visit the reserve.
Our volunteers have turned their attention in recent weeks to collecting seed to help promote new plant species growing at Nosterfield.
A rich source of wet grasssland and bog loving plants has been discovered at Kilgram, alongside the River Ure near Jervaulx. With the permission of the tenant farmer Martin Smith two groups have gone in complete with bags to collect species such as meadowsweet, wild angelica, blunt-flowered rush, hemp agrimony and pepper saxifrage.
Volunteers collecting seed
The seeds of these plants are now being prepared for sowing.
Meanwhile at Flask Lake four trail areas have been cleared of undergrowth and been especially-prepared as seed beds to eventually take the seed which will hopefully germinate in the spring of 2017. The help and advice of ecologist and plant expert Martin Hammond has been invaluable and we will all be keen to see how successful we are in providing a new home for these unusual plants.
