Farewell, young coders Tony and I were braced this morning for some poor results on the regular Ebley riverfly check, given recent experiences. And, indeed, that expectation lived up to billing. I took a sample first, and we didn’t need to analyse very long before we realised there was literally nothing. We managed to get a score of 2 with gammarus, and only found a single olive after that. So with a score of 3/4, we breached the trigger for the site. So we took a second sample, and swapped roles with Tony in a slightly different part of the site.
Decreasing Riverfly samples Met up with Graham at 9am for our regular riverfly check at the Ocean. Given the poor informal samples I had taken last week with Leonard Stanley school, I wasn’t holding out too much hope. And indeed, it was clear pretty quickly that the count was very low. Hardly any gammarus – less than ten which is remarkable. But we did actually find examples of three other species, which meant the overall score was 4 and did not trigger. This is a good example of how perhaps the individual counts tell more of a story than the score.
Surveying Church Field Today was the annual re-survey of Church Field in the Slad Valley with the Stroud Wildlife Survey Group. This is a community nature reserve, and the botanical survey informs the grazing and other habitat management over the next season. Just casually looking around, you can see the difference grazing has made in the last season. Large clumps of knapweed, field scabious and lady’s bedstraw right across the site, and also large areas of thinner meadow grass. There were enough of us to split into four teams, which would enable us to get around all 29 in reasonable time.
Setting up quadrats Not too much on the agenda today. I had a call with Emma in the morning to discuss some of the next plans for Dursley Code Club, and what I’ll do over the summer and next term. In the afternoon, I headed over to Church Field to prepare the quadrats for the botanical survey tomorrow. We have 29 quadrats which are re-surveyed every year, so we wanted to put flags at correct GPS locations. It’s a bit fiddly to get the Northing/Eastling coordinates correct, especially on a phone GPS.
Primary School Riverfly Went up to Ebley early this morning to host a visit by Year 4 pupils from Leonard Stanley Primary School. Met up with Tony, Lois and Tamsin and agreed the agenda for the day.
Walking with the Wildflower Society Headed up to Stinchcombe in the morning to support Kathy who was hosting a Wildflower Society meeting on the Hill today. We started in the golf clubhouse with some coffee and had a presentation from Kathy about the grassland restoration work that’s been undertaken and the importance of collecting survey data to track how well grazing management works in the future. We split into two groups and I led one across the course and along the ridge towards the SSSI. However, this was a group of botanists and progress was extremely slow.
Blue-winged takeover Early start to meet Susie at Lister Road for the monthly riverfly count. The river levels were strikingly low – literally not even up to ankles, but it seemed to be flowing faster which was odd. The first thing we noticed was Blue-winged olives everywhere. More than gammarus which is incredible. So after a while we didn’t collect and just estimated the number. After a while though, we got the eye in for other species and found regular olives as well.
Baseline survey of the common A pretty busy day started with a meeting with Leah about the launch of the new Discover Dursley website. We are pretty much there with the initial content, so the next step for me over the weekend is to put the site live and put out a call to the wider community for content submissions. After lunch, we headed over to Sarah’s Field in Berkeley to check on the progress of the wild flowers after the winter management. They were looking in good shape, despite the recent drought and the surging dominant grasses.
Tampering the pit A couple of months ago we had to get a trial pit dug in the garden next to the wall so the structural engineer could make some calculations for the new wall. It was a metre deep and could be filled back in today. There was a pile of soil which should in theory fit exactly back into the hole. However, one of the skills I’ve picked up in the last few years is fencing, and I know that you have to compact the soil with a tamper tool when doing anything with holes in the ground.
A morning in the river Early start to meet Tony at Ebley Meadows at 8.30am for our monthly riverfly check. The river was (unsurprisingly) very low – the first few meters from the bank were barely above the ankles. We weren’t sure what to expect – this is the week after a warm half term and this spot is heavily used by the public. So it’s very possible that a lot of children have been wading in it recently. On the surface, the score of 8 looks very respectable, and certainly high for that site.
