Week of Mon 30th Jun 2025

Set to be the hottest day of the year so far, I set out early for my regular river monitoring for the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. I could feel burning on the back of my neck even before 9am as I walked along the bank of the Cam.

Along the way, I pulled some Himalayan Balsam – a token effort given it has taken hold there. If we ever do manage to establish a community group to monitor the Cam, then we need to look strategically in starting with Balsam at the top of the catchment.

Nothing major to report on the rafts, although when I approached the second one, I heard a distinct plop and splash, but I couldn’t see through the willow whether it was a water vole or not.

After lunch I headed down to Jacob’s House to catch up with Ann-Marie and Leah on the progress of Discover Dursley. It’s been a few weeks since we launched and things are building nicely. We discussed ways to categorize content, encourage more followers, get more local business involved and build out the events.

Straight after, I held the Dursley Code Club in the library. A lot of the Monday children will be too old for the club next term, so I need to think about how they can continue to use the library resources for self study going forward. They continue to be immensely creative and curious, so I have no doubt that they will continue their digital journey under their own steam.

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.

We had three activities: how the river flows naturally, how people have made changes to the river and what lives in the river. I took the last of these and set up a riverfly monitoring area over in Ebley Meadows where Tony and I do the regular monthly check.

They stood behind a rope line and timed while I collected a kick sample in places where they told me creatures might be living. We then headed over to the middle of the field where I set up sample trays for them to use the pipettes, spoons and magnifying glasses to identify what they could see.

They were all magnificent – really engaged with excellent questions and able to spot different types of beetles, fly and shrimp in the tray. At least four told me directly they found it a really fun activity. It’s really uplifting to see their interest wildlife, and you never know what this might inspire someone to do in future.

One thing that took me aback was the low number of species present in the three samples I took. This is never a particularly stellar site, but each of them would have breached trigger level if it was the formal count. I’ll be back here with Tony next Monday, so we’ll see what the actual situation is then.

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. Many times I located the right line, took a compass bearing and then strode confidently off in the opposite direction.

But we managed to get all out in about an hour or so, so well worth getting the ground ready before the surveyors arrive in the morning.

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.

It’s always interesting to see that even when close together, quadrats can have different distribution of species. We pretty much found all the main expected plants and noted down some new ones not on the list.

The best ones were on the steeper, south facing slopes. These squares had pretty much everything in them.

Around 1pm we finished and sat down to a picnic in the meadow. Spots of rain appeared now and again, but not enough to drive us away and some very pleasant conversation while looking at the stunning views.

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. What was, a month ago, a site of abundance, harboured hardly any life at all today.