North Pond area development gathers pace.
Sunrise: 06.31 Sunset: 07.41
A specialist ecology company started work on the north marsh last week, removing trees from the west bank of the North Pond chain. They have done a nice job so far; the area now looks like how I imagined it would.
I wandered down to the pond yesterday morning. A lot of hornets were flying about, both European Vespa Crabro and the Asian vespa velutina (http://thewildenmarshblog.com/2014/06/15/asian-hornet-vespa-velutina/). The latter get my adrenalin flowing; it’s large, noisy and has gold disc eyes. Maybe the hornets had nests in the felled trees.
Most northerly of the North Pond chain.
Ring barked birch to provide standing deadwood.
The large willow on the left is where great spotted woodpeckers congregate early in the year.
Why ring bark the trees? Wouldn’t pollarding have the same effect. I simply ask out of ignorance.
Ringbarking will kill the tree, Joyce; woodpeckers will make holes on it; insects and beetles we move in as the tree rots, as will bees and hornets.
Pollarding produces long straight rods that are out of the reach of grazing animals.
A lot of work.
A lot of heavy work that volunteers won’t need to do with bow saws. The photographs don’t show what’s going on behind me – more heavy tree felling.
You can’t have seen the Asian vespa velutina hornets surely? That would be huge news as every beekeeper in the country is watching out for them in case they cross the Channel.
I mistook the orange hornet as velutina, Emily, because of this article (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/8347585/Asian-hornets-could-invade-Britain.html) However, the large orange hornet is crabro, but it doesn’t look or sound like the crabro hornets I am used to seeing locally.