My first week at RSPB Aylesbeare

My first week with the RSPB crew at Aylesbeare has brought on some mixed feelings.  On the one hand I’ve met a fine bunch of people, including numerous staff and volunteers from the South West region at the winter regional meeting on Thursday; seen a bird I’ve never seen before; and spent the week working outside.  And on the other hand I’ve been introduced to the details of the heathland management process.

Heathland has been around for a long time.  Maybe even thousands of years in this part of Devon.  So there are a number of flora and fauna species that are well adapted to live in it.  However, the environment is man made.  Nature is always trying to reclaim those areas that are suitable as woodland or scrubland.  In order to prevent this from happening trees and mature gorse are removed from the encroaching areas along with all leaf litter and other unwanted nutrients.  Wood is taken away to be sold, and the rest is burnt.  In many cases the most abundant trees in these areas are the silver/downy birch.  I’ve cut down plenty of non-native trees on TFL weeks, but this is, I think, the first time I’m having to remove native species.

Today I was lucky enough to carry out the regular bird survey with Johnny, the current assistant warden.  We saw plenty of tits, yellowhammers, dunnocks, etc, but the highlight was watching a great grey shrike chase what looked like a dartford warbler over some gorse bushes.  This bird is a predator to smaller birds and often creates a “larder” of it’s catches by storing them on spikes on fencing or spiky trees/bushes.  I’d already seen the bird on Tuesday, in flight and sat in the top of a tree, but watching it chasing a very agile small bird was a brilliant site to see.  Unfortunately, I was rather under-prepared, without camera in hand.