Small Woodland Owners' Group

RSPB – SWOG Meeting | 01st Aug, 2021

This long awaited real life meeting took place last Friday led by RSPB warden Phil Henderson. Having waited so long for it to happen, it was disappointing that I was ‘Pinged’ the night before and had to stay home isolating. Fortunately Phil had everything covered, Keith and Sheila took some photos and Heather scribed a few words to describe the day. Many thanks to them and all that attended to make this an enjoyable event.

Many thanks to Phil for a really excellent guided walk around the RSPB reserve and for encouraging and answering so many questions.

Following a circular route, it was fascinating to see the various management techniques currently being put in place to increase and maintain the range of flora and fauna – newly created large scallops, wide rides with tiered vegetation, thinned and coppiced areas. The most intriguing of all is the attempt to speed up the creation of deadwood. Will the imaginative variety of human-induced wounds to selected mature trees successfully result in the speedier formation of rot-holes and crevices? Only time and monitoring will tell and we look forward to hopefully hearing updates on this exercise.

Phil eloquently but concisely explained the methods and reasoning behind the very active management of the site and the involvement of teams of local volunteers. The latter had been busy pulling and stacking bracken and transferring green hay from one area to another – more experiments!

What a treat! Perfect weather, a group of smiling, unmasked, like-minded people to talk to and a beautiful wood to walk around that we hadn’t visited before.

Heather & Rod

Please let us know if you would like to host a meeting or you have any ideas to theme a meeting on.

Rich
[email protected]

Wood fairs 2021 | 30th Jun, 2021

A number of wood fairs have made cautious plans to re-open this summer. Read more …

RSPB Meeting | 22nd Jun, 2021

Phil Henderson from the RSPB has kindly offered members a walk around one of their managed woods near Battle in East Sussex. He will be pointing out the management techniques they have been using in the woodland as a way of improving the habitat for bird life and the flora and fauna they rely on.

The meeting will be on Friday 23rd of July, starting at 10 am promptly, a two hour circular walk of the wood then back to the meeting place where Phil will be available to answer any questions. Please bring your own refreshments/lunch if required. Unfortunately there are no toilet facilities on site, though of course plenty of trees, or stop in Battle on the way through https://www.toiletmap.org.uk/

Numbers are limited so please book early if we are oversubscribed there is a possibility of holding it again later in the Autumn/early Winter. Details of the meeting place will be sent out by email prior to the meeting.

To book a place, email [email protected]

Richard Hare

June News | 21st Jun, 2021

SWOG Online Talks | 10th May, 2021

The birds and the bees

We hope to be able to arrange woodland meetings later in the year, but have recently hosted two very successful online presentations that are available on YouTube. Read more …

UK Squirrel Accord – Project Update | 27th Mar, 2021

There has been an interesting progress report from the UK Squirrel Accord, who are midway through their project of finding a species specific oral contraception for the invasive non-native grey squirrel.

Bumblebees and trees | 23rd Mar, 2021

Thanks to Gill Perkins, the CEO of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust for her fascinating presentation on why bumblebees are so important as pollinators, the threats to their habitat and what woodland owners can do to help them.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW IT