Wildlife Warblings - Ghosts and bats - A spooky summer at Spains Hall!

Summer did eventually arrive and I managed to do my first survey work in the relative dry of July! It has become a standing joke in the Spains Hall Estate team that if I decide to check my Dormouse footprint tunnels, then the heavens open! However, the arrival of dry weather meant that once again we could get a digger in, ably manned by local contractor Andrew Hull, to dig out a ghost pond; a pond that has been filled in at some point over the decades, but there are clues as to its historic presence on the ground if you look carefully.

I discovered this ghost pond by accident, field-walking during wet winter weather. Whilst ecologists tend to be out and about more in the spring and summer when everything is growing and breeding, there is a lot to be said for a winter walk. You notice different aspects of the land, such as hedgerow and woodland structures, visible without the leaf cover, wintering bird flocks, soil erosion rills and areas that lie wet. The ghost pond was a perfectly round circle of water in an arable field, which in my mind raised a question. Once home, in dry clothes, and with the essentials in life – a pot of tea and chocolate, I looked at the historic maps, and sure enough there was an old pond marked in that exact spot.

A chat with FWAG East’s, Jilly McNaughton , who administers the Essex District Licensing Scheme set the digger wheels in motion to restore the pond. Jilly made a great video of the whole project. In the two ponds we restored last January, we already have a plethora of aquatic invertebrates, dragonflies, amphibians and marginal plants. We also discovered that several species of bats were already using the ponds.

During May and June, Ella Gibbs and Pete Claughton of the Essex Bat Group braved dizzy heights climbing up trees to erect bat detectors along the Finchingfield Brook, to provide baseline data for our new beaver enclosures.

We also decided to erect some detectors in the ancient semi-natural woodland. When the woodland located detectors logged out at 19,999 records in a week, it did cross my mind that it might be just one very energetic bat flying back and forth a lot! As it turned out, on the subsequent bat walk, we heard and saw different bat species repeatedly flying across and around the newly restored woodland pond feasting on the many associated invertebrates.

Duly impressed with the records, Essex Bat Group volunteer, Graham Hart, arrived one balmy, still, late summer evening, with a car boot full to the brim with equipment and four keen helpers, Ana Pino-Blanco , Hayley, Sarah & Yvonne, to put up two large mist nets across woodland rides, along with a harp trap next to the pond.

We all brought deck-chairs, and in my case, also the essential flask of tea and chocolate. I had just poured my first cup when the team leapt into action with our first catches of the evening. We caught bat after bat, namely a Soprano Pipistrelle, Natterer’s and Barbastelle’s – for the latter two, mostly females, which means there are likely to be rare maternity roosts on the Estate.

There was no deckchair work at all, but instead the happy murmur of bat workers measuring, recording and weighing these amazing small mammals. I was amused to learn that our bats were considered quite heavy…with the word ‘fat’ mentioned several times. Whilst my imagination was immediately filled with thoughts of getting the Estate bats into leotards, sweat bands and a keep fit class, in all seriousness, their healthy weight simply reflected the high quality woodland habitat and invertebrate abundance that results from good woodland management. By contrast, I was slightly slimmer by the end of an exciting evening with my chocolate still lying untouched in the deckchair!

When I have investigated the official biodiversity records for the Estate, there are few species records, and even fewer priority or rare species. This isn’t unusual for a historic shooting Estate, nor for a landscape that has been intensively farmed for many generations. Yet here we are with rare Barbastelle bats happily sharing the woodland with a population of priority species Marsh tits, punching well above their diminutive size with their incredibly large territories. I also nearly trod on (thank goodness for my sized 3.5 feet!) a Greater Butterfly orchid in one of the woodland rides during a wet late May day. The species hasn’t been recorded in the Finchingfield area or well beyond since 1889! This old specimen, collected by amateur botanist, Eliza Vaughan (1863-1949) is stored in the Natural History Museum, London. It does beg the question; how much biodiversity within our landscape is simply undiscovered or unrecorded, rather than absent?