Hazel Graves writes:

Our second meeting at the Friends Meeting House in Leicester saw a good-sized audience with some new members.  Several members reported sightings, including the first Fieldfares of the winter, an unusual spurge, the Willow Emerald Dragonfly and an Otter in Knighton.

Nicola then introduced Isabel Ravel for the main event of the evening, a talk entitled “The Charnwood Forest Partnership Scheme”.

Isabel then explained the background of various attempts since 1925 to establish protection for Charnwood Forest, “Britain’s Unexpected Upland”.  It didn’t make it onto the short-list to be considered a National Park, and the intrusion of the M1 certainly stopped the possibility of that happening. Moves were made to create a Regional Park in 2012, and this became a reality in 2017.

A lottery project was funded and Isabel discussed the work that LRWT have been involved in i.e. the area in which she works, the Grassland Project, based on Plantlife’s “Save our Magnificent Meadows” methodology.  Base-line surveys were made using quadrats and the number of positive and negative indicators recorded.  The idea was to manage these 39 areas, some belonging to the Trust, some under private ownership, using methods which were thought to improve the grasslands for traditional species. Traditional management methods were adopted, including changes to grazing and mowing times, scything as a means of haymaking in areas inaccessible to modern large machinery, and spreading of hay from “good” meadows onto prepared fields so that the seed would fall in these fields. The project was expected to last for 5 years but finished in 2024.  Quadrats were used to find differences made by the  treatments. Due to the shortened time-scale, most area had only 2 data points which makes statistical analysis difficult although it did look as if some of the treatments had improved the grasslands. It is hoped that it will be possible to follow up this work beyond the Lottery funded experiments. 

Another aspect of the Lottery money was to encourage recording and training recorders.  Weekly field recording meetings are being led by Isabel to which members are invited.

There was a discussion, which included questions on the statistical analysis, whether invertebrates were studied as part of the project and how to disseminate the findings.

Hazel Graves writes:

This was the first meeting of the 2024/2025 season and the first in the delightful Large Meeting Room at the Quaker Meeting House on Queens Road.

The meeting started with welcomes and notices, quickly followed by a chance for members to share their recent natural history encounters. The bulk of the group discussion surrounded the numbers of the various egrets in Leicestershire. There are now large numbers of Great Egrets at Rutland Water and Swithland Water.  It was noted that more Little Egrets are seen in the winter than the summer at many sites – and the observation was made that there are in fact only four sites where Little Egrets breed in Leicestershire.  

Peter Proudlove then gave a fascinating and beautifully illustrated presentation which covered many aspects of the subject “Bats”.  This included some basic biology and anatomy, the British species, lifestyles especially the types of feeding and echolocation, reproduction and winter and summer roosts, and equipment and techniques for monitoring.

The work of the Bat Conservation Trust (BCT) was explained. This covers monitoring known bat roosts by counting twice in June. Regular transects are walked along waterways especially canals to monitor Daubenton’s Bats.  Bat walks for the public take place, and static bat monitors are stationed at various sites of interest to monitor bat movements – an exercise that results in the need for much manpower to analyse the data. Advice is available for people who discover they have bat roosts and also suggestions given on where to place bat boxes.  “Bats in care” is an important part of the work of the BCT. Grounded and sometimes poorly bats, often juveniles, often underweight or injured, found by the public can usually be collected by the BCT volunteers who attempt to nurse them back to health by feeding them mealworms, and then reintroduce them back to the roosts where they were thought to have originally come from.  Some members have more than 20 bats to care for at any one time.  Some bats are taken to specialised centres for flying practice.  

The talk was rounded off by Peter discussing his recent trip to Borneo and showing a short but stunning video of probably 3 million bats exiting a large cave system heading out on their evening feeding.

The talk was followed by a wide-ranging discussion.