As the season shifted from Spring into Summer our staff and volunteers changed gears and tools and started the perpetual task of fence and infrastructure repairs. Grazing is essential for the management of the grassland sites and site security is forever on our mind. Posts rot over time and unfortunately we are often subject to damage to the fence lines, with wires being cut or squashed.  On certain sites we are able to take a tractor on site to assist with post installation, on others we have to install by hand. Our usage of the in-county tractor was hindered by a pied wagtail nesting within the chassis, so we had to borrow one from Cambs along with their post bumper.

This was deployed at a number of sites including the The Riddy in Sandy to install posts to protect a newly planted hedge from grazing pressure by cattle. We also sent it to Fancott meadows where we were replacing failed posts in the south meadow, in an area where we couldn’t access with contractors a few years ago.

Finally we used it a Pegsdon Hills, where we’re encountering a huge number of failed posts, all dating from around 2008-16. They seem to be either the softwood posts installed as the formulation of timber treatments were modified or the smaller diameter posts made from home grown sweet chestnut.

Grazing is one of the key ways we can influence the vegetation on the reserves, for better or worse, and the timing of grazing to reduce plant cover but not suppress other wildlife is always tricky. At Totternhoe Knolls we grazed hard throughout the winter months to push back the tor grass, clematis and young scrub that had expanded in recent years with no or limited grazing. As the season advanced we then restricted the herdwick sheep using an electric fence setup paid for by the Beds Local group, which gave the rest of the site a chance to bloom.

Pegsdon hills have a huge variety of plants and animals, but unfortunately no longer seems to have a viable population of Pasqueflowers, and number of factors could be behind this – over grazing by rabbits, under grazing by livestock, density of ground cover, poor genetic diversity or climatic changes.

We have partnered with Plantlife to reintroduce the plant across the site, using seed harvested under license from nearby Knocking Hoe NNR which is managed by Natural England. Seed harvested last summer was sown in the autumn and fingertip searches this spring has found seedlings coming up in the specially prepared plots. More seed has been harvested this spring ready for the creation of 12 more plots to be prepared later in the year. Ultimately there will be 24 plots spread across the Deacon and Pegsdon Hills SSSI and hopefully we will see these produce a new and productive population of this beautiful and distinctive flower.

Thanks to the support of key individuals we are lucky enough to have a huge range of habitats to manage, some of which may have disappeared years ago. One such situation is at Blow’s Downs where the dedication and lobbying of John Rafters helped save the Paddocks, off Half-moon lane or Station Road, from being covered in development and lost forever. The site was proposed to be used as a bypass or relief road to avoid Dunstable town centre with the surrounding land turned over to housing or commercial buildings. John rallied support for the preservation of the site and was a stalwart of the Blow’s Downs Conservation Group. This year we have been able to replace the memorial post on the site, which has a plaque to John and a site compass to the nearby SSSI’s. Additional to this we have installed a secondary plaque with information about the formation of the Chilterns by the deposition of countless numbers of fossils.

This support by individuals continues to the present day and we are staggered b the response to the launch of our Appeal to ‘Save Strawberry Hill’ – launched in July, there have literally been thousands of messages and expressions of support, all accompanying the generous contributions from young and old, wealthy and less so.

One of the messages recently was from a mum, whose daughter had saved up their pocket money for a few weeks, this brought a lump to my throat as I read the message, as to them the donation was all of their money.

We have had many interested groups visit the site and explore the extensive network of paths and revel in the cacophony of noise, pierced by the distinctive sequence of trills from Nightingales, distant but familiar calls from Cuckoos or occasionally the purr of a Turtle dove or chirrup of a Grasshopper warbler.

Thanks go to the dedicated bunch of volunteers who helped us throughout the spring and summer, be it mowing paths, trimming brambles or surveying the habitats for birds or plants. As we move through the summer we are seeing the fruit swell on the bramble & scrub and look forward to welcoming many more avian visitors in the Autumn as they migrate, stopping by to fuel up on berries and seeds.