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The Park

As the land in Huntington and Boughton Heath was developed in the 1980s, Chester City Council required the builders to donate packets of land to make up the 30 acres which is now Caldy Nature Park. It is an area for wildlife and for local people to enjoy. Take a look at the map of the site.

Since 1991, working with closely with Mike O'Kell and Chester City Council, the Friends of Caldy Nature Park have transformed the area. Our aim has been to create a large area of wetland and other different habitats so that the valley attracts a wide variety of wildlife and plants. Our latest project is to improve the area around the car park on Caldy Valley Road.

A total of 243 flowers have been recorded in the park along with 46 grasses/ sedges and 26 trees. Our records pages list them all.

Wildflowers
Crack Willows
Whose side are you on in the Bluebell Battle?
Bird Feeding Station in Wellfield
The County Flower
Notes on a Small Nature Park
Pond Dipping
Slow worm
Dead Wood

Wildflowers 

Thank you to Martyn Stead who leads four wildflower walks through the park during the summer months. It takes someone who really knows what he is doing to identify two rather obscure new species for the valley - the latest finding (last year) are orange balsam and soft hornwort. Thankfully, orange balsam is not nearly as agressive as its relative, Himalayan balsam, which has also been found in the park. Thanks are also due to Jonathon Barritt who keeps up to date records of all the flora growing in the park and provides reports of these walks - very valuable work.

Have you noticed the beautiful paintings of wildflowers on the noticeboards? Our May artist was Laura Bishop and the June pictures were done by Valerie Formby - many thanks.

Crack Willows

There are quite a few large crack willows in the park which are leaning over at alarming angles. As their name suggests, the wood is very brittle with many twigs and light branches breaking in the wind.

Many of the trees in the park are multi-stemmed with three or four boughs growing from the base. Cracks at the base are the weak point and when the trees are in full leaf and then it rains, it is just too much and the trunks will fall over. In our crowded park they may just rest on adjacent trees but if they are leaning over footpaths the City Council will have them cut down for safety reasons.

But there is always a sunny side. Large logs mean fun for children and as they rot away they provide homes for wildlife in the valley. This may mean that the park is not as tidy as it could be but it is just right for the wildlife.

Do you remember this view towards Bachelors Bridge? This was how it looked before the great storm on Christmas Eve 1997 when many of the great willow trees were blown down.

Whose side are you on in the Bluebell Battle?

British bluebells are under a severe threat from Spanish bluebells which are being sold in garden centres and are spreading into wild habitats. We plant British bluebells in the valley, but we have some hybrids that are a cross between the two species.

As they come into flower you can tell the difference. Spanish ones have much wider leaves. British bluebell flowers droop at the tip; the Spanish ones stay upright. If they have flowers on one side of the stem, they are British; if the flowers occur all round the stalk they are Spanish. British bells are narrow and hang downwards; Spanish bells are wide open and stick out sideways.

Bird Feeding Station in Wellfield Sheila Yale writes

We set up the bird feeding station in Wellfield on 14th December 2001. We attached the squirrel proof seed feeder to the large fir tree and set up the bird table nearby. We are not proud of the bird table as it is not an object of great beauty, however it is the best we amateurs could do and it serves its purpose. Should anybody, more skilled than we are, feel they could make a table that could perhaps be fixed to a tree stump, then we would be very grateful.It could well benefit from a metal cage over it to keep the squirrels off if anyone goes to metalwork classes or is already skilled in the art.

Sainsbury's very kindly donate apples, pears and bananas if they have any that are no longer saleable. At first we used to visit the station every day but I found that this was not always necessary so I now go every other day. This allows me to clean the table with a mild disinfectant before refilling. We have a stock of black sunflower seeds and bird table food paid for by the 'Friends' Committee and bought through the RSPB and I make 'birdcake' with fat and ground peanuts.

The birds very quickly found the station and to date I have recorded: - Blue tit, great tit, longtailed tit, house sparrow, greenfinch, chaffinch, robin, dunnock, blackbird, songthrush, jay, woodpigeon, collared dove, crow, magpie and of course, squirrel.

We are still waiting to see siskins but I guess we will need to get a peanut feeder. Sheila and Brian Yale Tel: 01244 340301.

County Flowers

The Cheshire County Flower, Cuckooflower (Lady's Smock) grows in the park near to the pond and other water areas such as Malcolm's Scrape. While it is very pretty, dainty and easy to miss, the orange tip butterflies will seek it out.

Notes on a Small Nature Park by Malcolm Leigh

There was snow on the ground on 31st December 2001, a light NW wind, it was frosty and the pond was iced over.

I saw 19 different birds on a walk round the park. Kestrel, moorhen, blackheaded gull, common gull, wood pigeon, collared dove, wren, robin, blackbird, coaltit, great tit, blue tit, magpie, jackdaw, carrion crow, starling, chaffinch, bullfinch, goldfinch.

The next day, the weather was the same with a very clear sky. But did the birds know that it was New Year's Day?

This time I saw 31 birds. The new additions were cormorant, grey heron, herring gull, pied wagtail, dunnock, fieldfare, redwing, blackcap (female), longtailed tit, house sparrow, greenfinch, 3 siskins and 2 redpoll.

Not bad for an hour's walk. Happy New Year to all those birds and to you too.

Pond Dipping in the Park

A small but dedicated group of Watch members went pond dipping on Tuesday 3rd June 2002 during one of the few hot, sunny periods of the Jubilee weekend. We were trying to find out how much the wildlife in the park's ponds had changed since the Caldy Valley Newts surveyed the ponds four years ago.

We started off in the pond in Wellfield. This was initially rather disappointing with lots of water boatmen and daphnia. But as the pond dippers became more adventurous we started to catch plenty of different nymphs and two wonderful diving beetles. The biggest difference to 1998 was that we only found one type of snail, the pond snail. Although we didn't find any on the day, a few weeks earlier other groups had found efts, very young newts with gills, and water scorpions, a smooth newt and larvae of stonefly, dragonfly and phantom midge.

Next we moved on to Malcolm's Scrape. This pond was once the best for pond dipping, but it has suffered badly in recent years with flooding and invasive cressula and phragmites. It looked extremely uninviting and all we seemed to find initially was a vast amount of mud! But as we looked closer there were some small but important animals that showed that it wasn't such an inhospitable environment as it appeared on first inspection.

The ducks and fish had been busy in the main pond, as all we found was daphnia.

Our persistence was rewarded when we moved on to try the leat by Number 5 sluice. We immediately found large ramshorn snails floating on the surface. Then some large fish (in pond dipping terms anyway) were caught; followed by a very large 'bug' which turned out to be a dragonfly larva.

Don't forget that Pam has nets, trays and identification charts that can be borrowed for pond dipping.

Slow worms

The slow-worm is often mistaken for a snake - it is in fact a legless lizard! Like other reptiles they are in decline in Cheshire and are a protected species. Mike O'Kell (tel 402578) would be very interested to hear from you if you see one. They turn up in compost heaps, lead litter, etc - allotments are a favourite. They look like a brown rather heavily built snake, shiny, up to 40cm in length. They like to eat snails, slugs and earthworms.

The other snakes you are likely to see look quite different. The grass snake is slender, olive green with a yellow and black collar. The adder female is brown, the mail whitish or cream coloured but it is the dark zig zag line running down the length of its back that identifies it.

Dead Wood by Malcolm Leigh

People often ask why we leave tree trunks and thick branches lying around the park. It will soon become old wood and a micro habitat supporting up to 60 invertebrates. Rotting wood underpins any wood ecosystem and at any one time, 40% of woodland wildlife is dependent on dead wood. For example, beetles, wasps, spiders and wood-boring bees are all at the bottom of the food chain. So the more beasties you have, the more birds there are. And all the fungi that grows on dead wood is a very Good Thing.

In the dictionary, the phrase 'dead wood' means useless material. I think not.

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