Split Willow, Cowslips & a Bat Box?!

Just a quick post to thank visitors who ventured out around the grounds over the bank holiday weekend; the weather was kind with blue sky and fluffy clouds passing briskly over our grassy East Park and Lake. If you did visit and snap any photographs – do mail them in, facebook or tweet them to @Comptonverney or #CVGrounds and we’ll share the love!

The lawns are now enjoying a good drink with a day of rainfall, which strongly suggests we leave the mowers locked away to pursue other tasks! One task for the coming days is removal of timber that has split away from this old willow pollard. A sad sight indeed which occurred last Friday during the chilly wind that built during the day. On a positive note, this will provided some much-needed pliable material that can be put to use in the construction of our temporary ‘wild’ bird hide that we’re planning for a forthcoming grounds weekend on June 29th and 30th.

If you’ve time available this week why not visit and take a stroll around the East Park, our mown paths are easy to follow now the surrounding meadow grass and flowers are growing, and you may well spot some of our insect and bird life. Just last week we spotted a Poplar Hawk Moth resting on our visitor centre!

You’ll notice we’re continuing to experiment with grass management throughout the grounds, leaving some areas to grow on to encourage wildflowers, and also to provide much-needed cover for small mammals.

Cowslips in the West Lawn at Compton Verney.

We’ll also be working through the fishing pegs over the course of the week to ensure they are up to scratch when we welcome our angling members back from the annual closed season break in mid June. We endeavour to provide a good number of angling locations which all offer different challenges. To find out about our late winter lake activity please click here: New Carp!

A final bit of good news is that the first of our bat boxes, installed but a few weeks ago have I’m glad to say been visited already! The box has been placed near to the planned tree chosen for our ‘Empty Nest’ project, with the aim of providing an alternative resting place.

The Daubenton bat, our highest volume species forages for food each evening just above the lake surface, and our consultant ecologist forecasted that bats would benefit from at least one box in this lakeside location. Droppings have been recorded below the box, which shows how quick the bats are to latch onto a good thing – they’re not blind after all!

Regards

Gary