JUST SOME OF THE WORK DONE BY NMWG VOLUNTEERS IN THE PARK from 2001 to 30 March 2015 (the date the group's name changed)
Volunteering events AFTER 30 March 2015 (as Friends of Milham Ford Nature Park
Volunteering events AFTER 30 March 2015 (as Friends of Milham Ford Nature Park
9 March 2015 Despite the rain, Ellen and Stephen Lee and Judy Webb turned up to do more hacking and clearing.
1 March 2015 More bramble clearing.
26 January 2015 Dropbox First volunteering event of 2015, cutting back brambles and digging out Michaelmas Daisy plants, Great Willowherb and other vegetation that would otherwise smother smaller plants. Children visiting the park with their parents were shown the frogs and frogspawn in the ponds. Also recording visiting birds for the year's RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch - table of birds counted [link updated 14 May 2022], compiled from data supplied by Peter Somogyi.
14 December 2014 Dropbox Last volunteering event of the year
Uprooting Great Willowherb, which is smothering smaller plants - bad for biodiversity.
7 December 2014 More uprooting of Great Willowherb, which is smothering smaller plants - bad for biodiversity.
23 November 2014 The event was cancelled due to steady rain that morning. However, Ellen and Stephen Lee valiantly arrived to pull up more Michaelmas daisies.
28 August 2014 Google photos Oxford City Council Volunteers, led by Carl Whitehead, carried out a great deal of useful work in the Park
24 August 2014 Google Photos Mainly tackling excessive growth of Great Willowherb
3 August 2014 Dropbox Seed Collecting and clearing excessive growth of plants. Members of Friends of Lye Valley & Rock Edge and Fiona Tavner from Oxford Friends of the Earth joined NMWG members in the seed collection. During the event, Peter Somogyi noted down butterflies he spotted over the course of 15 minutes and later submitted the results to the Big Butterfly Count. They were:
x 18 Common Blue Polymmatus icarus
x 14 Gatekeeper (Hedge Brown) Pyronia tithonus
x 2 Meadow Brown Maniola jurtina
x 2 Green-veined White Artogeia napi
x 1 Large White Artogeia brassicae
x 1 Speckled Wood Pararge aegeria
20 July 2014 Clearing excessive growth of plants at pond margins
1 June 2014 Pond maintenance
13 April 2014 Dropbox More clearing of female willow saplings, further trimming of the large female willow, and some pond maintenance. Yellow Rattle seed was sown in areas where it has not yet established itself.
6 April 2014 Dropbox Photos taken by Judy Webb, who reported:
"We got on really well today – thanks to the enthusiastic helpers! All potential seed-producing female willows were re-pollarded to stop willow seedlings making us more work next year. Male basket and grey willows were left. These were covered in pollen and nectar-bearing catkins and, just as we were packing up, a large queen buff-tailed bumble bee arrived to feast upon these catkins. What a joy to see!
Yellow coltsfoot flowers are nearly over and their silvery seed heads pepper the site - good food for seed-eating birds such as goldfinches. More than 150 Fritillary flowers were out in their special corner. Plus, it is a pleasure to report that the cowslips are coming into flower in beautiful swathes all around the site and a good few common spotted orchid leaves are showing already near the westernmost pond. We also managed to cut back large, aggressive, brambles from the old yellow ant hills and raspberry canes near the old pond. Young willows on pond margins were removed.
Peter Somogyi is to be congratulated for helping stock doves at Milham by installing a nest box.
Even more frog spawn clumps were seen in the ponds, plus hatched tadpoles. The best of all, however, was a big clump (tangled mass) of TOAD spawn in one of the ponds! This is the first time toads have spawned in the ponds in the five years since they were constructed.
The other amazing site was ‘Spring bee city’ – massed diggings and holes of solitary bees all along the hot, south-facing, sandy bank of the stream."
9 March 2014 A lovely sunny day for the volunteers, who included four very keen workers from the Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit of Oxford University.
15 December 2013 Clearing Great Willowherb to allow smaller wild flowers to grow.
27 October 2013 Flickr The help of new volunteers from Oxford University and Oxford Brookes University was much appreciated. A lot of the excess vegetation was cleared to help smaller wildflowers to grow. Some of the members of St Michael & All Angels Church Sunday school visited to see what lived in the ponds, and an interesting caterpillar was found towards the end of the morning by Judy Webb.
11 August 2013 Tackling Great Willowherb invasion
28 July 2013 Raking of cut hay down from the bank to level ground so that Oxford City Council's gang mower could return to pick it up and bale it. Collection of wildflower seed, some of which was spread in the Park and some given to Headington volunteers to sow at Rock Edge to diversify the vegetation and feed bees and butterflies there.
Early July - while busy with pond and stream maintenance, one of the group found a Water Scorpion, an uncommon bug that resembles a land scorpion in some ways.
6 April 2013
Chopping out Willows and brambles. The water levels in the ponds were low. There were about 10 clumps of frogspawn in one of the shallow, temporary, ponds. A similar amount was found on the shelf of the middle pond but due to the lack of water, this had dried out. A problem with algae/sediment first noticed during the first volunteering event on 16 March remained and Judy wondered whether this was fresh enrichment or, in view of the fact that the stream seemed clean, a re-activation of the sewage pollution that occurred in 2012.
3 March 2013 Dropbox Cutting back Willows and brambles, litter-picking.
9 September 2012
The Branched Bur-reed and the Water-lilies had spread too extensively and Nuttall's Pondweed (Elodea nutallii) had formed a carpet that was choking less vigorous aquatic plants.
6 September 2012 Hay cutting. Carl and Gary from Oxford City Council's Parks Department and 4 regular City Council volunteers provided much-appreciated help to volunteers from New Marston Wildlife Group with cutting and collecting grass on the bank on the East side of the park, which the big ride-on mowers can't tackle because of the slope. Judy Webb took a few photos (see slideshow - it includes great ones of a female Roesel’s bush cricket, Metrioptera roeseli) but was too busy raking hay herself to capture all the great efforts of everyone involved.
Sunday, 26 August 2012 Dropbox In the hope that it would help the Yellow Loosestrife to spread, five NMWG volunteers pulled out large quantities of Great Willowherb and Michaelmas Daisies, which choke other, less vigorous, plants unless kept under control.
Sunday, 29 July Photobucket and Sunday 22 July 2012. Photobucket Clearing large amounts of Great Willowherb and Fool's Watercress, which were choking other plants, from the stream bed.
Thursday, 31 May 2012: Volunteers, led by Carl Whitehead of Oxford City Council's Parks & Open Spaces Department, gave some much appreciated help with tackling aggressive species, including a large quantity of Meadowsweet and Michaelmas daisies, which were preventing other wildflowers from becoming established. This is an important aspect of the New Marston Wildlife's Group on-going programme of work to maintain and improve the biodiversity of the Park.
21 April 2012: Dividing clumps of Tawny Sedge (Carex hostiana), which is rare in Oxfordshire, and Flag Iris (Iris pseudacorus) and planting them in other areas of the pond margins. Trimming/clearing unwanted vegetation.
1 April 2012: Photobucket Cutting down female Willow shoots (they produce seeds, which leads to a vast amount of unwanted small saplings sprouting up around the ponds) and moving Sedge and Marsh Marigolds that risked drying out at the pond edges to places where they would get more water. The slide show for this day includes photos showing the difference between female and male Willow catkins.
Sunday, 11 December 2011 Last volunteering day of the year. It was a cold day and Judy Webb, Curt Lamberth and Sue Mallett deserve a special mention for putting in a lot of work in less than perfect conditions - as did Bill Parry, who had been busy clearing up lopped-off branches the previous week. Young Blackthorns were moved to the new mixed- berry hedge (crescent-shaped hedge in the middle of the grassy area on the north side of the park - hedge-laying carried out here for the first time on 27 January 2019). Other trimming and clearing work was also carried out.
Pond clearing 4 September 2011
Nuttall's Pondweed, Elodea nutallii, was again choking the ponds. Volunteers removed considerable quantities from the water. The Purple Loosestrife was also thinned out and seed was sown in the areas that remain unmown over the winter from several varieties of wildflowers, which are marked with a green asterisk on the list of plants in the park.
Pruning of trees and thinning of plants Photobucket 14 and 21 August 2011 Volunteers undertook the cutting back of young willow seedlings near the ponds, reducing the rampant Michaelmas daisies and, taking advantage of the low water level, removing bulrushes, which would eventually have covered the ponds. Also, a large amount of litter was collected. The slide show includes photos of an aggressive wasp attacking a Brown Hawker dragonfly.
Volunteers from Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, enlisted thanks to BTCV, made big improvements to the Park 15 March 2011
The volunteers were at the Park from 10 am until 4 pm and cheerfully tackled hacking down brambles, clearing debris, and thinning out trees in the north-west corner that were blocking sunlight needed to encourage Brown Hairstreak Butterflies to visit the Blackthorn hedge and lay eggs.
First maintenance work of the New Year 6 January 2011
Seed sowing and pond clearing 21 November 2010
Pond Clearing Event, Sunday, 5 September 2010 Picasa Picasa link following Google changes - photos yet to be uploaded to Google Photos
Nuttall's Pondweed (Elodea nuttallii) had been taking over the lower section of the lower pond area, which was also covered with thick sheets of algae. This was largely removed by hand or by dragging a rake head attached to a rope through the water.
March to May 2010 Picasa link - no longer working following Google changes - photos yet to be uploaded to Google Photos
The primroses on the Jack Straw's Lane side of the park were getting overgrown with ivy because the mowers were unable to get close enough to the hedge to keep the ivy down. Volunteers trimmed suckers and low branches and the mowers will now be able to keep the ivy at bay. Large clumps of primroses were divided and planted in lightly-shaded areas by the trees.
A cherry tree in the north-west corner of the park was felled because it was preventing light getting to the Blackthorn hedge, which is the main habitat for Brown Hairstreak butterflies.
Pollarding of the Milham Ford Nature Park willows Photobucket 31 January 2010
Contribution to National Biodiversity Day (22 May in 2009) Flickr
Work done on 24 May 2009. For extra details, click here
Tree O'Clock' - tree planting in National Tree Week - 5 Dec 2009 Photobucket
Wildflower seed sowing 5 Oct 2008 Flickr
Clearing the old pond 29 September 2007 Flickr
Moving felled whitebeam 2001 Flickr
1 March 2015 More bramble clearing.
26 January 2015 Dropbox First volunteering event of 2015, cutting back brambles and digging out Michaelmas Daisy plants, Great Willowherb and other vegetation that would otherwise smother smaller plants. Children visiting the park with their parents were shown the frogs and frogspawn in the ponds. Also recording visiting birds for the year's RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch - table of birds counted [link updated 14 May 2022], compiled from data supplied by Peter Somogyi.
14 December 2014 Dropbox Last volunteering event of the year
Uprooting Great Willowherb, which is smothering smaller plants - bad for biodiversity.
7 December 2014 More uprooting of Great Willowherb, which is smothering smaller plants - bad for biodiversity.
23 November 2014 The event was cancelled due to steady rain that morning. However, Ellen and Stephen Lee valiantly arrived to pull up more Michaelmas daisies.
28 August 2014 Google photos Oxford City Council Volunteers, led by Carl Whitehead, carried out a great deal of useful work in the Park
24 August 2014 Google Photos Mainly tackling excessive growth of Great Willowherb
3 August 2014 Dropbox Seed Collecting and clearing excessive growth of plants. Members of Friends of Lye Valley & Rock Edge and Fiona Tavner from Oxford Friends of the Earth joined NMWG members in the seed collection. During the event, Peter Somogyi noted down butterflies he spotted over the course of 15 minutes and later submitted the results to the Big Butterfly Count. They were:
x 18 Common Blue Polymmatus icarus
x 14 Gatekeeper (Hedge Brown) Pyronia tithonus
x 2 Meadow Brown Maniola jurtina
x 2 Green-veined White Artogeia napi
x 1 Large White Artogeia brassicae
x 1 Speckled Wood Pararge aegeria
20 July 2014 Clearing excessive growth of plants at pond margins
1 June 2014 Pond maintenance
13 April 2014 Dropbox More clearing of female willow saplings, further trimming of the large female willow, and some pond maintenance. Yellow Rattle seed was sown in areas where it has not yet established itself.
6 April 2014 Dropbox Photos taken by Judy Webb, who reported:
"We got on really well today – thanks to the enthusiastic helpers! All potential seed-producing female willows were re-pollarded to stop willow seedlings making us more work next year. Male basket and grey willows were left. These were covered in pollen and nectar-bearing catkins and, just as we were packing up, a large queen buff-tailed bumble bee arrived to feast upon these catkins. What a joy to see!
Yellow coltsfoot flowers are nearly over and their silvery seed heads pepper the site - good food for seed-eating birds such as goldfinches. More than 150 Fritillary flowers were out in their special corner. Plus, it is a pleasure to report that the cowslips are coming into flower in beautiful swathes all around the site and a good few common spotted orchid leaves are showing already near the westernmost pond. We also managed to cut back large, aggressive, brambles from the old yellow ant hills and raspberry canes near the old pond. Young willows on pond margins were removed.
Peter Somogyi is to be congratulated for helping stock doves at Milham by installing a nest box.
Even more frog spawn clumps were seen in the ponds, plus hatched tadpoles. The best of all, however, was a big clump (tangled mass) of TOAD spawn in one of the ponds! This is the first time toads have spawned in the ponds in the five years since they were constructed.
The other amazing site was ‘Spring bee city’ – massed diggings and holes of solitary bees all along the hot, south-facing, sandy bank of the stream."
9 March 2014 A lovely sunny day for the volunteers, who included four very keen workers from the Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit of Oxford University.
15 December 2013 Clearing Great Willowherb to allow smaller wild flowers to grow.
27 October 2013 Flickr The help of new volunteers from Oxford University and Oxford Brookes University was much appreciated. A lot of the excess vegetation was cleared to help smaller wildflowers to grow. Some of the members of St Michael & All Angels Church Sunday school visited to see what lived in the ponds, and an interesting caterpillar was found towards the end of the morning by Judy Webb.
11 August 2013 Tackling Great Willowherb invasion
28 July 2013 Raking of cut hay down from the bank to level ground so that Oxford City Council's gang mower could return to pick it up and bale it. Collection of wildflower seed, some of which was spread in the Park and some given to Headington volunteers to sow at Rock Edge to diversify the vegetation and feed bees and butterflies there.
Early July - while busy with pond and stream maintenance, one of the group found a Water Scorpion, an uncommon bug that resembles a land scorpion in some ways.
6 April 2013
Chopping out Willows and brambles. The water levels in the ponds were low. There were about 10 clumps of frogspawn in one of the shallow, temporary, ponds. A similar amount was found on the shelf of the middle pond but due to the lack of water, this had dried out. A problem with algae/sediment first noticed during the first volunteering event on 16 March remained and Judy wondered whether this was fresh enrichment or, in view of the fact that the stream seemed clean, a re-activation of the sewage pollution that occurred in 2012.
3 March 2013 Dropbox Cutting back Willows and brambles, litter-picking.
9 September 2012
The Branched Bur-reed and the Water-lilies had spread too extensively and Nuttall's Pondweed (Elodea nutallii) had formed a carpet that was choking less vigorous aquatic plants.
6 September 2012 Hay cutting. Carl and Gary from Oxford City Council's Parks Department and 4 regular City Council volunteers provided much-appreciated help to volunteers from New Marston Wildlife Group with cutting and collecting grass on the bank on the East side of the park, which the big ride-on mowers can't tackle because of the slope. Judy Webb took a few photos (see slideshow - it includes great ones of a female Roesel’s bush cricket, Metrioptera roeseli) but was too busy raking hay herself to capture all the great efforts of everyone involved.
Sunday, 26 August 2012 Dropbox In the hope that it would help the Yellow Loosestrife to spread, five NMWG volunteers pulled out large quantities of Great Willowherb and Michaelmas Daisies, which choke other, less vigorous, plants unless kept under control.
Sunday, 29 July Photobucket and Sunday 22 July 2012. Photobucket Clearing large amounts of Great Willowherb and Fool's Watercress, which were choking other plants, from the stream bed.
Thursday, 31 May 2012: Volunteers, led by Carl Whitehead of Oxford City Council's Parks & Open Spaces Department, gave some much appreciated help with tackling aggressive species, including a large quantity of Meadowsweet and Michaelmas daisies, which were preventing other wildflowers from becoming established. This is an important aspect of the New Marston Wildlife's Group on-going programme of work to maintain and improve the biodiversity of the Park.
21 April 2012: Dividing clumps of Tawny Sedge (Carex hostiana), which is rare in Oxfordshire, and Flag Iris (Iris pseudacorus) and planting them in other areas of the pond margins. Trimming/clearing unwanted vegetation.
1 April 2012: Photobucket Cutting down female Willow shoots (they produce seeds, which leads to a vast amount of unwanted small saplings sprouting up around the ponds) and moving Sedge and Marsh Marigolds that risked drying out at the pond edges to places where they would get more water. The slide show for this day includes photos showing the difference between female and male Willow catkins.
Sunday, 11 December 2011 Last volunteering day of the year. It was a cold day and Judy Webb, Curt Lamberth and Sue Mallett deserve a special mention for putting in a lot of work in less than perfect conditions - as did Bill Parry, who had been busy clearing up lopped-off branches the previous week. Young Blackthorns were moved to the new mixed- berry hedge (crescent-shaped hedge in the middle of the grassy area on the north side of the park - hedge-laying carried out here for the first time on 27 January 2019). Other trimming and clearing work was also carried out.
Pond clearing 4 September 2011
Nuttall's Pondweed, Elodea nutallii, was again choking the ponds. Volunteers removed considerable quantities from the water. The Purple Loosestrife was also thinned out and seed was sown in the areas that remain unmown over the winter from several varieties of wildflowers, which are marked with a green asterisk on the list of plants in the park.
Pruning of trees and thinning of plants Photobucket 14 and 21 August 2011 Volunteers undertook the cutting back of young willow seedlings near the ponds, reducing the rampant Michaelmas daisies and, taking advantage of the low water level, removing bulrushes, which would eventually have covered the ponds. Also, a large amount of litter was collected. The slide show includes photos of an aggressive wasp attacking a Brown Hawker dragonfly.
Volunteers from Taylor & Francis, Abingdon, enlisted thanks to BTCV, made big improvements to the Park 15 March 2011
The volunteers were at the Park from 10 am until 4 pm and cheerfully tackled hacking down brambles, clearing debris, and thinning out trees in the north-west corner that were blocking sunlight needed to encourage Brown Hairstreak Butterflies to visit the Blackthorn hedge and lay eggs.
First maintenance work of the New Year 6 January 2011
Seed sowing and pond clearing 21 November 2010
Pond Clearing Event, Sunday, 5 September 2010 Picasa Picasa link following Google changes - photos yet to be uploaded to Google Photos
Nuttall's Pondweed (Elodea nuttallii) had been taking over the lower section of the lower pond area, which was also covered with thick sheets of algae. This was largely removed by hand or by dragging a rake head attached to a rope through the water.
March to May 2010 Picasa link - no longer working following Google changes - photos yet to be uploaded to Google Photos
The primroses on the Jack Straw's Lane side of the park were getting overgrown with ivy because the mowers were unable to get close enough to the hedge to keep the ivy down. Volunteers trimmed suckers and low branches and the mowers will now be able to keep the ivy at bay. Large clumps of primroses were divided and planted in lightly-shaded areas by the trees.
A cherry tree in the north-west corner of the park was felled because it was preventing light getting to the Blackthorn hedge, which is the main habitat for Brown Hairstreak butterflies.
Pollarding of the Milham Ford Nature Park willows Photobucket 31 January 2010
Contribution to National Biodiversity Day (22 May in 2009) Flickr
Work done on 24 May 2009. For extra details, click here
Tree O'Clock' - tree planting in National Tree Week - 5 Dec 2009 Photobucket
Wildflower seed sowing 5 Oct 2008 Flickr
Clearing the old pond 29 September 2007 Flickr
Moving felled whitebeam 2001 Flickr