We had a good turn-out of around 20 people, including several young children and some new faces, on this fine Saturday morning.
For our first job of the day, Will led us to the wet heath area of the Warren to clear away cut branches from the heath so that they could be picked up by the tractor and disposed of off site.
The next job was to set to on the dry heath area scraping off the moss to remove the habitat for the destructive heather beetles and expose heather seeds to allow germination.
This job involved scraping away the moss, by hand or by rake, and bagging it up so it could be removed from the site. As far as possible we separated the moss from any woody material, mainly heather killed by the heather beetle, into separate bags.
The mossy material was taken by the NT back to their depot for composting with a view to returning any heather seedlings that germinated in the compost back to the Warren.
This group reported finding two slow worms in the heather which they left alone, marking the spot to avoid disturbing the slow worms as they worked.
This area is a good habitat for reptiles and as well as slow worms lizards and adders can be found here. It is best to avoid walking across the heath areas and stick instead to the many established paths so that the wild life is not disturbed and to avoid you or, more likely, your dog startling the adders and risking a bite. If your dog does get bitten by an adder take it quickly to the nearest vet (e.g. Crossways on School Hill, opposite the fire station, or Arun Vets on Mill Lane, next door to Gatleys opposite the Waitrose car park) who hold supplies of the venom antidote.
It is not all hard work. As usual, Jacinta provided us with refreshments, including home-made cake. As the photo above shows, Andy was clearly quite eager for his tea that morning.
The youngsters are also catered for with soft drinks if they want them. We are very happy to see young people at these work mornings but, unless agreed in advance, persons under 18 years old must be accompanied by a responsible adult.
