Mr Michael Noone, Radley’s head of Biology, discusses recent initiatives to improve biodiversity on College grounds.
How long does it take a bunch of Radley boys to get 420 hedge plants donated by the Woodland Trust in the ground, creating over 200m of new natural habitat? Answer: under two and a half hours!
On Tuesday afternoon a procession of boys volunteered to help start creating a conservation demonstration area, to the east of the public right of way near K Social. The idea is that this Nature Patch will be a window onto biodiversity efforts on the Radley Estate and Farm more generally. Answering MGN’s plea for assistance, boys popped out in droves on the way to/from their central hour activities and sports practices, learning the “Herbert” method of planting ably demonstrated by Charlie from the Countryside Centre. And very efficient it was too: everyone concerned was surprised and delighted that two rows of hedging had gone in by 4pm!
Hopefully with some careful watering, the hedge will take hold and be ready for conservation ‘laying’ (improving its structure by careful pruning to encourage regrowth) in 5 or 6 years time. In the more immediate future, a sizeable pond is due to be dug in the next month or so, and will be surrounded by areas of meadow and spring bulb planting – creating a learning space of beauty and calm.
In other developments, the boys’ work in the areas closer to Queen’s Court are starting to bear fruit. Biodiversity measures, monitored by the sixth form biologists, are increasing and there is a clear line visible in the ground where fertilisers and other poisons have drained away. The proof of the pudding is in the eating – literally! Starlings, redwings, a pair of nesting mistle thrushes, and the charismatic stock doves (the now re-establishing birds on the Radley College crest!) are all feeding in this area and ignoring the more invasive over-fertilised grass further down the drive. The stock doves are again nesting in the chestnuts, including the large stump by the Lodge – I suppose a Radley dove would do things in style and have the biggest nest box in town!
Last year boys seeded the whole area with yellow rattle, a hemi-parasitic plant that feeds on grasses, and there are already signs it is establishing. Natural succession will mean that various members of the daisy family will initially try to take hold as the grass recedes, but we have already seen these in turn being kept in check as natural ecological relationships re-establish themselves: leaf miner insects have been at the sow thistles and clouds of stunning black and red cinnabar moths annihilated the ragwort. These latter are the most astonishing aposematic insects, storing the plant’s toxins in their tissues so they in turn become poisonous to predators, without being harmed by the plant’s defences themselves. Nature has an answer for everything.
Earlier this term students took part in the RSPB’s Big School’s Birdwatch and students are starting to get better at identifying our native species, often with the help of the Merlin app. About 100 bird boxes were built by last year’s Removes, installed onto the sides of trees by 6.1s doing the Natural History CEP, and are now being used by the College blue tits. Hilariously, an ecology report had noted the latter were bullying bats out of bat boxes so hopefully we’ve sorted that little social issue out!
Alongside all the above, boys have been doing moth trapping and we will start this again as the evenings get warmer. We also now have a proper bat detector: it’s very obvious bats are around, but which ones? Soon we’ll know!
In the classroom sixth form boys have been comparing official ecological surveys by Swift Ecology, and their own surveys, with data collected by past Radleians in the 1890s and 1940s. This is a fascinating exercise in itself, requiring lots of cross-referencing as many scientific names have been updated to reflect modern genetic analyses since the late 1990s. Red kites are back, but otherwise the picture is one of catastrophic decline, something boys are just starting to put the brakes on. One phrase from 1944 sticks out: “Nightingales – common in Little Wood”. Won’t it be wonderful when we get them back!
