Hay harvesting on Coldhams Common July 2014

The meadow for hay was cut on 1 July in preparation for the Folk Festival camping.

This is very early this year, and may have an adverse effect on invertebrates and summer wild flowers, that will not have had time to complete their life cycle. Hopefully some plants had sufficient time to set seed. The Triangle area still had a superb show of flowers and shows what the grazed common could look like if properly managed.

By 4 July the cut hay was being collected, and it looked like a good harvest though with 50 to 70 large round bales being removed.  This has could be worth between £30 and £70 per bale [~£1500 to £5000 value ], but apparently the hay is given away for free.  Could this be better managed ?

Friends of Coldham's Common 2014 AGM

The Friends of Coldham's Common AGM took place last Monday 9 June at Ross Street, and Cllrs Zoe Moghadas and Dave Baigent both came as observers as well as Teresa Barnes from Friends of Coldham's Rec.

Chris Smith was elected Chair for this year, and Pat White is now Vice-chair and Neil secretary. Daniel has very generously offered to help with social events.  Barbara will continue as Treasurer.

We have raised the subscriptions to £2 to assist with things like subscription to the Open Spaces Society.  If people would like to join this year, then contact us with your details and we can collect the £2 when we see you next. 

Any suggestions or help with events would be great - last year we had a picnic, a butterfly walk and cowslip counts ? Litter pick, jam foraging and footpath cutting have been suggested.

Update on petition - a slight refinement based on feedback

Following feedback from people on the common, we have decided to refine the petition.  A lot of people were worried that the council might waste as much money taking fences down as they did putting them up.   [e-bay could be an option, although I am not sure what postage would be like on a 964m fence.] Anyway something picked up on as a real worry.

We are therefore going to add that they shouldn't waste large amounts of money on contractors, and that they reuse or recycle any materials.

I am more than happy to assist for free in taking down any fences.

Two more things :


1. The very nice people at "Just for pets" http://www.justforpets.uk.com opposite the Barnwell Road entrance have agreed to keep a copy of the petition on their shop counter, so that you can do your shopping for your dog/cat/gerbil/goldfish/budgie and sign at the same time.  They have a wide range of goods and gifts for all your pet needs ........[Sponsorship slots are available on this blog by the way ].

2. Some people are having problems with the council's online consultation timing out or prefer a paper copy.  There are forms at the Abbey Pool, but if you want one delivering please ask and we will get you one.

A second petition on grazing and fencing on Coldham's Common

Dear Common User

The council are presently “consulting” on a management plan for the common.

The officers of the council want to graze with cows on the Barnwell Road section of the common, which will require 600m of more fencing and more gates [ = £20 000 ?]. We have been told "off the record" this is what is going to happen whatever. We don't think this is right, but you have no option to say no in the consultation.

We have a petition with the council to say :
1. No grazing here on the Barnwell Road / LNR section, thank you.
2. No more fencing and gates, ta.
3. Please remove the existing wooden fencing and unnecessary gates.

There are a lot more details on the state of the common on the petition text page on this blog.

We hope that you will sign this.  See the website at
http://democracy.cambridge.gov.uk/mgepetitionlistdisplay.aspx?bcr=1

Thanks for your time

Friends of Coldhams Common

P.S. We also hope you will feedback on the management consultation if you have time : https://www.cambridge.gov.uk/have-your-say-on-the-future-of-coldhams-common 

Access to Coldhams Common during the Cambridge Folk Festival 25 - 28 July 2013

Friends of Coldham's Common are receiving mixed messages from the City Council about use of the common during the Cambridge Folk Festival for camping.  As far as we are aware there are no restrictions in place on your access to the common over the festival period, and if there is an attempt to intimidate you on this point by the stewards, please report it to the site office or by e-mail below.  PLEASE CAN YOU ALSO LET US KNOW OF ANY INSTANCES IN WHICH YOU ARE DENIED ACCESS OR FEEL INTIMIDATED SO THAT WE CAN TAKE THIS UP WITH CITY COUNCIL. 

Please also be aware that the visitors on the common [ despite them driving, camping and trampling all over the Local Nature Reserve which as we all know is so precious that it can only be managed by grazing ] are indeed guests in our local community and that we should treat them as such, so that they have a lovely weekend sharing our common.

The following is from the letter to residents sent out sometime in July and is all the definitive information we have  :

==============================

In case of enquiry contact Eddie Barcan
Direct dial 01223 457515
Fax 01223 457529
Email eddie.barcan@cambridge.gov.uk


July 2013

Dear Resident

Cambridge Folk Festival, 25 - 28 July 2013

I am writing to inform you that once again Coldham’s Common is to be used as a campsite for patrons of the Folk Festival.

Every effort will be made to ensure that any inconvenience to the residents during this period is kept to a minimum. The arrangements for the weekend are as follows:

1. Folk Festival patrons will arrive at the site from 10.00am on Thursday 25 July onwards. The site will be vacated on Monday 29 July.

2. A regular bus service will be provided running to and from the site to Cherry Hinton Hall.

3. The campsite will be stewarded throughout the weekend.

4. Should you experience any problems resulting from the camping arrangements on
Coldham’s Common please do not hesitate to contact the Coldham’s Common site office on 01223 213970 or the Festival HQ at Cherry Hinton on 01223 214220 - operating from Thursday 25 July to Monday 29 July, 9.00am - 12.30am (2.00pm Monday).

Please note that there will be a children’s poetry concert on Sunday 28 July between 12.00pm and 1.00pm at the main site (Cherry Hinton Hall) with John Hegley (Doors open at 11.00am).

Tickets are limited and available in advance to City residents from the City Centre Box Office and at the Cherry Hinton Hall site box office, subject to availability. They cost £4 for accompanying adults and £2 for children under 14 years old (children must be accompanied by an adult).

We are confident that this year's Festival will continue its tradition of being a successful, trouble-free event. We would like to thank you and all local residents for your continued co-operation and support of the Festival.

If you have any queries, in advance of the Festival, please do not hesitate to contact Elaine Midgley, Arts & Events Manager during office hours on 01223 457592 or elaine.midgley@cambridge.gov.uk (Cambridge City Council).

Yours sincerely

Eddie Barcan
Festival Manager
Cambridge City Council

Summer social - butterflies, Butts and Joanna Lumley - Saturday 20 July 2013

The summer social for Friends of Coldham's Common on Saturday 20 July was an excellent day out with superb weather and convivial company, consisting of a butterfly walk inspired by Janet, who was inspired by Joanna Lumley and the Big Butterfly Count [http://www.bigbutterflycount.org/about or http://butterfly-conservation.org/ ] and then a picnic on top of the rifle butts, serenaded by Neil on the guitar.

The summer sun brought out not only the Friends, but an unexpectedly large numbers of butterflies : the Triangle had lots of Large Skipper, Essex Skipper, Meadow Brown, Gatekeeper, Ringlet, Comma, Large White, Green-veined White, and Six-spot burnet. If you want to check out what these all look like Butterfly Conservation have a poster here :  Butterfly Conservation id guide

The Pyramidal orchids were in bloom and there was abundant Lady's Bedstraw, Tall Meliot and Spiny Restharrow, but Knapweed, Red Clover, Thistles and Brambles were most popular with the butterflies.  Bird's Foot Trefoil was in flower on the top of the butts and much of the football pitches. 

Spiny Restharrow

  
Disappointingly the rest of the common walked was almost butterfly free, those on the LNR doomed by the early hay cut for the Folk Festival, presumably just as they were hatching; those on the northern common - well let's face it with 22 Long-horned cattle on only 8 hectares since April, there aren't really any plants left - let alone the butterflies dependent on them.



However the highlight was Marbled Whites flying on the Triangle, at what is perhaps their only site in the city itself. This and the other butterfly species appear highly dependent on the tall grassland in the Triangle for their larvae and it is most likely that they have been driven to extinction by inappropriate grazing management elsewhere on the common.  We only hope that we can make the council see sense and not extend their grazing onto this area and destroy this final refuge. Neil's rendition to us of "Knock-knock-knocking on Heavens Door" could though be seen as somewhat prophetic.

Marbled White

The Friends put these thoughts calmly aside to drink tea, eat scones, Pringles and macaroons and admire the view from the top of the Butts. Roll on summer sun !   Thanks to all and Joanna Lumley for a great afternoon out.

Cowslip count on Coldham's Common June 1st

We counted up the cowslips on a very sunny Saturday 1 June - we being me, Barbara, Helen and Dieter assisted by Lucy the dog - and we found around 450 flowers setting seed.  See here for what they look like : http://www.wildlifebcn.org/species/cowslip

 

About two-thirds of these are on the small orchid meadow mowed in the autumn by the Wildlife Trust volunteers and the other third on the meadow mowed in July just before the folk festival camping. There are probably more on the camping field, scattered in the high grass. Interestingly although there were around a hundred rosettes of leaves on the southern side, none of these had surviving flowers and many were very small and grazed.  There are none anywhere else on the entire remaining grazed common - but prove me wrong if you can.

 

I looked online to see why there might be more cowslips in some areas than others and came across this very erudite article in the Journal of Applied Ecology [ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0021-8901.2004.00981.x/full ], which has been translate into normal English for us mere mortals [ http://www.conservationevidence.com/individual-study/135 ]. 

 

What the research shows is that early grazing is very bad for cowslips, causing serious long-term declines, but that autumn cutting is an excellent choice with summer cutting someway behind.  This fits exactly with where the surviving cowslips are on the common with most on the autumn cut areas.

 

This seems very positive evidence that not only is management of parts of Coldham's Common possible without grazing, but that the present grazing management ( putting too many cows on too early ) is probably causing a long-term decline in those emblematic species that we treasure so much.

 

We are going to do further surveys for the pyramidal orchids [http://www.plantlife.org.uk/wild_plants/plant_species/pyramidal_orchid/ ]  and spiny restharrow [ see http://wildseed.co.uk/species/view/97 ].  Let us know if you are interested.  The whitethroats and blackcaps are still in full song, so it should be a nice day out.

 

We are going to ask City Council to take more account of wildlife in their management of the common and keep cows off the existing ungrazed areas to protect them.