On my first night at Knepp, the tiredness surprisingly hadn’t quite hit me just yet, so whilst everyone was busy winding down in their tents at 9pm after a busy day of travelling, I was out listening to the unique soundscape at Knepp, with the help of Merlin on my phone. I was particularly intrigued by the sound of a female tawny owl’s call in the distance, which I had never heard before. Thanks to Merlin just about picking up the call, I was able to identify it as tawny owl, and I already felt the excitement that I was going to feel more as I spent more time at Knepp, of hearing and seeing nature that is often absent from our home regions, due to nature’s stark decline in the UK no doubt.
Once I had finally managed to get to sleep, I was soon woken up in the early morning at 5am by a different chorus of bird song even from inside my tent (there was no escaping it, which I found more delightful than irritating). Merlin picked up Eurasian Wren and Eurasian Collared-Dove, which I later confirmed. At 6am, I could hear Woodpigeon and Long-tailed Tits. At 6:10am, I could hear calls in the far distance from Gadwall ducks. I could also hear the chiff-chaff’s calls at 6:39am. I also took the opportunity to snap some lovely pictures of the interesting variety of lichen that’s present on most shrub and tree plants at Knepp.
Eventually, I finally decided to fully get up a little earlier than I planned to, as I was rather eager to get outside before most of the others and explore what the wildflower meadows around us had in store for me, perhaps even a few wildflowers I had never seen before! Before heading in for breakfast, I just had to appreciate the view of the tree hide in the early morning light, and I even was blessed with the sight of some small Long-Tailed Tits filtering through the canopy right above me from the nearby scrub, with lively chirping as they did so.
After breakfast, I met up with the rest of my group for a short rendezvous with Bella and Eva, who were leading the UK Habitat Classification surveys offered by the course. We talked about how we would be shortly heading out to survey 2 grasslands through finding and using 3 What3Words transects from previous years and using National Vegetation Cover (NVC) methods to physically survey them.
So, for each of the transects, we had What3Words coordinates to find the ‘start’ and ‘end’ of each one, enabling us to roll out a long line of tape measure to represent this transect. Then, through clever use of another tape measure, we were able to create a cross-section that allowed us to stand around the borders of our 2m quadrats. To save on time, we unfortunately didn’t have a go at estimating percentage cover of each plant species, but we did have the collaborative task of deciding on what was the maximum and average sward height of the vegetation in each quadrat (which wasn’t too difficult, considering these grasslands had been recently mown. We presumed that this was to manage the ragwort neighbouring other farmland). We would all place one hand out at a chosen sward height, and then measure one person’s hand from the ground for the average, which was often pretty similar to one another. We then were tasked with identifying all of the plant species within each quadrat, which was an exciting challenge, as this involved identification based on leaves and stem features, rather than flower or seed head features, as the meadow had been mown. Then, once we had identified all of the species, we would shrink the quadrat to 1m by 1m, and tally up the number of different plant species, as this is required for UK Hab’s Condition assessment which we completed back at base. Some highlight species from this has to be the beautiful Scarlet Pimpernel and the wonderfully small but vibrant speedwells like Thyme-leaved speedwell, which are crucial food sources for birds like turtle doves, to feed their young.
In the afternoon, after a delightful and much-needed break for lunch, we were all eager to finally roam and explore the very ‘Victorian Garden’-esque scrubland landscapes that Knepp are so especially known for. It does truly feel like you’re deep within a savannah landscape on a safari in Africa, rather than being in West Sussex in England. Absolutely magical. We were also able to observe the various different stages of succession that each part of the landscape was at, some with shielded trees developing within dense, prickly scrub like hawthorn, dog rose or blackthorn, whilst other parts had scrub plants that were very small and clearly a prime target for browsing by the herbivores at Knepp. We chose one area where it was mostly dominated by hawthorn scrub to classify and condition under UK Hab, which we funnily did whilst sitting down and appreciating the scrub, especially the vibrant pinkish Lesser and Common Centaury flowers that were dotted around.
Once we had carefully navigated our way out of the scrub (without much prickling), we decided to head to one quarter of the native tree woodland plantation that Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree created (locally called ‘Wagstaffs Wood’) when their children were born, following the best advice for natural restoration at the time (this truly helps you to appreciate how far ecological knowledge and methods have advanced within just 20 years). So, we split into two small groups, and surveyed a line of trees, where we identified each species using helpful ‘Wild ID’ guides and wrote down notes about the condition of each tree, particularly regarding the level of disease or pest damage that was present as well as the level of dead wood and bare ground within the plantation. There was quite a diverse mix of trees within the plantation, including scots pine, wild cherry, wild service, ash and pedunculate oak. Also, whilst it was sad to see that most of the ash trees present had likely been affected by ‘Ash Dieback’ and had indeed died, there were some signs of a borer insect on one of the ash trees we surveyed, which left intriguing tracks of sawdust behind after having quite a long nibble of this dead Ash tree.
Finally, once we had completed all of our UK Hab surveys, we head back to camp and discussed with Bella and Eva about how all our data can be input into the official spreadsheet-style system, in order to calculate the biodiversity unit value for each area we surveyed, using DEFRA’s Standardised Biodiversity Metric. Once we had done so, we reflected on the possible flaws and advantages of this classification system. For example, on one hand, as a Biodiversity Net Gain of 10% is now mandatory for all developments, this will help prevent further biodiversity decline on a local and national scale. Additionally, through purchase of Biodiversity Credits by developers to meet that legal requirement, local nature organisations like the Wildlife Trusts could receive more funding to achieve that 10% gain in biodiversity locally, enabling more jobs in the Environment sector to be created and for nature to be restored by those who can be absolutely trusted to do a good job at it, as I know from experience as a member of Gwent Wildlife Trust’s youth group.
Overall, I’d like to thank you all for reading my blog, and I would absolutely encourage you to go on an Opwall expedition yourself and to visit the Knepp Estate, as it truly helped me to learn a lot of professional skills that I can use in my future conservation career. Regarding that point, I truly feel that this expedition has helped me to appreciate that conservation is the perfect career for me, as I absolutely enjoyed every single activity of the expedition, and I would love nothing more than to help be part of the recovery of nature in the UK, especially after Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree have done such a grand job at allowing us to experience and understand how rewilding can be done successfully for nature’s benefit. Please feel free to click on the link below, which will take you to a folder containing my presentation about Knepp, complete with lots of photos and birdsong recordings, as well as to my diary notes from my time at Knepp. Thank you very much to Fran, Bella, Eva & the rest of the Opwall Team, who helped make my stay on the Knepp Estate so wonderful and worry-free.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12UyV0KjRhrEIdAf83OdNL1Yfx51t-7Td?usp=sharing
Photos by Aidan Dempsey
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