Project: 30 Years of Urban Ecology at Stave Hill in Docklands

Some truly nice news for a very pleasant change.  The new 30 Years of Urban Ecology at Stave Hill in Docklands project is a really positive one.  Its intentions are detailed below, but in précis the project is designed to commemorate the 30 years of the development of Stave Hill Ecological Park by creating a plan of walks that will capture the park through the eyes and ears of local residents, focusing on the site through the seasons.  The results will be published on a website for all to learn from and enjoy.

All the text is provided by the Project organizers.  The pics are mine.

PROJECT SUMMARY

 

We have learned about Stave Hill Ecological Park through collaboration on soundCamp, an ecological and acoustic project which has been based there for two years. This has led to the current proposal for a residency comprising research, outreach and documentation coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the Park in 2016.

Stave Hill is the successor to the William Curtis Ecological Park set up by Max Nicholson and the Trust for Urban Ecology (TRUE) in 1976. As such it is a direct continuation of the first urban ecology park in the UK and seemingly the world. Stave Hill was established on derelict former dockland in 1986 and comprises a varied collection of micro-habitats created from scratch on landfill and rubble. Over 30 years it has become a vital green space and a centre for ongoing ecological research and action in an increasingly dense urban area.

There is almost no information available online about this sustained and in many ways unique experiment in environmental, social and personal transformation in the heart of Rotherhithe. To the outsider and to young people it is hard to believe that what appears as a natural landscape has been painstakingly created and maintained, sometimes by the same individuals, over a third of a century. At the same time, the organisation and community sustaining the site has evolved from what appeared initially as a marginal experiment to a case study in community based ecological action. These developments exist as an unofficial history reflected in a living archive of plantings, acquired knowledge and skills, shared experiences of participants, organisational innovations and technical recipes acquired sometimes at great cost - as in the destruction of the site's first interpretation centre by arson.

Our aim is to document this heritage through the eyes and ears of local residents and by focusing on the site through the seasons. We will focus on continuities from the history of TRUE to ongoing work of direct and pressing relevance to how we engage with our common ecological futures. We are equally interested in the seasonal changes and the longer ecological timescales, including cycles of abandonment and re-generation, which give the site much of its value and character.

We propose an extended residency divided into four phases, each linked to a season. Each phase will consist of a preparatory research phase, during which the artists will be working on site. This will lead to a public engagement event, including a walk exploring the site and its environs, and related workshops and activities, together with specific local groups and community based organisations. The outputs of each phase in the form of environmental sound recordings, oral history, texts and images, collected and made by the artists in collaboration with workshop participants, will be archived on a dedicated website and curated in the form of four seasonal walks, each described in a printed booklet and available with additional media online. These will remain as resources for future visitors to explore the area.

PROJECT ACTIVITIES

 

WALK ONE
Stave Hill Ecological Park, Russia Dock Woodland, Greenland Dock, Lavender Pond
Date: March 2016 (Spring Equinox) 
These events will take place outside in the Park, starting with a site walk, and around the SHED, with a fire it it's cold.
Our aim is to engage with the site directly, using sound and other time based media to elicit responses. Recorded voices will be situated in the landscape. We will compare the current site to pictures taken at its inception and before [see attached] and consider its future. Aims: 1) To review the history of the site since its creation, via the recollections of local residents and key actors.
Method: We will invite participants to interview and record each other on portable recorders, with people of different ages / generations working together. We will also share audio materials and images from the research phase. 2) To explore these historical materials within wider ecological timefames: circadian and circannual. Method: We will work with artist Ky Lewis to make and put up solargraph cameras around the site, to record the changing path of the sun over periods of up to one year. 
Groups involved: TBC through consultation

WALK TWO:
Stave Hill Ecological Park, Russia Dock Woodland, Greenland Dock, Lavender Pond and Pumphouse
Date: 30APR - 1 MAY
The second walk is a dawn chorus walk, taking place in the context of soundCamp 2016. Many participants will have slept out the night before. They will be joined by others, as in previous years. They will gather at 04.30 and walk in small groups around the site, each group accompanied by an ornithologist. There will be preparation with birdsong ID on Saturday, and a follow-up on Sunday, along with other related activities. Why: Daybreak is unusual because human sounds tend to be low and non human sounds relatively high at this time. As such, daybreak gives a window onto a more biodiverse soundscape than many people have a chance to hear or attend to. Sunday 1st May is International Dawn Chorus Day, when many other people around the world do similar early morning walks. We will also be coming to the end of the 24 hour Reveil radio broadcast, linking ecological and acoustic projects around the world in real time. Method: Soundwalk with supporting workshops and activities, including breakfast. Over the weekend, we will also officially launch the 30th Anniversary year.
Groups involved: TBC through consultation

WALK THREE
A day in the Life of Stave Hill:  Summer Holidays walk and workshop
Date: Summer Holidays
This walk and workshop focuses on the changing soundscape of the Park in the course of the day, and on the sounds and sights of Summer in the Park. 1) Botany and cyanotypes Method We will work with a botanist / ecologist to identify plant communities, and photographer Ky Lewis to capture images of them in situ, in a workshop introducing the Cyanotype process. 2) Unheard sounds of Summer Method We will work with portable recorders and live audio streams to explore the micro acoustics of the site, including classic sounds of Summer such as bees buzzing and crickets creaking. Sound recordings will be archived online and as part of World Listening Day on radioaporee.org. Images will form permanent works on paper including ID information, for long term display on site. Both will feature in devised seasonal walks on paper and online.
Groups involved: TBC through consultation

WALK FOUR:
From the former William Curtis Ecological Park by Tower Bridge, along the Thames, via Stave Hill, to Greenwich
Date: Autumn Half Term
The fourth walk explores The Third Estate: areas of reserve or neglect associated with an increase in biodiversity. We will walk along the river charting fluctuations in the variety and density of sounds, and reviewing their ups and downs over the previous 4 decades, and further into past and future. We aim to experience, elicit and document what can be learned from the interventions of the Trust for Urban Ecology in this area from 1979 to the present, and their implications for the future.
1) The Third Soundscape Method Soundwalk with soundCamp and Jon Best, ecologist. 2) Invisible food Method Wild food foraging in Autumn and outdoors cooking with Invisible Food
Groups involved: TBC through consultation

 

Great to see the new Bee Observation Centre

 

Today the Bee Observation Centre opened in Stave Hill Ecological Park at the Stave Hill compound.  It was funded by the Cleaner, Greener, Safer Fund, as a donation to the Friends of Russia Dock Woodland.

The Observation Centre consists of a small wooden hut (decorated for today with paintings and drawings of bees by local school children).

Inside the hut is a glass-paneled inspection window, where the bees and the honeycomb are on clear view.  The queen was clearly visible, marked with a white do.  Outside the hut, at the back, is a small funnel out of which the bees come and go. 

At 2pm a class of school children filed quietly into the entrance.  A rug was rolled out for them and they seated themselves down, taking it in turns to visit the Bee Observation Centre in small, completely fascinated groups.  Although I am always wary about showing photos of children on the the blog, in the photograph above the Observation Centre was full of the first batch of children being guided by visiting bee keeper (and Bee Keeper of the Year) Sharon Bassey, from Peckham, who helped to set up the Observation Centre. It was great to see their enthusiasm and genuine interest as they competed to see who could spot the queen. 

Behind the Observation Centre are some hives, which have been in place since August 2012, with bees actively getting on with the important business of making honey.

If you want to visit you will need to go when the Compound is open, as the Observation Centre is inside it.  Their conservation details are on the Trust for Urban Ecology website at http://www.urbanecology.org.uk/stavehillcontacts.html

The ecological park is vibrant at the moment, full of colour and life - and lots of bees!

Don't forget that for those with a particular interest in bees and beekeeping, Surrey Docks Farm will be holding their Beginners guide to Beekeeping course this Sunday the 16th from 13:00 to about 17:00.  For more information see the Surrey Docks Farm website:
http://www.surreydocksfarm.org.uk/beginners-guide-to-beekeeping-course/

Bee Observation Centre opens today

From Steve Cornish:

Hello All,

Rotherhithe's very own Bee Observation Centre officially opens today Thursday 20th June at Stave Hill Ecology Park @ 2.pm. Funded by Southwark Councils (cleaner greener safer fund) It will be the first of its kind in Southwark.

The BOC houses its very own glass fronted working hive, where schoolchildren and their teachers can come along to witness a fully working hive in complete safety. Educational posters and fully functional miniature  model hives are also part of the Bee Hive experience.

We are expecting prominent members of the (BBA) British Beekeepers Association to attend, along with our local newspaper (Southwark News) also a full class of schoolchildren from the local St Johns Junior School.

Everyone Welcomed

Steve Cornish ( Friends of Russia Dock Woodland)

Birds, bees and a rather trendy caterpillar

I went to meet Steve Cornish to talk about the reed warblers currently nesting in Downtown Pond, and to look at some of the recent work being carried out at the Russia Dock Woodland. The RDW is looking good, with water flowing well, lots of Yellow Flag irises in full flower, hundreds of damsel flies, and lots of pale pink dog roses scattered around. After we had failed to see the warbler (but saw a spotted woodpecker) we walked to the Stave Hill Ecological Park compound.

The Stave Hill compound is looking excellent with a vast and elegant wooden insect city sitting on a base of pebbles, water and apline flowers. But although these were great features the star attraction turned out to be some bee hives that I didn't know existed, complete with their handler Craig. The hives, which Craig makes himself, were quite unlike any hives that I have seen before, and I had thought were compost bins. Likewise Craig, in a business suit and bare-headed, did not fit my preconception of a beekeeper (which involved strange hats and a lot of netting). We went over to him as he opened up the hives to look for the Queen, pulling out frames covered in bees to locate her. The bees carried on working regardless, apparently unconcerned about their world being rearranged. I asked a lot of probably very silly questions and received some fascinating answers. Queen bees (we saw one) can live as long as eight years, whereas worker bees during the busy summer months may literally work themselves to death in only six weeks. The Queen that we were looking for wasn't laying eggs properly. If a Queen ceases to lay eggs then the hive will die out in a matter of around two months. Craig had a replacement for her to ensure the survival of the entire hive. If the Queen isn't replaced then not only does the population of the hive eventually die out, but the worker bees cease to work at full capacity. As well as collecting pollen and working in the hive, the workers are responsible for keeping the hive clean inside and out. They can also attract missing bees by generating the scent of the hive, which they do as a group with a fanning motion. The male bees from the hive have no stings, and I stood with one on the palm of my hand, a truly beautiful little thing. Craig says that many people confuse honey bees for wasps, which surprised me.

My thanks to Craig for the highlight of my week.










A presumably suicidal caterpillar, black and bright green, was trying to make its way into one of the hives, and that too ended up on my hand. I didn't photograph it but I looked it up when I arrived home and it was a Zygaena filipendulae moth (Six-Spot Burnet - you can find a photograph here if you want to see what it looked like).

More insects from Sunday

Gatekeeper butterfly Pyronia tihonus on Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare)

Gatekeeper butterfly Pyronia tihonus

Six spot burnet on a vetch (Vicia) flower
Zygaena filipundulae




For some stunning photographs of the Burnets see
Les's most recent post. Lovely!

Six spot burnet
Zygaena filipundulae

The remains of a Burnet's pupae

Some of the insects from yesterday

Six Spot Burnets
Zygaena filipendulae
Day-flying moths. They look amazing in flight.
There were dozens of them in the area behind the windmill

Throughout the Woodland and Stave Hill Ecological Park these flowers,
Common Ragwort (Senecio jacobaea), were covered with the same type of caterpillars.
They look like the larvae of the Cinnabar Moth (Tyria jacobaeae), which will be
one to look out for later in the year.
Senecio means an old man, and refers to the grey hairy seed pappus. I believe
that the jacobaea part refers to St James, but I have no idea why!

As above

Thanks to Les's blog I was able to identify this pretty little thing as
a male Large Skipper butterfly (Ochlodes venatus)

This is a very blurred photo but I am guessing that it is the
female of the same species, on the basis of photos in my insect books.

A month and a half later and things have changed

The last time I was in the Woodland and Ecological Park was six weeks ago. It seems amazing that life could have been so crazy that I simply didn't manage to cross the road at some point. I suppose that the upside of missing so much of the parks in the summer is that I saw an awful lot of the north Welsh scenery, which has been marvellous.

Les's blog has continued to be a complete marvel. Every time I look at his blog I think that I really ought to take out my macro lens, although I'm not convinced that I could get the same stunning results. Today I had the 24-85mm lens because I wasn't sure what I was going to find when I got there, and that seemed like the most versatile. I was there at 1420 and stayed for well over an hour, with the sun alternately bright and hot, or hidden behind the passing clouds. The Woodland was full of people, with lots of people sunbathing around the green, walking along the paths and feeding the ducks. It was a nice atmosphere.

There has been a lot of change! No more roses or yellow flag irises, and all the white garlic mustard and purple honesty have gone to seed, producing short forests of green disks. There is a riot of colours from newly flowering plants - yellows, pinks, blues, whites and purples.

I was overjoyed to hear the grasshoppers that I've been seeing in Les's photographs. They really do provide a song for the summer. The insect life was out in force. A 6-spot burnet flew straight into my face, which startled me so much that I nearly bottled out of approaching them with the camera, but in the end I took several photos. The only butterflies that I saw were gatekeepers but there were lots of these. A mystery butterfly or moth needs Les's experienced eye to judge, but it looked most attractive sitting on a long leaf overhanging the Stave Hill pond, with a bright blue damselfly hovering immediately below - I'll post a photo of it tomorrow.

I saw very little in the way of animal or bird life. No foxes or squirrels were visible. There were lots of mallards, a few coots and a single heron on Globe Pond.

It is nice to see the foliage recovering in key areas of Stave Hill Ecological Park. The butterfly sanctuary is recovering nicely, the areas in front of and behind the windmill proved to be excellent for flower and insect spotting. There's a new area in the ecological park behind the ivy wall, which has been dug out and now contains water. There is also a stone marker of some sort on the top of the mound which sits above it. I have no idea what that is all about. The mound and has been fenced off now, and the path diverted around it. There were no radical changes to the Russia Dock Woodland but it was nice to see that all the ponds were full of water and that all the water plants are thriving fabulously.

There will be more photographs from today during the week to come.

Another lot from 29th May

. . .

Downtown Pond (lower)
Yellow flag and reeds

Wonderful to see the water levels so healthy!

Cut-leaved cranesbill
Geranium dissectum
Geraniaceae
Annual

Magpie (Pica pica) at Downtown Pond
with Yellow Flag in the background

Curled Dock
Rumex acetosella
Polygonaceae
Perennial

A bee enjoying the Budleia globosa in the butterfly sanctuary
. . .