Congresbury Moor

Congresbury Moor is an area of floodplain grazing marsh within the Biddle Street SSSI. In 1999 YACWAG made its first purchase of land - a ten acre field on the moor which is adjacent to the Strawberry Line. In 2000 two more fields (New Croft and Meakers) were added and in 2002 a fourth (Phippens).

A Brief History.
Ten Acres appears on the 1840 tithe map as two enclosures separated by a ditch. This ditch was now home to old beds, domestic and farm machinery, dead animals, copious amounts of black plastic and manure. One of our first tasks was to remove this and have the ditch reinstated. We added a berm on one side for added wildlife value, and the spoil from this operation created a north-south bund providing other opportunities for wildlife.

There were very great changes to the landscape at the time of the Enclosure Acts and Congresbury Moor suffered the same agricultural improvements as the rest of the country. A large pond or lake disappeared from the maps and a new drain was put in. John Rennie the Victorian engineer of renown, engineered the local drainage system, which was finished in 1827. Another great Victorian engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was responsible for further changes in the landscape when the Cheddar Valley Railway sliced through the north east corner of the moor on an embankment in 1867-9.

A Watching Brief
YACWAG's priority was to see what happened with minimum intervention. By the time we acquired Ten Acres it had been receiving annual applications of fertiliser "to beef up the grass". We favoured a low-intensive approach and decided simply to let the grass grow! We never refused an opportunity to walk down to the field with professional ecologists and learn from them. Thus we were able to identify many grasses and sedges, and were rewarded by a good diversity to practise on. The fertiliser had not done as much damage as might have been feared, and the invertebrates seemed surprisingly numerous too. In our first summer we stood on the Cheddar Valley Railway path and enjoyed a sense of pride in seeing a Kestrel hovering over our field. It was the middle of July and Ten Acres was the only field on the moor with long grass which was full of Field Voles. It set the scene for YACWAG's future management actions on Congresbury Moor. We would try to provide habitat which, because of current agricultural practice, no longer existed.

Just Add Water
English Nature had designated Biddle Street SSSI in 1994 because of the aquatic species present in the rhynes and ditches. One of our first actions was to create more wetland features. As well as restoring the straight ditch previously mentioned, including the creation of a semi-circular shallow pool half way along it, we also opened up some field gutters, creating small (half a metre wide) ditches that hold water in the winter. These field gutters are known in Somerset as "grips" (pronounced gripes) and produce an undulating appearance in fields. In the second year Ragged Robin (Lychnis flos-cuculi) was flanking some of these field gutters.
We also decided to create a new ditch that would divide the remaining area in half, creating three equal sized compartments within the field. These could then be treated differently and provide comparisons for management techniques or regimes.

The Wiggly Ditch
Incorporating some bends in the design provided areas with different aspects to catch the sun or provide shelter from the wind. It also gave corners for shy creatures to hide in. Beside our new super-ditch the huge bunds of extracted clay have provided a useful niche for small mammals when the ground is wet, as well as a range of colonising plants. From the field gate it is impossible to see the larger creatures using the waterside, but the many slots of Roe Deer show that it is a regular track for them. A stroll along the edge of the Wiggly Ditch will often flush out Snipe, Mallard or Green sandpiper. On 8th November 2002 Trevor Riddle, a trustee of YACWAG who monitors the birds on our patch, flushed a record 21 Snipe from the ditch edge.

To graze or not to graze
That was the question. We found that people were horrified by the long grass in our fields. Local farmers indignantly said we were "ruining" the field.What happened to the concept of leaving land fallow for a year? How could leaving it alone do any harm? We knew, however, that grassland must have some kind of management or the processes of nature would turn it into scrub and eventually woodland. Traditionally grassland management was much different from today.
Animals were not so large and heavy - and not so "fussy", being of a stronger constitution to cope with a harder life. It is not only for their aesthetic appeal that rare breeds are favoured for conservation grazing.

Vole City
From the start we had taken advice from Chris Sperring, MBE, of the Hawk and Owl Trust. His experiments in grassland management at Portbury had resulted in extraordinary numbers of Short-tailed Field Voles which are the preferred food of Barn Owls and Kestrels, and also part of the diet for many other species, including Buzzard, Crow, Rook, Weasel, Fox, Heron, Grass Snake, Badger and Otter. The Vole population had exploded in our field, and a pair of Kestrels could be seen constantly hovering over it. With the support and advice of Chris Sperring we decided to try to maintain the vole population. The margins of the nearby Cheddar Valley Railway Local Nature Reserve have been managed as rough grassland 'Barn Owl corridors' for five years. We put up two Barn Owl nesting boxes on poles in Ten Acres and to our delight a Barn Owl appeared just 10 weeks later. The sight of a Barn Owl quartering the field on a cold, misty evening is not one that will be quickly forgotten. The boxes were not wasted as a pair of Kestrels took up residence in one of them in the spring of 2002. The three young that were successfully reared in Ten Acres were ringed by Chris Sperring in June and flew a few days later. Their healthy weights demonstrated that they had access to plenty of food. Every year since then the Kestrels have nested in one of the boxes, and for two years we were delighted to have Barn Owls raise young in the field.

Permanent pasture
Our main aim on Congresbury Moor is to provide as diverse a range of habitats as possible in order to encourage and maintain species biodiversity. It is early days yet and we will continue to experiment with the best way to manage the grass. We have tried some cutting and some grazing, leaving good margins for a reservoir of Voles. There is a constant balance between the needs of the various species. Advice on management for harvest mouse is broadly speaking reflected in the way we have been managing the field for voles: they need undisturbed long grass. In New Croft, next to Ten Acres, two years of haycutting have restored to the moor at least 25 plants of Knapweed, as well as quantities of Tufted Vetch and Meadow Vetchling. We leave wide margins on all four sides to ensure that some long grass remains for overwintering invertebrates and, of course, the Voles. It seems to be working for us in New Croft, but in neighbouring fields you would not know if knapweed was present, because the cattle would eat it away. This is not the traditional meaning of "permanent pasture". Its original meaning was the permanent use of the land as pasture, as opposed to, for example, hay meadow. What we see nowadays are fields that are indeed permanently pasture. They do not get a break from being grazed, even when they are very wet. This inflicted far less damage to the flora when herds were small and could not be fed through the winter. The moor may have provided grazing for all those eligible from the village and still only had thirty cows roaming on it in the summer! Now thirty cattle are penned in one field summer and winter until its grass is 1cm high, and then they are moved on to do the same in the next one, creating a uniform sward that is of little benefit to wildlife. The effect of 30 cattle grazing a wet field for one day is not the same as that of one cow grazing for 30 days. We have been greatly indebted to farmer Mark Britten for his invaluable help in cutting, grazing and many other tasks, which without the use of his tractor would probably be impossible. His cattle, however, are a herd and they like to be together (as they have been for 20 years). They are creatures of habit and it has not been possible yet for us to experiment with the low stocking densities tried at Denmark Farm. In 2006 we are hoping to forge a new arrangement with local rare breeds farmer Andrew Sheppy, who is going to lend us a couple of Dexter bullocks to see what they make of the grass.

Conclusion
Ten Acres has taken on a completely different appearance. The grass sward is no longer uniform. There are wide marshy margins and tussocks of Tufted Hair-grass and Hard Rush are appearing. One can stand at the gate at twilight and through half-closed eyes imagine the moor as it used to look long ago. The birds seem to think so too. We have noticed that the assemblage of birds attracted to Ten Acres has changed with the management. Whinchat have become regular winter visitors. Wheatear visit during the summer and autumn. Stonechat and Reed Bunting can be seen perching on dried dock stems as they hunt for insects. Jack Snipe and Snipe take refuge and feed in the ditches. For a few weeks in the late spring of 2002 two or three Cuckoos were regularly spotted sitting on our "raptor perching posts" or chasing each other round the field. Later in the summer large flocks of Swallows, Swifts and House Martins swooped over the field gathering up flying insects. A Buzzard is calling overhead. Two Kestrels are within view, each hovering silently over some hapless small mammal. A Heron is standing in the ditch. It is rough and damp. It looks like a moor!