September 20, 2023 • 30 mins
Welcome Home Everybody!
The HomeSounds project began working with the National Trust in the autumn of 2022 through its Riverlands project and has installed two live-streaming microphones at their Felbrigg and Blickling Estates. Running Alongside these installations are a series of educational activities encouraging people to become more active in their environmental listening. The first of these is working with a small group of young people from Sidestrand School here in North Norfolk.
In these sessions we play listening games, explore on foot, learn about the wildlife of the area, and tune in to their acoustic habitats through listening and audio field recording. This show is the second of two parts in which we visit Felbrigg Hall. In part 1 we listened for recently arriving migrant birds. In particular the Chiff Chaff and Blackcap. For this episode, part 2, we learn about some work taking place at Felbrigg to improve the Scarrowbeck Stream that flows through the estate .
This work intends to create new habitats for wildlife by restoring the streams natural flow. We talk with Ursula from the Norfolk Rivers Trust who explains why and how they are doing this project. We explore the acoustic habitat by dropping hydrophones into newly created ponds and walk along the stream investigating the creatures and plants that populate the water and stream bank.
LINKS
Riverlands
Felbrigg Hall
Norfolk Rivers Trust
Homesounds
HomeSounds Show Supporters Club
The HomeSounds project began working with the National Trust in the autumn of 2022 through its Riverlands project and has installed two live-streaming microphones at their Felbrigg and Blickling Estates. Running Alongside these installations are a series of educational activities encouraging people to become more active in their environmental listening. The first of these is working with a small group of young people from Sidestrand School here in North Norfolk.
In these sessions we play listening games, explore on foot, learn about the wildlife of the area, and tune in to their acoustic habitats through listening and audio field recording. This show is the second of two parts in which we visit Felbrigg Hall. In part 1 we listened for recently arriving migrant birds. In particular the Chiff Chaff and Blackcap. For this episode, part 2, we learn about some work taking place at Felbrigg to improve the Scarrowbeck Stream that flows through the estate .
This work intends to create new habitats for wildlife by restoring the streams natural flow. We talk with Ursula from the Norfolk Rivers Trust who explains why and how they are doing this project. We explore the acoustic habitat by dropping hydrophones into newly created ponds and walk along the stream investigating the creatures and plants that populate the water and stream bank.
LINKS
Riverlands
Felbrigg Hall
Norfolk Rivers Trust
Homesounds
HomeSounds Show Supporters Club
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:24):
Welcome home, everybody, and welcometo episode six of The Home Sound Show.
My name is Martin and I'm afield recordist and teacher. I'm the
creator of the Home Sounds Project andyour co host for the show along with
Rob. Hello everybody. My nameis Rob and I'm an educator and a
naturalist. I work for the VascalTrust at Sheringham Park in Norfolk as part
(00:46):
of their Children and Young People Harbor. The Home Sound Show invites everyone to
become active environmental listeners. Each monthwe visit a different location, seeking out
seasonal natural sound and focusing on adifferent theme. We're also working with a
local school to explore these sounds togetherand share our experiences of listening. The
(01:07):
Home Sounds Project began working with theNational Trust in the autumn of twenty twenty
two through its Riverlands Project and hasinstalled two live streaming microphones at their felbrig
amplicating estates. Running alongside these installationsare a series of educational activities encouraging people
to become more active in their environmentallistening. The first of these is working
(01:30):
with a small group of young peoplefrom Sidestround School here in North Norfolk.
In these sessions. We play listeninggames, explore on foot, learn about
the wildlife of the area, andtune into their acoustic habitats through listening and
audio field recording. This show isthe second of two parts in which we
visit Felbrick Hall. In part one, we listen for recently arriving migrant birds,
(01:52):
in particular chiffchaff and black cap.For this episode, part two,
we learn about some of the worktaking place at felbrig to improve the scale
Arabic stream that flows through the estate. This project intends to create new habitats
for wildlife by restoring the stream's naturalflow. We talk to Ursula from the
Norfolk River's Trust, who explains howthe work's being conducted. Finally, we
(02:13):
drop hydrophones into the newly emerging pondscreated by the diggers to listen in to
underwater sounds. Scarabek is a smallstream that rises in North Norfolk near the
village of Almonton and flows south andeast before joining the River Bure, one
of the county's major rivers. Thisstretch of theere is a chalk stream,
(02:37):
a rare and unusual river type whichsprings from underground chalk reservoirs. Chalk streams
are few and far between, withonly around two hundred examples worldwide, and
the vast majority of these are herein England. The clear waters of a
chalk stream make them important havens forwildlife, with many species dependent on the
habitat they provide. Rivers are muchaffected by the actions of humans, and
(03:00):
Scarrowbeck is no exception. Artificially straightened, diverted, ditched, and abstracted from.
Much of the course of Scarrobeck hasbeen altered by people, with a
resulting decline in the wildlife the riversupports. Additionally, the runoff from agriculture,
roads and domestic sources pollutes the naturallypure water, further compromising the integrity
(03:21):
of the ecosystem. Okay, soeverybody, this is Ursula who works for
Norfolk Rivers Trust. I'm sure she'llintroduce herself. We've got Sidestrand School,
We've got Ethan, Kieran Poor,Harry, Sheena, Taylor, Colby,
(03:42):
Scarlet Martin and Sheila. Good morning. Thank you for having me. So
I'm not a River's Trust. I'man ecologist by trade, which is I
don't know you guys know what anecologist is. Have you had of an
ecloge just bere No. It's quitea new science, I suppose, compared
(04:04):
to some of the other older sciences. But basically, what ecologists do is
we study how animals interact with theenvironment, and how humans can also interact
with the environment, and how weimpact that, and how different animals can
impact the environment if there are toomany or too few, and how we
can restore the environment to make itbetter for some of the animals that are
suffering because of changes that we've madeto the landscape. Basically, so that's
(04:29):
what we're doing. I tend tobe out on site maybe half the time,
the other half of the time andfilling informed and doing boring planning stuff.
But this is the best part ofthe job. So really lucky at
the moment. And the weather isamazing, so that's really really nice.
Sometimes it can be pretty awful.Then I still prefer it to being inside.
Definitely. Yeah, superjob. Yes, And so we don't know very
(04:51):
much about what's going on. Ohwas actually Jeff Karen, that wasn't you?
Was it again? So we talkedvery briefly about the like, but
they really don't know about the project. Okay, So assume we know nothing.
(05:14):
Okay, I'll go back to thestart. So in the very very
historic times, this would not everhave even been a river. So you
can see down there there's a bitof a ditcher river that runs through the
whole estate, and this is atributary of the river View. But man
humans have modified it quite drastically,so beforehand it actually when they looked at
(05:36):
the modeling, because they can lookat all the layers of the earth and
how the land lies, it wouldhave just been a wet bog. It
would never ever have been a runningstream. Ideally, what we would have
loved to have done is actually turnedit back into just a lovely wet bog
because that benefits loads of things likedragon flies and mayflies, and you've got
(05:57):
all sorts of birds that love thatboggy wet habitat. The amphibians love it,
newts and frogs and toads and things, and when you've got a fast
flowing ditch, lots of animals can'tsurvive in that. So ideally we would
have put it back to a bitof a boggy whit patch. But because
of the number of species living inthere now we've got stickleback, we've got
brog and toads and nuts and things. We can't change it too much,
(06:21):
so we've had to be very careful. But we've had a special designer come
in and he has told us whatwe can do to make it really good
habitat the loads of animals, butalso make it a look a bit more
natural, because if you look down, it's pretty much dead straight, and
that's not natural for a river tobe. So here, what we're doing
(06:41):
is we are ditch blocking. Sothere are a number of low features across
the Bellley low points, and whenyou fill them in, it backs the
water up and it makes it alot buggier and a lot wetter. We're
also in the main channel going tobe blocking about five points along the river,
creating lovely big pools, really deepopen fall. Open water is really
good for ducks and a lot ofthe birds that you see on the lake
(07:03):
here as well, so some ofthem will probably move down, really good
for some dragonflies and things as well. And then in the side of the
river valley we're creating what are calledseekage ponds, and those are the ponds
that fell up from water running downthe valley, so I'm not sure if
you can see it from here.Just where the man in orange is walking
(07:24):
past now is one of the pondsthat we've created, and that's filled by
water running down the valley filling itup, and it stops all the nutrients
from the valley where fertilizer has beenput in the past, running into the
river water, because we want theriver water to be as clean as possible.
So that's what we're doing, creatingponds and open water features they're called,
(07:47):
and ditch blocking pretty much. Andso Sheila said it was a bit
like you're acting like human beavers.Exactly exactly right. It's exactly good.
So most of you might that beavers, damn they create lovely big dams and
then the water spills out into thefloodplain, benefiting loads of other species.
So that's exactly what we're doing.We're being great big beavers with bright or
(08:09):
inter reflective maines. Okay, cool, get a closer look. Come on
down. Yeah, you can havea look at the diggers and the dumper
and come and have a look atthe pools. We have had swallows using
the ponder. Really nice to seethey've come all the way from Africa.
(08:30):
Stopping to have a drink here.Okay, it's nice. And what we
thought we might do because we havegot a special hydrophone microphone that you can
put in water and recall what's goingon in the water. So we thought
we might be able to put thatin as it is now, just newly
created, and then hopefully come backin a year or more and see if
there's any difference. Be lovely tosee what's going on. Yeah, brilliant
(08:52):
which the National trusts Vulland's project seeksto restore natural river processes, creating new
habitats and improving water quality at Felbrigg. Scarrobeck enters the National Trust estate along
its western boundary as a culvert underthe lane before turning south. During the
(09:15):
middle part of the eighteenth century,the Beck was dammed to form Felbury Pond,
which was part of the landscaping ofthe estate. It is reputed,
but not confirmed, that the formingof the pond may have been the early
work of Humphrey Repton, who inseventeen seventy eight lived close to the estate
in Old Hall Sustard above the lake. The Beck has been remandered to provide
(09:37):
a more sinuous form reducing silk buildup in the pond and creating new wetter
areas on the bank side, favoringwading birds such as lap wing and snipe.
Below the pond, a stage zeroapproach has been adopted, allowing the
water to find its own natural path, creating multiple branching meanders. This slows
the river's flow, creating new wetlandfeatures for wildlife. And also we're using
(10:00):
flood risk downstream. So you cansee. This is what I was talking
about with the seepage ponds. Thewater is running down the hill and it's
filling up the pond. The water'snot coming from up there enough, it's
coming all the way down and underthe ground, filtering through. There are
lots of springs and things bubbling upand filling up lovely ponds, which is
(10:22):
fantastic. So in theory there shouldn'tbe anything in there yet because we've just
dug it. But I did noticewe've already got a couple of diving beetles
and water boatmen in there, sowe might hear some sounds from them,
be interesting to see. And theswallows were flying over. They pick up
the mud as well, so quitea few little birds we've got wagtails going
(10:43):
around picking up all the little insectsand worms, and has anybody heard of
a wheat ear any birders? Sowe've had some wheat ear on site,
which is really nice because they're normallyup on the coast, so they've come
inland and they've been sitting catching allthe worms as well. Lovely to see.
So yeah, that's so this isgoing to stay separate from the main
(11:07):
bit. But what we're doing.Can you see all those big piles of
soil, We're going to put theminto the river right at the end of
the project and back all of thewater up the blocking the river. This
is going to get much much higherup here, so the foot path is
going to be really nicely done withgravel and flint and things and sleepers so
(11:28):
that foot parts will be nice.But this will come all the water will
come up here a lot higher.So it might connect at some point when
it flows very high. Yeah,there's a possibility. So will it not
throw completely now, yeah, soit'll find its way around. You might
get triples, yeah, it will, but underground pretty much. Yeah.
So what happens is when you downthe water, it tends to trickle back
(11:52):
down into the ground and then comeback out in springs and things underground and
back out further down, so itwon't itself because it's still the same volume
of water, just going in adifferent way. And that's one thing I
can't ever get my head around,and I panic when we do this.
It feels like you're just stopping thewater, but you're not going down and
(12:16):
under again, and that's exactly whatthe eis do as well. Yeah,
PA have greater concentration underneath. Doesit affect them at all? Not to
this extent, No, because thisis such a minor project, but on
a grand scale, yes, thereis potential that it does change the type
of the soil and the field ofthe soil and things news. So that's
(12:39):
something that they do really have totake into account. When we do projects
like this, you have to sometimeshave structural engineering texts and all sorts of
Yeah, exactly, don't build ona flood plane. That would be much
simpler. Yeah, okay, Well, this is our hydropho and it's a
(13:01):
bit like well, it's it's likethe microphones that you've got, only this
one's waterproof. And what it cando is I can just bum this in
the water, and any sounds thatare being being made in the water,
the microphone will pick up. SoI think the plan will be we'll head
over to that pond. I'll chuckthis in and see if we get any
sounds. Jack, can we ifwe can go over there, we can
(13:26):
listen as well. Side grassy bitof leave that stuff there. We're gonna
have a listening. Come on,guys might have got contact. There might
(14:05):
be a sort of can you hearanything? Can you describe what you can
(14:31):
hear? No, I can hearnothing. Just the way that's it.
Kind of anything just to it.We kind of expect I think she said
she'd already seen things like water boatmenand things like that already. Scott,
you want have listened. How longwould you expect this to start getting well?
(15:07):
People start start to colonize almost immediatelyinsects. But at the moment,
obviously there's no plants in there,there's nothing. But as you said,
it was what I was reflecting mudfrom the As soon as the new habitat
is there, something is going tobenefit the other thing that we've done here,
(15:37):
which we like the question why ifwe've made lots of different levels and
that's because different species like different depthsof water, so some of it will
be dry and the summer, someof it will be completely wet all year
round. Different plants and different animalsneed different depths of water. And the
other thing you can see is wehaven't made it smooth. We've left it
(15:58):
really rough. And that's again it'slots of different animals. Every time,
little bit of edge, every littleturn and rock and nook and cranny create
a habitat for an animal. Sothat's why we leave it sort of what
they call messi but actually that's exactlywhat wildlife needs. We need to leave
more mes around. So that's whyyou can sometimes ask why does it love
(16:21):
messy? That's exactly why. Changingit's trying to walk, you could have
been in the middle. Does hejust go sola? How long has this
(16:51):
has this pomp been here? Thenwe dug this one started on Friday last
week. Okay, so it's reallyonly been here for a handful of so
we not really expected it to soundthat good at this stage. Are you
really good? To listen and thencome back in a year time and listen
(17:11):
again and see where it's multiple speciesstand to benefit from the work the National
Trust is doing here. Water bowland European eel were both once commonplace river
dwellers but are now listed has endangeredand critically endangered, respectively. Improvements to
(17:33):
water quality and stream bed will benefitmany invertebrates. That's just caddis flies and
mayflies, which spend their larval stagesin the river and form the basis of
many food chains feeding fish, includingbrown trout, brook lamprey, and bullhead.
Improvements in the abundance and diversity lowerdown the food chain will also reap
benefits for iconic river species. It'ssuch as kingfisher and otter. Is there
(18:07):
is there as it was moving.Have you seen this is fished out of
the stream. Here there is hislittle head out that say, so it's
a it's a cased caddis. Soit's a caddis fly turns into a winged
insect. But at this stage it'sa well, it's the larva. Nymph
(18:33):
in the makes its little house fits, it's fines in the in the in
the water. Stick it together.There's loads for them to make. There
quite a few different types as well. So some of them were making out
of leaves. Some of them willmake it just out of bits of wood
and sticks. Some if you putglitter or beads into the into a tank
(18:56):
with them, they'll make their homesout of glitter and jewels and and things,
which is beautiful. So, yeah, they move around. They live
like this often for two or threeyears, and then they're patch as an
adult. I think they tend tolive for most of the summer seasons okay,
seven to eight nine months generally asan adult, unless they're eating first
(19:21):
made a part of the food toYes, we've got them in sharing apart.
Yeah. Yeah, have you seenthis, Karen, The little creature
inside, little head legs poking out, moving. So it's like this dage.
It's like being on a sort ofcaravaning holiday. It was like a
(19:41):
crab iving to drag your house aroundbehind you, or a hermit crab.
Yeah. Some of them are likecbs and they steal other ones shells that
they've made. Yeah, you'd beone of them. I've just popped out
around the corner shop. Come back, Karen, stealing my shell ship.
Put it back in the water.I think that's a good plan. We'll
(20:03):
do that, thank you, slumdunk. Here we have the big toys.
Which is one of the best partsof the job is seeing some of
the machinery because if you think aboutit, in the past, people would
have had to have done this byhand. They would have had to have
done it with a spade or ashovel or a wheelbarrow something like that.
(20:26):
That would have been really horroring andreally hard work. So thankfully we've got
some lovely big machinery which can makeit happen really quickly, really efficiently,
and really effectively as well. That'sokay, So we've got where the boy's
gone. They run away behind.They're on the side with tie with that
(21:03):
to dumper's got a big old dumptrack. You can see if your meat,
You and Colby, the bigger ladsup the dumper track and then the
dump track can drive across the fieldtip it all up wherever we need the
(21:26):
soil to go, because that's whatthey do. And the reason we use
the ones with the tracks rather thanthe wheels is because the tracks do a
lot less damage to the ground.So when you've got wheeled machines, they
did great big ruts in the groundand they can be really quite dangerous and
hard work to fill. They getstuck quite easily, whereas if you've got
big tracks like this, it's alot better on the ground conditions, especially
(21:49):
when it's really wet and really muddy, doesn't do half as much damage.
It's very little pressure actually caused bythese lovely big track machines, So we
always request that we have track dumpersand track diggers rather than wheel machines they
use to day. Yeah, sowe're moving all the spoil right at the
(22:10):
top of the hill. You cansee there's some mounds up there now because
we use all the soil that weneed to across the rest of the site.
And at the very top of thathill there's actually a big hollow,
so we're filling that for the tenantfarmer here because it'll be nice and flat
for him. The grass will growmuch much quicker in the next few months
because it's slovey and warm and tohave a bit of rain as well,
(22:32):
and he'll have a flat piece ofground up there, which makes it easier
for him to harvest as well ifhe ever grows a cross or if he
fails it for hay or anything likethat. Yeah, So sometimes it's quite
difficult to find places to spread allof the spoil, all of this mud
and soil. But at this site, we're very lucky that we've been able
to find a nice, easy,quick place to spread it. Sometimes you
(22:53):
have to cut it all the wayoff site for miles and miles and it
takes forever. And how long willthe machinery be on site? For?
Just another week? Okay? Prettymuch? Yeah, So we should finish
this pond today or tomorrow, andthen next week we start on the track
itself took track, So we we'reputting in gravel and flints and sleepers along
(23:15):
the side and some swales to takethe water off as well. Right,
so the track won't be a river, right, so we're taking the water
off it and it should be alot dryer. And another Ye, have
you found enough interesting while you've beendigging? Yeah? We have. Actually
we found it's up in the cabinat the moment. We found what looks
like a metal maybe a handle ona window or well what else did we
(23:40):
think it was? We wanted abouta hair clip, a hair clip,
all nat hair clip. It's prettyold and pretty rusty, so we've kept
it for the archaeologists here. Okay, because there is quite a lot of
interesting archaeology on this site, obviouslybecause it was a hall and it's a
lot of historic sort of use ofthis land as well, so maybe something
in yeah. Cool. One ofthe other sites I worked out actually at
(24:04):
wind and we worked on the rivertifet Windham Abbey and we had to dig
out the river quite considerably to putin some big pieces of oak for a
fish pass, and when we weredigging out we found these massive bones and
I got really excited. I thoughtthere were dinosaur bones that they were,
but they were used. They wereox used by the monks who lived at
(24:26):
the abbey and they used their skinsfor paper, which is fascinating. And
obviously they didn't really have a goodway of disposing of things in the past,
so everything you could get thrown inthe river. So we found all
these bones and all these horns aswell. So these are oxen, which
are like big cows exactly right.Yeah, that was pretty cool. Norwich
Castle actually has them in the music, so that's good. Yeah. Yeah,
(24:52):
So yeah, sometimes we do findinteresting things on these on these digs,
which is something worth looking up forAnd how long do you think it
will take before at the moment,obviously it's sort everywhere and the diggers.
It all looks you know, itall looks a bit like a work site,
doesn't it exactly? But how longwill it take before you could look
across here and you wouldn't know anythingthat's happening. Generally almost within a year,
(25:15):
right, you wouldn't know we werehere, Sometimes two years, depending
on how big the project was,how wet the grounds are. But thankfully
we've been really lucky with the conditions. It's been pretty dry, So I
imagine within a year you'll come hereand you wouldn't know. So it's amazing,
really how quickly it can turn fromlooking like a building site into a
natural How it happen, that's it. My favorite phrase in this industry is
you've got a crack eggs to makean omelet. Yeah, so you have
(25:37):
to make a mess to make itsomething really good. And that's what we
explain to a lot of people whocome, because people come past and they
ask us what we're doing and whywe're doing it. Quite often they're very
concerned. They think that we mightbe damaging the environment, so we have
to explain what we've done, andthen they're much more understanding and yeah,
appreciative generally, which is lovely.Thank you. Next you requested, oh,
(26:03):
yeah, I've got one about thethe King's coronation that's going to happen
in the signal May. Would yoube off work for that coronation? Most
of us are yes. Unfortunately Iam working. I know you've got to
miss the king they but I'm disappointed. Kind of going on right, any
(26:45):
other questions about anything on the subject, on the subject, any questions for
the machine driver. They're a bitshy around the corner here. Did you
just say you don't talk English?Just understand? No question? Well something
(27:18):
that who said it? But aboutso as well as you talked about the
different animals and plants that are goingto colonise, what other things in terms
of bigger otters? But someone wasasking after so this would make a good
habitat for Yeah, we know thereare otters up in the lake, and
when I've been working down here doingwaterfall surveys, there's been a few signs
(27:41):
of otters as well to utter spray, which is otter too. It's very
distinctive because it smells of jasmine tea, and often it's full of shells and
phones and fur and things. Sowe know that otters use this, and
when we create these lovely pools,it's going to be perfect habitat for otters
to dive around in and swim inand catch fish and frogs and whatever else
are you eat. Yep, there'sbeen a great white egret as well.
(28:03):
Okay, so egrets will love it, herons will love it. Ducks,
yeah, things like that. Yeah, all of all sorts of life.
Yeah, it should benefit everything massively. Yeah, well, I guess once
the you know, if the wateris better and there's more things living in
the water, that helps everything thateats things that live in the water,
and it's everything above the food upthe food chowing benefits as well, doesn't
(28:23):
exactly. Yeah, yeah, wheneverything needs water to survive, doesn't it,
And especially when we've had some veryserious droughts. This last year,
the water wasn't even ankle deep,so it was very very shallow. Most
things couldn't live in it. Therewere a few dead fish because some of
the puddles dried up. So makingit deeper, making a lot more water
here will be really beneficial for thoseanimals, especially in times of drought,
(28:47):
which we are probably going to getmore of. In the future with climate
change and climate chaos. So yeah, making the habitat much more suitable for
a lot more things is really good, but also form changed resilience. Okay,
brilliant. Thank you ever so much. Can Wear and the team thank
(29:08):
you very much. It's lovely tomeet you all and I hope you have
a good day and it'd be greatto see you come back and have a
listen if you can next year.Yeah, you've let a go. Yeah
you've been listening to Thanks go tothe National Trust, the Norfolk Rivers Trust
(29:32):
and the staff and kids Sidestrand School. If you'd like to keep listening,
look for the Riverlands Show on PoppylandRadio, which broadcasts the Sounds of Fabric
and Blickling every Wednesday evening at tenpm, or you can visit www dot
homesounds dot org for more opportunities toactively listen. Welcome home, everybody,
Welcome home, everybody, and welcometo episode six of The Home Sound Show.
My name is Martin and I'm afield recordist and teacher. I'm the
creator of the Home Sounds Project andyour co host for the show along with
Rob. Hello everybody. My nameis Rob and I'm an educator and a
naturalist. I work for the VascalTrust at Sheringham Park in Norfolk as part
(00:46):
of their Children and Young People Harbor. The Home Sound Show invites everyone to
become active environmental listeners. Each monthwe visit a different location, seeking out
seasonal natural sound and focusing on adifferent theme. We're also working with a
local school to explore these sounds togetherand share our experiences of listening. The
(01:07):
Home Sounds Project began working with theNational Trust in the autumn of twenty twenty
two through its Riverlands Project and hasinstalled two live streaming microphones at their felbrig
amplicating estates. Running alongside these installationsare a series of educational activities encouraging people
to become more active in their environmentallistening. The first of these is working
(01:30):
with a small group of young peoplefrom Sidestround School here in North Norfolk.
In these sessions. We play listeninggames, explore on foot, learn about
the wildlife of the area, andtune into their acoustic habitats through listening and
audio field recording. This show isthe second of two parts in which we
visit Felbrick Hall. In part one, we listen for recently arriving migrant birds,
(01:52):
in particular chiffchaff and black cap.For this episode, part two,
we learn about some of the worktaking place at felbrig to improve the scale
Arabic stream that flows through the estate. This project intends to create new habitats
for wildlife by restoring the stream's naturalflow. We talk to Ursula from the
Norfolk River's Trust, who explains howthe work's being conducted. Finally, we
(02:13):
drop hydrophones into the newly emerging pondscreated by the diggers to listen in to
underwater sounds. Scarabek is a smallstream that rises in North Norfolk near the
village of Almonton and flows south andeast before joining the River Bure, one
of the county's major rivers. Thisstretch of theere is a chalk stream,
(02:37):
a rare and unusual river type whichsprings from underground chalk reservoirs. Chalk streams
are few and far between, withonly around two hundred examples worldwide, and
the vast majority of these are herein England. The clear waters of a
chalk stream make them important havens forwildlife, with many species dependent on the
habitat they provide. Rivers are muchaffected by the actions of humans, and
(03:00):
Scarrowbeck is no exception. Artificially straightened, diverted, ditched, and abstracted from.
Much of the course of Scarrobeck hasbeen altered by people, with a
resulting decline in the wildlife the riversupports. Additionally, the runoff from agriculture,
roads and domestic sources pollutes the naturallypure water, further compromising the integrity
(03:21):
of the ecosystem. Okay, soeverybody, this is Ursula who works for
Norfolk Rivers Trust. I'm sure she'llintroduce herself. We've got Sidestrand School,
We've got Ethan, Kieran Poor,Harry, Sheena, Taylor, Colby,
(03:42):
Scarlet Martin and Sheila. Good morning. Thank you for having me. So
I'm not a River's Trust. I'man ecologist by trade, which is I
don't know you guys know what anecologist is. Have you had of an
ecloge just bere No. It's quitea new science, I suppose, compared
(04:04):
to some of the other older sciences. But basically, what ecologists do is
we study how animals interact with theenvironment, and how humans can also interact
with the environment, and how weimpact that, and how different animals can
impact the environment if there are toomany or too few, and how we
can restore the environment to make itbetter for some of the animals that are
suffering because of changes that we've madeto the landscape. Basically, so that's
(04:29):
what we're doing. I tend tobe out on site maybe half the time,
the other half of the time andfilling informed and doing boring planning stuff.
But this is the best part ofthe job. So really lucky at
the moment. And the weather isamazing, so that's really really nice.
Sometimes it can be pretty awful.Then I still prefer it to being inside.
Definitely. Yeah, superjob. Yes, And so we don't know very
(04:51):
much about what's going on. Ohwas actually Jeff Karen, that wasn't you?
Was it again? So we talkedvery briefly about the like, but
they really don't know about the project. Okay, So assume we know nothing.
(05:14):
Okay, I'll go back to thestart. So in the very very
historic times, this would not everhave even been a river. So you
can see down there there's a bitof a ditcher river that runs through the
whole estate, and this is atributary of the river View. But man
humans have modified it quite drastically,so beforehand it actually when they looked at
(05:36):
the modeling, because they can lookat all the layers of the earth and
how the land lies, it wouldhave just been a wet bog. It
would never ever have been a runningstream. Ideally, what we would have
loved to have done is actually turnedit back into just a lovely wet bog
because that benefits loads of things likedragon flies and mayflies, and you've got
(05:57):
all sorts of birds that love thatboggy wet habitat. The amphibians love it,
newts and frogs and toads and things, and when you've got a fast
flowing ditch, lots of animals can'tsurvive in that. So ideally we would
have put it back to a bitof a boggy whit patch. But because
of the number of species living inthere now we've got stickleback, we've got
brog and toads and nuts and things. We can't change it too much,
(06:21):
so we've had to be very careful. But we've had a special designer come
in and he has told us whatwe can do to make it really good
habitat the loads of animals, butalso make it a look a bit more
natural, because if you look down, it's pretty much dead straight, and
that's not natural for a river tobe. So here, what we're doing
(06:41):
is we are ditch blocking. Sothere are a number of low features across
the Bellley low points, and whenyou fill them in, it backs the
water up and it makes it alot buggier and a lot wetter. We're
also in the main channel going tobe blocking about five points along the river,
creating lovely big pools, really deepopen fall. Open water is really
good for ducks and a lot ofthe birds that you see on the lake
(07:03):
here as well, so some ofthem will probably move down, really good
for some dragonflies and things as well. And then in the side of the
river valley we're creating what are calledseekage ponds, and those are the ponds
that fell up from water running downthe valley, so I'm not sure if
you can see it from here.Just where the man in orange is walking
(07:24):
past now is one of the pondsthat we've created, and that's filled by
water running down the valley filling itup, and it stops all the nutrients
from the valley where fertilizer has beenput in the past, running into the
river water, because we want theriver water to be as clean as possible.
So that's what we're doing, creatingponds and open water features they're called,
(07:47):
and ditch blocking pretty much. Andso Sheila said it was a bit
like you're acting like human beavers.Exactly exactly right. It's exactly good.
So most of you might that beavers, damn they create lovely big dams and
then the water spills out into thefloodplain, benefiting loads of other species.
So that's exactly what we're doing.We're being great big beavers with bright or
(08:09):
inter reflective maines. Okay, cool, get a closer look. Come on
down. Yeah, you can havea look at the diggers and the dumper
and come and have a look atthe pools. We have had swallows using
the ponder. Really nice to seethey've come all the way from Africa.
(08:30):
Stopping to have a drink here.Okay, it's nice. And what we
thought we might do because we havegot a special hydrophone microphone that you can
put in water and recall what's goingon in the water. So we thought
we might be able to put thatin as it is now, just newly
created, and then hopefully come backin a year or more and see if
there's any difference. Be lovely tosee what's going on. Yeah, brilliant
(08:52):
which the National trusts Vulland's project seeksto restore natural river processes, creating new
habitats and improving water quality at Felbrigg. Scarrobeck enters the National Trust estate along
its western boundary as a culvert underthe lane before turning south. During the
(09:15):
middle part of the eighteenth century,the Beck was dammed to form Felbury Pond,
which was part of the landscaping ofthe estate. It is reputed,
but not confirmed, that the formingof the pond may have been the early
work of Humphrey Repton, who inseventeen seventy eight lived close to the estate
in Old Hall Sustard above the lake. The Beck has been remandered to provide
(09:37):
a more sinuous form reducing silk buildup in the pond and creating new wetter
areas on the bank side, favoringwading birds such as lap wing and snipe.
Below the pond, a stage zeroapproach has been adopted, allowing the
water to find its own natural path, creating multiple branching meanders. This slows
the river's flow, creating new wetlandfeatures for wildlife. And also we're using
(10:00):
flood risk downstream. So you cansee. This is what I was talking
about with the seepage ponds. Thewater is running down the hill and it's
filling up the pond. The water'snot coming from up there enough, it's
coming all the way down and underthe ground, filtering through. There are
lots of springs and things bubbling upand filling up lovely ponds, which is
(10:22):
fantastic. So in theory there shouldn'tbe anything in there yet because we've just
dug it. But I did noticewe've already got a couple of diving beetles
and water boatmen in there, sowe might hear some sounds from them,
be interesting to see. And theswallows were flying over. They pick up
the mud as well, so quitea few little birds we've got wagtails going
(10:43):
around picking up all the little insectsand worms, and has anybody heard of
a wheat ear any birders? Sowe've had some wheat ear on site,
which is really nice because they're normallyup on the coast, so they've come
inland and they've been sitting catching allthe worms as well. Lovely to see.
So yeah, that's so this isgoing to stay separate from the main
(11:07):
bit. But what we're doing.Can you see all those big piles of
soil, We're going to put theminto the river right at the end of
the project and back all of thewater up the blocking the river. This
is going to get much much higherup here, so the foot path is
going to be really nicely done withgravel and flint and things and sleepers so
(11:28):
that foot parts will be nice.But this will come all the water will
come up here a lot higher.So it might connect at some point when
it flows very high. Yeah,there's a possibility. So will it not
throw completely now, yeah, soit'll find its way around. You might
get triples, yeah, it will, but underground pretty much. Yeah.
So what happens is when you downthe water, it tends to trickle back
(11:52):
down into the ground and then comeback out in springs and things underground and
back out further down, so itwon't itself because it's still the same volume
of water, just going in adifferent way. And that's one thing I
can't ever get my head around,and I panic when we do this.
It feels like you're just stopping thewater, but you're not going down and
(12:16):
under again, and that's exactly whatthe eis do as well. Yeah,
PA have greater concentration underneath. Doesit affect them at all? Not to
this extent, No, because thisis such a minor project, but on
a grand scale, yes, thereis potential that it does change the type
of the soil and the field ofthe soil and things news. So that's
(12:39):
something that they do really have totake into account. When we do projects
like this, you have to sometimeshave structural engineering texts and all sorts of
Yeah, exactly, don't build ona flood plane. That would be much
simpler. Yeah, okay, Well, this is our hydropho and it's a
(13:01):
bit like well, it's it's likethe microphones that you've got, only this
one's waterproof. And what it cando is I can just bum this in
the water, and any sounds thatare being being made in the water,
the microphone will pick up. SoI think the plan will be we'll head
over to that pond. I'll chuckthis in and see if we get any
sounds. Jack, can we ifwe can go over there, we can
(13:26):
listen as well. Side grassy bitof leave that stuff there. We're gonna
have a listening. Come on,guys might have got contact. There might
(14:05):
be a sort of can you hearanything? Can you describe what you can
(14:31):
hear? No, I can hearnothing. Just the way that's it.
Kind of anything just to it.We kind of expect I think she said
she'd already seen things like water boatmenand things like that already. Scott,
you want have listened. How longwould you expect this to start getting well?
(15:07):
People start start to colonize almost immediatelyinsects. But at the moment,
obviously there's no plants in there,there's nothing. But as you said,
it was what I was reflecting mudfrom the As soon as the new habitat
is there, something is going tobenefit the other thing that we've done here,
(15:37):
which we like the question why ifwe've made lots of different levels and
that's because different species like different depthsof water, so some of it will
be dry and the summer, someof it will be completely wet all year
round. Different plants and different animalsneed different depths of water. And the
other thing you can see is wehaven't made it smooth. We've left it
(15:58):
really rough. And that's again it'slots of different animals. Every time,
little bit of edge, every littleturn and rock and nook and cranny create
a habitat for an animal. Sothat's why we leave it sort of what
they call messi but actually that's exactlywhat wildlife needs. We need to leave
more mes around. So that's whyyou can sometimes ask why does it love
(16:21):
messy? That's exactly why. Changingit's trying to walk, you could have
been in the middle. Does hejust go sola? How long has this
(16:51):
has this pomp been here? Thenwe dug this one started on Friday last
week. Okay, so it's reallyonly been here for a handful of so
we not really expected it to soundthat good at this stage. Are you
really good? To listen and thencome back in a year time and listen
(17:11):
again and see where it's multiple speciesstand to benefit from the work the National
Trust is doing here. Water bowland European eel were both once commonplace river
dwellers but are now listed has endangeredand critically endangered, respectively. Improvements to
(17:33):
water quality and stream bed will benefitmany invertebrates. That's just caddis flies and
mayflies, which spend their larval stagesin the river and form the basis of
many food chains feeding fish, includingbrown trout, brook lamprey, and bullhead.
Improvements in the abundance and diversity lowerdown the food chain will also reap
benefits for iconic river species. It'ssuch as kingfisher and otter. Is there
(18:07):
is there as it was moving.Have you seen this is fished out of
the stream. Here there is hislittle head out that say, so it's
a it's a cased caddis. Soit's a caddis fly turns into a winged
insect. But at this stage it'sa well, it's the larva. Nymph
(18:33):
in the makes its little house fits, it's fines in the in the in
the water. Stick it together.There's loads for them to make. There
quite a few different types as well. So some of them were making out
of leaves. Some of them willmake it just out of bits of wood
and sticks. Some if you putglitter or beads into the into a tank
(18:56):
with them, they'll make their homesout of glitter and jewels and and things,
which is beautiful. So, yeah, they move around. They live
like this often for two or threeyears, and then they're patch as an
adult. I think they tend tolive for most of the summer seasons okay,
seven to eight nine months generally asan adult, unless they're eating first
(19:21):
made a part of the food toYes, we've got them in sharing apart.
Yeah. Yeah, have you seenthis, Karen, The little creature
inside, little head legs poking out, moving. So it's like this dage.
It's like being on a sort ofcaravaning holiday. It was like a
(19:41):
crab iving to drag your house aroundbehind you, or a hermit crab.
Yeah. Some of them are likecbs and they steal other ones shells that
they've made. Yeah, you'd beone of them. I've just popped out
around the corner shop. Come back, Karen, stealing my shell ship.
Put it back in the water.I think that's a good plan. We'll
(20:03):
do that, thank you, slumdunk. Here we have the big toys.
Which is one of the best partsof the job is seeing some of
the machinery because if you think aboutit, in the past, people would
have had to have done this byhand. They would have had to have
done it with a spade or ashovel or a wheelbarrow something like that.
(20:26):
That would have been really horroring andreally hard work. So thankfully we've got
some lovely big machinery which can makeit happen really quickly, really efficiently,
and really effectively as well. That'sokay, So we've got where the boy's
gone. They run away behind.They're on the side with tie with that
(21:03):
to dumper's got a big old dumptrack. You can see if your meat,
You and Colby, the bigger ladsup the dumper track and then the
dump track can drive across the fieldtip it all up wherever we need the
(21:26):
soil to go, because that's whatthey do. And the reason we use
the ones with the tracks rather thanthe wheels is because the tracks do a
lot less damage to the ground.So when you've got wheeled machines, they
did great big ruts in the groundand they can be really quite dangerous and
hard work to fill. They getstuck quite easily, whereas if you've got
big tracks like this, it's alot better on the ground conditions, especially
(21:49):
when it's really wet and really muddy, doesn't do half as much damage.
It's very little pressure actually caused bythese lovely big track machines, So we
always request that we have track dumpersand track diggers rather than wheel machines they
use to day. Yeah, sowe're moving all the spoil right at the
(22:10):
top of the hill. You cansee there's some mounds up there now because
we use all the soil that weneed to across the rest of the site.
And at the very top of thathill there's actually a big hollow,
so we're filling that for the tenantfarmer here because it'll be nice and flat
for him. The grass will growmuch much quicker in the next few months
because it's slovey and warm and tohave a bit of rain as well,
(22:32):
and he'll have a flat piece ofground up there, which makes it easier
for him to harvest as well ifhe ever grows a cross or if he
fails it for hay or anything likethat. Yeah, So sometimes it's quite
difficult to find places to spread allof the spoil, all of this mud
and soil. But at this site, we're very lucky that we've been able
to find a nice, easy,quick place to spread it. Sometimes you
(22:53):
have to cut it all the wayoff site for miles and miles and it
takes forever. And how long willthe machinery be on site? For?
Just another week? Okay? Prettymuch? Yeah, So we should finish
this pond today or tomorrow, andthen next week we start on the track
itself took track, So we we'reputting in gravel and flints and sleepers along
(23:15):
the side and some swales to takethe water off as well. Right,
so the track won't be a river, right, so we're taking the water
off it and it should be alot dryer. And another Ye, have
you found enough interesting while you've beendigging? Yeah? We have. Actually
we found it's up in the cabinat the moment. We found what looks
like a metal maybe a handle ona window or well what else did we
(23:40):
think it was? We wanted abouta hair clip, a hair clip,
all nat hair clip. It's prettyold and pretty rusty, so we've kept
it for the archaeologists here. Okay, because there is quite a lot of
interesting archaeology on this site, obviouslybecause it was a hall and it's a
lot of historic sort of use ofthis land as well, so maybe something
in yeah. Cool. One ofthe other sites I worked out actually at
(24:04):
wind and we worked on the rivertifet Windham Abbey and we had to dig
out the river quite considerably to putin some big pieces of oak for a
fish pass, and when we weredigging out we found these massive bones and
I got really excited. I thoughtthere were dinosaur bones that they were,
but they were used. They wereox used by the monks who lived at
(24:26):
the abbey and they used their skinsfor paper, which is fascinating. And
obviously they didn't really have a goodway of disposing of things in the past,
so everything you could get thrown inthe river. So we found all
these bones and all these horns aswell. So these are oxen, which
are like big cows exactly right.Yeah, that was pretty cool. Norwich
Castle actually has them in the music, so that's good. Yeah. Yeah,
(24:52):
So yeah, sometimes we do findinteresting things on these on these digs,
which is something worth looking up forAnd how long do you think it
will take before at the moment,obviously it's sort everywhere and the diggers.
It all looks you know, itall looks a bit like a work site,
doesn't it exactly? But how longwill it take before you could look
across here and you wouldn't know anythingthat's happening. Generally almost within a year,
(25:15):
right, you wouldn't know we werehere, Sometimes two years, depending
on how big the project was,how wet the grounds are. But thankfully
we've been really lucky with the conditions. It's been pretty dry, So I
imagine within a year you'll come hereand you wouldn't know. So it's amazing,
really how quickly it can turn fromlooking like a building site into a
natural How it happen, that's it. My favorite phrase in this industry is
you've got a crack eggs to makean omelet. Yeah, so you have
(25:37):
to make a mess to make itsomething really good. And that's what we
explain to a lot of people whocome, because people come past and they
ask us what we're doing and whywe're doing it. Quite often they're very
concerned. They think that we mightbe damaging the environment, so we have
to explain what we've done, andthen they're much more understanding and yeah,
appreciative generally, which is lovely.Thank you. Next you requested, oh,
(26:03):
yeah, I've got one about thethe King's coronation that's going to happen
in the signal May. Would yoube off work for that coronation? Most
of us are yes. Unfortunately Iam working. I know you've got to
miss the king they but I'm disappointed. Kind of going on right, any
(26:45):
other questions about anything on the subject, on the subject, any questions for
the machine driver. They're a bitshy around the corner here. Did you
just say you don't talk English?Just understand? No question? Well something
(27:18):
that who said it? But aboutso as well as you talked about the
different animals and plants that are goingto colonise, what other things in terms
of bigger otters? But someone wasasking after so this would make a good
habitat for Yeah, we know thereare otters up in the lake, and
when I've been working down here doingwaterfall surveys, there's been a few signs
(27:41):
of otters as well to utter spray, which is otter too. It's very
distinctive because it smells of jasmine tea, and often it's full of shells and
phones and fur and things. Sowe know that otters use this, and
when we create these lovely pools,it's going to be perfect habitat for otters
to dive around in and swim inand catch fish and frogs and whatever else
are you eat. Yep, there'sbeen a great white egret as well.
(28:03):
Okay, so egrets will love it, herons will love it. Ducks,
yeah, things like that. Yeah, all of all sorts of life.
Yeah, it should benefit everything massively. Yeah, well, I guess once
the you know, if the wateris better and there's more things living in
the water, that helps everything thateats things that live in the water,
and it's everything above the food upthe food chowing benefits as well, doesn't
(28:23):
exactly. Yeah, yeah, wheneverything needs water to survive, doesn't it,
And especially when we've had some veryserious droughts. This last year,
the water wasn't even ankle deep,so it was very very shallow. Most
things couldn't live in it. Therewere a few dead fish because some of
the puddles dried up. So makingit deeper, making a lot more water
here will be really beneficial for thoseanimals, especially in times of drought,
(28:47):
which we are probably going to getmore of. In the future with climate
change and climate chaos. So yeah, making the habitat much more suitable for
a lot more things is really good, but also form changed resilience. Okay,
brilliant. Thank you ever so much. Can Wear and the team thank
(29:08):
you very much. It's lovely tomeet you all and I hope you have
a good day and it'd be greatto see you come back and have a
listen if you can next year.Yeah, you've let a go. Yeah
you've been listening to Thanks go tothe National Trust, the Norfolk Rivers Trust
(29:32):
and the staff and kids Sidestrand School. If you'd like to keep listening,
look for the Riverlands Show on PoppylandRadio, which broadcasts the Sounds of Fabric
and Blickling every Wednesday evening at tenpm, or you can visit www dot
homesounds dot org for more opportunities toactively listen. Welcome home, everybody,
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