Volunteer task days on the Sevenoaks Greensand Commons are varied and interesting; with a common theme of seemingly tireless hard graft from a great bunch of people who are dedicated to putting their best effort and energy into helping local nature; restoring lost habitat and biodiversity. The days-out with the group are as fun and interesting as they are massively productive, with a conscientious approach to the work and the appearance of the sites that is very admirable.

Throughout Winter and early Spring, through rain deluges, sleet and snow, the volunteers made consistently great efforts to reclaim space for rare lowland heath habitat to recolonise the Greensand Commons; following years of neglect that had allowed thick scrub, pioneering birch woodland and the dreaded, invasive rhododendron to take-hold of the landscape.

Now that Spring has gained momentum and nature has burst back into life, our task days have focussed more on engaging with the nature of our sites, to better understand and enjoy the intricacies of the places we devote our efforts to.

Towards this, with only 1 month left of our project’s funding, I’m very glad to have supported some of our volunteers on KWT Study Days, including Reptile Ecology and Survey Techniques, and Butterflies of Kent. A small thanks for great efforts.

Through opening-up heathy woodland glades and clearing larger areas for open heathland, we’ve created plenty of log piles and dead-hedge habitat features. We’re now placing reptile survey refugia (corrugated roofing tiles that heat up well in the sun) to draw-out any resident reptiles from hiding, to bask and show us who’s sharing our spaces. The volunteers will continue surveying these refugia as the heathland habitat recovers. So far, we reliably find 1 slow worm on many task days and surveys alike, but we’re hoping for more encounters as the refugia bed-in better and the reptiles find them. Any slow worm gets plenty of well-deserved excitement from the group all-the-same, as did finding a slough (shed skin) last week!

We’ve been watching-out for butterflies on task days, and enjoyed a sweep one site, trying to net and ID whatever we could. We have low butterfly numbers – but watching one orange tip butterfly evade five people swinging nets is priceless fun, we’re not lacking in entertainment! We’ve enjoyed plenty speckled yellow moths (finding five in one day) then learning that their caterpillar food plant is wood sage which we have plenty of too; so we are supporting them well!

I led a dawn chorus and bird song identification day this month, impressed to have 11 volunteers keen (or keen enough) to meet at 5am just before sunrise! It was a great morning spending a few hours walking through Bitchet Common, helping people recognise 19 different bird songs or calls. Blackcaps stole the show – whenever I asked people to rethink their identification of a bird's song, they soon got the hint that I was suggesting a blackcap every time! We even got to see a nice couple of them bouncing through low branches in song – helpfully proving I wasn’t making it up, they really do predominate.

We’ve still been hard at work, with seas of countless green-leaved birch saplings bursting through the heather and bilberry – we have to pull them all out whilst they’re still small, to protect the precious heathland habitats we’ve been working so hard to restore; and keep woodland succession at bay. That means task day, after task day, using tree-poppers with impressive productivity from the group!

We also tidy-up loosely laid dead-hedging from larger-scale, more-so industrial clearance work widening the woodland rides – we create better quality habitat from the materials, increase space and soften boundaries for heathland to spread into woodland edges.

Our vendetta with rhododendron and cherry laurel is ever-present – someone’s always keen to swing a mattock to dig these out (regardless of scale!) before they spread more!

And tree guards – you never know how many tree guards litter a woods until you go looking for them – and the amount of plastic our volunteers remove from the landscape is admirable!

As we come to the end of June, the last month of our project's funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the end of an era of great dedication from the volunteer team; of great times-had, and great friendships made, through working on the commons together. We keep our fingers crossed that future funding will be secured to support the team in their ongoing conservation work on the Greensand Commons; to protect our efforts from the last five years to restore the heathland habitat that could so-easily be lost again to woodland in a short time; and to keep a great group of dedicated volunteers together, who are driven to do their best for nature.

We are glad to confirm that, with significant local council funding now secured, it looks hopeful that sufficient funds for a legacy project will be achieved soon, and we will be able to announce an exciting new era of nature conservation and volunteer task days on the commons! So, we eagerly watch this space; and in the meantime continue enjoying and getting to know better the nature we've supported, and hope to go-on doing so.

A great thanks to all the volunteers of the Sevenoaks Greensand Commons Project, from KWT and the nature of the commons.

A great thanks to them all!