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Thursley Common
| Visit Saturday 2 December 2006 - The new green growth has died back for the winter and the heavy rain washing the burnt layer from the slopes is changing the charred landscape from black to grey. Water is everywhere. |
Early afternoon when we arrived today, warm and dry. However, the past few days had been very wet and it was clear just how wet much of the lower-lying part of the Common can be, even away from the main mire. Areas that in previous months were dry were now saturated or under swathes of water.
Another contrast was how brown the landscape had become as winter arrives. Moor-grasses were now brown and we wondered just what the rabbits would be feeding on for the next few months. Bracken similarly, was now varying degrees of russet brown.
The common was now devoid of animal life. Reptiles must be in hibernation. The dragonflies that previously skimmed low over sandy land and pools alike were entirely absent. Spiders, so common during the last visit, were now absent.
On the plus side, we did hear and see more birds, especially the flock of starlings sitting on the wires that criss-cross the site.
Tree stumps and fallen trees had been beaten by the rain and were further disintegrating until some stumps were simply holes in the ground. The larger gill fungi had more or less gone leaving small brown specimens growing out of the blackened ground including various brown cup-like Peziza species and a variety of unidentified gilled species.
Moving up the hill, on to drier land, much of the smooth charcoal coating had gone leaving some barer sandy areas and allowing the low charred stems of the one-time heather just showing through. The charred stems of gorse were also sprouting regularly, splashing the black ground with spikes of green. Washings on exposed mounds now revealed abundant blocks of ironstone and the soil erosion of the exposed sandy ground continues in places.
One other major change was the number of visitors. While previously we have had the common more or less to ourselves, now there were many people, it seemed, almost everywhere.
| Visit Saturday 21 October 2006 - A splash of colour on the blackened soil from fungi, wet pools and increasing vegetation. |
The changes are less stark now that greenery has begun to come back to the burnt areas.
The site is looking very green in the damper low land but is still burnt and bare on the slopes.
The main changes this visit, other than everywhere becoming greener, are more birds singing, lots of fungi and after the recent heavy rain, many pools of water with mires becoming wet again.
Visit 23 September 2006 - Life is definitely returning to the burnt ground. |
We had a late afternoon visit this time with a wonderful sunset developing over the fire damaged landscape lighting the fire damaged trees with a bright reddish-orange hue.
The extent of the fire is clear to see with vast areas of dry burnt charcoal covered land with very little sign of life, especially on higher land other than occasional new gorse shoots. It is interesting to see the bare black ground with large numbers of scattered wartime mortar bomb fins and brass shell cases and other assorted metal ware laid on the surface. One rabbit warren in this area had clearly been a badger sett in the middle of the heathland at one time because we found a complete badger skull partly exposed in the spoil.
Look to the edge of the heathland and you can tall maturing pines that have fire reddened needles almost to the tops. Elsewhere are the burnt twisted stems of pines, birches and gorse bushes.
Lower land is becoming covered with a maturing growth of bright green bracken and below which Mary spotted a live adder almost invisible in the mottled light. Birches continue to regenerate from the base and some of the new leaves are already being eaten by insects.
The lower-most land in the now burnt over valley mire is beginning to regenerate the fastest. The bottoms of some pools are beginning to green up, not from algae as first appeared but from tiny cross-leaved heath shoots. Careful examination of the surrounding land found clumps of this same species grown to about 5-6cm high along with developing patches of moss. Wetter areas have surviving Sphagnum bog-mosses and other mire plants such as sundews. Moor-grass tussocks have rapidly achieved about 40cm of growth, browsed in places by rabbits. Elsewhere, the Sphagnum clumps have been deeply burnt over. Great hairy willow-herb and even dandelion are also just beginning to show small shoots.
Spiders are colonising, not only with spiderlings that might have ballooned in, but also with adult garden spiders spinning their webs wherever they can. Dragonflies are still ranging widely over the burnt landscape and ant colonies are active. We even saw some hoverflies alighting on the burnt land. Small piles of sand indicate the burrows of beetles. Large numbers of craneflies, so common this year were landing widely over the landscape.
Many of the dead pines have the bark scraped off, presumably by deer, although we have not seen any yet, other than several dead and brittle roe skulls. Pieces of burnt bone are common, possibly rabbit. Also the burnt remains of large caterpillars and of woodlice. The depth of burning of the topsoils can be seen by the way the reddened pine roots have become exposed.
Fruiting fungi are becoming common on the charcoal, especially in small damper hollows. We have no idea of their species but there are certainly several different types to be found. Also small white fungi (Myxomycetes – slime moulds) spreading across the charcoal and sometimes forming circles around burnt pine cones. A bright yellow ‘myxo’ species (Fuligo septica?) also spreading their amoebae-like forms on some dead pine stumps.
Burnt Soil and Sand
The devastating fire has burnt not only the top vegetation, the heather and gorse, the finer grasses and herbs and their associated wildlife, but also the upper humus rich organic layer of the soil down to the underlying sands. In places the underlying sands show through, reddened by the heat where iron compounds have oxidised. Almost everywhere, is a thick layer of black charcoal with burnt heather twigs showing through.
Regrowth
While it appears that initial re-growth is quick, this is mostly restricted to moor-grass where the inner parts of tussocks remained viable, and braken where underground rhizomes remained unaffected. Burnt open bright red pine cones are shedding their seed with potential to develop into pine scrub.
Within the mire area, it is interesting to see how sundews have survived the fire within damp hollows and how quickly new sticky leaves have grown.
Fauna
While we have seen dead caterpillars and snails, a dead adder and the remains of a roe deer skull and assorted rabbit bones, other wildlife is returning or surviving. Ant colonies have survived in stumps and underground, and individuals of several different species can be seen running over the charcoal surface. Rabbits have survived underground and are now re-digging their burrows and nibbling the moor-grass re-growth. We have also seen tiger beetles and harvestmen running over the surface and spiders are already spinning their funnel webs across the burnt stumps. We have seen a common lizard and also an adder, which rapidly entered a hole in the burnt soil when disturbed. Solitary bees are digging into bare sand areas and dragonflies are widespread searching for prey.
Return of the heather
How well the heather returns, we will have to wait and see as many of the plants are so burnt as to not come alive again. In the hottest areas, the heather seed, dormant in the soil, will have been lost. Moor-grass may well thrive in the potassium enhanced soils and smother those areas where heather once grew. Renewed growth of young pine may also smother potential heather areas.
Heather takes up to 30 years to mature and longer to develop the older spreading phase so attractive to wildlife. Prior to the fire, the heather woould have been in areas of mixed ages, with growth, the new heather will be of a single age and careful management will be required to ensure the age diversity so important to sustain heathland biodiversity.
| Visit 22 July 2006 - Death ... and Life |
The fire at Thursley Common National Nature Reserve, Surrey, destroyed large areas of this special lowland heath, mire and woodland habitat.
We will be visiting the site to photograph its regrowth over the year. The fire began on Friday 14 July 2006, leaping a fire break and raging out of control on Saturday 15 July.
We visited the site a week later on Saturday 22 July and recorded the devastation although even as we walked around we could see life coming back to the Common.
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