Parkhurst Forest: The Habitat

Example of a hard surface road in the forest. It also gives some idea of the height of the mature spruce stands. You can see that the canopy is significantly broken between the spruces on the left, and mixed broadleaf area on the right. Popular feeding area for for Pipistrelles and Barbastelles. Note: Barbastelles can often be seen feeding above the spruce canopy as well as within the cutting itself. This sort of habitat is also consistent with commuting for a number of different species.

Example of a typical grassed ride. Again the canopy can be seen to be broken by the width of the ride. Typically the grass is left uncut as you can see here. Where this sort of habitat cuts across beech stands, you will find peaks in Barbastelle activity.

This is a typical example of a covered track. There is continuous canopy cover (evidenced by the shorter grass). This is the sort habitat where I was expecting to find gleaning species like Plecotus and M. Bechsteinii, although no M. Bechsteinii have been found so far (I suspect this is due to very small number of ash trees in the forest).

Typical open track across a re-planted area. Not good habitat you might think, but Serotines and Leislers seem to like this habitat for feeding.

Example of a recovering area where pines have recently  been harvested. No significant presence in this sort of area other than the odd commuting Pipistrelle. As evidenced from most of the SDM results, the pine and spruce stands do not seem to be a favourite with any of the bat species, though there some notable exceptions (Leislers and Barbastelles) where spruce stands meet the surrounding fields.

One of the ponds recently constructed as part of of a biodiversity programme in the the forest. These ponds are still quite immature, though their presence might explain some unexpected Daubenton sightings. It will be interesting to see what happens as these ponds start to mature.

This is fairly typical of one of the woodland streams. They are under more or less total canopy cover during the summer. The stream is at peak flow during this picture and has actually made all the usual fords unusable. During the summer, these streams maintain some flow whereas the drains that also feed these streams will dry out. Note, I've not included the land drains in the model for this reason.

Panoramic view of one of the adjacent fields to the forest. Virtually all of this grassland is used either for grazing or silage & hay. There is a mix of enclosure size, and all the enclosures are bound by hedgerow with the odd oak that has survived the hedge cutting. process.