Hi, everybody. Welcome to the first probe cast of 2023.
I hope everyone has had a good Christmas break.
By popular request, I'm continuing to interview key people around college,
and today I'm interviewing Alyson Leslie, who is an important part of our really strong gardening and grains team.
Alison is particularly here to talk about something we're all interested in.
Worcester, Worcester Wildlife. Yes.
You've made that a very particular interest in my life.
Yes. Yes. Alison, you've been with the college for how long?
16 and a half years. I joined in 2006, October 2006.
You were Murton before that? Yes.
And before you were at Merton, you had a life in commercial says.
Yes. I started from school in retail banking and then moved into the business and commercial centre in Marlow.
I did also do a full five year stint at Lloyds Bank in Halifax, in Oxford as the senior cashier.
So I left in 2003 without a job.
I knew that I wanted to change and I wanted my hobby, which was gardening, to become my career.
I had gone part time and gone to Berkshire College of Agriculture doing the general certificate in horticulture.
And then it still took a year to pluck up the courage to leave what I'd known since I left school.
Like I said, March 2003, I left with no job.
Well, I don't know whether that was a foolish thing to do, but very grateful that months in college gave me my first job in horticulture.
But as soon as I'd seen was to college, I knew that's where I wanted to garden.
You walked through the cloisters? Yeah. And you see the front quadrangle, and it's just.
It's just. It just grounds you, really. So that's where I was.
And I think I know the answer to this. But you don't regret having left the financial sector?
No, no, no. Not at all. No.
It was the right time for me to leave. Great. Great. Well, I'm glad you made the decision to approach Worcester.
I think we're the beneficiary of your real expertise, along with all the other great guys in the gardening team.
Just by way of context, because what I've discovered from doing these, of course,
is that there are lots of new students who find out about the college this way.
We've got lots of members of staff who are obviously focussed on their own things and are always very pleased to find out more about the college,
its history, but also people who do things here, but also lots of old members who are listening as well.
So to bring us right up to date, how big is garden and grounds team?
We have eight members of staff varying in years of experience from Kalam,
who is youngest member with 10 to 12 years experience, I think to Adrian Nash, who's been over 40 years.
Once we're here, we don't go.
We just stay. Well, I'm sure on behalf of everybody listening,
we're hugely proud of the garden and grounds here at Worcester and hugely appreciative to all of you for the wonderful job that you all do,
how wonderful it is to be in this beautiful college, but also a college that has such amazing gardens and grounds.
That's nice to hear. Thank you. Your particular focus, obviously.
I know you're a nice gardener. You do? I can see you out of the lodgings windows doing, you know, lots of pruning and lots of gardening maintenance.
But I also look out and I see you, particularly in the summer, looking at the wildlife with my head and looking up, looking at the sky.
But also I know because I've watched you, you know, looking in great detail at the ground.
Yes. So tell us, you know, what was it that made you engage, particularly with wildlife at Worcester back in November 2013?
I discovered a hole with quite a lot of soil that had been excavated, so I bought myself a camera and brought it in and set it up.
And to migrate excitement. I'm not sure about the head of Common Ground when a black and white striped head coaches head out of the hole.
And that then led to me filming the life of that badger for the next six years.
Quite an elderly badger. A one eyed badger.
Right. We could see. On the camera with that one, I was glowing and the other one wasn't.
So we always knew that it was the same budget and it just let me down to the world of trail cameras.
At one point, we five had around six cameras around the college filming the badges,
like the pair of deer that turned up in 2018, watching them chasing each other at the bottom of the garden, watching the foxes.
We have we've had a breeding pair of foxes here for quite some time in the long grass in the Prophet's Meadow,
watching them learn to hunt and just following various wildlife.
It's knowing the signs. It's taught me to to look further than it's so.
It's to look beyond what's right in front of me. It's looking for small signs.
Even small signs like otters spring that you suddenly notice on the edge of the lake and you think,
Well, there's got to be an otter coming in somewhere. So you've learned to look really carefully.
Yes. And presumably slowly. Yes. What the rest of us, when we're walking around to look at, tend to ignore.
Yes. And listen as well. It's also listening.
I always say that most of us will just look, but you need to listen and look up as well instead of looking forwards.
You know, if you look in the middle of my fist to the 11th of May, listen to the little screeching that suddenly start happening in the sky above us.
The Swifts have come back to Oxford and to me that summer, starting if you listen in March,
the middle of March, the little chief, chief, chief song will suddenly start.
That's the sign of spring for me, that if you're not listening, you won't know that that it's there.
It was. Simon bought me a book for Christmas one year called Bird Watching with Your Eyes Closed.
If you learn a song, two or three songs a Week of the Birds like the Kingfisher, you'll hear it first.
But if you don't know what it sounds like, you won't look for it.
But if you suddenly hear and know the kingfisher sound as you walk past the lake, look low and you'll see it flash across the bottom.
Very, very low. Right low over the night before you see it.
So you've learnt all this by looking, listening and being interested?
Yes. And the rest of us can actually do the same.
So, yes, very, very simple. I say just then a few bird songs and all of a sudden you'll just hear the whole unfolding of the world will open up,
close your eyes and you'll hear a missile.
THRUSH The song. THRUSH The Jay, the Kingfisher, the great Spotted Woodpecker will be singing at the top of the tree.
If you learn that Nuthatch sound. For me, it sounds like if you've left tackle with a slight drip, you'll hear a little drip drip.
If you learn it just you'll spot so much more than you would normally you would not see.
No, no, you're absolutely right. And at a time when we're all being encouraged to be mindful, this is a fantastic way of stopping.
It's great for using hands and it's for my mental health as well to just take a few minutes and listen.
So I hope everybody walks around the lake on a regular basis and I know most of us do that.
Just take Alison's advice and slow down and close your eyes and listen.
Now, it does sound like there are lots of different species of birds.
You've already namechecked a few. How many? I know you've done a bit of an audit, haven't you, Alison?
Andy, how many? I've now recorded 65.
Well, not all of them. I hear all the time. The latest one that we had was a mandarin duck that was spotted on the lake back in October.
Even a little secret was first seen in February last year.
I only record them as of being in the college if they land.
So for years I've been waiting for the red kite to land so I can take it on my list.
So the Red Planet has landed. It did land.
They started building a nest in one of the trees in 2021.
They abandoned it, but they did start it. So that is a tick.
And I know you've made a particular study of the swans. We're all sad when the swans leave us.
And then that's when they come back. Yeah. You've been looking at them for how many years?
Since 2012. They first started building their nest here.
For five years. They would lay their eggs.
And everybody, people waiting 42 days for when the last one was night and nothing ever happened.
And it was why? Why is there nothing happening? And it didn't last.
It'll never happen. Right. And it wasn't until one of the swans got ill and we had to call Tiggy when goes out to collect it.
And we found out that they were two females.
Oh, right. Yes. And we were never going to get any.
It was how they went through the laying, the incubating, but no hatching.
And it wasn't until that one female died, but another swan turned up, paired with the one that was left.
And the following year, x rays and hatching.
Right. And we've been having hatching eggs ever since.
Now they're hatching. We're obviously contributing to the swan population in and around Port Meadow and the canal and so forth.
But sometimes they don't all survive through those now.
But 2021 was a bit of a disastrous year.
They made their nest right next to the Sainsbury platform.
We had a pair of foxes, had five cubs that year under the tea shed of the Gardens and Grounds team, which was wonderful to watch.
Mum would come out, cool out the Cubs and they'd be quite happy to suckle Mum right in front of the garden.
It was wonderful to see. But with that you have five hungry cups.
And just as the swans eggs were hatching, the foxes raided the nest.
So last year, the male swans started building that nest back up again.
And the female didn't want anything to do with it and did not want to go near that nest.
So after it finished that nest he built to another one, which she was, which is a bit further round.
And last year three had hatched and between days ten and 16,
she always takes them off the lake and marches them off to the canal and we don't see them again.
Occasionally we might get one visit to see this never come back.
We do have an odd one or two single birds that come back and I like to think that it might be one of the segments have come back.
The male swan won't have anything to do with it. Chases them off or it's his like, yeah, yeah.
But they mum and dad will take their cygnets away rhythm on the canal, the river, and then they will come back.
Mum and Dad will come back usually around December time.
Yep. And then the whole process starts again. How long do the swans live?
I believe they're quite well fed. Think it's between 15 years, maybe slightly more, if it is the same female.
She's had three partners. The first one was the female son that died.
The second one we called Chris because he crash landed outside the front of the college and he went off with her with the cygnets.
But he never came back and that's all we've got. Yeah, she don't Chris.
And now we've got Graham recruiting.
I don't know whether it's after one of the gardeners or we just called him Graham Swan after
the cricketer and we know it's him because [INAUDIBLE] hiss at you and you are near him.
So we think she's if it's the same female, she's on her third partner.
Good for her. A big theme, particularly from students, but also staff and fellows, is about how we make Worcester much more sustainable.
How do you think we could make everything we do, you know, more sustainable, particularly in relation to wildlife?
We have started to create more wildlife.
Meadows So we've reduced areas of mowing.
We do take part in the plant life.
No, mow my campaign.
So the orchard it's it's mowed in around September, October time but it won't be mowed this year again until September, October time.
And that's been going on probably before I came.
So it doesn't have any fertiliser put on it and it's just left to its own devices.
And that means that we have all sorts of we have lots of flies.
Yes. Butterflies, moths. You can go and stand in there this last summer.
You could stand in that orchard. And if you close your eyes, you'll hear the crickets.
And I can find that quite soothing, actually, listening to the crickets.
You were also showing me some quite rare orchids.
Yeah, so? So in the old secret shipments. Isn't this in the orchards?
Last year we had ten pyramid. Little kids.
And the year before that was seven. And before that, none.
So where it's not being mowed and not being enriched.
Gradually the wildflowers are coming back and the profits.
Top of your garden is now an area of long grass and that hasn't been going quite as long.
But bee orchids last year suddenly appeared.
The weather, they've come in on some mowing lawns that we've brought in from outside that have orchid seeds or they've just lay dormant there.
But now we're leaving it long though, of come with your bees at the bottom of the gods to talk about the bees.
Obviously that's a more artificial arrival process than what you were talking about,
but I was really keen to bring the bees and I couldn't quite believe it was they had never really had bees in the past.
And they have flourished, of course. Have they been a good addition to what they have?
Because if you walk along the main border by the Nuffield lawn and you walk past the catchment, the Peter, it's covered in honey bees.
They love your honey bees. I think you've found that. Yeah. And that's what they're feeding on.
Yeah. Yeah. So much. We planted Daffodil called Minnow towards your bees because they're quite an early flowering, high necked daffodil.
So it's, it's encouraging us to plant. Okay.
Plant is good for you doing that for the bees. Good growth.
So when we're looking for certain plants now, is this good for bees?
So yeah, it's always kind of been not just for the honeybees, the bumblebees.
Yeah. And for the solitary bees that we've got going around the.
I do have some sad news about my bees because we check them at the weekend and the very cold spell and then the warm spell.
And now this very, very cold spell means that two of our colonies have died.
So we know it's also the weather, the love them, and so it's time to wake up.
So when we checked at the weekend to one, certainly our strongest looks like it didn't survive.
And the other one we couldn't quite tell, but we probably lost two colonies.
So we're going to have to start with some new colonies in May when things warm up, but rest assured that we will do our best to bring in new colonies.
But we were all rather devastated that we lost too. Well, I saw I saw our first queen bumble bee out yesterday feeding on the Monia.
Right. So she's obviously come out for a bit of a feed.
You just hope when she goes back into her burrow again.
So there are lots of great things that we're doing not only to introduce more wildlife into Worcester, but also,
you know, to encourage the wildlife that sheds and flourish and plants that have been lying dormant to to flourish.
Is there anything else that you'd love to do? Well, we're creating dead hedges at the moment.
We put steaks and we fill up between the two states.
We've got a row, two rows, and then we just fill it full of beef.
We've had a big storm. We've collected all the wood debris off the the lawns.
We fill it full of that apple tree cuttings, any woody material, anything that we can't put through our chipper.
So a lot of the wisteria we've got eight or nine wisteria around the college, you know, is too twisty to go through our chipper.
It's all filled in these hedges, so it's full of dead material which provide shelter during the winter.
We've now got two hedges set up around the college with plans to do another two or three around the college.
And it's just with a saying early, within 20 minutes of us finishing that first one, a wren and a robin were already going in and out of the dead.
HEDGES Now, over time, the insect population and the little microorganisms will be in there,
and it's just going to provide shelter and more food for wildlife, particularly the birds.
Great, great. And just for people who are interested to go and look,
I know one that hedges behind the tennis court is another one is another one over by
that near the limbrick pass memory go towards our tool sheds by our compost heaps.
There's another very short one, but it's already packed the baskets that we the plants support baskets that we make.
You will see us creating in April time, which is from the silver birch trees that we got at Coppice from the heart.
Go Arboretum. They're only good for one season, so one summer.
So when we clear the big flower border and cut it down, all of those silver birch baskets are pulled out and they would have gone through the chipper.
They've now been broken up and put into the dead hatch. So they've gone from the Harker Arboretum to our dead hatch.
So they're being supported by the herbaceous border.
Right. Now, listen, you've made the decision recently to cut down your number of days.
Yeah. So sadly, we're getting less of you in college, but hopefully we're going to be getting an apprentice to make up your absence.
But you're doing something very exciting, which really just expands on your commitment to wildlife and wildlife adventure.
Tell us what you're doing. Well, I'm since the beginning of December last year,
I now go every Friday to help out as a volunteer at the Tiggy Winkles Wildlife Rescue Centre, which is quite close to where I live.
Yeah, and it's all down to that black and white nose that came out of that hole back in 2013.
That just started me on this Road to Journey Wildlife.
And Tiggy Winkles, from what you were saying in your on, isn't just hedgehogs.
No, no, it's British Wildlife. Yeah, it's always different.
Great. Well, Alison, thank you so much for joining us today.
Thank you. As I said right at the start, for everything you and the team do to look after, but also to generate,
you know, the wonderful new initiatives that are parts of long term gardening and make Worcester so special.
We really appreciate everything that you do, but I think today's conversation,
it gives us an insight into some of the less obvious and visible things.
And certainly the lesson having talked to you today for me is to slow down, look more carefully, but most importantly, listen, listen, listen.
Thank you. Thank you to all of you who've been listening in.
I'm going to be interviewing the Dean team next week.
So I look forward to meeting up with them to find out what they do in relation to welfare support in college.
Please do listen to future broadcasts.
Give me any feedback in relation to anything we've covered or anything you'd like me to cover, particularly who you'd like me to interview.
Alison, thank you. Thank you very much. And keep.