October and November are always busy months for OiB, even more so when Covid is causing constantly changing restrictions on how many people can meet out of doors. During this period we do a lot of tidying up. So various individuals managed to get out and tidy up the Charles St car park, a number of planters around town, flower beds on Weston Lane and Bremner Street corner, as well as smaller sites. All socially distanced or keeping in a bubble, of course.
Annually OiB tidy up the small park on the corner of Bremner Street. This area holds two bird boxes, some well developed small trees and, on the frontage, small bulbs and plants. It tends to overgrow its space each year so we wait for all the birds to have completed nesting and then cut it back. This year, constraints at the council recycling centre meant we kept the debris on site to compost down safely. Most years we also litter pick the space within the area and we did that again but the litter levels were smaller than usual.
Restrictions on numbers of Otley Bloomers (6 maximum) due to Covid meant that we had to limit participants, but we managed to do a good job in just a short while. No chance for our usual cake and coffee though!
Bremner Street corner was tidied up again this weekend. The condition of the corner was pretty good. Not too much litter (thanks, Otley), only about a bin bag full.
The majority of the work was to clear the name of the road, weed at the front of the corner and trim back those bushes which were growing onto the pavement. Behind the front bushes there was a bit of scrubbing up of small plants and a discussion on what to do with the laurels in the midst and the opportunity to plant another fine tree at the rear.
Lovely weather with small birds singing their hearts out. Thanks to everyone for turning up and helping.
We put out new bird boxes in the winter and that is one of the reasons the birds were singing.
Bremner Street corner last got a tidy-up in July 2017.
The snowdrops that we planted around Otley in September are beginning to flower. We began to see them early in January, and now with any luck they should be showing at all the sites where we planted them. There are definitely snowdrop flowers at Gasworks Corner and Bremner Street, more are appearing all the time. Thank you again to everyone who helped us.
It’s the Big Garden Birdwatch on 30th-31st January. Organised by the RSPB, the idea is to count the wild birds that land in your garden or a local park for one hour on the 30th or 31st January. There’s a simple tick-box form to fill in and send off, for further details see the RSPB website.
We are hoping to count birds on some of the sites we’ve worked on or put bird boxes on, such as Bremner Street, Gasworks Corner, Craven Street, Myers Croft Beck, the Memorial Garden, weather permitting.
