Red River Rescuers AGM

held in the Meeting Room at Cornwall Wildlife Trust HQ,

5 Acres, Allet, Nr Truro
on Wednesday 4th November 2015 at 7.00pm

Attended by:

Steve Jones Lynn Jones

Gary Barlow Kevin Gill
Jo Poland Shaun Poland
Laura Fox Lucian Fox
Adam Polednicek Kathy Wood
Perry Smale Judy Swift
Peter Maker Jenny Wellsteed
Chris Richardson Helen Cox
Michael Cox

Apologies were received from: Gavin Henderson

Jo welcomed all present to the 2015 AGM of the Red River

Rescuers and talked through the running order for the evening.
There were no formal matters arising from last years meeting but
when questioned Steve did mention that he had still not received
the award from the British Dragonfly Society, partly because he
only found out at the last minute that the meeting at which it was
supposed to be presented at was in Shrewsbury rather than
Dorset, and had heard nothing from them since. He did note that
the BDS were in some dis-array at the moment. Jo offered to
follow up with them and Steve was happy for this to happen. Last
year's minutes were then accepted. Jo then invited Steve to give a
round-up of the progress that had been made since our last AGM.

Steve reported that despite our best efforts there was still no
sign of the Scarce Blue-tail Damselfly or (not unexpectedly) the
Marsh Fritillary Butterfly at Bell Lake Marsh but that our
continued work could only improve the chances, especially for the
Scarce Blue-tail assuming they could make the jump from the
existing site at Gt. Wheal Seton. With the majority of clearance
work finished at Bell Lake Marsh, a couple of sessions were spent
working on the north side of the river at our Yellow Centaury Ride
 site, working to re-create conditions to help two rare flowers
there, the Yellow Centaury and Allseed, both needing clear, open
and disturbed ground which had all but disappeared. Following this
a couple of sessions were spent up the valley from Cuttings Hill at
the Kieve Mill site, where Devil's Bit Scabious had been reported
as becoming rapidly overgrown in a previously cleared area that
would benefit from our attention. There was also the added bonus
of a nice pool on the site that had become very overgrown. The
area was cleared and a glade cut through the trees to the pool
where more trees were removed along with Gorse and Brambles.
Steve noted that the open area had problems again with the
trimmed stumps re-sprouting and that we may well have to dig
them out. Our first session of this season had been to Bell Lake
Marsh where another scrape had been dug near the Small Red
Damselfly area, along with Greater Reedmace removal and Willow
cutting.

In May, photography students from Tremough visited both Bell

Lake Marsh & Great Wheal Seton on two consecutive days following
a lecture by Steve at the University on insect photography at the
site. Despite the poor conditions the days were a great success
with two of the students returning to help with RRR activities.
Steve remarked on the importance of our spoil banks for mining
insects at this point.

August saw our second Bioblitz with some of the highlights being
George Davis and his moth traps again, Laura and her mammal
traps, and the photos from the camera trap, (set up by Gary), of
our resident Roe Deer and Grey Squirrels. The Peregrine Falcon
family flying over created much excitement whilst the observation
of a Parent Bug with brood highlighted what a wonderfully diverse
fauna and flora the valley has.

During the summer the group was nominated in the "Nurturing

Nature" category of the Cornwall Community Awards 2015 and
Steve hosted a visit to the site from Rupert Spencer, one of the
assessors for the awards. He was very impressed with our efforts
and we were invited to attend the awards evening at the Eden
Project where all the shortlisted volunteer groups were presented
with an award and we were all thanked warmly by the organisers
 for the work we do and it was acknowledged that the County would
be a poorer place without us all :)

Work for this season was then discussed. Major clearance at Bell
Lake Marsh is now finished and the work priority needs to shift to
improving the marsh habitat with a number of new scrapes needed
as well as the removal of the Greater Reedmace that is beginning
to spread from the old sluice area towards the middle of the open
marsh. Some of the areas of Sedge clumps also need to be dug out.
Steve pointed out that without the continuous digging of fresh
areas of open water the "marshy" areas would soon disappear,
highlighting the current prime areas of marsh that had been dug as
open water scrapes in previous years. Steve has approached
Western Power Distribution about the possibility of further
supporting our work with extra funds and has been offered an
extra 200 but this will probably be the last money they can give
us. This will go towards some digging tools and gloves, etc. Kevin is
looking at some sort of winch/ratchet device to help with sedge
clump removal. Adam stressed the difficulty in Reedmace removal
and Lynn suggested rotating tasks during the day. Kieve Mill will
need a couple of sessions to deal with the re-sprouting stumps and
to finish the work around the pool, and a new site a short distance
further along the valley has been identified by Steve and Gavin as
worth clearing. Great Wheal Seton will need one session for
maintenance of the Scarce Blue-tail damselfly pool and the
surrounding area and that will probably be the season done.

A short "questions or comments" session followed with Michael

asking if a map existed for the valley/our sites as he was not
familiar with the area and other visitors would also benefit from
this facility. He in particular was interested as he would like to
investigate the fungi in the valley and would like to be able to
report accurately where he located any specimens. Jo and Gary
recalled the Cornwall Council map for the valley but thought this
was now unavailable. Gary mentioned the "Camborne Town Map"
which on one side has a fairly basic illustrated map of the valley
right down to the sea. Gary and Steve would look at the map drawn
by Steve to see if this could be reproduced in electronic or
printable format via the website to help. Adam asked about people
"trampling" areas of the marsh and if this would have a detrimental
effect, but Steve thought that at worst it would do little harm and
 in fact this "poaching" was actually good for the area in helping
open watery pathways through the vegetation that would be
exploited by various inhabitants.

Laura then presented her recorder's report (which Lucien kindly

read at short notice) which found this to be our most prolific year
for records to date with 764 from 19 different recorders from
the beginning of 2015, and again highlighted the Bioblitz, which
generated most of our records. Particular mention went to Sally
Luker (and her daughter) who opened our eyes to the wonders of
the leaf-miners, galls and aphids, often overlooked but vital cogs in
the wheel of life in the valley. 212 new taxa were added bringing
our total to an amazing 657 !
(The full text can be found at the end of the minutes)

Gary presented a brief financial report detailing the purchase of

the camera trap and more recently the new ball wheelbarrow to
help with moving spoil from scrape digging on the boggy marsh.
(Full details to be found following Laura's recorders report).

The meeting then closed with an invite to tea and cake (thank you Lynn
and all the bakers!) and a go on Jo's book raffle (which raised 29.00).

The evening concluded with a slide show from Adam featuring a miscellany
of his photography, from some amazing macro insect pictures (we are now
all intrigued by "focus stacking") to views of his Czech homeland which
was thoroughly enjoyed by all.

Recorder's report

It has been a fantastic year for records. Since the start of 2015, 764
records have been submitted from 19 individual recorders.

The main bulk of the recording effort took place at Bell Lake Marsh,
where 447 unique taxa were recorded this year. Note that I use the word
Taxa instead of Species as not everything could be identified to species
level. Its good to see old favourites like the Field Digger Wasps still
making good use of the site, as well as some new faces which had before
gone un-noticed. The Bell Lake marsh list now boasts a total of 657 unique
taxa for this site alone; this is constructed entirely from our groups
recording effort.

Most of the records were generated from this years very successful
BioBlitz. 25 volunteers took part in an event which aimed to record as
much as possible within a 24 hour period. We were based at Bell Lake
Marsh, but this year extended our BioBlitz area to include our new site,
Yellow Centaury Ride. There were of course many duplicates, as more
than one person might record the same thing at the same grid reference
on the same day, but once these had been filtered out we had
accumulated a total of 668 unique records made up of 415 unique taxa,
212 of which were new to the site list.

Many of these new taxa came from Sally Luker, who brought to the
BioBlitz her expertise in the small and overlooked, such as leaf-miners,
galls and aphids. Despite their size they are nonetheless just as
important part of the valleys ecology, and without Sallys help we simply
would not know they were there. This highlights how valuable it is to have
an expert specialising in species which are difficult for us to identify, or
even notice! There are many other groups, such as mosses, lichen and
fungi, that we know very little about.

Unfortunately, Yellow Centaury Ride did not live up to its name as we

failed to find any Yellow Centaury there. This may be because the site
has dried out somewhat. However, it is a very small and easily overlooked
plant, so it may be that we just didnt see it.

Also at the BioBlitz, our live mammal traps caught Bank Voles for the
first time but no Water Shrew this year. George Davis brought along his
moth traps again, and recorded many late summer species which were not
flying at last years BioBlitz in June. Among the catch was a scarce
migrant, Tebenna micalis, also known as the Vagrant Twitcher. It wasnt
just moths that were attracted to the light we caught several
caddisflies, a parasitic wasp and some beetles, including an impressive Dor
Beetle and a colourful Hornet Beetle a Cornish Red Data Book species!

We also tried out our new camera trap this year, and caught our first
images of Roe Deer. Although weve known the deer were visiting the site
from the dropping and field signs they left behind, its quite another
thing to actually see the animal in action.
At the last AGM I mentioned a few species we had yet to record. Since
then, weve managed to cross some of them off the list; however, there
are many others which should also be using the site. Can you believe no
one has yet recorded a Chaffinch at Bell Lake Marsh? But we can take
clues from the other species which have been recorded. For example,
Kevin photographed two species of Nomad bee this year at the marsh.
Nomad bees are nest parasites of other solitary bees and are usually host
specific, meaning that they only target one particular species. Therefore,
it stands to reason that if a Nomad bee has been recorded, its host
species cant be far away. Kevins Nomad bees (not their official title!)
are known to parasitize the nest of the Yellow-legged Mining Bee and the
Ashy Mining Bee, so it would be good to look out for these species. In
particular, the Ashy Mining Bee is easy to recognise as it looks vaguely
like a small, sun-bleached bumblebee, but mainly flies in the spring when
the only bumblebees around are very fresh.

Weve also started recording at our new site, Kieve Mill. We have already
found signs of voles feeding on the rushes. But there is a lot yet to be
discovered about this site, and it might be a good idea to make this the
focus of our next BioBlitz.

If anyone is out on any of our sites and see something they would like to
record, there are a few ways you can do this. Photos can be posted to our
Facebook group page, just be clear about where it was seen and when. You
can also email me your sightings at redriverrecorder@gmail.com.
Alternatively, you can bypass me altogether and go straight to the record
centres recording website, Online Recording Kernow and Scilly (ORKS):
www.orks.org.uk. If you do this, be sure to use the form in our Recording
Group as this allows me to keep track of our groups records. Feel free to
let me know if you are unsure how to do this. In the future it will be
possible to embed this form on any web-page, so anyone could go to our
Weebly website to enter their records.

Laura Fox
Recorder
Red River Rescuers

Treasurer's Report

A financial statement follows:

Red River Rescuers Financial Report 2014-15

Opening balance 136.06

Income Outgoings
22.00 AGM Tombola 69.99 Camera trap Aldi (Gary)
57.00 Wheelbarrow B&Q (Steve)

Total 22.00 126.99 -104.99

Balance carried forward 31.07

Assets
Type Number Value
Bahco 21 bowsaw 10
Bahco 24 bowsaw 10
Bahco 21 bowsaw blade 3
Bahco 24 bowsaw blade 3
PR CK Maxima loppers 10
Newsome bypass lopper 9
Newsome hedge shears 2
65lt Alibert voyager chest 2
Rigger gloves 10
Ladies gloves brown 5 380.00
Safety helmet white 6 45.00 (nominal)
Bolle safety goggles 10 40.00 (nominal)
White work gloves 10 10.00 (nominal)
Digging fork 5 25.00 (nominal)
First aid kit 2 10.00
Camera trap 1 69.99
Wheelbarrow 1 57.00

Total 636.99

Volunteer hours to date 1343

We made two purchases this year, the camera trap which we used very successfully for the
bioblitz to capture records of our resident Roe deer and Grey squirrels, and a ball tyre barrow
to help move spoil from scrape digging and general clearance in the marsh.
Income came from Jo's book tombola. In the coming year we hope to receive 200.00 in December
From Western Power towards some digging tools and gloves thanks to an approach from Steve.
Asset levels and value have been adjusted for wear and tear, and volunteer hours made up to
include all events to the beginning of this season.

Gary Barlow, Treasurer

04/11/15