Belton Park Ranger

3^rd June 2021 Zoom Meeting – Belton Park Ranger – Roy Morledge

Roy began with a little background history about Belton House, built in 1688 by the Lords Brownlow, then taken over by The National trust in 1984 taking on the 1750 acres of estate. He showed a map displaying the size and features of the estate: The Belmont Tower, the East Avenue lined with Lime trees, the South Avenue, 1 mile long and lined with Turkey Oak trees.

There are 3 full time Rangers, aided by a number of volunteers like Roy, Mike Cox and Chris Beale.  Their role is looking after the about 430 fallow deer that roam the estate, the wildlife, fences and maintaining appropriate grazing.

He showed pictures of bucks looking somewhat sorry for themselves having shed their antlers in April.  The fawns come along in late June/July adding to their numbers each year, but there is plenty of grass available, so some sheep have been added seasonably to the livestock and also some cattle in the fields near Belmount Tower. Their primary task is to flatten the many meadow ant anthills. All grazing is covered by High Level Stewardship.

Inevitably adequate fencing is a prime issue and one of the priority tasks for the Rangers. They have also been tackling a conservation project to reshape the river (Witham), at which time Mike had a wet experience with the ‘holy’ waders he was provided! There are trout in the river (Witham) and some otters, with kingfishers, banded demoiselle dragon flies and much waterfowl in evidence. There are also ponds in the garden which attract some unusual birds including egrets, shovelers and goosanders and where many lilies abound. There’s also the Tar Lane pond which contains Mandarin & mallard ducks.

About the 2^nd week in October, brings some excitement to the Deer, when the rutting season begins, although after the fighting sessions (which damages the fencing) the bucks tend to stand and wait for the Does to visit them for ‘service’. This is also the time for many and varied mushrooms to appear, wax caps.

He finished off the presentation with some excellent videos from trail cameras, showing badgers, a fox, deer. He confidently handled the questions that followed, with Barry raising the issues about the WW1 use of the site for training of soldiers in machine gun practice, the bullets of which he used to collect as a local boy.

Mike Cox proposing a Vote of Thanks for Roy’s very informative and interesting presentation.  He expressed his view that Roy was a fascinating raconteur about Belton, and what it gem it was on our doorstep, that we should all make use of, with the Woodland Trust area adjacent.  This was echoed by President Derek, then well supported with ‘visual applause’                                                                                                                                     AR