Baildon Moor - Bracken cutting

park on the top car park

Our domain!: when we started working on the moor this hillside was covered in brackenAn area of moorland we've improvedA lovely day for our last visit to cut bracken this summer.

Undoubtedly we have not covered the same amount of ground now we no longer have an auto-scythe, but we have still made a good impression, adding to many of the existing piles of composting bracken. We use a mixture of scythes, slashers and sickles, with some of the sparser areas being pulled by hand.  I walked down to where we had started off in 2002 – we have cut an impressive patch, creating space for heather, bilberry and crowberry.

I didn’t achieve my ambition of glancing upon a short-eared owl silently quartering the hillside (it’s been years since I have seen one), but we disturb quite a few red grouse and could see buzzards over Rombalds Moor.