Meet our volunteer co-ordinator David Cocovini

Hello, I’m David Cocovini and I have the good fortune to be the voluntary warden and volunteer co-ordinator for the Friends of Pewley Meadows, so I get to spend as much time as I want working in a landscape where nature and wildlife thrive. It’s a rather rare landscape – unimproved chalk grassland – with a wealth of flora and fauna that’s more varied than can be found almost anywhere else in Surrey. And, periodically, it needs attention.

One of the chief attractions of the Meadows is the presence, all year round, of a number of skylarks. There are many other attractions, of course, but the skylarks are particularly important because, across Britain, their numbers are declining. As agriculture intensifies, suitable nesting sites have become harder for them to find.

Pewley Meadows offer the wide-open expanses of rough grassland that skylarks need. Lately, however, the few small patches of bramble that punctuated the Meadows have started to spread, and grow. And skylarks don’t nest near brambles.

Periodic bramble management and clearing is something that I, along with several other enthusiastic volunteers, will be organising on an occasional basis.

Its hard work but we all enjoy it. We’re lucky. Perhaps you’d enjoy it too?

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