Works on Wennington

Hi everyone,

To ensure a nature reserve good for wildlife a lot of work goes into habitat work. We can't just leave the land - succession would take over and woodland would take over (woodland is great, but not for all wildlife. We need a variety of habitats to make it good for all sorts of wildlife).

Our main objective at Rainham Marshes is to provide attractive breeding habitat to declining lapwings and redshank, and also suitable wintering habitat to large numbers of wildfowl and waders - so that means you'll often find our wardening team outside doing stuff cutting with brush cutters or tractors. The way that we manage certain habitats over the year will differ depending on the season.

  Lapwing by Andy Hay (rspb-images.com)

Water level management is vital for habitats - recently you might have noticed reedbed cutting, cutting channels, and next spring will provide good places for new growth. In a reedbed it's good to have sections of different age reeds - certain wildlife species only like old or new growth! You may have noticed our scrapes as well - Nicole and the wardening team have been lowering the water levels on the scrapes - in summer to manage scrape you raise the water levels, and in winter lower them. This is providing good open mud and shallow water for the autumn passage waders and wintering ducks.

I wanted you let you know about some exciting works that are going on, on a section of the reserve that we don't usually see!

The reserve is about 411 hectares - the circular walk only covers about 1/4 of the reserve (we call this area Aveley), and this bit of works takes place over on a sections of the reserve called Wennington.

This is a view of the whole reserve - the boundary is shown by the yellow and blue line. The main pathway is the red dotted line, the car park and visitor centre is on the bottom right of the red dotted line. Wennington is the area of the reserve shown by the thicker green dotted line.

Wennington Marsh is just over 100ha of grazing marsh habitat, and is part of the Inner Thames Marshes Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The RSPB owns and manages the area. The Inner Thames Marshes SSSI is designated due to the wintering and breeding birds, wetland habitat, plant and invertebrate interest.

 Views over Wennington I took the other day...

Although the area is considered to be in 'favourable condition' (an official assessment designation by Natural England) the areas of Wennington have had little management - other than the grazing cattle.

 Grazing cattle on Wennington - blocking the pathway that we were trying to walk down... We sent the Site Manager first!

The habitat works that we are doing  will create a series of new shallow scrapes and drains across the marsh that would considerable enhance the marsh for wildlife. The area, although favourable, isn't performing to its full potential. In winter typical wintering waterfowl counts total nearly 6900 birds, with large flocks of wigeon, teal, lapwing and golden plover making up the majority of these figures - most of these birds are on Aveley Marsh, only 13% are on Wennington (usually on the  ‘target pools’). In summer our priorities are breeding lapwing and redshank, and similarly the most numbers are on Aveley.

 Looking over to the A13... Wennington is basically one big field at the  moment!

The work being done will see the creation of over 9.5km of shallow ditch and scrape on Wennington that will enhance this part of the reserve. The work will not impact the visitor trail of access to the reserve at the Visitor Centre.

 This is what we are aiming for - these are not here at Rainham (the pictures are from another reserve)...

Currently, we have machines out there creating these fabulous scrapes- hoping to be finished by the end of November.

This is what the site looks like at the moment...

There are a mix of 3m-10m wide scrapes up to 50cm deep, which will fill up with rain water and provide the lovely shallow water areas that breeding and wintering birds like.

 Some of them have already filled up with water...

It's looking good so far!

We'll keep you up to date and let you know about the results!

I hope you found this interesting!