“Ah good morning Mrs Fox!” are the words I said when the fox turned and looked at me with a mouthful of seed. This was at the feeding station when I first went round to take the feeders down so I could refill them.
The fox was waiting until I had finished filling up the feeders and then it went back to taking the bird food I’d just replaced. The foxes breeding season is at a height now, sometime in the next month the vixen will mate and soon become pregnant. This is when you will see the foxes easily around the reserve because the vixen will be feeding up on as many mice, voles, berries and seeds that it can take because their pregnancy will take place within the next few months.
On Tuesday the work party had the task of digging a trench. The reason to do this is due to the water not draining out of the playground properly. The water has not moved as it was hoped after the wet winter so far, it has failed up to now. Our job was to start the work on Tuesday; the job is to create a new drainage trench in order for us to place a new pipe in. It will encourage the water out of the playground and into one of the water channels.
We dug throughout the day to create a trench in very messy mud; No one finished the work without covering their wellies and trousers in the clay mud. The work will continue later this week.
- Josh McGowan