Well almost December and how time seems to fly at the moment despite the reserve still being closed to visitors. The last few weeks just seem like a blur as the team try to get on top of the work programme which has led to a very busy time for us all. 

Late November sunsets are always very nice

With not writing a blog for a while I seem to have lost my stride a little but hopefully today I can give you a little flavour of what's been happening on the reserve and what and wherefores of the habitat management we've been carrying out. We do miss our visitors but it seems like at the moment tier 3 just isn't going to allow us to welcome you back.

Reed, reed all about it! Well that's what we were up to for a good three weeks, cutting the reedbed in Singleton lagoon for the benefit of our breeding bitterns and bearded tits. Unlike the main reedcut this bit of reed needs a little more finesse in the mosiac and this means we use brushcutters and then in some areas lower the bed of the accumulated reed litter by mowing again. This create lovely wet areas where eels and three-spinned sticklebacks can access and where the bitterns can take advantage. 

Singleton lagoon reedbed after cutting and bed lowering

There were some nice bird highlights as the robin of the reedbed our wintering stonechats followed us around and took advantage of the food we uncovered

We were really working against the clock as we wanted to flood the lagoons on the November tides, which we did but unexpectedly on one of the lowest tides the reserve has ever flooded on and a day after the big tides had finished. Managing tidal a tidal reserve like Blacktoft can really be touch and go when it comes to water, sometimes you get it and sometimes you don't! 

Singleton lagoon reedbed after we'd had a surge tide 

The tide seemed to have an instant effect on the birds with up to six water pipits and snipe taking advantage of the food that was being flushed out! 

Water pipit - this one had been feeding on Marshland lagoon a week earlier

Good too while we were working to find a good number of bearded tit flocks this year, with ten even gritting on our bridge across the ditch one day (there was a little bit of dried motor on it!) . Last winter large flocks were few and far between for some reason but it seems our continued management of the reedbed and a good breeding season has led to a nice surplus of this secretive little marshland sprite. 

And a nice bearded tit soundscape from this morning as I was checking sluices. We are hoping to do a few more soundscapes into the future so listen out for them

One of the obvious things is that there is an awful lot of reed seed this year all across the reedbed, this really helps maintain bearded tit winter survival and is one of the many reasons why we do our reedcutting in the tidal reedbed. 

The reed buntings seem to be really taking advantage of it at the moment with good numbers around site. 

The surge tides and a nip in the temperature has also helped boost wildfowl numbers across site with again our management of the grazing marsh benefiting curlew, wigeon, teal and snipe. Nice to have a couple of male pintail the other day although their tails were not quite grown yet! 

A pair of male pintail-less

Marsh harrier numbers don't seem quite as high as usual but this may be down to the continued lack of voles, there's still been the odd sighting of merlin and hen harrier but its certainly not a raptor year at the moment. But the kestrel has been busy collecting voles after the flood and storing them in Singleton hide, look away if you are squeamish! 

This is how I found them.

There were plenty of fieldfare around for a good time as they stripped the hawthorn berries and they were accompanied by redwings and song thrushes. But notably there seems to have been very few blackbirds this year.

Fieldfares drinking in the car park area

The cooler weather brought in a single colybita chiffchaff this week and certainly the wintering treecreeper is still on site, but most noticeable has been the continued southbound procession of redpoll and siskin with birds over this morning, a remarkable heavy movement of redpoll particularly something which seems to have gone relatively unnoticed apart from by ringers.   

Out on the nearby estuary there has been some excellent numbers of pink-footed geese with a fantastic November count of 27,800 counted for the national pinkfoot census last weekend, 16,100 of which were split between our Reads Island and Whitton Island refuges. As I've said before the pinkfeet need good undisturbed feeding areas in the day and certainly this seems to have got a lot better in recent times, in part accounting for the rise in numbers, but they do also need undisturbed and safe roosts. Nice to see over 5000 additional birds also roosting on Thorne and Hatfield moors, conservation really is about having the habitat on a landscape scale and it take all landowners to play their part, nice to see this happening and not just a co-incidence. 

And this year has also seen one of the heaviest passage of Whooper swans through the site with pleasingly quite a few youngsters mixed in, there were 6 even yesterday going south.

Some nice numbers of both golden plover and lapwing using the sandbars on the river next to the reserve too with at least 9000 goldies and 6000 lapwing at times making for some large whirling flocks. These birds too feed out on the arable farmland mainly at night so as to avoid gulls stealing their worms.

Our refuge down at Reads Island has as usual seen some fantastic numbers with over 5000 dunlin and 3500 teal among the throng of over 23,000 wetland birds on the last WeBS count. 

Back up at Blacktoft some of our management has focused on managing our wildflower meadows and grasslands in a variety of different ways. Many traditional systems graze off the aftermath growth following the hay cut if its dense enough, and we have been doing this down on the farm we now manage alongside grazing off some of our nectar mix that we are just establishing and need to get rid of some of some problematic kale and bristly ox tongue. Its the first time this area of floristically rich river bank has been grazed in living memory and this has been helped with part taking a hay crop of the more accessible areas (the Environment agency flail mow it on the steeper bits) so we will have to see next summer if this new approach is helping to improve it.    

However, I have to admit I do like another approach to meadow management even though it is a little more labour intensive. This is based on one of our better SSSI meadows that we manage for the landowner which has never been grazed at least since the 1960's if at all. In the more fertile areas we just cut and remove the grass/arisings off site, and this really seems to help limit the grass growth very effectively and promotes the wildflowers, the advantage for me is that sheep love to eat herbs (wildflowers) rather than grass at times and can I suspect be a little too heavy handed if grazed too hard across a meadow every year. Some of the orchids that can be wintergreen from November onwards may possibly be affected particularly bee, pyramidal and green-winged. 

Cutting grass with our fingerbar mower, we specifically got this mower as we felt it was less intensive than a drum mower.

 

Grass raking when you get moving on small meadows can be quite quick even with a small team even in the fog. Interesting to note that the grass pile actually set on fire all through its own wet and pressure! Never seen it heat like that other than in bales.

Good too to see both ours and a local estates (which we worked with in the spring) bird friendly seed crops getting the attention of the finches, bunting and sparrows. The key really is to try and get all farmers to deliver 10 to 15% more for wildlife across their farms through better agri-environment schemes and also working in a few new approaches in farming to raise up nestling productivity in field. RSPB hope farm is proving it can be done!

And for something new to me that I've been learning about (yes Site Managers have a lot to keep learning!), grassland fungi. Its been a fantastic year for them this Autumn/early winter and I managed to pick up on this thankfully as we were undertaking some work on the lusher bits of meadow. So why be bothered about waxcaps and other meadow fungi?

Well for starters, they are indictors of old established and ancient meadows, and secondly they are an integral part of what makes our meadows so darn fantastic. Of course they also are part of the rich tapestry of wildlife within these meadows that make them GR8 for wildlife of all kinds not just flowers. And last but not least they look amazing (although don't sometimes taste that nice!) 

Parrot Waxcap

I'd always wondered why I hadn't found many waxcaps in some of our older meadows, well it in part turns out that I was looking at the wrong time, November seems to be one of the better months and of course we don't do a lot of work in the meadows at this time. Some really nice waxcaps as you can see!

Meadow waxcap

Golden waxcap

Probably bitter waxcap but I'm not licking this one again! Couldn't get rid of the taste for two days!!

Snowy waxcap, this one was in the reserve car park

So what else did I learn? Well all sorts in fact, for starters

  • I found that the waxcaps were not in the best wildflower areas, and when I read up on management for waxcaps this is true! Waxcaps tend to be in areas that are not that good for wildflowers.
  • Also that management such as harrowing and any heavy compaction can badly affect waxcaps so now this is written into our management objectives.
  • I also suspect that sheep like to eat any fungus they come across after a discussion with someone about why they hadn't found waxcaps on a nice acid grassland. 
  • And that waxcaps can be quite hard to identify!

But this year was amazing and me and my partner Masha even got chance to look at another local field as we were counting Whitton Island from the Wolds that I'd suspected to be good, and yes it was excellent!   

This one's great, its called slimy waxcap and its like a bit of snot on top of it!

Scarlet waxcap showing the gill colour

 The wider reserve has also been quite nice for fungi this year (particularly then the sheep were taken off the grazing marsh early) here's a few of the more interesting ones to finish on.

White saddle - it looks a bit like cauliflower

Field blewit - apparently good eating. 

Probably pleated or glistening inkcap

And some parachute fungus in the reedbed

Stubble rosegill - one of our larger fungi, they always look nicer in the grassland

And Willow bracket

I'll finish off with another nice sunset picture, this time from my doorstep, the large ash has had a little owl calling from it all Autumn.