More progress has been made on the WREN project at Hollesley marshes in the past few weeks, with at least two key milestones being reached.
For the past 5 weeks we have had shingle being delivered by CEMEX in order to create shingle islands for common terns and even possibly sandwich and little terns to breed on. This has been piled into discrete mounds in the middle of the site for spreading at a later date. Last week we were able to spread a 1000 tonnes across the islands.
The idea for these discreet patches within the larger islands came from visits to Holland by reserves ecology; they had noticed that our Dutch colleagues had, had some success in attracting various terns to breed by creating a mosaic of shingle, bare mud and grass islands. We have tried to replicate that in some way here.
There is still around 260 tonnes of shingle to be spread on the islands to finish the effect off. A side issue of this is that the footpath we had to shut to enable smooth delivery of these Lorries is now able to be reopened as of today.
We also had the rotary ditcher in (a new machine bought to create foot drains in wet grasslands) to create the deeper features which add a varied topography to the flat field surface and create micro niches that invertebrates so love and in turn are liked by birds. Unlike a normal digger this machine takes the spoil from the field surface and spreads it thinly across the surface which in turn creates another habitat type for various animals to utilise.
In terms of the overall project, with each passing day more and more of the field surface is being removed, with some 50% of the field surface having now been removed. The contractors (Barry Day and Sons LTD) have recently hired in a dumper to enable more earth to be moved quickly. The bund that surrounds the site is now 75% complete and is really starting to blend into the landscape.
In terms of the future, we have some ambitions to get the rotary ditcher back in to create more features across the rest of the currently unexcavated lagoon but this highly weather dependent and to perhaps rotavate some hay into the meadow to put some organic material into the very heavy clay surface which currently looks unfriendly to invertebrates.
We are looking at a tentative completion date by the end of the month, if not slightly before. I would expect all plant to be off by the end of the month, the sluices to be installed and the water to be starting to be moved in from the nearby feeder ditch. Exciting times indeed.