It has been sometime since we wrote a blog of the comings and goings at Boyton and Hollesley. It has been a very exciting time for the reserve team as the new wetland at Hollesley has exceeded all our expectations. As readers will be aware we finished the creation of the new 18 hectare wetland last October with the predator exclusion fence only being finished in March. During construction we were concerned that the hard dry clay which formed the lagoon bed would take at least a year or two to become rich in invertebrates (wader food). As you can see by this photo how parched and hard the surface was.
However, our concerns were unfounded as this spring on this new wetland has been fantastic. Even as the fence was being built there were avocets and lapwing moving on to the scrape. It really doesn’t take long for species like this to discover and use new sites. To our delight only six months since the diggers left the we had some of our target species nesting.
As I mentioned the numbers have really exceeded our expectations for the first year with 24 pairs of lapwing, 40 pairs of avocet, 7 pairs of redshank, 4 pairs of ringed plover and 2 pairs of yellow wagtail all nesting on the new islands. With the construction of the predator exclusion fence we have ensured that the lagoon remains free from foxes. The scrape has fledged over 40 lapwing chicks, 18 redshank chicks and an amazing 70 avocets chicks! This bodes very well for the future of these species on the lagoon and there is plenty of room for them to breed next year.
Photo: John Richardson
So far we have recorded 23 species of wader on the lagoon with regular sightings of rarer passage migrants.
Aaron, Site Manager