Late June saw me off to the RSPB reserve at Inch Marsh for a very interesting course in the art of rope dragging for Snipe it sounds simple but dragging a 50m rope through dense rush is challenging while monitoring what is being disturbed. The following week the volunteers and I managed to do this exercise across the 98 hectares of wet grassland at the Crook with interesting results unfortunately no evidence of breeding snipe but on lagoon 5 we managed to count 17 birds feeding in a small area of wet margin where I had only seen two the day before and on field 3 4 birds feeding in the wet margin in the ditchway.
The rope never gets near the bird as the rustle of the rope on the vegetation makes for a safe escape by the bird and because of the speed we are working at the nest is not left for too long by the parents another factor is that the chances of treading on a nest when looking for breeding birds is greatly reduced as each transect is fifty meters wide.
We have to monitor breeding birds on the reserve however some are more difficult than others also the exercise enables us to make a more informed management decision about agricultural operations in sensitive areas of the reserve. As it was evident that a number of birds were using the lagoons we have still not cut the lagoons in field 1 and 5 and will rope drag around mid-August to see if we have any late breeding attempts which snipe are liable to do. It is with those results we will make a decision about cutting at that point.
July was a quiet month as both human and wildlife mainly sheltered from the Sun and high temperatures rather from the usual rain for a change. However, work carried on with rush being cut and bailed for bedding by a local farmer this gives us an opportunity to control the rush this late August early September by weed wiper.
Our control of rush is a major factor with the our breeding lapwing project as you may know lapwings like open areas to nest were they have a good line of sight so a short sward is a paramount for distant views. The also prefer wet grassland were their precocial young can find food within a short space of time after hatching so wet grassland is ideal. Unfortunately, it grows rush as well.
Our volunteers besides the rope dragging and fence repairs have helped harvest large amounts of yellow rattle seed which has now been sown by them on the islands and around lagoon 1 to slow the grass growth down.
Both Yellow Rattle (Rhinanthus minor) and Red Bartsia (Odontites vernus) seem to like our soil and the native grasses we have on the Crook, for both plants are native to the UK and semi parasitic on grasses both also form great scuttling hiding places for chicks were they might feed with some cover. The Red Bartsia is self-sown or more likely from the seed bank in our disturbed soil from when we dug the lagoon however the Yellow Rattle has come in when we sowed the wildflower meadow in 2016 and has proliferated.
Out on the saltmarsh our changes to the grazing is numbers is allowing plants that we have not recorded for many years. A small numbers of Lax Flowered Sea-lavender Limonium humile and a single plant of sea purslane Halimione portulacoides which so I am told has not been recorded this far west on the Solway since the 1970's. The Crook of Baldoon was pleased to welcome two botanical groups to the reserve this past month which discovered these two interesting plants.