Since my last post we have managed to track down and hire an amazing piece of machinery to cut the rush across the reserve.
A fantastic low impact machine. Basically, it is a tractor with tracked wheels that can work on very wet land without marking too much and coping to travel on land that a wheeled tractor would sink in. We hired it for a week and managed to cut 75% of the reserve.
The Picture above shows the cut with the dark areas are uncut and the lighter areas are cut.
We try to cut the rush 3 times a year unfortunately the weather in south west Scotland does not always allows us to cut in January/February which is the prime time just before the breeding season. In fact, in the 8 years we have had the reserve it has only been managed once before in 2011.
And during the first week of February a 16 tonne 360 digger was hired to remove land drainage and change parts of our water control system. Things have quietened down a bit now till we start strimming the islands next week so these are in optimal condition for the breeding season.
Talking of Breeding season, it is not far away now and the Lapwings have already on suitable weather days started to display the duck are pairing up and as we go into dusk most nights the calls are quite load.