Following the Christmas break we were welcomed back to work with a strong storm co-inciding with a period of high tides. This created a fantastic spectacle around the whole estuary with thousands of waders and wildfowl forced off their saltmarsh roosts with hunting harriers and short-eared owls not far behind. But as always with these huge tides comes the clean up. Following on from Blue Planet II and the issues of plastic pollution in the seas gaining political momentum, it was a timely high tide for us to gain some much needed support to help with the tidy up.
It started at Point of Ayr where a group of the voluntary wardens gathered one windy Saturday morning. Here we collected 12 bags of rubbish – mainly plastic – as well as larger items including car tyres and buoys. Two of our volunteers counted over 330 disposable straws between them, as well as far too many small blue plastic inserts from cotton wool buds to count! Having visited the site since then the beach looks much better for having so much rubbish removed but it will need to be repeated after each period of high tides (which happens again later this week - click here for details of our forthcoming high tide events at Parkgate).
Point of Ayr volunteers following the litter pick - Image J Langley
An even bigger task than at Point of Ayr was the unenviable job of clearing Burton Marsh. The scale of this was vast so we organised a public clear up and the response from the local community was brilliant. In just one morning we cleared a huge stretch from Burton Point towards Denhall Quay, with 40 volunteers collecting over 90 bags of mainly plastic bottles as well as over 50 large items of plastic, such as barrels, and 11 car wheels. This would have taken the reserve staff and volunteers much longer so the extra support from the local community was great. We even managed to spot some of the wildlife that call Burton Marsh their home including snipe, marsh harrier, and water shrew. The Parkgate Society also cleared Parkgate Marsh and collected over 70 bags of rubbish making the total number of bags collected from Burton to Parkgate at over 160!
Community volunteer group clearing Burton marsh - Image J. Langley
Final mound of rubbish - Image J. Langley
Another issue of these high tides is the damage caused to the electric fence line surrounding the sheep compounds off Denhall Lane. The main problem for the fence is that large debris knocks out fence posts and tidal vegetation covers the electric wires. It’s always amazing what can be carried by the tide with huge tree stumps being dumped on the fence line. A small team of volunteers and staff set out to remove this vegetation on a typically bleak January day to help our tenant farmer. Compared to the last storm tide in 2014 we came out of this tide with much less damage than expected but it is still an intensive job to be completed.
Other than clearing up after the high tides, the wardening staff have been busy to get the site ready before the breeding season begins. Those that have visited the site recently will have noticed that rank, overgrown areas have been cleared around path edges along the reedbed trail and towards the bunker hide. Our aim for this is to try and increase the plant diversity and break up the dominance of single species to improve the habitat for butterflies and insects. The cuttings have been purposefully left on site to provide a habitat for grass snakes following on from our first confirmed sighting at the reserve last summer. We will continue to survey these areas to see the impact of the management and will hopefully see an improvement in reptile and butterfly numbers.
Areas of rank grass cleared to create a varied habitat for insects and wildflowers. Images J. Langley
The staff at the reserve have also been involved with pollarding ash trees near the steps to Inner Marsh Farm. This is a traditional form of management that is similar to coppicing but higher up the tree. In keeping these trees in a regular pollarding regime it maintains the habitat that ash trees provide whilst maintaining a lower tree height to prevent it becoming an issue for the train lines. This will be carried out on a rotation in future years so will maintain a varied habitat with trees at different stages of regrowth.
The beginning of the year has been great for visitors to really see the spectacle of wildlife on the Dee Estuary. The high tides flushed thousands of wildfowl and waders with several thousand lapwing being counted off Burton Point, bird of prey numbers have been more than impressive again with double figures of marsh harriers roosting on the estuary as well as 2 male and 2 ringtail hen harriers. A recent surprise was a bittern found off Parkgate flying towards Neston last week, and has been spotted a few times since. Wintering whooper swans have been joined by a family party of Bewick swans which can often be seen on the saltmarsh from Burton Point viewpoint or on Bridge Pool first thing in the morning.