The wet weather hasn’t stopped the team this month. Water levels have come up an astonishing 55cm on Burrowes Pit in a very short space of time. This has played merry hell with the track and in spite of repairs in November, further repair works will be undertaken in December.
The have now paused the island clearance work on Burrowes Pit having cleared a good 50% of the islands of vegetation. With wintering bird populations starting to congregate, we are trying to reduce disturbance on the lakes where possible, which makes the island clearance a bit awkward! We have also been working on installing a fence on the small grazing compartment at ARC adjacent to the track to Hanson to enable more secure sheep grazing, this has been electric fencing over the past two winters, but we wanted something a little more secure to prevent the sheep escaping!
Other tasks include the mowing of the shingle compartments alongside the main access track to the visitor centre and the discovery area to reduce the amount of bramble from dominating these areas. We have also widened the Discovery trail at its entrance from the bridleway as the blackthorn had been encroaching quite rapidly. In relation to infrastructure, Dengemarsh Hide has had significant guttering repair undertaken.
We have had a long reach excavator on site for most of last week and half undertaking routine ditch management, this is the desilting of c.10m of ditch to clear out the vegetation. This clearance resets the habitat, providing opportunities for early colonists species, improves water flow and reduces the chances of the ditches drying out. The excavator has been linking up new foot drains in flood field with Dengemarsh by creating spillways to allow the lake to overtop when full into the field, this will hopefully keep the field wetter, reducing the amount of pumping we need to do to keep it in good condition.
As well as this we have been working on plans to improve our water control capacity within the grassland fields, these are regulated by an agricultural ditch known as the Dengemarsh Sewer. We have some old structures in need of repair and whilst we work on this, we have installed temporary dams to prevent all of the water escaping from the reserve into the Dengemarsh sewer, holding the levels higher which should help us keep the Boulderwall fields in good condition for breeding and overwintering waders. The excavator is finally scraping the crassula off of the damp sand at the south end of ARC for the benefit of Jersey Cudweed with this area being the stronghold for the species on the reserve, although it is now becoming increasingly widespread thanks to the efforts of the team clearing marginal habitats in recent years. The cattle have now all left the reserve for winter holdings and next week the sheep will be heading out on the shingle to graze the rank grasses and vegetation around the reserve to provide the opportunities for our wildflowers to flourish.
Our volunteer surveyors have been out on site helping with snap wildfowl counts around the reserve, this helps to provide a bigger picture of what is happening on the reserve and helps to reduce chance events on dates when our nationally coordinated wetland bird survey counts affecting the important peak numbers of species seen here each winter.
Come and see the reserve for yourself, and see the hard work going into conserving our wildlife! We are open daily 10am-4pm.