As this lovely warm October weather continues, I have just reached my fourth month here at the Exe estuary reserve. The ground is getting wetter and wetter, and huge numbers of birds are starting to move in for the winter. We are moving onto different kinds of jobs. One is attending to the pumps, sluices and syphons to gradually raise the levels in the ditches. Another is scrub clearance. Big blocks of brambles have built up round the edges of some of the fields on Exminster and Powderham marshes. Left by itself it would gradually spread inwards, so we have started to cut it back.
After a break over the summer, we carried out the first of our monthly bird counts on the reserve. This spans all of Exminster Marsh, Powderham Marsh, Bowling Green Marsh, and Goosemoor. Over the past few weeks water levels on the reserve rose very quickly with the ground becoming very squidgy. At Exminster we are starting to see the return of large flocks of Canada Geese, and Lapwing.
"Goose-flying" by Mcanbolat - Own work. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
"Black-tailed Godwit Uferschnepfe" by Andreas Trepte - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.