This week we have been all over Devon at our other reserves visiting Chapel Wood in North Devon, and Labrador Bay in South Devon as well as the Exe Estuary Reserves. We also passed Isley Marsh which the RSPB owns on the Taw Torridge Estuary near Barnstaple, although no management is undertaken as the site consists of saltmarsh and mudflats. This site is very valuable for resting and feeding wetland birds.
We went to Chapel Wood (a small site consisting of broadleaved woodland, and the site of remains of Spreacombe chapel and a scheduled ancient monument) on Wednesday to check all of the bird boxes that were put up a while ago, hopefully we didn’t miss any! We replaced a few that were in a bad state and installed some additional ones as the birds would benefit from some more. A few small trees were felled and we had a look at a few others that might need to be felled.
During the rest of the week, we have been clearing more scrub on a field on the Exminster Marshes to prevent it from spreading and to improve the habitat for Lapwings by opening up the landscape.
Today we’ll be checking our visitor counters dotted around the Exe Estuary reserves, checking the water levels and burning vegetation left over from last Thursday’s hedgelaying.
Thanks for reading, we’ll have more news next week :-).
Mark