Hello everyone!

This is my first blog entry as one of the new residential volunteers of the Exminster team. After two weeks working on the reserve I am beginning to find my feet, though they still disappear into the occasional ditch. My city-soft hands are getting used to the grip of a shovel; however, I’d say the ground is still winning. And the myriad of unfamiliar species of wildlife is becoming slightly less baffling…

Two weeks ago I was sat in an air-conditioned office, 31 floors up and looking out over London. My working day consisted of spreadsheets, presentations and project plans. Not to mention a four hour daily commute, a sardine simulator known as the London Underground at rush hour and of course a 10 minute wait in the queue for the elevator to get to my desk.

How things have changed! For the next six months I am a residential…

Hello from Exminster,

Firstly welcome to the reserve to our new residential volunteers Laura and Phill, whom you will hear from on this blog over the coming weeks. There have been other new arrivals too with more Lapwing chicks hatching since last week, along with mallard chicks and Canada geese chicks. That’s just within the predator fence on Powderham Marsh.

As the spring progresses the grass grows ever longer…

Happy May everyone!

There’s good news to report this week as eight little lapwing chicks have been spotted on Powderham, as of Wednesday. We will be keeping an eye on them and the other nests closely over the next few weeks as more chicks begin to hatch and then fledge, we can determine how successful breeding has been. We will keep you posted on any developments. You’ll need a scope, or a very good set of binoculars…

Hello everyone, Mark here again to update you on what is happening in the Exe Estuary :-). This is my final blog post as I am finishing next Wednesday, and two new residential volunteers will take my place shortly afterwards.

This week at Exminster, we have undertaken a breeding bird survey on Exminster Marshes and on the Powderham side of the reserve, and have continued to monitor the Lapwing.

We have also continued…

Hello, Mark here again :-)

This week on the reserves, we have been doing a variety of tasks.

We are continuing the Lapwing monitoring on Exminster and Powderham. There seem to be quite a few pairs of birds on the Powderham side, but they are a little undecided on Exminster. Hopefully they’ll settle down soon so we can get some good numbers.

Illustration of a Lapwing (RSPB images)

 

We have also undertaken…

Hello from the Exe Estuary Reserves, Mark here to update you :-).

This week we have been doing various bits and bobs, including a day at Aylesbeare Common.

We spent Tuesday at Aylesbeare Common, where we walked along the fence line on the outside of the reserve to check for any problems such as fallen trees, broken wire and wobbly posts. It also gave us a nice tour around the reserve. During the afternoon, we cleared…

Hello from the Exe Estuary Reserves :-). Mark here to update you :-).

We have been pretty busy this week and last week, mainly working on our workshop and monitoring the Lapwing as we are leaving the reserves undisturbed as much as possible during the breeding season.

We have almost finished the wooden cladding on our shipping container which was part of the planning application. We have also moved some materials…

This week has been a week of general housekeeping, or Spring Cleaning, on Exminster Reserve, continuing working on our new workshop, removing unwanted wood and waste from our store area and preparing for the installation of Palisade fencing around it. Work has also been carried out cutting back and removing invasive Tamarisk, which usually resides in more arid parts of Europe, from the seawall at Bowling Green Marsh.

…

Greetings from the Exe Estuary!

We’ve been busy again this week, finishing the hedging behind Tobys on Powderham reserve, with the help of Chris our Monday day volunteer. We helped out the Aylesbeare team in creating habitat for butterflies in woodland, something a bit different for us. We finished, for this season at least, removing sycamore trees from Bowling Green Marsh. Whilst there we also painted the ceiling of…

Hello again from the Exe Estuary, Mark here :-)

This week we have been to various places doing various things. On Monday, we finished tidying up the area next to the path leading to the viewing platform at Bowling Green Marsh, where we have cleared scrub next to a ditch. The ditch will be slubbed in the autumn to remove a lot of sediment and other debris, and hopefully the ditch will look cleaner and be able to support…

Hi there!

This week has been another very busy week here at Exe Estuary Reserves.

We have started the week carrying out a High Tide Bird Counts under a very weird weather conditions, alternating sun, rain and snow! Although it is still present a substantial number of species you may notice a decrease in their amount. This is a signal that spring is just around the corner and our birds are starting to leave the reserves…

Its been another busy week for us volunteers, and staff, at Exminster Marshes, working at four locations in one week. The week began at Labrador Bay, with more scrub clearance. We’re almost done now and it will soon be time to let the sheep and ponies take over the job, who are better suited to the steep slopes than we are! There are also trails that are perfectly suited for a Sunday afternoon stroll and provide a great…

Greetings from the Exe Estuary Reserves. I moved down to Devon to start as an RSPB residential volunteer two weeks ago and I’ve already had the opportunity to work in five different locations all over Devon. As mentioned last week we went to Chapel Wood and Labrador Bay. This week we have focused our efforts on Bowling Green Marsh, near Topsham. The ditches around the site are in need of some attention, having become…

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…

Hi everybody!

How’s it going? Hope everything is fine!

This week we have carried out two different bird surveys. Monday it was the turn of our monthly High Tide bird counts. On our reserves are still plenty of wetland birds, with the presence of two Egyptian geese on Goosemoor.

Tuesday we conducted a farmland bird survey on Powderham Marshes. Of note were the presence of a big flock of about 75 Chaffinches and…

Hello from the Exe Estuary J. This week during the Thursday work party, we started to lay a hedge on the Powderham Reserve, along the footpath behind the Swan’s Nest pub. We used wooden stakes which were made from material removed from an area of scrub that we cleared near the viewing platform. Steve Elcoate, one of our regular Thursday work party volunteers, has kindly provided some photos of the work that was undertaken…

Hello again from Exe Estuary reserves.

This week we have spent the first three weekdays working at Powderham where we have cut some trees and shrubs in order to further open the landscape up. This helps breeding lapwing, which need an open area to build the nest. Moreover we have made some bonfires to burn all the cuttings. To be honest we have started to make bonfire much more quickly than before, probably thanks to…

 

Happy New Year! And after a relaxing festive break it is good to get back out on the reserves to see what has changed, water levels over the marshes are looking good and this is reflected the large flocks of ducks, geese and waders feeding and roosting during high tides.

Work across the reserves is now back in full swing. Our electric predator exclusion fences were switched off over Christmas in case of flooding…

Hello from Exe Estuary reserves, today is Friday again..... it’s amazing how fast time flies when you do something that you enjoy!

Last Monday we went to work at the RPSB’s Greylake reserve in Somerset. This reserve is wet grassland similar to Exminster marshes and they needed a hand to finish off an electric fence. It is quite important to conclude this fence as soon as possible because Lapwings and Redshanks…

Hi there! How’s it going?

In this first week of December I attended to the Quad bike training on Monday and First Aid training on Thursday.

 

For the first time I’ve ridden a quad bike and to be honest it was great! Although I’ve never ridden a quad bike before I immediately felt at ease in the saddle. We tried a lot of different things such as going up and down hills, riding through very deep ruts, slaloms and…

Hi there! This is my first blog after two months of volunteering in Exe Estuary Reserve. Before I was volunteering with the Ulster Wildlife in Northern Ireland and it was there that started my passion for ornithology. I thought this would be a great opportunity to improve bird identification skills and knowledge about their habitat, so far I’ve really enjoy my work and learnt a lot of things about wetland area management…

It’s Friday again so that means another blog post :-)

I thought I’d tell you about what we have been up to during the past week, to give you an idea of what we get up to day to day. A couple of weeks ago we spent a day working at Labrador Bay to improve access to the coast path by clearing vegetation from the paths and installing a new post for a kissing gate. This week we continued this work and are pleased to say…

Hello again from Exminster Marshes! I am a new volunteer here, helping to look after the reserves for the next five months. I am enjoying the work here so far, and should gain useful experience. Previously, I was volunteering with the National Trust in North Devon, based at Hartland (near Bideford) after completing my degree in Conservation. Work mainly involved maintaining public access on the South West Coast Path…

On Monday this week, we were coming back through the fields on Powderham marsh, and one of us spotted a Barn Owl flying.

Barn Owl: By Kristina Servant [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons