Hi all, hope you’ve had a lovely week, ours has been quite productive.
We finished up the coppicing in Swell Wood on Monday - all that’s left now is to put up the deer fencing to protect any new shoots from being nibbled back. We’ve also spent a lot of time battling bramble as our hedge-laying prep continues. It feels like we’ve done a lot, but the hedge is so thick with bramble that progress is a little slow... I don’t know where all this bramble keeps coming from!
The team also began work on some electric fence repairs around Greylake on Thursday. It’s important we keep them in good condition as they prevent foxes and badgers from predating nesting birds such as lapwing and redshank. There’s a lot to maintain, about three and a half kilometres!
RSPB Staff
It was the Big Garden Birdwatch last weekend too. I set up a birdfeeder over the weekend to coax the locals into the garden and was pleasantly surprised with my tally!
Over the hour I managed to spot:
three great tits,
three blue tits,
two coal tits,
a marsh tit,
two goldfinches,
a robin,
a dunnock,
a woodpigeon,
and a great spotted woodpecker!
I don’t have a particularly good camera but managed to snap these photos by aiming my phone through the lens of my binoculars - harder than it looks! You can tell by the red patch on the back of this great spotted woodpecker’s head that it’s a male, but since then I’ve also seen a female on the feeder.
More work on the Greylake fence, and yes, you guessed it, more hedge work on the agenda for next week. See you then.
Luke