It’s been a strange couple of weeks here at Lakenheath Fen – lots of meetings and training courses, we’ve been passing each other like ships in the night almost!
We have managed to do some practical work though over the past five days. Work continues on the raised plant beds - Dave has again been doing most of the heavy lifting, I found time to pop out to do some drilling and sawing (once all the very heavy sleepers had been carried through and positioned....) The ‘pond’ bed needs one more layer before it’s ready for its liner, then we’ll commence work on the third bed.
Dave went wading in the pond dipping pool yesterday morning and used the underwater brushcutter to give that area a bit of a tidy up. The water levels are still low enough to allow for wading rather than a boat! It’s been raked and looks nice and open again now – the reeds spring up as soon as your back is turned it seems. We’re planning on doing a bit more work in this area over the winter, including tasks such as raising the platform level to cope with higher water levels – it’s an area to keep your eye on for sure.
Yesterday afternoon Dave and I went out into Brandon Fen with the brushcutters to do a bit of work around our scrapes. Last winter a few more scrapes and rills were created in Brandon Fen, to try and attract in those waders. While some cattle have been in the grazing marsh over the summer months they haven’t been able to keep up with the vegetation growth in certain areas so we went out to give them a helping hand. The area will be topped soon by our grazier but he won’t be able to get his tractor to all the scrape areas, so it’s up to us with our trusty brushcutters to go and tackle these. We’ve started getting a bit of water moving in the direction of Brandon Fen so it'll be great to see the scrapes getting a bit wetter and muddier - and hopefully birdier (is that a word?? It is now!) We did flush a snipe out of the grazing marsh as we made our way across, so that's a good start!
Finally, we've all been putting a bit of effort into preparation for our Race for Wildlife fun run, that David mentioned in his blog. Whether it's been promotion, ferrying items around for the goody bags, preparing the goody bags or preparing signage, many of us have been hard at work getting things ready for what promises to be a great event. If you fancy the challenge of walking, jogging or running any of our three courses (2k, 5k and 10k) be sure to enter up front using the registration form below. You can email the completed form to and ask any questions via our email address: lakenheath@rspb.org.uk
Photo credit: Anglian Newspapers