Last Thursday was our first volunteer task without Ali and it was back to pulling ragwort. Katherine had us all organised for what we hoped might be the final push to finish off clearing the fields on Cowles Drove. Helping us were Darren, David M, Rob and Roger. After all the heavy rain, the fields were holding quite a lot of water. I flushed two common snipe as I walked across the field collecting up a few ragwort plants we had missed during previous sessions.
For some reason, the ragwort plants on the Norfolk side of the river seem to grow much larger than the ones in the Suffolk section of the reserve. They can’t be pulled by hand alone so we were all using garden forks or ‘lazy-dog’ tools to help lever them out of the ground. As a result of these large plants, we quickly filled up the trailer and Katherine went off to dump them back at the yard. We can’t leave them lying around on the grazed fields as whilst cattle, sheep and horses won’t eat the plants when they are alive, they will when the plants are dead. Horses are particularly at risk especially when ragwort gets into hay bales.
Here is the "ragwort mountain" in the staff cart park, which is gradually getting larger and larger!:
Image credit: Dave Rogers
Whilst Katherine was away, Rob found a new moth for the reserve, a tawny wave. This is a Brecks specialist so it is right on the border of its patch.
Here is a picture of one that Katherine took in her garden a couple of years ago:
Image credit: Katherine Puttick
After a solid mornings pulling ragwort and three more full truck and trailer loads, rain stopped play. We had cleared up all we had pulled and dodged most of a massive thunder storm. Fortunately, it passed just to the north of us! We didn’t quite finish removing all the ragwort so we will be back out next week with our trusty volunteers to pull what is left.
Elsewhere on the reserve, we have been out with the mower, hand shears and brushcutters in order to keep the paths cut. Our grazier has also moved more cattle on to the riverbank. With all the rain and continued warm weather, the grass is still growing strongly. We still have more cutting at the viewpoints and at Mere Hide. I did a little reed cutting at the hide to improve the view of the kingfisher perches. The kingfishers have been showing very well with up to three birds present around the hide pools today.
Here is a picture that I took from Mere Hide recently:
We hope to see you soon!