Saturday brought sunshine and cranes back to Lakenheath Fen. Both our resident pairs were seen on the reserve yesterday with Little and Large plus their chick sighted in the New Fen area and flying over the reserve to feed south of the railway line. Pair A2 and their twins were seen further down the reserve from Joist Fen viewpoint. The cranes return to the reserve at this time of year to re-establish their breeding territories and soon the young cranes, who have been looked after diligently by their parents for the last 9 months, will be chased away as mum and dad get ready for the new breeding season. Having roamed across the Fens for the last 5 months and mixed in with other cranes on their travels, last years youngsters should be well prepared for life away from Lakenheath. Hopefully our youngsters will stay around in the Fens and in 2 or 3 years time find a mate and settle down to breed somewhere nearby.
Image credit Warren Etherington
Other sightings yesterday included a bittern seen walking around the pool at the Visitor Centre, bitterns were also spotted further down the reserve. We also had a water rail on the Visitor Centre pool. On the feeders we had a our usual good selection of birds but we had nice sightings of siskin and brambling with a lovely male being seen in the afternoon. Redpoll, fieldfare and redwing were seen in the woodland around Brandon Fen. There was also a peregrine seen perched in West Wood. As Emma mentioned in her last blog the great white egrets are showing well and are best seen from the river bank. If you do venture up onto the riverbank footpath wear wellies or good walking boots as it is very muddy up there.
As I write this blog on Sunday morning Andrew and John have just spotted a barn owl hunting between the Visitor Centre and the car park.
Image credit - Matt Walton
On the management front, the reed cutting is now complete for this year. Last week Katherine organised a number of work parties to complete the burning up of the cut reed in New Fen North. We had help from our regular volunteers, Americans from the local bases and an afternoon of work from the other RSPB wardens from Fen Drayton, the Lodge, Nene Washes, Ouse Fen and Ouse Washes who were over for a training day. Very many thanks to everyone who helped out with reed cutting and burning during December and January. We achieved what we set out to do and it was the largest area we have ever cut here at Lakenheath.
This week Emma and Katherine took the work party out willow cutting and with the help of Rob, Roger, Dave M, Tony and Nigel they removed a large number of trees around the site.
Finally this week the excavator arrived to undertake a series of works to improve the movement of fish around the reserve. We know from survey work that the fish populations are quite patchy across the reserve. Places like New Fen North and the pools in front of Mere Hide and Joist Fen viewpoint have really good populations of fish. However elsewhere fish are not numerous or are absent. Fish are an important food source for many of our key species so we are working to replace some sluices with more fish friendly structures as well as linking up water bodies all to allow our fish to move around the reserve more easily and colonise areas where they are currently not present. Here is the excavator cleaning out and enlarging the key water carrier ditch along the north side of the West Wood.
Image credit - Dave Rogers
The digger will be with us for another 2 or 3 weeks and we hope that these works will make a real difference to our fish.
We hope to see you soon.
Dave Rogers
Site Manager
David Rogers Senior Site Manager - Lakenheath Fen