Carrying on from last week’s blog, planting of our raised plant beds outside the visitor centre continues. They are already drawing the attention of our visitors and it’s great to see people wandering over to take a look at the developments.
Last Thursday the Wildlife Friendly Gardening bed outside the office window was finally planted up. Suzanne and volunteer Janet did a grand job of this, supervised by Linda Sills who kindly donated the plants for this bed and some for the Brecks bed.
Photo credit: Ali Blaney – Suzanne and Janet finishing off the Wildlife Friendly Gardening bed
Even though the plants are small at the moment and only a couple, such as fumitory are in flower, straight away it looks amazing! The artistically placed logs that are filling temporary gaps will provide extra homes for the insects, which will be attracted to the area by the plants and flowers. We can’t wait to watch this bed develop.
Yesterday we were joined by Pete and Sally from Cambridge University Botanic Garden, who brought us an amazing selection of Breckland plants as a kind donation for our Brecks bed. They also planted them for us in the best way for each species and gave us some information about looking after them. It’s fantastic that our ‘sand pit’ finally has some plants in it too. The wind has been blowing the sand into some nice dune shapes and these dunes now have some vegetation. Some of the plants are teeny tiny at the moment so you’ll have to look hard for those but don’t worry, we’re working on interpretation to go with the beds and each species (although not each individual plant) has a label.
Photo credit: Ali Blaney – Lakenheath Fen Breckland sand dunes taking shape
Katherine and Suzanne have been busy collecting plants from the Botany Bay area of our reserve (right down the western end, accessible via the riverbank) and transplanting them into the fen / bog bed, alongside some from Brandon Fen (eastern end of the reserve). Pride of place in the middle at the moment is a beautiful marsh marigold, already in flower. I would have included a photo of it but as it’s right in the middle, I couldn’t reach it! I did try, by perching precariously on the side of the bed and leaning in, but I could feel the eyes of volunteers John and Nigel on me from the visitor centre, just waiting for me to splat into the bog so I gave up before that actually happened, much to their disappointment I’m sure!
Before planting started last Thursday, the day began with our first 'booming bittern' survey of the year, which I mentioned in last weeks blog. If you've never heard a booming bittern, imagine the sound of someone blowing a jug - it's kind of like that! If you follow the bittern link there is an audio file you can listen to but the booming is very quiet. Maybe I'll try and record a better boom tomorrow morning. So far, the news is that we have at least four booming males but most likely more - we're back listening tomorrow to try and make better sense of it all....don't forget these bitterns can move locations while we are listening! We all recorded hearing bearded tits 'pinging' away in the reeds as well as numerous Cetti's warblers - they seem to be everywhere. After the survey last week and while planting was underway with Suzanne, volunteer Janet and Linda, our other volunteers worked hard to complete a list of ‘odd jobs’ that needed doing around the visitor centre. This included a bit more path work with limestone dust, fixing some signage and transplanting some brambles and hawthorns to discourage use of an unofficial trail over our earthworks. Odd jobs are often quite satisfying to do, especially when you get to tick them off a list (or maybe that’s just me!).
Volunteer Robert popped in yesterday and started building our fish refuges. We'll be carrying on with these tomorrow no doubt and I'll include a photo next week. These will be sunk into the water at various locations around the reserve to provide hiding places for our smaller fish to try and protect the fish stocks a bit more. We know for a fact that we have some pretty large pike in the ditches and pools here as well as otters and cormorants, all of whom can get a bit greedy when it comes to fishing. They can always pop over the bank and feed in the river Little Ouse. Adding some extra coverage for our smaller fish will help maintain the population in the reedbeds themselves a bit better. We also plan to build a floating vegetation raft for one of the pools in front of Mere Hide - we'll see what is attracted to it as a bit of a test. A busy day for us and our volunteers tomorrow then!