Toys for the boys and camera shy cranes

Apologies, it has been a while since we last did a management blog so here are a few things that we have been up to in the last few weeks.

Katherine, Emma, the Thursday volunteer team and I have been pulling ragwort - it is that time of year again.  It is a great nectar source for insects and is home to a few specialist species but it is also toxic to many grazing animals so we try to keep it in check in the grazed parts of the reserve, particularly those where our grazier takes a hay crop.  In the past couple of years we have pulled up a lot of ragwort plants by hand and Joist Fen South and Humphrey's Paddock definitely have fewer plants in this year.  New Fen South however has looked like a field of oilseed so we are planning some different tactics for next year.  There is plenty of ragwort elsewhere on the reserve for the insects however!

Last week we trialed some new cutting machinery.  Wetland reserves can generate lots of unwanted vegetation as part of their essential management.  Last winter we cut and burnt around 5 hectares of reed as part of key rejuvenation work to the reedbed in New Fen North.  Ideally we would have liked to have turned that cut reed into something useful like a bio-fuel.  The RSPB and other conservation bodies have been working with the old Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) for the last three years to just such a scheme,developing methods to harvest, process and use such material.  At Lakenheath Fen in addition to the reed cutting we currently have a number of fields that have significant amounts of soft rush in them.  Small amounts of rush provide a varied structure to wet grassland and some cover for ground nesting birds but large amounts make the habitat unsuitable for a wide range of key species like waders. So as part of a trial also involving the Ouse Washes we had two specialist tracked cutting machines in to cut the rush off.

The Pisten Bully (left) cutting and blowing the cut rush into the Softrak (right)

These machines can work in very wet conditions and the Pisten Bully came fitted with a special harvesting cutter which chopped up the cut rush into small, regular sized pieces suitable for sending to an anaerobic digestion (AD) plant.

Having both machines working like this allowed the Pisten Bully to keep cutting for longer before it needed to be unloaded

Many farmers are installing these AD plants to generate methane and electricity and having a number of them located close to the reserve means low transport costs for us in moving the cut material.  The AD plant liked the look of the material and are now feeding into their machinery.  So in future they may pay us for it.  This would mean we can offset much or all of the costs of doing the management we need to do to maintain our habitats in tip top condition.  We are also looking at possibly feeding some of our cut reed as well so if this works we may be able to manage both our reedbeds and our wet grasslands for wildlife in a more efficient, economical and environmentally friendly fashion.

The cut material piled up and loaded onto trailers ready for transport to the anaerobic digester. 

To celebrate another very successful breeding season by our two crane pairs we put out a press release at the beginning of the week.  As a result on Wednesday I did a live interview on the BBC Radio Cambridgeshire breakfast show, followed by TV interviews for Cambridge TV and BBC Look East.  The news was also picked up by a number of local and national newspapers.   One of the crane families was obliging for the Cambridge TV cameraman but despite the BBC bringing two large, expensive cameras and a big telephoto lens we couldn't find the cranes when they were filming so they had to rely on some of the footage we had shot on our little £250 trail camera.  Both crane pairs are still present on the reserve at the moment which is interesting as in the last few years they have tended to start feeding in the wider Fens from mid August onwards.  Joist Fen viewpoint remains the best place to see them from, though if you are travelling on the train between Ely and Norwich do keep a look out as you go past the reserve as both pairs seem to like the grass bank near the railway.  We have a number of short video clips from the trail cameras showing close up views of the crane families which we are showing on the computer in the Visitor Centre so do pop in and take a look at our TV stars in close up as well as seeing all the other wildlife the reserve has to offer at this time of the year.

We hope to see you soon.

Dave Rogers

Site Manager