Volunteer Sunday was upon us once again yesterday - March already! It was a glorious, if very blustery morning, but 9 people arrived for a spot of hedge planting and reed panicle collection.
The hedge on the north western boundary of the site was beginning to take shape and 50m were left to plant yesterday. With a team hard at work, the remaining 50m was completed easily. The very northern section of the hedgerow is planned to be finished next winter - so another 100m will be planted up in November, completing the whole length from Westfield lane in the north to the scrubby area west of the Cromwell Trail in the south. When mature, this will be a great corridor for wildlife between the hedges on Westfield Lane and the scrub to the south.
Reed panicle collection is an important late-winter job here at Langford. Panicles are the fluffy seed heads that develop on the top of reed stems and each one can bear hundreds of individual seeds. We harvest around 5 bin bags full of these per year for propagation in our polytunnel in the spring and summer months - the reed from which either gets planted out here at Langford or sold to other reedbed creation projects. Our team yesterday harvested a whole bin full of panicles, which will last us throughout the whole growing season this year.
The pair of oystercatchers entertained us at lunchtime, flying noisily back and forth from the reserve over to the Trent, great crested grebes were displaying on Phase 1 and water rails were squealing away on Phase 2.
Thanks to all for another great effort and a very enjoyable day.
Reed panicles perfect for harvesting on Phase 1. Ben Hall (rspb-images.com)