Reserve still closed!

Unfortunately the reserve and car park are still not open. The flooding situation is on-going and until the Trent drops the reserve at least will remain closed. Water is no longer coming over the floodbank, but is still pouring in from Slough Dyke. The public footpath from the car park to the Trent was still flooded at the northern end yesterday and Slough Dyke is still blocking the footpath around the Southern boundary.

James Wilkinson took the photo below of two of our newest volunteers checking out the flood damage at the north end of the public footpath...

As soon as water levels permit, we'll be carrying out a full damage assessment and then cracking on with preparing the site for re-opening. There is always a lot of debris and detritus to remove and the visitor trail will need a bit of time to dry out, fences are damaged and the footpath needs a bit of TLC... I'm just hoping we've at least got through the wettest bit of the winter now...

Here are a few comparison photos showing before and after the flooding. All the before photos were taken by volunteer Stuart Carlton.

Just prior to the flooding we carried out the January WeBS count, nothing special but good numbers of wigeon were present and it'll be interesting to see how these figures compare to the February count, scheduled for Valentines Day... Perhaps the most surprising part of the January count was that no swans were recorded?? Maybe they sensed the impending flood and decided to head to higher ground? I've got Langford WeBS records going back to 2012 and this is the first no-swan count.