Now that it’s Autumn (well, it feels more like winter today...), the practical work parties have started up on the Mainland reserves again. The group is made up of a number of local volunteers who give up their time to help the RSPB. As well as a few stalwarts we have a number of new faces joining us this season, which is great! To give you an idea how valuable the work parties are to us, the volunteers put in 225 hours work over the 2011/12 Autumn/Winter season. That is 30 days work, an amazing amount of time and effort, which makes a big difference to what we can achieve on the reserves up here. Thank you!
We were sad to see one of our most regular volunteers leave Orkney this summer, Ian Bell, as he has been an amazing help to us over the last few years with all the efforts he put in on the reserves. However, we wish him well in his next move and hope he can be as useful to his new local RSPB reserve – Saltholme.
This year we kicked off the season with a visit to The Loons, to give the hide and railings their annual paint, renew the anti-slip netting on the ramp and weave in the willow hurdle. Mark and David also managed to repair part of the retaining stone wall that backs the storm beach at Marwick Bay. It was damaged in last year’s storms.
Paul and Izzy removing wire from in amongst vegetation, photo: Lorna Dow
This week we popped over to Mill Dam reserve on Shapinsay to remove an old fence which is being replaced by a contractor soon. It turned out to be a fantastic day and a number of us were regretting wearing thermals! The fence we were removing was right beside a bird crop, which a female hen harrier was visiting regularly through the day for the 120 twite that are already feeding on it. We didn’t complete the job, so we are making a return trip next week to finish and hopefully I won’t get the Landrover stuck this time......