After narrowly surviving a savage attack by a vicious Oxfordshire wild cat...
... I ventured down to the reserve to do some weed wiping. Weed wiping isn’t the most exciting way to spend a day but it’s an important and effective method for reducing the amount of rush we have on the reserve. Some rush is good, providing cover for snipe, nesting areas for reed buntings and can be good for invertebrates, but as with most things when you’re managing a relatively small area of precious habitat it’s all about balance and so we don’t want too much rush dominating the grassland fields. Large areas of rush aren’t good for lapwing and redshank and so once again I headed out to wipe the relatively safe and biodegradeable herbicide; glyphosate, onto the main rush areas. The weed wiper trails behind the ATV and basically paints the glyphosate onto the rush using a big brush. The rush tends to stand taller than surrounding vegetation so we can set the brush height so it just makes contact with the rush.
After 6 hours of weedwiping on the Malt Pit field, crawling around at 5km/h, I thought it was time for a bit of excitement so went grass snake hunting. I did pretty well and managed to track down 3 of these impressive reptiles hanging out together. The flash went off as I took the photo but you can still see it was an magnificent pile of snakes.
Lots of swallows and martins were passing through the reserve, with a mixed flock of about 200 feeding over Malt Pit and coming down to drink water in flight from the scrapes. Meadow pipits and skylarks were also very noticeable. A couple of snipe flushed up from the Malt Pit lagoon, a kingfisher was on the reedbed, lots of teal were loafing around and a stonechat perched on a fence post near the Wetlands Watch hide.