Thanks to volunteer Gary for his report and photos.
It was much warmer than I expected, so I shed a few layers before setting off today. It was so warm a dragonfly and peacock butterfly were seen – amazing for mid-November. It was nice to see that the recent rain has put some water back in front of West Mead and the efforts of the wardens have been successful in wetting parts of the South Brooks. The peregrine fodder, sorry wigeon and lapwing numbers are rising nicely with at least 2,500 wigeon and 1,600 lapwing present. There could easily be more in hidden dips and hollows. It was quite noticeable that the goose numbers are down with only 250 canadas and I didn’t see one greylag at all! Two peregrines are intermittently ranging over the North and South Brooks but the female type marsh harrier favours the South. A red kite, several buzzards, and two kestrels could also be seen on and off.
Snipe are proving difficult to see well at the moment with just a quick break from cover, but the ever reliable green sandpiper at Winpenny is good value. Another volunteer saw about 30 black-tailed godwits but unfortunately I missed them. Roving flocks of tits and crests can be encountered anywhere around the trail and if you are lucky a firecrest may be with them. Redwing, fieldfare, bullfinch, chaffinch and greenfinch are making inroads into the berries on the zigzag so are relatively easy to see at the moment.
Today we christened part of the resurfaced path leading to Nettley's Hide; we are now expecting this sort of respect each time we encounter the working party – some hope!!!
The other incident I won’t even mention …………
This leads me on nicely to a follow up to Gary's report with an update on some of the habitat management taking place at Pulborough Brooks - the digger pulling our hapless truck and warden from a boggy patch was not called out specially for this job!
Having completed some work on Amberley Wildbrooks to help us manage the water levels, the digger and its driver will now be undertaking ditching work on the wet grassland here. The wet grassland is criss-crossed with ditches, linking pools and scrapes to the river and allowing us to move water around the site and manage levels and habitats for our breeding waders and wintering wildfowl. Over time, silt accumulates in the ditches and vegetation starts to choke them up preventing the effective movement of water. With some very special aquatic plants and invertebrates on the site, maintaining these ditches is an important job that is done on rotation; at all times you need a mixture of vegetated and open ditches to provide the right conditions for some of these very special (and fussy!) species.
Normally, this work would have been done a little earlier in the autumn, but as it has been so dry this year, our window for getting the work done has been extended a little so this work will be ongoing for the next couple of weeks whilst it's still dry enough for the vehicles. Whilst the work is being undertaken there may be some disturbance - if you're coming to visit please ask staff in the visitor centre where we'll be working and you can focus your birdwatching efforts in undisturbed areas, or choose to watch some of our habitat management in action.