Hello again! It’s been a while and a lot has been happening. My first housemate, Sam, has left to return to university, having enjoyed his time here greatly. I have been joined by a new housemate, Aiden, who has been working on the little tern project for the last few months. I am also now staying on until Christmas. I am very keen to see what the reserve is like during autumn and winter, to see the harrier and corvid roosts, huge geese flocks and starling murmurations. It will also be good for me to experience what it's like working during cold and very wet weather.
This is definitely reed cutting and piling season. Many of the Tuesday and Thursday work parties have been taken up with cutting reed and piling it. It is still a joy to be doing such hard work out in the reeds. We have been joined by bearded tits on many occasions. One of the wardens likes to think they are coming to say thank you for the work we do to retain their habitat. I hope so too. They are a joy to see at this time of year, hopping across the reed tops in flocks of 10 or so birds. We have also got to pile reed at the back edge of reception broad, which was quite strange to see from a different angle. We have also piled some reed around the edges of one of the broads to create small pools that lessen the wave action and encourage more plant growth, shrinking the broad and providing more wet reedbed for the bitterns. This did mean we had to venture over ditches using a ladder and a plank. Trying to carry a forkful of reed over that in a strong breeze, (its basically a sail), can be a little hairy at times. We also piled reed in the shallows of the broad and it was like walking on water, the reed becomes bouncy or floaty to walk on. Aiden may have got a little close to the edge and fallen in on his first day but as they say we live and learn and he hasn’t done it again since.
Out on the floaty reeds - photo credit : Matthew Wilkinson
At some point soon I will get to do a brushcutter course so that I can help with the actual cutting of the reed. So far, I have been tasked with cutting reed using a reciprocating mower. It's quite a beast. As it runs along the uneven reedbed, mowing down reed, you have to try and keep its cutting head low to cut near the bottom of the reed, so there’s a lot of arm strength needed to keep the handles up. There are a few levers to keep track of too that occasionally have to be pulled back and forth to get it going again after a rest and you can use brakes to hold one wheel still while the other turns to perform a pirouette and change direction. You also have to look out for tussocks and other obstacles that you need to cut around to preserve them or, in the case of tree stumps, to preserve the mower.
Sam with the beast of a reciprocating mower.
Wednesday jobs continues every Wednesday and I think we may have turned the corner of the vegetation’s invasion of the footpaths. Nettles and brambles are still growing but definitely less than we saw over the summer where I felt like I would have to be cutting it back 24/7, just finishing one circuit of the reserve, only to begin again at the beginning. Obviously the wardens and work party volunteers also played a big part, using brushcutters and mowers when it threatened to overwhelm the paths and swallow up all who ventured here.
We finished the fen raft spider surveys with surveys at Cantley Marshes, the release site. We spent two work parties with all the volunteers out in pairs surveying sections of ditches. Nearly everyone got to see the spiders. Some with nests and some with spiderlings, as this was the time of the second brood. The results of the survey seem very positive as they have spread quite a lot from the last survey, 2 years ago. Part of the survey involved a standard square that we called a hectad that for us measured 100 metres by 100 metres. Although in some hectads the numbers had decreased, the number of hectads that showed presence of the spiders had increased a lot. So they are doing very well and fingers crossed they spread to the Strumpshaw ditches soon.
Me surveying spiders in my best flowerpot man hat.
I have also been involved in a large signage audit of signs across the mid yare valley reserves and also Sutton Fen and Berney marshes. This has meant I got to visit Sutton Fen for the first time, a reserve not open to the public. I felt very privileged to wander the reserve with the assistant warden, Mick. His knowledge of the habitat and wildlife was fascinating and Sam and I listened intently. As we set off, we were given a walking stick each and it quickly became obvious why. We were glad we wore wellies. We waded through some very deep mud and wet uneven fen and using the stick for support or to check depths was very helpful. I was trying to look around but mostly I had to concentrate where every step was going to go. As Mick was leading we usually knew if it was about to get deep. At one point, while walking through very tall reeds, he talked of an old ditch we should watch out for and a little while later he suddenly seemed to go a lot lower than expected. “I think I have found that old ditch I was talking about“ he uttered from the depths . He showed us a place where a few very rare fen orchid grow and talked with great fondness of his many interactions with the cows they use to graze areas of the fen. Some of our highland cattle do go there in winter so he knew the Mr Men from Surlingham well. We did also find the two signs we had to audit there. After Sutton we headed to Berney marshes where the warden, Jim, showed us around. This again is a beautiful and fascinating place and we were very lucky with the weather. As the public can walk on public footpaths through this reserve there is a lot more signage helping to keep people on the path and providing info about the wildlife they can see.
Sam in the reeds at Sutton and gorgeous Berney marshes.
This month we had the theatre group, Tangled Feet, perform a play by Steve Waters on the reserve and I got to go on a dress/tech rehearsal run the day before they started. It really was wonderful. The play began like the beginning of a guided tour around the nature reserve but as it continued you followed the guide around the reserve and crossed the paths of several people whose life stories gradually develop and are connected. At some points it was quite emotional as you are forced to think about losing all this precious habitat to housing and I personally realised how much I care about this place. At one point walking back at the end I was joined by a cloud of midges and I said to myself “even you, midges, even you “. On the Sunday we did have a power cut and for a while we did not know if the power would come back on in time for the theatre group to charge their equipment between performances. Luckily it did and all the performances went well.
The cast of tangled feet rehearsing with a curious cow audience.
We also had the second episode of the BBC radio play, Song of the reed, recorded on the reserve and it was nice to see the crew again. For this one Sam and I were asked to be background hub bub in a scene and we had to pretend to be slightly disgruntled volunteers unhappy with a sudden change of task.
Sam and I join the cast to be background hub bub for Song of the reeds ep2
On the events side of things Sam and I got to run a moth trap opening event and we helped with a bat night each. The moth trap opening seemed to go very well. We were worried about being able to identify the moths so earlier in the week we had a practice run and we also stood out with the traps the night before the event to see what turned up. By the time it came to the event we had a good idea of the most likely moths we would see. We also had a few interesting moths not in the trap that we temporarily put in some specimen jars to show people, a gypsy moth, an old lady and 2 spectacle moths. We had two traps so we split into two groups and started the opening. Luckily in my group we had two ladies who trapped very often and any that I wasn’t sure of they certainly were. The moth trap is basically a big light on a box and the moths spiral into the light and fall into the box. Once in the box there are cardboard egg holders that they can shelter under and feel safe. When opening each person can take it in turns to carefully take an egg holder and see what’s on it. Once both traps were fully opened the groups mingled to see what each other group had found and then we released them all back into the woodland.
A gypsy moth sits on the finger of an attendee at the event.
The bat night was run by another volunteer, Linsey who is also a member of the Norfolk Bat group. I had to make sure everyone was here by checking names and although we were missing two people for my one, we knew they were on the way. We began by the workshop as there is a colony in the roof that we knew would be heading out for the night so it’s a great place to start. The bat detectors were handed out and everyone was told a bit about how to use them. Lindsay began her opening talk and every now and then a bat would fly out of the workshop or over the group and we would all try to spot it with oohs and aahs and “there!”s. Linsey knew a lot and her talk was fascinating so this was a great start to the night even though there weren’t as many bats coming out of the workshop as we would have expected. Earlier in the year I had counted about 135 coming out over about an hour and this time we had less than 10. I learnt that you can hear the bats zeroing on their prey as they get closer the bats clicks get closer and become a “raspberry” when they reach it. We headed off around the reserve but we did not see or hear many bats on the walk, but there was a mysterious clicking on one frequency that turned out to be a cricket. I was quite excited that the bat detector could pick up more than just bats. It could also pick up mobile phone signals. We returned to the reception view and we did hear and see quite a few bats there, hunting over the water, and even though we reached the end of the walk time, people wanted to stay and carry on listening and as people left and handed in their detectors you could tell they had really enjoyed it and some wanted to get their own detectors.
At the end of this month Aiden and I were charged with taking the salinity readings for Strumpshaw meadows, Cantley and Buckenham marshes and then also Surlingham church marsh and Rockland. We have to constantly monitor water salinity as our reserves depend on it so heavily. There are many plants that could not survive high levels should salt-water flood in from the river Yare. Each day was basically a long walk punctured by occasional crouching over a ditch and sticking the salinity meter into the water and taking a reading. We had maps with each point on and a suggested route. The meadows and marshes can contain random unmapped boggy ditches so the suggested route helps avoid those. They can also contain cows who can be very interested in what people are doing. We had one day covering the Strumpshaw meadows, another at Cantley and Buckenham marshes and a third on the other side of the river measuring Surlingham and Rockland. Surlingham and Rockland sometimes involved wading through very high reeds or ducking through scrub to try and find a ditch, but with careful map reading and some help from google maps we got them all in the end. We then entered our readings into the master spreadsheet. It was good to see the historical readings, to see the trends of higher values after floods and then the general decrease as time passed after the flood.
Aiden in amongst the vegetation trying to find a ditch .
While doing the checks at Cantley we did see a hobby up close.
And then further on at Buckenham we saw a stork that had decided to follow a digger around that was slubbing out ditches. I think the slubbing provided easy access to food.
Also in this months sightings I saw stonechats on the pumphouse track. Here’s one with some food.
A nuthatch in the woodland in classic nuthatch pose.
On one visit to tower hide a snipe was sitting right out front
And a great white egret sat to the left in the sun.
And lastly there have been some great sunsets – heres one with added geese
I hope you enjoyed reading. See you next time!