Reserve news from residential volunteer, Belinda
We started another busy week off with the monthly Wetland Bird Survey at both Titchwell and Snettisham which involves counting the wetland birds on the site. This helps determine trends in the distribution and numbers of wetland birds across this site and nationally.
The remainder of the week was spent burning material remaining on Patsy’s reed pool and the freshly cut material to the left of fen hide. Both areas have been cleared to enhance views for visitors and help create a mosaic of varying ages of reed. This should in turn increase the number of birds visiting these areas such as Common Snipe and Water Rail who feed around the edges.
The smaller jobs that were completed were the cleaning of the hides, a Little Egret roost count and a litter pick on the reserve.
Thursday night it was the Christmas staff and volunteer party at The Jolly Sailors. It was a fabulous night with a lot of festive fun and games kindly organised by Clare. Thank you to everyone that came and hopefully you all enjoyed it.
We participated in the Brancaster Christmas Tree festival along with other charities and businesses in the local area.
Over the past week we borrowed a pedestrian mower from RSPB Frampton so that we could cut the grass alongside the East Trail and around the scrub we are developing in this area. This will encourage the scrub to grow without being outcompeted by the grass and removed the rank grass to benefit the wildflowers.
Now we are into the winter the yurt has been dismantled and this will be cleaned and stored until spring time.
The smaller jobs that have been completed on site have been the pruning of some of the overhanging trees on fen trail and cleaning the hides and bird feeders.
The reserve team spent Wednesday at Frampton Marsh reserve where we worked with a volunteer work party to coppice 11 willow trees to benefit scrub loving birds such as Cetti's warblers.
This was my last week at Titchwell, as I am off to Costa Rica in the new yea. I would just like to say a big thank you to everyone at Titchwell for making me feel so welcome and making my time here so great. Hopefully see you all soon.
Belinda
Snettisham
The largest Pink-footed Goose count was recorded with a total of 43,200, almost double the previous count for this winter.
If you want to see the geese there are several guided goose walks scheduled for January 2018 so please make sure to book onto one if you are keen.