Hello and welcome to your weekly update from the North West Norfolk Team.
We started the week with a site visit to our second private reserve that we have management responsibilities for. Despite being in my role for 2 ½ years, this was the first time that I had visited the site. This site is a 30-hectare woodland home to marsh tits, silver-washed fritillaries and white admirals. It is a typical mixed british woodland that is now suffering from rhododendron encroachment and severe grazing by muntjac which has probably contributed to the loss of nightingales from this site. This site has no public access so we installed a new ‘Private’ sign and whilst here we noticed a dead tree had fallen on the telegraph wire that runs through the site so we removed that aswell.
Following this visit Hayley and I headed to our other private reserve for a site visit. Sadly, and not surprisingly one of our newly installed signs was vandalised. This will be reinstalled. Once again a party had occurred on site in which the culprits left their rubbish behind and so once again, we spent our valuable time clearing up other’s peoples rubbish.
Moving onto Tuesday and our day was largely spent at Titchwell. With all this monsoon rain it was time to open the pipes on the East Bank to let some water off the Freshmarsh so ensure there are muddy margins for the waders to feed upon. These pipes are suffering from major erosion, so it also proved a valuable opportunity to check they hadn’t collapsed, fortunately they are hadn’t.
In the morning we had a ‘manager’s meeting; this monthly meeting is an opportunity for Hayley, Jim, myself, Lucy and Nic (our administrator) to catch up and reflect on what has happened and where we are going in terms of income, projects, work plans and any H&S issues. Following this Jim and Hayley moved onto making a start on finishing the path up to and out of the welcome hub whilst I headed to Snettisham.
Following recent government guidance, we now ask all visitors (unless exempt / U11) wear a face covering when inside a hide. Therefore, I headed around the reserve replacing all the signage and reopening rotary hide whilst dodging the thunderstorms.
Mid week ended up being an admin day for Hayley and Jim and I had a day off but we were back at Titchwell on Thursday. The task for the next two days was to complete the path and surroundings around the Welcome Hub featuring the hiring in of a ‘whacker plate’ and lots of humping and dumping.
I have also been out with the brushcutter this week pushing back some of the nettles and overgrown vegetation along our paths to ensure they remain accessible for everyone and one of our volunteers came in to help tidy up the wildlife garden.
That’s another varied week for the reserve team and hope this continues to provide a flavour of some of the work we get up to ensuring our reserves are managed for both the wildlife and the visitor.