Welcome to this week’s reserve team round up.
I am back from a sunny week walking in the Lake District passing Jim in the night as he headed off to Scotland for two weeks of mountains.
Monday I was straight back into the place with our monthly WeBS count assisted by Hayley and volunteer Chris. It was a beautiful sunny day, but this can make counting Freshmarsh challenging with many of the birds in silhouette. Following this Hayley and I headed to Parrinder Hide to make a start on repairing some of the windows, this also provided us the opportunity to have a catch up with everything that is going on across our four reserves.
Tuesday was another spring high tide at Snettisham and with high number of visitors on the reserves and concerns over parking and number of people in hides I spent the morning on the reserve. It was a stunning morning in the sun with 68,000 knot swirling all over the place and lots of happy visitors.
As a reminder, please obey on site instructions in terms of hide capacity, wearing of masks and be considerate to other users.
Snettisham high tide
In the afternoon I headed back to Titchwell to take some time to walk around the reserve tweaking water levels and to identify what needed to be done on the reserve over the coming weeks.
Wednesday was spent at Parrinder hide with Lucy and volunteer Terrance, cleaning all the interior mould of the walls and removing cobwebs so that we could make a start on repainting the inside. This task was continued by a couple more volunteers on Thursday and Friday, but is still a work in progress
Thursday it was my turn to be Duty Manager, supporting our visitor operations team in ensuring our visitors all have a safe and enjoyable visit to the reserve. This provided me some time to attend our weekly RSPB England Q&A session to hear what is happening across the organisation.
As I am Duty Manager this weekend, I had Friday as a day off. Hayley returned from her days off to visit Snettisham to complete a few small tasks and spending the afternoon working from home catching up on admin.
I am writing this on Saturday morning with the wind still blowing outside. So, first task of the day was a trail check to check for fallen trees. A few small trees had fallen over so it was out with the saw to clear them from the paths. Not only has it been windy but also incredibly wet over the past 48 hours and despite our outlet pipes being fully open, water levels have risen considerably across the reserve.
Freshmarsh on Saturday 26 September
We hope you have enjoyed reading what we have been getting up to this week, we shall be back again next week with another behind the scenes update.
See you soon
Lizzie
NW Norfolk Reserves Warden