Hello and welcome to another weekly round up from the reserve team.

Monday started with Hayley and I at our Snettisham reserve to complete a number of jobs. As mentioned in a previous blog we use a herbicide to help remove some of the vegetation on the roost bank to ensure it remains free of vegetation for the knot to roost on. There was a small amount that I missed so I finished this off plus I sprayed a small area in front of Knots Landing to ensure even better views of the birds. Whilst I was completing this, Hayley had the task of cleaning Knots Landings window, which is no easy task as the windows can streak very easily. One of the corner posts had popped out the ground on the path towards Knots Landing so we bashed that post back in and the strangest task was raking the shingle in front of Knots Landing where there appeared to be quite a few footprints. The final task was to check some of the outlet pipes on the reserve after the large volume of rain that has fallen in Norfolk ensuring water was leaving the pits as they should be.

Tuesday was Hayley’s turn as Duty Manager supporting the visitor operations team. In the morning I collated some beach litter that had been left at the top of west bank path, reattached some signs that the storm has loosened and checked on the pipes around the reserve to ensure water was able to move offsite. More on that next week.  During the afternoon Lucy, Hayley and myself had a couple of meetings, one to review visitor management at Snettisham as we have experienced a significant increase in visitors on the reserve. It has been really uplifting to hear about lots of first-time visitors or people who haven’t visited the reserve for a long time coming back and being wowed by the wader spectacle. Our other meeting was more of a planning meeting focusing on our social media accounts, but it also deviated slightly into what events we could potentially run over the winter months.

On Wednesday I spent much of the day carrying on with the repainting of Parrinder hide which we are progressing well with. There are a lot of sides inside Parrinder that need repainting! Hayley spent Wednesday working from home and catching up with various issues and queries that have occurred over the past week.

Thursday was my turn to be Duty Manager which includes assisting with car parking and providing lunch cover in the café. It was also an opportunity for me to type up the winter work programme to ensure we remain focused and ensure we are sufficiently resourced. There were also a couple of meetings including our RSPB England Q&A for staff to be kept up to date with the ever-changing world and to ask senior leadership any questions. The second meeting was a catch up with our Area Manager regarding our Freshwater Habitats Project, we hope to share more news on this soon.

Hayley and I were both off on Friday as we were owed some time.

Thanks for reading, I hope you continue to find these blogs interesting.

Lizzie
NW Norfolk Reserves Warden