Welcome to this week’s installment from the reserve team.
We were pleased to welcome back Ryan and Matt on Monday. Ryan has returned to us as a residential volunteer for the winter months after another successful season as one of the National Trust Seasonal Rangers for Blakeney Point. Matt has returned to us for two weeks to finish off his seasonal contract with the RSPB, over the summer he has spent most of his time with the cows of the Nene Washes.
Freshmarsh
Most of this week has been spent working on the Freshmarsh. At this time of year we are cut, rake and burn the vegetation on the large island inside the predator fence. This reduces the vegetation and litter layer to benefit the breeding gulls and avocets. We have also been cutting some more of the perimeter reed along the Parrinder bank, this cut reed is raked onto the banks and left to form habitat piles and decompose. Both tasks have benefited the wintering snipe and water pipits with several seen the newly cut areas this week. A bonus on Wednesday was a little stint that wondered around the feet of Matt and Ryan on the island.
Management Plans
Jim has been spending much of his time this week continuing to work on the new Snettisham management plan, principally ensuring the right figures are in the tables as requested by Natural England.
Lockdown 2.0
Hayley and Lucy have principally been involved in how lockdown 2.0 impacts the visitor operations of Titchwell and Snettisham. Following the government’s announcement, it was clear that our shop had to close its doors once again on the 5th November, until at least the 2nd December. With the closure of the holiday accommodations and the stay home message, the decision was also made to close the café during this period as it wouldn’t be financially viable to keep it open. As out hides are indoor spaces and mixing of households isn’t permitted, we have made the decision across the RSPB to close them. Once again, we were out on the reserves closing them on Thursday and renewing associated signage.
Coastal Wardens Meetings
Thursday afternoon, Jim, Hayley and I virtually attended a Norfolk Coastal Warden meeting facilitated by the Norfolk AONB. This biannual meeting provides the opportunity for reserve wardens across the North Norfolk coast to get together to share what is occurring on our sites and to hear about other projects; principally these are focused on the rising visitor numbers and impacts on our sensitive habitats and associated species.
Site visits
With our reserve ecologist, Graham, in the area before lockdown, I took the opportunity to take him around the reserve so that he could see the repair work to our east bank pipes and a look at the freshwater marsh in preparation for our Annual Review Meeting.
On Friday I popped across to one of our confidential sites for a site visit to check there had been no more anti-social behaviour and to plant the fencing repairs for next weeks work programme.
Well that covers most of what we have been up too this week so I will leave you with this photo of Matt imagining what it is like to be a red crested pochard on Patsy’s.