A week to go

With a week to go before what hopefully will be a massive marsh stomp I paid a visit to have a look at the marsh. My friend Peter saw 36 Lapwings there in the morning but here were none that I could see whilst I was there. A few years ago I took a photo of 640 Lapwings, but in recent years the number has dwindled away and I’ve only seen two this year. Perhaps it was the work we’d done in October and November that was paying off. There were a lot of other birds though

The water level is dropping too. The high point was at the end of November so not only is the water rushing away into the river it’s going to make it a lot more accessible than it was back then, so we’ll be able to create our nice open marsh before the next floods.

Certainly the last marsh stomp created a new open area which is already attracting quite a few birds.

Later I met Richard, who pointed behind me. There were perhaps 1000 Starlings on one of the pylons, where they gathered before settling in the reeds on Fobney Island. I wheeled around to watch them and they almost immediately erupted into flight. I was lucky to catch them.

A Barn owl made a brief appearance a few moments later before disappearing into the night. Off to hunt roosting Starlings perhaps although they seem to like the high ground that’s a bit drier and probably full of mice and voles.

I sat on the bench we built earlier and watched the birds on the marsh. Even after “dark” the lights from the water works shine well enough to see what’s going on. I could also hear loads of Snipe. They make a little croak as they fly away from the marsh. Where are they going? Off to find food in the dark or a different spot to roost? Who knows. There were a lot of them, possibly 30 or so, many more than I’ve ever seen, they hide away and are very well camouflaged. Ducks came and went geese sat and honked and the marsh was surprisingly busy well into the night

Of course all these birds like the marsh for different reasons, some birds like to hide away and some like to sit out on the open water. I had plenty of time to sit and think about the work we could do but being mindful that we have a chance to cater for a lot of different species. The cattle never thought about their impact when they arrived. They just trampled everything.

The paths are a lot drier, and hopefully they’ll stay that way for the next week. It’s all still difficult without wellies though, but now it’s mostly mud. Just the sort of mud we’d like to see on the marsh!