We haven’t been on to the marsh since February, except for the paths around the perimeter.
We’ve been watching it slowly disappear as the water level dropped and the reeds grew tall.
So it was quite exciting to push a way through the vegetation and see close up what lay beyond.
This is what we found:
We knew it was lovely but couldn’t believe just how lovely. The margins were covered in feathers which indicated how many birds hang out there.
Among the countless footprints of the birds a solitary fox had passed over the mud.
We set to work in the sunshine, so very different from the last time we were there.
Some folks scythed the margins, others gathered the cut vegetation and others stomped the areas that had been cut.
After a really pleasant and sociable couple of hours we stepped back to admire our handiwork.
We could now see a bit of the marsh from the bench. I went back in the evening to see what impact our works had had on the birds that had left when we started work. They were back but now they had been joined by a green sandpiper feeding on the area we had been working on.
I went back the following morning on my regular morning walk, and I had some friends who I was proudly showing around.
There was now a common sandpiper, as well as the green sandpiper, side by side on our marsh!
These are both birds that visit on their migration, birds that we were aiming to encourage.
The migration season is starting again, birds are now flooding south for the winter. Our summer visitors have already left, and birds that have been summering in the far north are heading our way.
Who knows what might turn up in the coming weeks.
Rural Reading 