The water levels continue to fluctuate but mostly they’re rising.

And there’s more rain on the way.

The marsh is looking absolutely wonderful. Bird numbers are increasing, lots of Teal, Gadwall have arrived in numbers, and a few more Wigeon have joined them. They seem to like the area we cut! There must be lots of food for them. The haystacks are well above water, hopefully occupied by mice and voles and shrews ice and warm and dry and safe from predators.

The water level has given us a chance to move the railway sleepers into position with less effort.

And we spent a couple of hours making some new benches. There are 10 now.

Including 2 on the old railway line, which we put there last weekend. One to watch the badgers from.

And another to look out over the marsh.

And another on top of a concrete access chamber. This will always be above the flood but it might be a challenge to get to it if the level rises any more. It’s popular though

The next day we went back out in search of among other things Beavers.

We followed the ancient bank of the Holy Brook among the huge Plane trees.

This gave us good views into fields, now wet, that are hard to see from anywhere else.

And we explored a willow woodland planted only a few years ago. Lots of signs of deer browsing but none of beaver.

We know beavers have been seen five miles away. There are reports of at least a dozen along the Kennet further upstream. It’s only a matter of time before they get here. It’s really quite exciting to search for them. Can you imagine the excitement if we actually found them!

Not quite as exciting but nearly so was the discovery of Water voles on our exploration a few days earlier. Well, a water voles’ toilet.

Water voles used to be abundant. Then about 25 years ago they vanished. Mink had arrived and ate them all. It seems some may have survived in an out of the way part of the marsh. Could they be about to make a comeback?

There’s a lot of places we could look for them. There will be many more adventures in the marsh to come.