Another busy day of volunteering on the reserve. The morning started with clearing the car park of leaves and unblocking various drains and culverts along the trail. The afternoon was spent coppicing an area above the public footbridge. This is an area where we hope to encourage willow warblers and bullfinches and the dense regrowth from the cut trees will provide ideal habitat for them. As we were working we saw dippers on the river, bullfinches in the trees and a green woodpecker was calling in the distance.

A day spent supervising some tree surgeons saw me standing around the visitor trail more than usual. Over the course of the day I saw dipper, grey wagtail, bullfinch and green woodpecker. However, the highlight had to of been a female goosander which few within feet of me as I looked over the river bank as it just happened to be flying past.

A really smashing day. The weather was great and we had a good turn out. The day started well with a red kite and  two bullfinches as we got out of the car at the top end of the Trusssler trail. We then set to work putting in a new bench dedicated to the memory of a previous volunteer, Mike Humphreys. After that was installed we made full use of the bench as we had lunch and admired the view. However, the view would have been better still, if it were not for a few small trees and so in the afternoon we coppiced these and then cleared the undergrowth from the large glade in readiness for next spring.

I cannot believe it! Everytime I visit the reserve it seems to rain! Today I checked the reserves nature trails before having a meeting on site. The reserve looked great, which more than made up for my soaking.

The afternoon was spent felling a couple of trees on the visitors trail which had become damaged in the recent winds and trying to find the dippers on the river for someone who had never seen them before. Eventually we saw one in front of the New Inn pub, we are so lucky to have them being so obliging on the reserve.