We are now around half way into the restoration and things appear to be going to plan, with some wonderful results, such as this lovely looking ditch.
Many of the new ditches were awash with dragonflies this morning, several dozen in sight at any one time, many egg laying, either singly or in pairs, whilst others were still involved in the chase!
Wherever we can we try, not only to enhance the site for our wildlife, but also for our visitors, and, opposite the Buddleia Loop view point we have already opened up one ditch mouth so people can see into it and, today, we opened up a second, which will give views in toward one of the key bittern roosting sites on the reserve and, over a few hours today, this….
Became this…
Work has also started on upgrading our paths. Our aim to get them all up to a standard so that they are passable across all seasons and in all weathers. Some parts of our paths are a bit difficult in wet weather, or if you are pushing a pram or in a wheelchair, so, as a first step, we are re-surfacing the paths running from the visitor centre around the Buddleia Loop, nearly 1.5 km in total, putting in a smooth, flat surface, that does not get filled with mud and rain. This does mean that parts of the path, especially around the Buddleia Loop, will need to be closed for a few days, just to make sure that people and diggers don’t get too close to each other. The work, in total, shouldn’t last for more than around three weeks (weather permitting) so please bear with us whilst we make these important changes but, if you have any questions, please do give our visitor centre a call (01305 778313). To whet your appetite here is a picture of the work in progress, you can see the start of removing the old path surface and, within a week or so, we should be installing the new surface.
Yesterday we hear of a report of a stork that flew over the reserve. This is a very rare bird in Weymouth so we were keen to see any photos of the bird. To our delight we received this picture this morning and it clearly shows a White Stork!
It flew over the reserve at about midday on Saturday so its amazing that nobody else noticed it flying over the reserve, especially as it flew right over the North Hide! Presumably the same bird was seen at Langton Herring yesterday morning but its now disappeared.
thanks to Danny Dench for sending us the pictures.
Three week into the restoration and work has started on the larger reedbed to the north of north hide. This area was lowered a few years ago to create open water and reed fringed pools and since then the reedmace/bulrush (depending in what you call them - the plant that has the large cigar shaped 'flowers' - picture to follow) has taken over and there is no open water left. This area was, when there was water, a favoured roosting site for our wintering bittern and, being just to the side of north hide, gave great opportunities to see this wonderfully evocative, but hard to see reedbed specialist. So, we have re-created pools in the middle of the area and have started to re-create the ditch around the outside, re-connecting old ditches, improving water flow and fish movement and so, we hope, making it a desirable location for bittern to breed (fingers crossed for next year).
Before the start of the works the ‘ditch’ looked like this....
And, a few hours in it looked like this.....
We are working on the wider ditches over the next couple of days, so more by the end of the week
With one thing and another, including some hot weather and some hotter technical hitches, we have not done such a grand job of keeping you up to speed with the restoration, but here is the latest news...
The work in the meadow to the south of north hide is almost complete and the ditches are lookig wonderful, already attracting little egrets, water rail and grey wagtail to feed on the newly created edges and wheatears hopping along the spoil looking for a tasty morsel. Just to the edge of the north hide pool we have changed this...
To this...
And within the reedbeds in front of the buddliea loop viewing shelter we have restored ditches so that you can see down them from the viewing shelter (or will be able to when we have removed the bits of reed blocking the entrance - the 18 tonne digger started to sink right at the reed edge and we did not fancy it becoming a permenant feature of the reserve! The new view from the viewing shelter looks like this....
The view outfrom where the digger is looks like this (you can see the viewing shelter on the left of the picture and on the right one of the other ditches being restored...
Finally, a little further over the reserve, near one of the first pieces of work we did, we found this in the fresh mud....
It's an otter print, with a one pound coin for size comparison - exciting to find this in the early morning light, the first for a while - it was, of course, lovely to see the prints, imagine how much nicer it would have been to see the animal itself!
Just a quick post to say there was a juvenile Black Tern feeding at Radipole Lake this morning. It was first seen at the visitor centre then was relocated at the buddleia lake where it fed happily for 30 minutes or so.
The Pectoral Sandpiper is still at the visitor centre as was a Green Sandpiper still. Also worth mentioning that whilst watching the black tern this morning I got three views of Kingfisher which should mean that we will have plenty around for this weekends Kingfisher Quest. Its all weekend between 10am and 3pm. We will have volunteers manning various watch points around the reserve looking for kingfishers which will give visitors the best possible chance of seeing one.