22 January - Work Party at Etton

Sixteen adults and two children turned up on Sunday for our first work party of the year, focusing on removing willow from the southern end of the reserve, which we want to remain a wet area, suitable for wintering snipe and good in the summer for hares and skylarks.

Hard work it has to be said, lots of digging and pulling and swinging mattocks! David and Tim instead worked on creating the anchors for the new tern raft and Frieda and Emily were busy mapping water levels around the site.

And we even had a visit from Nick Watts OBE of Vine House Farm, who was visiting the reserve for the first time and offering thoughts on how we can best manage it for wildlife!

Langdyke Walk - 1 January 2012

A busy start to the New Year with over 60 adults and 12 children joining us for the annual Langdyke New Year's Day walk, led by Frieda and Martin.

We walked across Swaddywell and over to Open Coppy Wood and back around along the footpath to the Brick pits and King Street.

Etton - Maxey Pits - 14 January

A beautiful frosty morning today and large parts of the reserve were covered in a thin layer of ice. Teal were everywhere (at least 200), the air alive with their flight and evocative, call. There were fieldfare in the hedgerow and about 30 meadow pipit and 20 skylark constantly bursting out of the wet vegetation at the northern end of the reserve, near the wood. At least 7 snipe around too and one hare running across the grassland near south hide.

Etton Maxey Pits - Work Party

Work party this afternoon, under blue skies with occasional lapwing and fieldfare overhead.

There were twelve workers out today, hard at it cutting down willow, strimming down sedge and reed in front of the southern hide and generally fixing things up. We did a great job, even if I do say so myself, in clearing the sight lines across the wetland from the eastern embankment. Prizes to Bob Titman for herculean effort and David Cowcill for obsession with a strimmer!

Thanks to all involved.

Goldfinches

Last week’s best ever total of goldfinch in my Helpston garden of 19, was beaten today with a flock of 24.

Also a red kite over the house early morning.

Grey Wagtail, Helpston

I had a new pond put into the garden this week, and straight away a grey wagtail has found it and was bathing in it this afternoon.

Bainton Pits, 12 November

A walk around Bainton Pits this morning turned up a singing Cetti’s warbler in the south-east corner of the main pit and a pair of red-crested pochard in with the tufted duck on the same pit.

 

Plenty of fieldfare and redwing activity all around the site and a snipe and green sandpiper overhead.