May included two very wet Tuesday workdays that severely restricted what larger project work we could sensibly ask volunteers to carry out in those conditions. We did find we had a completely flooded road in front of the access gate to Whillet’s on one of those days. We spent some time unblocking the drain of points that feed into the reservoir so the flood water in the road which was quite deep and affecting traffic could drain away.
May is another month when we are busy with survey work of all types at the western end of the reservoir. This included checking the numerous bird nest boxes, flora surveys, grass snake & small mammal refugia tin survey. Whillet’s also has regular butterfly & dragonfly surveys.
Our pondlet at the study area had become over vegetated with starwort water weed some had to be suitably raked out to make a little open water. We also controlled the invasive Hemlock Water Dropwort (HWD) from the nearby marsh pool and cut back further HWD and bramble from our common spotted orchid area. We also installed a sonic alarm to reduce fallow deer browsing damage to the orchids.
We trimmed the hedge tops at all our West End wildlife public viewpoints.
We carry out survey work over all the reservoir, wildlife surveys and habitat checks were carried out at the main dam end side of the reservoir. At the North Bank side, we surveyed from the dam right up to the picnic area. Where we also carried out hedge cutting and repairs to the vandalised hedge within the picnic area and generally tidied the picnic area and cleared the rubbish.
Along South Bank we surveyed and cleared access paths all the way from Admirals Wood right down as far as the new Reed-bed area where we surveyed around the reed-bed area itself.
May 26th
A few of us enjoyed an enjoyable walk from the car park all the way to the new reed bed on the south bank today.
It took 2hrs to get there due to stops to trim back bramble, nettle etc encroaching onto the paths plus a few stops for birds, butterflies and damselflies. The return was only around an hour.
Highlights were finding plenty of reeds now getting established with the bonus of two pairs of Reed Warblers and a Reed Bunting nesting there.
We also found a few dragon and damselfly species including Red-eyed Damselfly for the first time this year and Black-tailed Skimmers in several locations.
Below are some images from the day
