Maintenance Day

Tuesday, May 24th 2016

The Tuesday volunteers as always have been busy at Foxglove today. A variety of tasks were completed. We have been steadily repairing some of our footpaths that are starting to get overgrown. Here are Before and After pictures of one of the stretches of pathway.

Pathway repairs involve clearing the weeds, spreading more gravel and finally using the whacker plate to compact it all down and finish it off.

Elsewhere on the reserve, volunteers located and fixed an area where the water was flowing from the reed beds out across the reserve and creating big puddles. We suspect our resident Water Voles may have been modifying our drainage systems for us! More work has also been done in the garden to keep it tidy.

Out on the meadow, the rushes have been strimmed. They tend to take over the wetter areas. We are pleased to see that the Yellow Rattle is now in flower here. This plant parasitizes on grass, preventing it from becoming too abundant and allowing more wild flowers to grow.

Finally, some of the volunteers cleared one of the old fire sites from the winter that was looking rather messy.

While this was going on, some less interesting, but essential office work was also done to keep everything up to date.

After work, the bird work continues and the ringers are all very busy keeping track of what is happening in all of the small nest boxes around the training area. Wader chicks are hatching too, and these young snipe were ringed last night.

Evening on the training area is a good time to see other species that sometimes go unnoticed during the day, such as this hare.

Thank you to everyone who came to help out today.

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Access to the Reserve: OPEN with limited access

Monday 18th March 2024 |

The reserve is now open, although again with limited access.

Visitors will be able to access the reserve with the use of key fobs provided at the pass office upon entrance to the camp, or will be provided entrance and exit through the access gate by an officer from the camp Guard Room. In this case visitors will need a mobile phone to call the Guard Room when they wish to exit the reserve.

Please be aware that due to these circumstances, entering and leaving the reserve might take a little longer than usual.