New Reed Bed

Team Thursday began  the day by varnishing parts of the duck raft.

The group then headed down to the lake to plant some reeds.

It was soon realised that the volunteers were not the only animals to have travelled this route since the last fall of snow!

Badger tracks were followed for quite a way. The prints were very clear and seemed to be from two different animals, a large one and a smaller one!

Once at the water, the areas to be planted with Phragmites were measured out.

The group worked in pairs to plant four rows of reeds along the sections of the bank.

The plant plugs were heeled in well to prevent them from floating away! The new reed beds will provide some shelter for the water birds over the coming summer months when they start to grow tall and spread along the shore.

In total 1000 reed plugs were planted!

In amongst them was this striking raft spider. Dolomedes fimbriatus, is a European spider of the family Pisauridae. It is one of the two largest spiders in the United Kingdom. Like other Dolomedes spiders it hunts by running on the surface of water, and can submerge altogether to hide from predators.