Sunshine and Shade

Not every day is as busy as it was today; I barely saw Stacey and Jennifer, the other Reserve Managers! It was mainly because we had to ‘divide and conquer' to achieve the day's targets.

Jennifer was away strimming with a team while Stacey and a few of our Tuesday volunteers started the day with bagging the hopper seed. We received a delivery from a local farmer of five dumpy bags of chaff/seed which is the waste product of the rape seed harvest. His waste is our gain, as it is an excellent hopper feed for small passerines such as Bullfinches.

These large dumpy bags were emptied into smaller, easier to handle sacks which we can then transfer to the nine hoppers which are distributed around the reserve.  This food  is essential for the birds over the winter.  For now the smaller bagged seed was taken to our seed store via the quad bike and trailer.

Meanwhile I was on the Green Route, above Risedale Beck, with 19 Scouts from the 1st Kildwick and Farnhill Scout Group replacing rotten path edges.

After a short lunch I took the group for a guided tour of the reserve.

We passed by the volunteers repairing the over grassed footpath on the moorland and redefining the path edges. This is a fairly labour intensive job, which although hard work, was made all the easier by great banter and laughter.

The day done the team returned to the Field Centre having made the path a lot more presentable. 

Thank you to all who assisted today, and to the gentleman who kindly donated a tripod.