Stodmarsh NNR April 2009 Management News

Welcome to the Wildside work Christina and Emma who run our lottery project have been very busy since Christmas and this work has now born fruit. Following on from the car park and nature trail resurfacing we now have a new walkers shelter in the Stodmarsh car park as well as some new hedge planting untaken by the volunteers. The shelter has a notice board and a blackboard for wildlife sightings. We just need to buy some chalk now and you can all get writing! All the hides have had new information panels installed giving visitors some background on the reserve and there is a panel for the Ramp and another for the start of the Nature Trail.

All the hides have a notice board too. In addition the David Feast Hide has a blackboard to partner the one in the walkers shelter so that wildlife sightings can be recorded at both ends of the reserve. We also have a new reserve leaflet which was produced in house by our communications team, which we will put on display as soon as we have dispensers. Finally Christina has produced a green travel guide which is being displayed in the hides and Emma an education pack for local schools. Some seasonal guided walk sheets are also in the process of being produced. These will be available in both a PDF downloadable format from our website and supplied as laminated copies, which visitors can collect at the start of a walk and then return for reuse at the end of the walk. I would like to thank Christina and Emma for all their hard work and Antony who produced the reserve leaflet. Winter work – the reedbeds.

In February we had another excavator contractor IG Pilchers in the reedbeds between the Lampen Wall and the Marsh Hide. They cut one reed compartment (to remove built up litter), which should give us better reed growth this year. Two culverts were installed allowing machinery into otherwise inaccessible parts of the site. Finally we removed a large section of scrub behind the Tower Hide which had encroached into the reedbed. We had hoped to cut a second reed compartment with the excavator but regular rainfall prevented us doing this. Instead of cutting the contract short we decided to clean and reprofile a ditch next to the already cut area of reed and then scraped back the surface of this area to lower the bed by 20cm which should provide better wet reedbed habitat, particularly for bitterns. Spring 2009.

As I write this the sun is shining and water levels are as high as we can get them in the main reedbed. We have heard our first booming bittern and spring migrants are starting to arrive. Water levels are also looking good too on the grazing marsh in front of the marsh hide. All this is thanks to work by Robin, Ian and Ben in fixing a number of old sluices which had been leaking badly. Hopefully we will be able to maintain levels well into the spring, though of course we (and the wildlife) expect a natural lowering of water through the summer. The water levels at Grove still present a problem, due to the continued presence of the invasive alien plant Crassula helmsii. We are planning more control of the plant in front of the Ramp and Harrison’s Drove hide but please bare with us while we try to sort this problem out. If we don’t get rid of the plant there will be no bare mud or shallow water which will affect the wildlife.

Finally I mentioned in the last news we are part of a reedbed research project being run by RSPB with funding from Natural England. We have now met with Donna who is running the project and Anna who will be doing much of the survey work and we hope to see them out on site at Stodmarsh throughout the rest of the year investigating our reedbeds!

Dave Rogers – Senior Reserves Manager
Robin Hanson – Reserve Manager Stodmarsh