High flyer, with Bar code!

Sherborne Brook, on holiday for Bar-Headed Goose?

A hard ask from Mike today as we were to pay a visit to the Water meadows to complete the wood stacking and some fence clearing near Century wood. My last visit here wasn't paved with glory and this time we were more cautious with Mike driving the 4x4 with no loaded trailer! On the way to the work area we bumped into Richard and John from the Wildlife trust who were repairing part of the fence line alongside Sherborne brook where previously great work had been done in re-establishing the river bank using the 'hurdle' approach using faggots. In this case this meant a line of hurdles down the centre of the current widened brook. This was done ~1 year ago and already the river was deeper, clear  and with lots of evidence of water voles presence. Much useful conservation topics were discussed but this meant we all started to feel the cold given the time of day and cloudy conditions. This was soon remedied when we started the days task and with the temperatures rising we were soon taking off the layers.

Had a warm and rewarding lunch break walking along the Sherborne Brook where several treats awaited me. The first was witnessing a Heron catch its lunch, the second spotting the newly built swan nest with attending swan, {near the Boat house} and lastly seeing a most unusual goose for these parts. It turns out it is the Bar Headed goose {very distinct with the black 'bar' code stripes on the side of its head}. Not in my phone bird app. , not surprising since its home is central Asia!

Returned to the Water meadows for the afternoon where we finished the wood stacking in spite of Maddie who was in a playful mood as she attacked the wood piles with her usual energy!  Having completed this task Mike persuaded me to revisit the access point alongside Century wood where we were to do some fence clearing. On this occasion the deep mud had dried out so access wasn't a challenge. However evidence of our last trip was still visible where the deep ruts were still clearly defined. However the fence damage I thought I had caused was mis-reported and apart from some 'rotted' posts there was only a couple of scrape marks on the big strainer post to show for my collision. Granted that was enough to dent the new trailer but I felt better having not destroyed the fence. Afternoon weather was very pleasant and a very enjoyable day all round.