'Tour de Water Meadows'

Ok no bicycle or mountains or the likely 'Tour de France' winner Nibali But it was hot and I was carrying binos and 2 cameras! No volunteer action this week as both our Dark Knight and 'head Ranger' were on the sick list.

Not much room to land

Barn owls, Sherborne water meadows 

Arty shot of Sherborne buzzard

Red Kite over the Water meadows

After a couple of trips recently to Symonds Yat to see the Peregrines, which provided some great displays but disappointing pictures, I thought a survey of the Sherborne Water  Meadows was in order. I was fully armed with 'kit' which was ok at the beginning, before the sun burnt through the early cloud, but took its toll later on. It was pretty quiet all the way down to the water meadows until I bumped into Sherborne's shepherd and his friendly sheep dog. Enjoyed an interesting conversation which included a view of how well water management is performing {possible scope here for me to get interested & knowledgeable parties together to move things forward} and also the shepherd's 'spot' of otters today {I went to see of they were still around but no luck today}. However on my way towards the 'tin barn' I spotted an adult hare and then two magnificent barn owls which I managed to get a couple of half decent photos of. I left the owls to some peace and quiet as I made my way towards the Windrush and the boundary between Sherborne and Windrush estates.

More wildlife was on show with excellent displays from Red Kites and Buzzards. Wandering alongside the Windrush lots of Peacocks on show with some Red Admirals as well. Joining the butterflies were an assortment of damselflies not all of which I could identify. Not so good was the presence of ragwort which also showed itself at the top end of Picardy. I slowly made my way along the fisherman path by the 'cooling' Windrush with not much wildlife on show.  I eventually reached the bridge at the far end of Birch copse and headed back towards Century wood  & Northfield barn car park. Was pleased to see 50+ lapwing on the main pasture alongside the sheep which were clearly in relaxed mode {lying down} given the heat. So not a bad visit which ended with a quick look around the Broadwater which was fairly quiet with a couple of herons & the swan family on show.

A meaningful agenda

Bat cave compound, bit of a jungle 

A little busy of late so a brief summary of July thus far. Started this years renovation work in the Sherborne bat winter roost aka 'the bat cave'. Morris directing on this with Mike as support engineer and me on security duty. On reaching the entry to the 'compound' ( in which is located the bat cave) with heavy bags of building clamps we were faced with a wall of vegetation. So it was a good job Mike had the brush cutter although it was a tough going to find the path through. It proved to be a hot and sticky session for me outside but good progress made in cooler conditions inside on construction.

Young oak, minus tree guard

This week was to be a continuation of construction in the bat cave but sadly Morris was sick so it was back on tree guard construction. So fully tooled up we set off with tractor and 4x4 with trailer to the previous site below Crookmoor Ash. Was glad I was following Mike in the tractor as he discovered some soft wet ground which I probably would have got stuck in. Turned out that there was an underground leak in a mains water pipe in the pasture we were working in. The old tree guards we were replacing today were pretty badly damaged but fortunately the oak trees they were meant to protect were in good condition. On the Broadwater today the swan family were all in good health ,although the adult male was absent on a visit above the weir, a pair of small egrets were on show along with the usual herons. On my return to the estate offices I also came across a large grass snake, not sure who was more surprised.

Martin Harper with an environment agenda of worth.