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.