First Work day of 2012 - Sunday 8th January

Well the year's off to a good start. Lovely day, dry and sunny. And what's even more important - lots of volunteers turned up. This enabled us to tackle 3 tasks on one day. 1) did a bit more clearing on the damselfly pond, this should be it until next winter, 2) cleared more of the ditch along the main bridleway towards Lower Bedfords Road, including partially clearing underneath the track where it turns towards the main pond. We would have cleared it more but Elliot refused to be dragged through the pipe to clear it. You just can't get the (unpaid) staff these days! We'll have to get some drain rods and try again. The 3rd job was to clear out some of the stream that leads into the main pond. This gets very overgrown with grass etc which isn't helped by rubbish and branches etc. And of course we collected litter, about 6 sacks of it. The dipping platform was in the process of being repaired by the Essex Wildlife Trust and was taped off, as can be seen from the photo.

Work Party 11th December 2011

As you can see from the above photos it was a wet and muddy work day ! We continued the work done on the November work day in clearing some of the reed mace from the damselfly pond. The reed mace gradually takes over the pond if not cleared and we are restricted to the winter months as this is a site where Great Crested Newts live and breed. We will continue in January with a bit more clearance and some edging work.