Reed all about it

Girton Pits today, and for once no time constraints. There was quite a lot of disturbance, especially on the sailing lake - some guys (presumably from the sailing club) were cutting scrub with chainsaws on one of the islands, and there were several fisherman dotted around. However, the A1133 Pit was a bit quieter, with lots of duck on the southern part. There was nothing of particular note, with a total of 358 Tufted Duck and 45 Goldeneye the stand-out counts. Single Redshank and Green Sands were also present (the latter on the Spalford Pit). Nearby, I took a drive through Spalford Warren to check the feeders - loads of tits and finches, plus a single Lesser Redpoll.

A revisit of Mons Pool (this time accessed from the north) didn't produce much different from yesterday, so I bumped down the track to Besthorpe NWT North. The new reedbed was officially opened here last week, with water let in from the adjacent storage lagoon. The Newark Advertiser rather optimistically described this as a 'vast' wetland with the creation of 8 hectares of reedbed and 3 hectares of wet grassland during recent works (across both this site and Mons Pool). Whilst definately not 'vast', these sites will no doubt become important areas of habitat, and I look forward to seeing how the sites evolve over the next few years.

The newly flooded (future) reedbed at Besthorpe NWT North