A Wetland Wonderland

People often ask me what it’s like to work on a nature reserve and live in a remote area ; ‘How do you get shopping?’, ‘What do you do for fun?’, ‘You’re  living so far from civilisation, there’s not even a STARBUCKS near you, how do COPE???’ and ‘Do you really like living alone? I mean, you’re so ALONE, so lonely and alone. All ALONE.’  are just some of the questions I deal with on a regular basis. But really, it’s not as bad as everyone seems to think it is! They see that I’m in the frigid north and assume it’s just me and the polar bears for miles around, living in a bleak, sunless wilderness, suffering through grey days and greyer nights, with no hope of brighter days to come. And yes, it is getting colder, winter is coming, but it’s not so bleak as you might think. The reserve here is lovely, and I really do enjoy being surrounded by countryside! I much prefer rolling green hills, farmland, woodland and lakes to the depressing urban jungle that defines our towns and cities across the land, with their towering buildings, rat-infested parks and  rubbish tips, where the streets are paved with dog poop. I enjoy the quiet relaxation of the countryside, its peacefulness and the friendliness of its residents. And that’s exactly what I get in my current role! Don’t get me wrong, it is nice to spend some time in our towns and cities, meeting up with friends, going out clubbing, shopping, drinking, eating out, and generally being a bit more classy and whatnot, but I’m very glad to get away from it all by working outdoors in these lovely remote places.

The loveliness of rural life

‘So what’s so great about this nature reserve?’ I hear you cry. Well, it’s just a bit different from everywhere else that I’ve worked before really! Whereas the reserves I was working on in Orkney and the Farne Islands are seabird reserves, tall cliffs covered with nesting seabirds and smelling a bit fishy, with some nice vegetated bits and lots of nice birds and wildlife a bit further inland, and Loch Ruthven was a large loch surrounded by woodland and heathland, Blacktoft Sands is basically one big reedbed with lots of pools, big and small, throughout the reeds. It’s set in between two rivers, the Ouse and the Trent, jutting out into the channel where the two rivers meet to form the Humber, surrounded by Scunthorpe, Hull, York, Leeds and Doncaster. My nearest town is Goole, an industrial little place known mostly for it’s part in the ship-building industry, and I regularly spy ships coming up the Ouse, past the reserve, past my house, and on towards Goole. Which is slightly surreal actually, as from street level it looks as if the ships are carving their way through fields… Anyway, the reserve is pretty big, although only a small area is open to the public, as the majority of the reserve is reedbed. Despite that though, there are 7 bird hides, each one looking out onto a different pool, with different birds on each, except Ousefleet hide, which looks out onto the grazing marsh, a drier bit of land that’s grazed in by cattle and used by breeding waders and wintering wildfowl.

Here’s an aerial photo of the reserve, showing the rivers, the pools that the hides look onto, the areas where the reeds have been cut, and the extent of the reedbed.

A typical view from one of the hides

Some lovely trees as well

The reserve is best known for the Marsh Harriers which breed and over-winter in the reedbed. They have been very successful over the past couple of summers, but over winter they get large numbers of these beautiful birds of prey roosting in the reeds overnight, along with a few Hen Harriers too. These birds have come in from the continent and need a nice place to sleep for the night, and where better? They all start arriving as the day turns to dusk, with as many as 30 Harriers seen in the sky at once, then one-by-one they drop into the reedbed to have a little sleepy – a wonderful sight to behold! The roost is only now beginning, with about 8 Marsh Harriers and 2-3 Hen Harriers seen coming in to roost recently, but these numbers will build as winter deepens, with the chance of seeing Owls as well! What could be better?  But during the day, there’s a wide variety of waders, ducks, geese with Bearded Tits, Reed Buntings and TreeSparrows flitting about, and Redwings and Fieldfares passing by overhead. I’ve seen a nice variety of birds since I’ve been here, and I’ve only been here a month!  I think some of the winter birds have been the nicest birds so far – Whooper Swans and Pink-footed Geese and Brent Geese. But the waders have been great too and I’ve learnt to recognise a few species that I couldn’t identify before, which is always great!

In addition to all of this though, we’ve also got four lovely Konik ponies. These are an ancient Polish breed of horse, much better adapted to life in a wetland environment than most other breeds are. They are used in Poland to graze and manage the large areas of reedbeds, as they are happy to wade around in water and are less susceptible to getting foot problems from spending a lot of time in water – a big problem for some breeds. They are hardy little guys, and they love to eat the reeds, so they are helping to manage the habitat here! They eat the reeds back and help to create pathways through the reeds and shorter areas of reeds that many reedbed birds and wildlife like to feed and shelter. The Koniks are here for three years as part of a wider project to find ways to manage the habitat more naturally. Most of the habitat management work that goes on here is done by machinery, such as brushcutters. Plots are cut in the reedbed each year on a rotation so that each area is cut every few years. This helps to provide a mosaic of habitats, with areas of younger shorter reeds for birds like Bitterns to feed in, as well as taller, older stands of reed for birds like the Bearded Tit to nest in. In this way, we can keep the reedbed at its best and provide habitat for all of its residents!

A very nice photo of a very photogenic Konik pony. Unfortunately not one of my photos though!

This photo shows some of the plots where reeds have been cut in previous years, and the ditch that feeds all of the pools.

This reed cutting work will be continued again this year, as this is what me and the team will be doing for a lot of the winter, creating a more varied habitat for the reedbed residents, both the permanent and over-wintering ones. In addition to this we’ll be carrying out a few more habitat management and maintenance tasks to keep the reserve looking its best, so both people and wildlife can enjoy this wetland wonderland!

The Journey to Holy Island...

After my job in Inverness had finished, I returned to Hemel to look for winter work as I was unable to find any in Scotland. However, I was unable to find anything in Hemel, and mostly spent my time volunteering for my local conservation group and visiting Jason in Norfolk, thinking that I’d be unemployed all winter. So imagine my surprise when Jason and I received an email from our boss from the Farne Islands asking if we would be interested in living and working on Lindisfarne over the winter! The National Trust owns Lindisfarne castle and some of the surrounding land, and keep the castle open during the winter, and they needed someone to live on the island and take the emergency phone in the evenings after the staff had left, and make sure that the castle doesn’t burn down! It’s a pretty simple job, with free accommodation, and with few prospects of a job elsewhere, me and Jason agreed to do it! A month or so later and all was sorted, we were moving up to Lindisfarne on the 8^th January to live in the National Trust’s holiday cottage and look after the castle in the evenings until 25^th March! All went well with the move up here, although it was a very long drive from home (thankfully, Jason has a car. It would have been even worse on the train)!

This is now our second week of living up here and the job is going very well so far! It really is simple. We get all day off to do whatever we want, which mostly involves exploring the island and looking for birds, and when the staff at the castle go home for the day we take the emergency phone. If it rings, we answer it and go up to the castle to see what’s wrong. We check the fire alarms, make sure there isn’t a fire, reset the alarms, lock up and go home again. Obviously, if there is a fire we call emergency services etc., but we have been reassured that there will almost certainly be no problem with the alarm system, and hopefully no fires, so it’s really just a precautionary measure, and we get our weekends off! As it’s only part-time, the pay isn’t brilliant, but as we get a rent-and-bill-free cottage to live in, so all we really have to buy is food, so the pay is not an issue really! And the cottage is really nice! It’s fairly old, so the floors are uneven in places and the doorframes are a bit short so Jason has to watch his head sometimes, but I like it, it’s quirky! And it's furnished nicely, with a little wood-burning fire so it’s really cosy! No broadband here, so we’re using a dongle which doesn’t get a lot of signal, and not a lot of mobile phone signal either, but it hasn’t been too much of an issue so far!

Lindisfarne, or Holy Island as it’s also known (due to the monks that lived here many hundreds of years ago), is a small island off the north Northumberland coast, very close to the Scottish border and the Farne Islands, which we can see from here on a clear day. Access to the island is via a tidal causeway, which means it is readily accessible by car 12 hours a day, but cut off from the mainland for the other 12. This means that we do have to be quite careful and check the safe crossing times before we try to cross the causeway; get it wrong and your car gets drowned in salt water, and you have to await rescue by the coastguard!! Apparently it does happen a few times each year, just look at these news stories, so we need to watch out for that! Also, we have to make sure that we’re back on the island in good time, or we could be stuck on the mainland all night! The causeway also means that our working hours change each day. None of the castle staff live on the island, so they come on to the island in the morning, work all day at the castle, and then leave before the causeway closes. As soon as they leave our job begins, so depending on the tides we may have to have the phone from 2pm onwards or from 8pm onwards. While we have the phone we can’t leave the island, as we need to be nearby if something does go wrong.

It really is a very nice island with areas of saltmarsh, sand dunes, ponds and fields, with the small village on the south-east side of the island, closest to the causeway and the mainland. Only about 150 people live here, with a small shop, post-office and a couple of pubs on the island, which remain closed most of the time during the winter, except for half-term week when they should be open for business. It’s pretty quiet here, but it gives us time to explore the island and look for interesting birds! A few days ago, Jason spotted a Green-winged Teal (a type of duck) on one of the ponds, which is a North American version of the Eurasian Teal that we get in the UK, as well as seeing some nice geese and a couple of Mute Swans with coloured rings on their legs (for identifying them). We have a couple of bird feeders up in our little garden, which have mostly been attracting House Sparrows, Blackbirds and Starlings, but just today we had a lovely little Tree Sparrow, which aren’t seen here too often, and several Greenfinches, which are really pretty! We are keeping our eyes open for more interesting birds, and will keep you posted on what we see, and our adventures whilst we're here! I am also applying for summer jobs while I’m up here, and will keep you updated on my progress, hopefully I’ll get something good again this year – wish me luck and watch out for my next post, which should include some photos!