Working in the reed beds

I've recently been volunteering with The Parks Trust once a week on some of their practical conservation projects. One of these is the management of the reed beds surrounding Walton Lake.

These are an important habitat in Milton Keynes - I think they are the biggest reed beds that we have in the local area. Martin also mentioned that last winter we had a couple of bitterns overwintering here from Holland or Germany. (Unfortunately it's unlikely that they will breed and boom, because the area isn't big enough to allow them to feed. They are fussy eaters and, unlike the omnivorous herons, won't eat anything but fish! ) The reed beds also provide habitat for reed warblers and water rails - and I have also observed lots of frog and toad tadpoles as well as caddis fly larvae of two different kinds, dragonflies and damselflies. A while back I went down to the reed beds in the early morning with Gary and Nina, and we listened to the sparkling, varied, 'pouring' sound of the warblers (which have now gone back to Africa). Gary wrote about it here.

Anyway, the RSPB recently gave The Parks Trust some advice on how to manage the reed beds - and they felt that we needed to reduce the willow and alder carr around the beds to prevent them from gradually becoming overtaken by woodland.

It seems terribly destructive to be removing trees - but I guess the ideas is that we're trying to manage the habitat to allow a diversity of species to survive. And, added to this, the reed bed habitat is very distinctive. I hadn't realised that you can go into the area but you can, and it's like another world in there! The reeds (phragmites communis) are well over 6ft tall. The picture above shows us going in for the first time. We needed to use scythes to cut a path through.

Working in the reed beds is hard, because the area is boggy. It is also difficult to pull the felled trees up and out over the banks. In addition to this, we're coppicing at waist height, so that a contractor (who is being brought in) can see the stumps in amongst the reeds and treat them to prevent further growth. Coppicing at such a height means that the branches of the felled trees catch in the stumps.

However, it's immensely satisfying doing physical work - both physcially and emotionally. I love being active, working with the others and learning about the habitat. It's great to see the physical progress made in just one day. It's also very rewarding learning new skills: I'm trying hard to use the bow saw in an efficient manner and watching the others' technique.

The next task in the reed beds is to cut paths through the reeds. The aim of this is to create little waterways for the birds and fish, and to provide a good place from which bitterns can feed (they like to hunt from the edges).

At the end of each day I'm adding to a log of practical conservation work to build towards a possible career change to environmental education (at some point in the future).