Not particularly exciting news to many readers of this blog save those of us who work here and would need to deal with the aftermath of any problems arising from the non-functioning rain water system that should flush the toilets, but I am absolutely delighted to report that joint landowners of the nature reserve and project partners Sembcorp Bournemouth Water provided a couple of operatives to fix our toilet flushing predicament today! Albeit possibly a temporary fix by plumbing the system back into mains supply rather than using our rain water storage it does at least mean that our toilets should be working throughout the busy holiday period (speaking of which, just in case anyone was wondering, the reserve will be open as normal everyday except Christmas Day again this year). Many thanks to the company and in particular Steve and Jack who did the work!
On the wildlife front siskins are still coming down to the bird feeders and therefore are much easier to see now than they have been so far this autumn/winter, both the great white egret and a bittern have been seen and the starlings did come in, but with poor weather roosted straight away again in dribs and drabs rather than gathering together first and descending on mass. There have however been no reports of the ferruginous duck seen on Ivy Lake yesterday.
Heavy rain has bought the river levels up and the report from one of our volunteers upstream of us is that a good number of sea trout have made the most of the conditions to come up from the Avon and spawn – some may even have been in the deeper water within the reserve today waiting to travel further up stream in the dark tonight, but if they were no one saw them!
Blashford Lakes Nature Reserve 