Paul's Blog - All comments and views are my own,

Brackets....... The Bio-diversity of the Pembrey Burrows nature reserve is huge, perhaps one of the less well studied groups are the Fungi, which are neither plants nor animals. Dr Phillip Jones is the local expert, in the true sense, and is often out on the reserve, happy to share his knowledge and enthuse others. This particular bracket type fungus grows on Sea buckthorn, Fomitiporia hippophaeicola occurs on living Sea Buckthorn as a parasite and is seldom recorded with only 89 records, mainly from Lincolnshire i t was first found at Pembrey in 2012, by Phillip.                                                    Fomitiporia hippophaeicola                                                      Fomitiporia hippophaeicola There are many more species of fungi on the reserve and I will look at them in blogs later in the year.

Bloody weather..... This is a combined blog from yesterday when I managed to catch one bird, a Wren, and today when I turned around went home and back to bed until a more reasonable hour and better weather. Storm Imogen has really battered the fore dunes at Pembrey reserve, with up to 20m of dunes washed away in places, the good news is that the sand will redeposit and the dunes will build again. Marram Grass roots exposed by the collapse of the dunes, some of the roots were 3m long The high tide today at 9.4m, brought in the following: Teal 200+, Shelduck 10, Wigeon 4, Redshank 40+, Greenshank 1, Curlew 5, Black-Headed Gull 100+ and Common Gull 20+ Not massive numbers but still reasonable given that most of the marsh is out of sight due to the topography. Lets hope the weather settles down.......................

Storm "Imogen", the aftermath Yesterday saw the south of the country enveloped in storm "Imogen", a gust of 83mph was recorded at the Pembrey Airfield about two miles west of the reserve. Looking down channel (West) after Storm Imogen, the rollers were still coming in though An early morning visit found the reserve has escaped the storm with only the fore-dunes suffering with more erosion and inundation by the sea into the dunes in a few places. The cattle have been leaning on one of the stiles and broken the top bar, a very heavy fly could have broken it as it was very rotten!!!!. The 19 bullocks are doing a great job grazing off the rough grasses and, in a few places, breaking the surface of the fixed dunes; this is key to maintaining the dunes in great condition for the wide range of flowering plants and invertebrates. The high tides and storms do bring home just how much plastic and old fishing nets are out in the sea plastic and old fis