Divide and conquer wednesday 10th May 2017

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Today being Wednesday means one thing, volunteer day, when the other three stalwarts, Veronica, Brian and Neil turn out to tackle tasks and "monitoring".

 Today we turned our attention to the main entrance area of the reserve, having removed part of the old wire fence a few weeks ago, it didn't take long for cars to be parked on the grassy area when the hard standing is full.

 Neil helped out for a while before going off to do a breeding survey for Stonechat, one of the ubiquitous birds of sand dunes and heaths.

 Digging in sand is great, however working on the edge of a tarmac road meant we soon found the going a bit tougher than usual but undeterred the replacement fence went in easily and even more satisfying is the fact that apart from any nails, all materials were recycled from "old unwanted waste wood".
Brian hard at work

Finished? I may tweak it a bit more!

After lunch Veronica set off to look for the Strandline Beetle which should be emerging from hibernation anytime now? or not as seemed the case. Brian and I kept tweaking the fence!
Neil had a great time as well as finding eight pairs of Stonechat in the areas he surveyed he also had the following butterflies, SMALL BLUE, GREEN HAIRSTREAK, DINGY SKIPPER and SMALL HEATH, as well as MOTHER SHIPTON MOTHS.

Stonechat ♂

Without the help so freely volunteered much conservation and access work, both here locally  and across the UK just would not happen.





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