Autumn arrives in the natural world, 21st August 2026

 Bore da pawb

Gobeithio eich bod chi i gyd wedi cael haf gwych, mae wedi bod yn un diddorol gydag uchafbwyntiau ac isafbwyntiau. Ond rydyn ni nawr yn mynd i mewn i'r hydref pa newidiadau a welwn.

I hope you have all had a great summer, it has been an interesting one with highs and lows. But we are now entering autumn what changes will we see.

With water levels so low, or seemingly so we have carried out some management work on one of the artificial dune slacks at Pembrey Burrows LNR; it may seem an odd time to do this work but waiting into late autumn risks being flooded out and the work not happening.

What have we done... a few years ago a large area was scraped back to bare sand, the area quickly colonised with typical dune slack vegetation, Southern Marsh Orchid, Purple Loosestrife, Lesser Spearwort, Marsh Pennywort and Sedges.

With a specific aim in mind the area has become too vegetated.

In particular the sedges have done much better than needed so approximately one third of the sedge bed has been removed down to the water table, which rather surprisingly was not that far below the surface.

At the same time we also removed a "runway" of reeds taking the surface down by another 150mm, effectively "resetting" that area back about four years, I know the question "why that shape" easy to monitor and sometimes you need to be different. It will soon blend in.

Yes it looks rough at the moment, we have left plenty of  the area unscathed with plenty of nectar sources for the 60+ Common Blues and other butterflies to forage on.

Something a little humorous, you may have noticed a significant increase in Grey Squirrels this year, they have done very well again! however a few are packing up and leaving our shores via Burry port Harbour!!!