Thanks to Andrew who made them, and Aaron who got them up, today. We have just caught the tail end of the period when birds are searching for somewhere to nest, so we can look forward to monitoring and recording what we see, using the iRecord button on the menu bar.

It was nice to hear from a passing-by  walker, that she had seen a couple of Blue Tits darting in and out of one of the boxes that we put up a few years ago.

John, Marcus and myself just cleared off the last of the ballast ridge, and then tided the section between the picnic clearing and the bird-box clearing.

What we are trying to do is get rid of the overhanging branches. These make the path feel enclosed and isolated.

This picture shows the nice open and snaking path. The snaking creates little micro-habitats and stops the path becoming a wind tunnel. With the path running in a north-easterly to south-westerly direction, it is the left-hand side that will get the sun. The right-hand side tends to be quite damp and good for fungi, lichens and mosses. If you click on the links you will see how massive each of these subjects are. Fascinating and good fun when searching for them. Plenty of Jelly Ear fungus today but I didn’t spot anything new.

This will be our last day of cutting back. The trees will start to green up and it will be difficult to see if there are any nesting birds in them.

Next week we are dealing with the tree that has blown down, a little further down the path. We are joined by a small group from Cemex, who want to put something back into the local community.

On the second Sunday of April we will be down by the A45 doing a litter-pick. There is a lot of litter that has built up over the years. We can now work beyond Potford Dam, but we need to let David at Sustrans know what we are doing prior to any workdays.

Thanks for today, guys.

Paul