Radio awards

A busy day started with a hair cut first thing. Afterwards, I headed over to Wild Acres where we were being interviewed by local radio for a potential award.

It was mostly a day of strimming the top part of the site to improve access. This is the time of year before all the seeds drop, so I was careful not to disturb flowering plants.

There’s quite a bit of poison hemlock on the site, as well as elm suckers, so that required precision cuts with secateurs instead.

I left before lunch, which is highly unusual for me. I was meeting with Pete from the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust by the river Frome. The cartridges which we use for mammal monitoring had become less performant in recent weeks, so we were replacing the clay with a fresher mix. This should enable captured footprints to stay for the two week period in between checks.

There were signs of water voles at two of the rafts. This is their peak breeding season and there is plenty of dense vegetation on the banks to provide cover.

In particular, there were so many signs at one of the rafts, it was likely that water voles were living on both sides of the monitoring raft.