Riverfly and floodplain plugs
Early start this morning to meet Tony at Ebley Mill for our monthly riverfly check. I was a bit late because the visitor car park which used to be free now has started charging. There is a new process to get a pass which I’m now aware of.
We approached the site with some trepidation after recording two consecutive low scores last month after a recent pollution event.
We really had no idea whether it will have recovered to the levels that we saw earlier in the year.
Sadly, it was obvious yet again on first sight that we weren’t going to see very much apart from gammarus. They were a bit more numerous that last time, but nothing to write home about. We searched and searched and did find three tiny olives, but apart from that, nothing. There were a few cased caddisfly shells, but all were empty. Overall the score was 4, which did not trigger a breach but was clearly disappointing. We’ll have to see next month whether there is any improvement.
After a quick trip to the tip with garden waste, I headed over to Slimbridge Wetlands Trust where the Flourishing Floodplains project had prepared an order of plugs for Glorious Grasslands. This is the first time I’ve seen their operation, where they grow thousands of plug plants from seed. They specialise in floodplain species, both for their own reserve and to sell to raise funds.
Anna had called me the night before to say she had an order ready, and it was convenient for me to go pick them up and drop them over to the harvesting team who happened to be at Cherington today. These plugs are destined to be planted at a client site on Wednesday.
I took the chance to catch up with a couple of volunteers who I’ve not seen for a while, so I did a bit of sifting before heading back home.
