Tay Estuary Diary February 2016

It was gales and heavy showers for the first week or so of this month before it settled back down into a colder dry spell with some snow on the high ground.

The river level did finally drop back a bit after weeks of extra water coming down the system. Some of our time on the wetter days was spent patching up damaged nest boxes that have come down in the gales over the winter months. They are dried out, repaired, given a coat of cuprinol and put back up again around the place for the benefit of the birds.

Once we got a dry spell of weather it was time to get started on our annual litter pick. There was a fair bit of rubbish picked up along stretches of the foreshore on both sides of the river, it is only when you start gathering up all the litter that realise just how much people throw away!

The old barge was used to move the tractor and flail mower up to the fishery where it was used to catch up cutting round the banking’s and pond sides.

The ground has been so soft for so long now but we have caught up at last, the place is looking a lot tidier now with some of the islands and our pound area having had a good tidy up with the strimmers as well.

Some of our new hedging that was planted out over the last couple of years is doing okay, after weeding it all out and having a good look at, it appears to have had a good strike rate.

There has been a bit of movement of birds along our part of the estuary this month; a frosty spell has seen more swans coming into feed with us as inland waters began to ice over.

Their numbers peaked at 57 on the 24th, and we had three new green darvex rings amongst them, they were LTI, PNN and BBP.

There were a lot of Snipe and the odd Woodcock moving through on the 11th, and we saw our first curlew of the year on the 25th. We were seeing a lot more Goldfinch some days with charms between fifty and hundred at times. The redshank numbers have improved a bit but are still poor for the time of year.

As the month drew to a close the river level was as low as it has been for a long time and the weather was what it should be for the time of year.

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