Southwater Quarry

Over the past few seasons we have had a little bit of trouble at Southwater Country Park with the two resident pairs of swans both competing for Cripplegate Lake. The last two years pairs have bred on both Cripplegate and Lennoxwood Lakes but this is when the problems occur. The fishing lake is not really suitable for a family of swans so the parents usually lead them over to Cripplegate Lake thus causing world war 3! The wardens or Sue usually have to collect all of one family and carry them over to the Quarry Lake!

So this year a miracle occured when the parents managed to walk their two youngsters all the way from Lennoxwood Lake to the Quarry Lake! Anyway to cut a long story short we hope each year that the parents might use the Quarry Lake to breed on but there is very little by way of reeds or rushes to build a nest so they return to the fishing lake each time.

To try and prevent this, we have decided to plant a small area of reedbed in the only shallow area of the Quarry Lake. See photos below (all courtesy of Sue Cocker) many thanks.

Tom planting Phragmites

 The process involved taking out some of the overhanging Alder and Willow and planting lots of Phragmites which hopefully will take hold in the shallow water and create a more substantial reedbed.

View from the bank

 From the bank you can see the kind of area we hope will eventually turn into reedbed. All the open areas of water to the right of the fence line have been planted to should start to create a larger reedbed soon.

Filling the gaps with Phragmites

 As you can see the Phragmites comes looking very small but we hope it will begin to take hold very soon and start to create a dense covering.

Fencing the island

We have had to fence the area to stop the Swan, Tufted Duck, Coots, Moorhens and Mallards from eating the Phragmites plugs before they have taken hold. Once they have established we will remove the fencing and keep our fingers crossed that the swans will like the small island and new reedbed! We will keep you updated as the project develops. Our thanks go to Horsham Green Gym for all the manual labour help!