Warnham LNR - A bit soggy!

Wet Meadow - Living up to its name! (J. Glossop)

After a full night of rain on Tuesday I was expecting to coming in to a pretty full millpond but even I did not expect it to be this high. The Wet Meadow in front of the Sandpiper Hide did its job and took most of the flood water but there was still a 2ft rise in the water level in the millpond by the end of the day. Our recorder Jo was brave enough to get out there with her camera and take some shots of how high the water had got!

Chennels Brook - J. Glossop

 As you can see from the photo above there was a huge amount of sediment being washed downstream which is no doubt having an effect on the drying up of the millpond. Hopefully over the next couple of years we will get some way with getting the main millpond de-silted but this will be a hugely expensive operation. I think the canalised section of Chennels Brook in the photo above looks like the canals in Amsterdam...quite impressive considering it normally is about six inches deep!

Wet Meadow - J. Glossop

Sandpiper Hide - J. Glossop

 As with every flood event like this there are always problems caused by the volume of water. This time we had to make sure the cattle which were on the Wet Meadow were pushed up into the dry woodland to the east of the meadow. No doubt we will have lost a number of our Harvest Mice due to them being totally flooded out, and the nest the Swans were building has all but washed away. Even the Pheasants looked like they didn't quite know what had happened!

Flooded Pheasant - J. Glossop