Well we are in Rye Bay and we are creating scallops!

After looking like we were going to have a wet day, the rain stopped when we arrived at the job and stayed away. The scrub is mostly blackthorn with a little hawthorn sprinkled around. We have left 1 larger hawthorn and a small oak so far and 1 dead tree because standing dead wood provides important habitat just as much as fallen dead wood.

The scallop so far. The bare ground was impenetrable scrub, well, not for us of course! If you look closely you will see a couple of patches of red in the background, this is hawthorn berries. We now have a large pile of brash to deal with.

Raven and Peregrine were both seen during the day and back at the farm we saw a large bird of prey with jesses on being mobbed by corvids which we believe to be a Harris Hawk. Hopefully it will be reunited with it’s owner.

Today we started our contribution to this year’s round of scrub clearance under the Higher Level Stewardship agreement for Hastings Country Park Nature Reserve and it looks like we got the only dry day this week!

This involved removing mainly blackthorn scrub to the north of Ecclesbourne Meadow. We are doing this in “scallops” of irregular shape which Natural England believe will result in a better diversity of plant species in the regeneration that follows due to more variable light and shade than if straight lines were used.

Travelling across the fields we saw a number of Wheatear and Stonechats.

Unless another more urgent job arises we’ll be back there next week with maybe a bonfire  but dependant on numbers on the day.