Yet another productive few weeks at Renscault Brooghs. The wildflowers have climaxed and the grasses and bracken have kicked into overdrive! The insect activity has also gone turbo, which is undoubtedly welcomed by many hungry beaks, but the river is very low, which is not surprising given what little rain we’ve had. Dare I say, we need some rain!
We had the pleasure of welcoming Liz Charter and Tim Earl onto the site earlier this month. Liz is a renowned local ecologist and Tim is an ornithologist with much experience creating and managing nature reserves. Liz has already compiled a botanical species list comprising 140+ records which can be found here along with a number of historic lists taken from the NBN Atlas database. They were both very taken with what the site had to offer which further stoked our fires.
In addition to the fantastic data collection that happened this month, we were also very excited to welcome Jon Burgess and Rob Wright to the site along with their bee hives. Jon and Rob are a real characters and their passion for beekeeping is infectious (although I’ve yet to don the suit). The hives will now be a permanent feature of the site and there are certainly plenty of flowers to keep them bees busy. We are mindful of introducing plants or animals to the site in order to fulfil the rewilding approach. However, the bees that were brought in were swarms taken from Mount Rule, so knowing they were local swung it for us.
The plan at the moment is to have no plan. We are just watching what the site presents to us so that later in the year and into next year we can start to develop some long-term objectives. I’m the type of person who likes to get things done, so this has been a change of gear for me but has allowed time to watch the season unfold before our eyes. It really is quite amazing just how complex yet in-sync the natural world is; near infinite elements and processes, restless yet balanced.
As always, if you would like to learn more about the project, offer your advice or opinions, or even get involved in some way, please feel free to get in touch via the contact page.
