Wot! No fencing. Ground nesting birds in danger. 6th April 2024

We've had the wettest February and March on record. Intermixed with all this wet stuff were the odd cold days, and very cold mornings. Surprisingly little frost. Tuesdays, my normal morning for a site visit, were generally either pouring with rain or so overcast as to make not worthwhile visiting Manor farm.

To compound matters, California crossroads (double roundabout) are being dug up for some hairbrained, multi-million pound upgrade scheme (which doesn't make sense to us locals) meaning the through road is closed, necessitating a round the houses detour.

The first glimpse of good weather, with a warm morning, allowed me to visit Manor farm at 6:30am. I had been worried that in my several weeks hiatus I would have missed much development on Manor farm. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I discovered that absolutely nothing had been done on the site. Nadda, zip, zilch. No fencing, no sluice gates, no bridge near the Longwater road entrance, etc. What have Cemex been playing at?

About the only change I noticed was a series of small green, orange and red pennants had been placed along the edge of the bridlepath. No doubts signifying something important, but not obvious to your hard working reporter. I suspect that the flags either signify buried pipe or perhaps changes in fencing. Regardless of their true meaning, I noticed that a couple of flags had come loose, and that there were significantly more pennants on the north bridle path than the south. One explanation for this is that more people have been walking and cycling along the south bridle path and with some of them being local youths, it could be that they have stolen the flags for laughs.

What is serious about a lack fencing is that ground nesting birds are in dire trouble. I photographed very fresh dogs tracks this morning on the south bridle path, and some cyclists had decided to go off track and cycle across the site, a few metres where Lapwing and Little Ringed Plovers had bred last year.

The other issue I noticed is that the ballast put over drainage pipes, particularly around Hawthorne lake has, as I predicted, begun to erode away - mainly due to the frequent bouts of torrential rain we've experienced. This erosion will get much worse once more pedestrians and horse riders use the reserve. Sigh, what ever happened to British engineering excellence?

Too be perfectly honest, I didn't really expect any developments to have occurred during my hiatus. It's pretty much on par for Cemex.