Covid lockdown anniversary. What a wild ride it has been. 23rd March 2021

Reports will be sporadic until the breeding season is finished - typically June/July. I'll be keeping off Manor farm, restricting myself to the south footpath. Though if Inert expand their infill operation during this time, I will occasionally pop onto the parts they are working on to see what they have done.  It's interesting watching the birds when Inert continued infill of Finch pond during the breeding season. The birds totally ignored the heavy plant trundling to and fro. It was only when humans appeared that they took flight.

As usual with Inert, it is very difficult to figure if they have done any restoration work from week to week.  Just when I think they have done nowt, I discover they have been tinkering and done loads.

My infrequent, short visits, mean it is down to luck whether I see any activity. Thus it was, I turned up on a Monday to witness Inert at work. I think this is the first time I've visited the site on a Monday. I only went due to glorious cloudless sunny skies. Got to make use of any break in the weather.

Inert were working away, this time with a digger and bulldozer, between the bailey bridge and pump station. They appear to be up to their peculiar strategy of building large mounds of spoil, only to knock them down again some time in the future. And once again restricting themselves to a tight space just north of the bailey bridge.

No doubts spoil from newly appeared heaps on Chandlers will be transported across the bailey bridge over the coming weeks to be dumped around the pump station. Then, at some point in June or July, the stuff will be laboriously loaded onto lorries and shipped westward onto the land mass. An extremely inefficient, time consuming and costly way of going about this restoration.  I hope Cemex have negotiated a fixed price contract.

A new tipper lorry contractor has appeared which I've not before, M.A.C.  This might have been the lorry that was around a couple of weeks back which the memsahib saw - and which I mistook for the heavy earth mover. As I was leaving on Monday, I spotted a Manor tipper truck dropping a load. A possibility, perhaps, that restoration will continue apace over the next three months?

Then again, Inert have consistently done the opposite of what I have assumed. At least Inert are continuing with restoration of Manor farm for the time, rather than halting until June/July, albeit in a tiny corner of Manor farm.