Two diggers, one dozer and boulder sorter outer. 9th November 2019

Wednesday's lovely sunny stomp, revealed Inert working on the banking that runs alongside the south embankment and also around the southerly shores of Cormorant lake (south).  Two diggers were busying themselves, digging around the mound and reducing the height of the banking alongside the south footpath.

Inert seem to take great pleasure in nibbling away at this banking. It's been attacked a couple or three times already. I've no idea why the relatively low banking isn't simple bulldozed flat.

Our intrepid bulldozer driver was trundling all over the south shores of Cormorant lake and the land mass. In addition to commercial tipper lorries (from the likes of John Stacy) Inert have drafted in their heavy bulk loader; the type you see in big open cast mines. It has been trundling around for weeks, now.

Saturday's stomp was a reasonably miserable affair. I had hoped the overnight frosts we've had for the past few days would solidify the ground a little.  Nothing of the sort. All it did was set water hard as epoxy resin around the doors and windows of my car. Getting the car door open required a great deal of pulling and yanking. By contrast, not only was the ground around Manor farm not frozen solid it was, if anything, even more gooey and sticky and yielding. I had to stay off bits of the site, even when sticking to bulldozer tracks.

The depths of some of the bulldozer tracks (2 feet or 60cm in places) testify how soft the soil was in parts, as even its wide caterpillar tracks did not stop it from sinking.

Fog made this morning's photography a little challenging. All would have been well had I left half an hour later than I did e.g. 7:45am, as the sun would have burnt off the fog. But then I would not have got some stunning shots of a Red Kite at 8:45am, when the sun was up, mist gone, and the bird was sunning itself.

What my (vague) stomp revealed was that the entire southern half of Cormorant lake's shores are completely torn up this week.  More stuff has been pushed into the lake on a broad front taking the infill a little further north and still going around the scrape.

Inert have built a series of what can only be described as long barrows alongside the vehicle track south of Cormorant lake. It's very peculiar. They are beautifully crafted out of what looks like sandy ballast. No idea what they are for, but they do hide Cormorant lake (south) from the south footpath. And this after Inert reduced the height of the banking that ran alongside the south footpath.

A boulder sorter outer has taken up residency on the land mass, opposite the scrape, at the end of the track that Inert built a couple of weeks ago.  It looks suspiciously brand new. Bright shiny paint and pipe work.  There is also tons of concrete lumps spread about the boulder sorter outer.  I don't think the birds are going to be too happy about this.

The nasty fly tipping has been cleared up, and a nice lump of concrete placed against the gate of the Longwater road entrance to deter anyone trying to get into the site. Should have left the banking and the tank traps in place.

Our pump was quite silent, this morning and Wednesday. Possibly awaiting repairs to its leak.

In summary, Inert have been all over the southern shores of Cormorant lake (south), filling it in a little, but mainly (as usual) tearing the whole place up so it looks like the Western front. Business as usual.

The much calmer, and reserve ready, Fleet Hill farm had a nice load of wildlife this morning. Shame I didn't have more time to investigate.