Work on infill appears to accelerate. 20th October 2018

Will the restoration of Manor farm be completed before the 31st December of this year?

I reckon it is too close a call to make. It all depends what happens to Cormorant lake and how much inert waste has to be trucked in. If the infill of Finch pond is completed by the end of this month, and the restoration of Cormorant lake simply requires the north embankment and ridges to be bulldozed into it then the answer is probably yes.

Though once landscaping has been completed it will be over to finer details like tree planting, construction of footpaths and bridle paths, fencing laying, etc, etc, etc. However, these, according to the planning applications, take place after the site has been filled in and contoured.

Enough speculation - I should know by now not to do so. Back to this week's progress.

My Wednesday morning visit revealed the bulldozer driver pottering just south of the Longwater road entrance; pushing the top surface of soil around.  I'm not sure what precisely was going on. Perhaps clearing some of the water after the deluge we had.

Later on he was working on the new west shore of Finch pond, both to the north and south of it. This area seems particularly complex, and undergoes frequent changes - mainly of being filled in and then dug out again.

This is also the cast for the area south of the current shore of Finch pond. A large amount of it has been dug out by a couple of feet, and the spoil pushed into Finch pond. I am still baffled by this process. Perhaps this area is to be shallows for reed beds - it is quite a large area.

On the other hand, I did notice a whole stack of rubble (large concrete blocks) spread out along the west side of the copse, extending over the track way previously used by the haulage lorry. This rubble looks like the stuff screened by the boulder sorter outer, and has simply been bulldozed over to the west of the copse.  The area where the screener resides has had a lot of the hills of spoil removed.

The pump has been doing a splendid job of draining Finch pond and Cormorant lake.  Its job is much easier now that so much of Finch pond has been filled in.

The causeway, so carefully constructed earlier on in the year, has made a reappearance due to falling water levels.

Time, as they say, will tell.

Once again it was rather misty when I arrived for my Saturday stomp around Manor farm.  Wednesday wasn't too wonderful either, weather wise.

Regulars may have noticed a slight delay in this week's update. This was partly due to a problem with my network adapter. One possible explanation was that it was due to a Microsoft update issue.  The solution of not Ipv4 or Ipv6 wi-fi or internet connection is to use netsh to reset the winsock catalog and then reset the Ipv4 protocol.

As usual, there was a fair amount of wildlife on Manor farm, even whilst all the plant were trundling around the site. I was happy to see the Lapwing flocks gathering, though they were not yet as large as last year.  There is still much time for them to grow in size.

Saturday's early morning visit had the plethora of Canada geese, Egyptian geese and a surprise appearance of a flock of Barnacle geese.  Photos of many of these can be found on the RSPB's Community forum.