Last night chaired a very interesting talk by Simon Wellock who for the last year has been the Warden for Lincs. Trust at the Far Ings Centre, Barton. He described how reed-bed management could best promote a diverse ecology, although the bittern is often referenced a healthy environment for the bittern is a healthy wetland environment for many other creatures as well. Reed-bed management is costly of labour and equipment and has to be repeated at least every 12 years.
Sadly the warden and his volunteers have to deal with a lot more than the welfare of the nature reserve, fly-tipping in particular.
Reed-beds are always a temporary feature in the natural sequences of wetland ecology, the reeds causing in the medium turn the wetland to dry out, this resulting in the demise of the reeds and their replacement by scrubland and tree types able to tolerate relatively damp top soils. In the linear reed-bed along the south bank of the Humber parallel with Sluice Road this process seems to be happening in places (see above image). Reed-bed management involves halting this process.
Recently noted; marsh marigold in flower, coltsfoot colonising disturbed soil e.g. Ferriby cliff (where some collapse) and beside Humber bank path near Old Tile Works, flowering current, forsythia, all types of daffodil family etc.