The birds are awake

It seemed almost a shame to disturb the tranquillity of the scene by the stream on this beautiful morning:

Certainly the duck, which appeared to be asleep – except for promptly getting up and moving away every time the photographer attempted to approach for a closer shot – was of the opinion that another party of humans arriving to do volunteer work on site was really rather tiresome.

The work, however, was much needed.  For just at the moment these are watercress beds with rather a shortage of watercress, and an excess of other plant species:

In places, the weeds made for some pretty patterns:

At other spots, the duckweed was so thick, it made the watercourse look like solid ground – more of a green river than a self-respecting Chilterns chalkstream:

Some barrows were already loaded with weeds and silt removed from the stream, courtesy of yesterday’s work-party.

The rest of the spoil extracted from the brook by the group preceding us was resting – and drying out – on the concrete bund.  It was now ready for us to cart away, one barrow-load at a time.

“Why are we always clearing up after other people?”

It was a long way to the compost heap.  You can just make out the tiny figure of a Green-Gymmer in the distance on the first of these photographs.  We were grateful that the weather was pleasantly sunny, but not as hot as it had been for our predecessors yesterday.

Even as the pickings from yesterday were being barrowed away, other volunteers were hard at work generating more material to be carted away this afternoon.  Some were weeding by hand/fork, others raking out unwanted vegetation:

Meanwhile, down at the other end of the site – downstream – engineering works were in progress:

Two sets of work, in fact.  One consisted of ‘just’ moving things around on site.  This was more than “an engineering tidy”, though.  For one thing, the items concerned were rocks – heavy rocks; and the barrow had a flat tyre.

Some of the cargo, to be transported

from here …

to there (where if they are piled up by other hands to dam the stream, they will not be obstructing the way for fish)

This was not the first time we had relocated items from that particular stretch of the stream, which is clearly popular with small persons.  Last time we did a similar job, it was to extract old tyres, and re-form them into a planter.  It was good to see our handiwork in use on site:

The resident robin also checked out whether this development had turned up anything of use for him:

And the other engineering works – well those had something to do with repairing a weir, including making a through-route for fish.  For those not immediately involved (that was most of us), it was all very mysterious.

And there were an awful lot of us on site today.  For we were joined by two teams of people (young, fit, hard-working!) on one of their out-of-office days. 

The mid-morning break was a time to socialise and, of course, to take on board refreshments.  A most impressive range of eats and drinks (thank you, EA and Watercress Beds Visitor Centre bods!)

“I don’t know when I last ate an ice-lolly” one of our own volunteers cheerfully observed.

Because we were based right beside the site visitor centre, rather than being out in the wilds as were last week, there was also an opportunity to put a fresh edge on some of the tools:

For the second half of the morning, there was for some of us a chance to swap jobs.  While work to make watercress-beds less of a haven for weeds and more of a reserve for actual watercress continued, another party carried some more tools downstream.  The immediate task was to remove mud – a copious quantity of sloppy, black mud (but far from the worst we have ever encountered) – from the area where the weir was to be restored.

Looking over to the right from the pathway, it really did look as if an Arcturan mega-cow had had an unfortunate accident.  [There’s a bathroom on the right? – Ed.]  And yes, the only way to get the gloop out, and high up on to the bank, was to scoop it up in buckets:

We Green-Gymmers did our bit, but for completion of the tasks, it was over to our visitors.  For they were staying for the whole working day, while we dispersed as usual at 1 o’clock.