Last year, Sir David Attenborough named NWT Cley Marshes on the north Norfolk coast in his top ten places to visit and "one of the great places in Britain to see wildlife". While it doesn’t come as a surprise to many locals and visitors to Norfolk, what may be more surprising is that the feeling of wildness takes a lot of human intervention, as warden George Baldock tells us.
This article was first published in January 2018.
Since its purchase in 1926, under Norfolk Wildlife Trust’s care the nature reserve at Cley has grown to become one of the best-loved birdwatching sites in Europe, visited each year by more than 110,000 people.
Located on the eastern end of the Norfolk Coast SSSI, the reserve’s fame is justified: as well as avocets and marsh harriers which have been coaxed to breed, and the thousands of pink-footed and brent geese which visit in winter, Cley and Salthouse Marshes is ideally located to receive rare migrants from the continent.
Pink-footed geese at Pat's Pool, by Kevin Woolner
Cley and Salthouse Marshes has a very wild feel to it, but in fact, most of the habitats are managed by humans, for the benefit of the wildlife that comes and goes, throughout the year. The reserve comprises a range of habitats, including grazing marshes which are winter habitat for wigeon, teal and dark-bellied brent geese, breeding habitat for redshank and lapwing in the summer, and a stopover for many wildfowl and waders. Among the grazing marshes are areas of reedbed which are home to marsh harriers, bearded tits, water rails, reed buntings, wainscot moths and numerous warblers. Three large areas of water are overlooked by the main wildlife hides. These ‘scrapes’ as they are known, were funded during the 1970s by local people whose names they still bear: Whitwell Scrape, Simmond’s Scrape and Pat’s Pool.
They are shallow pools which provide invaluable refuge and feeding habitat for a range of wetland species including waders and their young during the summer, and for wildfowl and geese in the winter. The scrapes are also a great place to see passage migrant waders, as they stop for a feed, before continuing their journey.
We can alter the water levels using a series of underground pipes and this system is manipulated throughout the year to provide the best overall habitat condition possible. During the winter months, we increase the levels to control vegetation on islands and to saturate the mud, allowing invertebrates to colonise. Levels are dropped slightly before the breeding season, to allow waders to nest on the islands and then continue to slowly drop throughout the summer months to reveal the mud on which the waders love to feed.
Over time, the scrapes naturally silt up. Common reed and other grasses start to encroach. This needs to be managed to maintain feeding and nesting habitat. We recently undertook restoration work on Whitwell Scrape. It had silted up and was covered in reed - to the point where almost nothing could be seen from the hide. Occasionally a redshank could be seen dropping behind the reed and calling from the small piece of wet mud that was left. Time to get some machinery in!
Black-tailed godwits, by Gill McLennan
The scrape was dried out and a JCB brought in for a week. The edges of the scrape and the islands were re-profiled to provide as much feeding ‘edge’ as possible and to dig out the fast spreading reed rhizomes to prevent regrowth. We deliberately varied the height and depth of the bottom of the scrape, to provide varied depths of water. This is to accommodate the specific requirements of different species of waders. The scrape is now completely open and re-profiled, allowing visitors to watch feeding black-tailed godwits, pink-footed geese coming in to roost and common snipe skulking along the grassy edge.
This type of scrape restoration work is necessary every 8 to ten years. In the intervening period cattle are brought onto the reserve in the summer to graze the edges of the scrapes and churn up and dung into the mud, creating habitat and microtopography for invertebrates. We also need to do a little manual work ourselves to control the vegetation and maintain open areas of habitat, as well as keeping views from the hides open for birdwatchers and photographers.
Experience shows that scrapes in general are at their most productive for the first few years after major work, so we are now looking forward to this year’s breeding season, where we hope nesting waders will take advantage of the new islands and open edges. Watch this space - literally!
Header image by Richard Osbourne