Boundary House Fen, Saturday 18th June 2022

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This week's blog post was written by the wonderful Kevin!

Boundary House Fen is one of our SSSI (Sites of Special Scientific Interest), which we have been working on with Natural England and the backing of the Frilford Heath Golf Club. 

The last couple of years has seen the biggest change, with Dr Judy Webb (a Biologist) and Rod D'Ayala taking a hands-on approach in returning the fen to its wetland environment. Rod has been the driving force, directing Green Gym's volunteers to help cut reeds and dam the drainage stream that went through the fen, causing the water to flood and spread out, along with Rod's diversion of the water round the edge of the bog and filtering down through it. This encourages the growth of fen plants that eat the roots of the reeds, keeping them from taking over and so letting more light in for other rarer fen plants to recover and grow.

The pictures taken by Michele showed the variety colour there is to be seen on the fen. A little visitor came over while we were have our refreshment break: a tiny match box size common-shrew was busying foraging! Its movements were so quick it was hard to get a picture, but you can just about see his tail and snout in these photos. 

Jim the Scyther doing what Jim the Scyther does


Michele's orchid

The little visitor! 


The team hard at work! 

Cut reeds 

The tail end of the tale 



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