The paragraph below had been has been written by Dr.Barry Yates, Manager of The Rye Harbour Nature Reserve. I am hoping to twist his arm for him to write about the Reserve twice or more a week.
Rye Harbour Cam 2 update. Today the first Common Tern chick hatched, and now it has about 25 days of non-stop feeding and growing ahead of it. At first the chicks stay in the nest with an adult, while the other parent goes off to find suitable food – perhaps a shrimp, or flat fish, but ideally a sand eel. As the chicks get larger and don’t need the protection or warmth of the adults they will start wandering around the island and swimming in the water with their tiny webbed feet. With over 80 nests of Common Tern and half a dozen of the Black-headed Gull on the web cam island it should provide much interest. BUT BE WARNED, many chicks will not survive, perhaps due to starvation of bad weather, or attacks from Herring Gulls or Foxes or Badgers (yes, even on islands). It is a hard world for most wildlife and here at Rye Harbour we try to help the seabirds by trying to exclude the Fox and Badger using electric fencing. In this way we have built up a large and successful population of many ground nesting birds that are declining elsewhere – such as Lapwing, Skylark, Redshank, Grey Partridge and many others.
Barry Yates
We nearly had a disaster with Branston and Woody this evening. When the Horses came in for their feed, I somehow forgot to close Woody’s stable door. Not the brightest thing to do. When we noticed that I had not closed the door, Branston was in the stable with Woody. Fortunately Branston was helping Woody eat her feed. Not like Woody to allow that, I would have expected her to have got rather annoyed, and to at least of bitten Branston, if not a hard kick. Two days earlier it would have been a different story, as although Woody was unwell she was in season, she could have well finished up being mated by Branston and put in Foal. The last thing we would have wanted for Woody. I wasn’t sure how Branstone would be if I went in with him and Woody in together. We managed to get him out of the stable with waving arm and moving Woody’s feed outside. It could well have turned out differently.
Jan from Herts asked would a Badger cull effect the Badgers the Badgers at Denbury. until a Government announcement on a cull is made, probably some time this month, we really don’t know. For sure some part of the Southwest will be used for the experiment. It was when a gassing cull was tried some years back. The public and media out cry stopped the gassing. Rumour has it that any cull this time will be by licenced shooting. We will give details of any licenced person on this site, for they will need to apply for the licence. Believe me any person applying for the licence will not be doing the shooting because of Bovine TB cull, but for the enjoyment that they get out of shooting animals. I know a few of them.
Thanks Elsie email me the photos.