Surveying at Martin Mere

Over the years I've had several spells of volunteering at Martin Mere and I've been back again over the past couple of weeks. Last week it was a butterfly survey, this week an NVC habit survey. 

In my working life I've done plenty of NVC surveys, usually of large moorland sites in Northern Scotland or Northern Ireland. They can be tough going, often over very difficult terrain, and in order to correctly identify the community types they ideally require identification of all plants in a 2m quadrat, not just flowers, but also grasses, rushes, sedges, mosses and fungi. 

A site in the moorlands can involve many miles walked across moor and bog, often in inclement weather, in order to survey perhaps 100 quadrats. Typically I'd fly to Inverness on a Saturday, then hire a car and drive north for a couple of hours. Then I'd start work on the Sunday, continuing all week and finally returning home the following Sunday. Even then it wasn't finished, I had to get all the books out, assign each quadrat a community and then write the report. This could take another few days.

Fortunately, volunteering for an NVC at Martin Mere is very different. First of all the terrain is nowhere near as difficult, and we only go out on nice days! Also, my part is just to identify the plants and decide on the coverage of each species, there's no data input or analysis on my part. Even so, on Wednesday I walked 13 miles in total just around Martin Mere!

The great thing for me is that these surveys get me out to otherwise inaccessible parts of the reserve, parts that I could never normally get to and I can see species which would be impossible to see from the hides.

For example, the plant in the photo is blunt-flowered Rush Juncus subnodulosus. This was a new species for me and it's a pretty scarce plant anywhere I think, mainly due to lose of habitat. We only found it growing in one small clump on Outer Vinson's. It may not be high on the list of everybody's must see species at Martin Mere, but for me it was an absolute gem of a find and made the day worthwhile.

This is whorled caraway, a very scarce plant in north west England which grows here in relative abundance. There used to be a hide named after it called the carum field hide which is long gone, and I'm not sure that whorled caraway even grows in that particular field these days. If not then seeing it from the hides is impossible.

Whoreld caraway.

Purple loosestrife, a favoured plant for many butterflies, including this week clouded yellow.

Marsh ragwort.

Six-spot burnet moth.

There have been lots of butterflies over the outer fields including several clouded yellows. This was the only one I managed to photograph, a very tatty looking individual.

Meanwhile about three weeks ago a small population of small red-eyed damselflies was found in the crane pen. These were a first for Martin Mere so it was good to catch up with them this week.

One of four over summering whooper swans. Whoopers bred on Sunleys this year but the cygnets don't seem to have survived. This photo is of a bird on the Mere, it's not sitting on eggs, it's just having a rest! Also, but not so obvious in the background of this photo, four pink-footed geese.