Northcliffe Woods, Shipley

Today lived up to its billing - a muddy day! But glorious autumn sunshine in the morning even if it was followed by some heavy showers in the afternoon.

The job today was to dig out as much shale and leaf litter as possible to increase the chance of retaining some open water in the summer months. We have undertaken this task for Friends of Northcliffe for the last few years. In order to limit ecological disturbance, and work within our resources, we have limited this to a channel from the silt traps through to a pool near the dam wall.

Ideally we would like to remove more than can be done in one day, but with the stupendous effort of the group we made good progress, despite the constant irritation of a million and one hungry midges. 

At lunchtime we were visited by a dragonfly, a Migrant Hawker I think, that seemed to be laying eggs at the edge of the pond.