Friday 28 September 2012

Fleet Pond Autumn Bird Walk - A Great Success!!!

We had a great turn out on Saturday for a stroll around Fleet pond looking out for our feathered friends. We started off the walk with a ringing demonstration by our local bird ringer Gary Clewley, who explained why ringing is important and we got to see 2 great tits (Parus major) close up.
Next we wandered over to sandy bay looking at birds along the way, we had a great view of a kingfisher which perched on heron island and caught a fish for everyone to see.
We saw lots of birds along the way including treecreeper, nuthatch, teal, siskin and chiffchaffs. We finished off the walk by visiting Gary again and he had an adult male siskin which was great to see up close as not everyone had good views previously.
Siskin (photo below) are winter visitors and often seen on the alder catkins around the pond.

For more information about our future guided walks please visit our website
www.threesixfive.org.uk/countryside/guided-walks

Wednesday 12 September 2012


Diggers Back at Fleet Pond

DIGGERS were craned into Fleet Pond on Saturday ready to begin the second phase of dredging in the Fleet Pond restoration project. They are now manoeuvring around the pond on pontoons –continuing to make it deeper and creating new islands using the resulting silt. By the end of this year a good dent should have been made into the estimated quarter of a million tonnes of silt that needs to be moved.

Last Spring the diggers removed silt and formed central islands thus creating a windbreak and reducing wave action across the lake. This stirs up the silt and makes the water murky so that plants cannot grow on the lake bed. The dredging stopped on April 1 to avoid disturbance to breeding birds. This autumn the dredgers will deepen areas around the edge of the lake while further islands will create calmer backwaters leading to areas of clear water in which plants can grow.



More dredging will be needed in future and Hart District Council is working hard to secure funding to continue the restoration. The project run by the council has raised funds through Natural England’s Higher Level Stewardship grant of £173,000 and Water Framework Directive (£142,000). There has also been Environment Agency WFD grants of £100,000 and a similar amount from developers’ contributions.
Fleet Pond Society, through its ‘Clearwater Campaign’, promotes community awareness of the situation at the pond and raises voluntary funding towards projects not contained in the main restoration project.
Cllr Sara Kinnell, Hart’s Cabinet Member for Leisure and Environmental Promotion, commented: “We’d like to thank everyone involved. This year is a giant step towards reaching our goals.”



For more information and updates on how the project is going and what species are visiting the islands see the Hart Countryside Blog – www.hartranger.blogspot.com, ring 01252 623443 or email countryside@hart.gov.uk