A man in a light blue anorak, dark blue trousers and a cap is raking a pile of cut vegetation onto a drag sheet. There are many other piles of cut material around him. In the background an area with short vegetation. There are green bushes in the background to the right, and bare trees on teh background on the left.

🎵 We're raking in the rain,
Just raking in the rain,
What a glorious feelin'
I'm happy again 🎵

Despite heavy rain this morning we continued to rake cut material on part of our #SSSI onto drag sheets to build up the soft eroded peat banks of the Lye Brook.
#FenRestoration #OxfordshireFens #OX3
🌰🌍

A view down a shallow valley. Starting at bottom left and leading up through the photo a frost covered boardwalk. Just right of centre in the mid distance a pollarded Willow has branches growing upwards. In the background are some trees mostly hidden by the mist. There's a small patch of warmer sunlight top right in the background. In the mid distance left of centre a solitary figure with his back to the camera.

Another freezing cold start for our volunteers today. Spot the scyther in the mist! 🌍 🌰
#OxfordshireFens #FenRestoration #OX3
@judywebb.bsky.social

View across a shallow valley. A boardwalk runs along the centre, and the upper half shows a cut area to the right and a dense area of uncut reed to the left. There are trees in the background and a sky with white clouds.

A single stem of Marsh Helleborine orchid flowers that are thriving here thanks to the conservation work described in the post. The background is blurred.

Since 2016, scything, raking and scrub removal has transformed an area of almost 3000 m2 solid reed to the rare NVC M13 (Black Bog-rush Blunt-flowered Rush) plant community, more than doubling the amount of this habitat in the Valley. #FenRestoration #AlkalineFens
@bsbibotany.bsky.social
🌍🌰

In the foreground a gently sloping fen with piles of cut reed, whilst in the background a number of trees with a band of thin mist in front of them. The sky is blue with a few wispy white clouds.

Slightly ethereal feel to the Valley this morning, as the low winter sun caught the mist rising from the fen. Totally magical!
#OxfordshireFens #FenRestoration
@judywebb.bsky.social

A landscape view down a shallow valley. Almost everything is covered with frost. Starting at the bottom right corner and snaking the full length of the valley is a boardwalk. Near bottom right a man in a hi-vis jacket and carrying a dark rucksack is walking away from the camera. At upper right and in the distance are a number of trees, some of which still have autumn coloured leaves. Low sunshine is hitting the right hand side and middle distance of the view. The sky is blue with a few low white clouds.

A very cold and frosty morning for our volunteers today, but at least we had sunshine!
#OxfordshireFens #FenRestoration #OX3 @judywebb.bsky.social

Roughly in the centre of the photo a man with wellies, light coloured trousers and shirt with a darker anorak is raking a large pile of cut reed down a slope towards him. In the background a large stand of reed waiting to be cut.

Roughly in the centre of the photo a man facing to the left with dark trousers and wellies with a blue checked shirt is using a scythe to cut the reed in front of him. In the foreground a heap of material he has already cut, while on the left of the photo an area waiting to be cut. In the background is a mostly featureless area of short mostly greenish vegetation.

It's remarkable how much #FenRestoration (and other #conservation work) comes down to the repetition of these two simple tasks. Scything and raking. Maybe not glamorous (especially the raking!), but vital to controlling rank vegetation and letting other plants thrive.
#OxfordshireFens #GreenSpaces 🌍

A view looking south down a shallow valley. In the foreground scattered brownish cut material. Large parts of the Valley have short green vegetation, though some areas still have longer brown vegetation. On the right of the photo starting at the centre point and old Willow pollard with thin branches growing up. A brown boardwalk snakes through the centre of the Valley, while in the background are a number of trees, mostly without leaves, though a few have yellowish leaves still. The sky is grey with some darker clouds present.

Autumn in the Lye Valley.
Our scything team have done a great job in cutting large parts of both the east and west SSSI. Lots still to do though, and we've now got a huge backlog of cut material waiting to be taken off the fen.
#OxfordshireFens #FenRestoration #OX3 🌍

Roughly in the centre of the photo two men with spades are standing on a raised area of ground. Behind them is a mass of green vegetation, and in front of them bare earth. They're gradually removing peat from this raised area (and mostly our of shot, piling it up to make a bund). To their right is a small trench with a black pipe in it, and at extreme right a couple of dark rucksacks.

Decades ago, part of the Lye Brook was deepened and widened, with peat piled on the banks. One side effect was to block the flow of spring water here. We've made a start on reprofiling this part of the fen, with a view to rewetting this currently dry area. 🌍
#OxfordshireFens #FenRestoration

In the foreground, and just to the right of centre a man in short sleeves wearing blue trousers and wellies is using a scythe. In the distance are a number of trees, while in the mid ground a gently sloping area of green, mostly short vegetation.

With four scythers on site this morning, we're making great progress with clearing the fen. We cut a block on the east side of the Valley, and a larger area on the west side (pictured below). Lots more work for our rakers though... 😀
#OxfordshireFens #Conservation #FenRestoration #OX3 #SSSI
🌍

A man wearing a blue checked shirt, dark blue peaked cap, and light grey trousers is using a scythe to cut an area of brown vegetation in front of him. The background is a mix of green and yellowing shrubs.

Scything Marsh Arrowgrass (Triglochin palustris). Near Threatened in England, it flourishes here. Once cut it will be used as "green hay" in areas of the fen we're restoring to reinforce its local population.
#FenRestoration #OxfordshireFens #RedList 🌍
@bsbibotany.bsky.social @tverc1.bsky.social

To the left of the photo a young man in dark blue clothing is holding a rake with yellow prongs above a pile of cut reed and rush. In the centre a young woman in bright red bobble hat, dark top and bright green leggings also has a rake. Immediately behind the cut reed is a dark green drag sheet, and running from left to right is a brown boardwalk. Behind that is an area of green vegetation.

At the far left of the photo a young man in dark clothing with his sleeves rolled up is wearing dark gloves. In the centre of the photo a young woman in bright red bobble hat, dark top and yellow wellies is carrying a drag sheet stuffed with a roll of cut reed and rush. She's walking over an area of short green vegetation while in the background are carious mostly dark green shrubs and ivy plants.

Delighted to welcome two new volunteers to the Valley this week! They were quickly put to work raking the west fen and carrying the cut material to build up the eroded banks of the Lye Brook.
#OxfordshireFens #FenRestoration #OX3 #SSSI #LocalWildlifeSite @judywebb.bsky.social
🌰🌍

A woman stands roughly in the centre of the photo wearing a light coloured blouse, dark blue top and light blue jeans. In her left hand she's holding some clear plastic bags, some of which contains seeds. She's on a slight slope (higher top left, lower bottom right) and is surrounded by spikes of purple flowers and lower growing white, and yellow flowers.

Some of our earlier flowering plants have already set seed. Here, one of our volunteers doing a first sweep for ripe Ragged Robin, Yellow Rattle, and Tufted Vetch seed to spread in new areas once the fen has been scythed off at the end of the season.
#OxfordshireFens #FenPlants #FenRestoration 🌍

Top centre is a small white flower on a long thin stalk. Lower down and to the left are a number of unopened buds, some showing white. They're surrounded by other vegetation.

The first of our Grass-of-Parnassus (Parnassia palustris) aka Bog Star is now in flower. We're one of the most southerly sites for this plant, and thanks to our ongoing #FenRestoration work we have the largest population of them in Oxfordshire. 😍
🌍 #WildFlowerHour #OxfordshireFens #FenPlants

A singe flower spike with a deep red stem with a large number of pale coloured small orchid flowers with yellow centres and red petals. The background is a diffuse green.

Our Marsh Helleborines (Epipactis palustris) have been stunning this year. Originally a small colony mostly confined to the east of the Valley, thanks to our ongoing #FenRestoration work, they've spread and this year we probably have over 2000 flower spikes!
#HelleborineChallenge #WildFlowerHour 🌍

#FenRestoration #OxfordshireFens 🌎

At bottom left a man dressed in dark blue trousers, and a lighter blue checked shirt is holding a long handled mattock raised over his right shoulder. In front of him at ground level are a number of long leaved dark green plants. At extreme bottom left of the photo is a section of woven wood shuttering. The background is mostly short cut green vegetation, though where he has been working is bare earth. At top right of the photo is a high vis jacket and bag lying on the ground.

One of our volunteers swapped his scythe for a mattock this week to clear an area of Pendulous Sedge and Hard Rush. If left, these plants swamp out everything else. After re-wetting this area will be sown with other fen loving plants. #FenRestoration 🌍 #OxfordshireFens

A line of thin wooden boards a couple of inches high and held in place by short stakes snakes from the bottom right of the photo into the distance. On the left, a large green area with shallow pools of standing water. On the right, cut dead vegetation packed down hard. Part of a tree trunk is visible at top right.

We've now used all of the first batch of the 3 metre cut oak boards funded thanks to a grant from the @freshwaterhabitats.bsky.social. Hammered into the fen, they're already stopping a lot of clean spring water draining off the fen into the Brook. 😀
#FenRestoration 🌍 @judywebb.bsky.social

A mass of small pale pink flowers with darker pink stripes. The centre of the flowers is white.

Bog Pimpernel (Anagallis tenella) is more common in the west, but Scarce in Oxon. Ours reappeared from the seedbank after we started our #FenRestoration work, and removed the tall dense reed that had been there since at least the 1940s when grazing ceased. #WildFlowerHour 🌍
@bsbibotany.bsky.social

In the foreground on the right, a woman wearing black wellies, blue jeans, a light coloured anorak and bobble hat is holding short dark stems of dead Marsh Lousewort. Just to her right is a black bin liner. In the background with his back to the camera is a white haired man in a blue checked top is also holding a black bin liner, also spreading Marsh Lousewort. they're standing on very short cut mostly green fen. In the background the ground slopes upward with some bare earth, thin tree stems, and some longer green vegetation

We spread the last of our Marsh Lousewort (Pedicularis palustris) this week in an area of the SSSI where we're trying to reduce dense rush (Juncus spp.). If you want to learn more about how this plant helps in #FenRestoration, see freshwaterhabitats.b-cdn.net/app/uploads/...
🌍 #OxfordshireFens

A man in a dark blue anorak with its hood up is holding an A4 size brown envelope containing seed. He's walking through dead brown waist height vegetation. There's an ivy covered tree top left, adding a little green. There are also bare tree branches, and behind a light grey sky.

As well as scything and raking the #SSSI, we spent some time at the southern end of the Valley spreading seed in an area of fen still being restored. We spread Ragged Robin, Angelica, Devil’s-bit Scabious, Greater Bird's-foot Trefoil, and some Grass-of-Parnassus.
#FenRestoration #OxfordshireFens 🌍

There are five people in the photo, four of them raking cut rush and reed into piles, There is some snow on the ground. At the top of the photo there is a partial view of trees with autumn coloured leaves.

A hive of activity on the west side of our SSSI this week, with scythers and rakers all working here. It's unusual to have so many people working so close together, but it was freezing cold, and this was the only bit of the Valley in the sun!
#FenRestoration #OxfordshireFens #Conservation 🌍

Two young women on an ice covered boardwalk. The first is pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with tools. The second is carrying a number of rakes cradled in her arms. The woman in front is wearing a light grey top, yellow gloves, and her head is almost completely hidden by a large brown scarf wound round and tucked inside her top. There's a small information board bottom right, snow covered vegetation to the left, and trees in the background.

"Wrap up warm for our conservation work party, it's going to be cold" we said.
As you can see, this volunteer wasn't taking any chances! 🤣
#FenRestoration #OxfordshireFens #OX3 #conservation

The Oxford photographer Henry Taunt wrote of the Lye Valley in 1915 "...Grass-of-Parnassus with its creamy white flowers dot themselves, like twinkling stars in the shadowy grass". Re-introduced in 2011, this year, we have thousands of flowers, just like then? 😊
#FenRestoration

Waste not, want not!
Barrows full of Pendulous Sedge, dug out from an area under restoration, and repurposed to fill and stabilise a slipped and eroded bank of the Lye Brook. All in heavy rain...
#OxfordshireFens #FenRestoration #Volunteers #OX3

A rather dark photograph. In the centre a man in a red jacket and orange hat is pushing a wheelbarrow loaded with sedge plants. He's on a boardwalk. O the right of the photo is mostly dead vegetation, and in the background, another person in a hi-vis jacket is at work digging up the sedge plants.

Waste not, want not!
Barrows full of Pendulous Sedge, dug out from an area under restoration, and repurposed to fill and stabilise a slipped and eroded bank of the Lye Brook. All in heavy rain...
#OxfordshireFens #FenRestoration #Volunteers #OX3
@judywebb.bsky.social

Two women one on, and one standing beside a boardwalk. There are a couple of bin liners full of seeds on the boardwalk. The women are breaking up seed heads before dropping them.

We spread the last of our Marsh Lousewort (Pedicularis palustris) seed today in a couple of areas that are still too dominated by reed and rush. A hemiparasite, within two years the reed should be gone. Read more here: freshwaterhabitats.org.uk/app/uploads/...
#OxfordshireFens #OX3 #FenRestoration

freshwaterhabitats.org.uk/app/uploads/2023/03/Mars...
#OxfordshireFens #OX3 #FenRestoration

Seed collection still in full swing here. This week, Devil's-bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis), and the Rare in Oxon and nationally Near Threatened Parsley Water-dropwort (Oenanthe lachenalii). Most of these seeds will be used in our #FenRestoration areas.
#OxfordshireFens #OX3

Our "bog stars", or Grass-of-Parnassus flowers are steadily opening across the Valley, a reminder of how our #FenRestoration work is helping increase numbers of this beautiful flower at the southern edge of its range in the UK.
#OxfordshireFens

Our #FenRestoration work continues at the southern end of the Valley. Here one of our volunteers is (re)scything reed, taking care to leave the Hemp Agrimony and Ox-eye Daisies for our #pollinators!
#OxfordshireFens