After speculating about the various spoor shown in the previous post Rob caught a mug shot of a water mongoose on the camera so now we have proof of the source of at least some of the tracks. Well done!
Today the Van Stadens Forum meeting was held at the Reserve. This is always a good opportunity to find out little snippets of information about what the various municipal and government agencies are up to. For us it was interesting to find out that at present the water from Van Stadens, Bulkriver and Sandriver is not used by the metro at all due to decaying infrastructure so there is plenty of water for us to use. Not that we need any at the moment with all the rain we’ve had.
There was also talk about the need for preventative burning of a section of the reserve, promises were made so we’ll see.
Rob, Cathy and Keith have moved their activities to the area behind the main picnic site. It is very encouraging to note that the Podalyria invasion is greatly reduced and the blue gum seedlings are not too bad. It is still too big a job for three people to keep the reserve alien free though and more help is needed. At least we have stopped the invasion from our own blue gums.
Neil put his holiday to good use again too and carried on with the extension of the shade house which involved planting of poles and lots of fighting with thick, stubborn wire, quite a strenuous job even for much younger person than us and it looks very promising.
After lunch we eventually got to some ‘real’ work and cleaned up another tree’s branches. Sisanie arrived to gratefully collect a scoop full of firewood and he promised to burn our stacks of branches and remove more wood so there is good progress.
Finally we braved the cold water to plant a holly tree on the island. The water was ok but the wind chill forced us to make a quick job of it. The warm cup of coffee we looked forward did not happen because just at that time there was load shedding.