Sorry for the silence over the past couple of days.  I have been playing catch up with a number of tasks after a fairly busy week.  The weather here continues dry and settled so the river still looks miserable and a mere shadow of what it should be at this time of year.

I went down to New Inn first thing this morning to do the monthly invertebrate check and had real difficulty sampling in such low water.  The results are well down on last month especially baetis nymphs, but as it's almost impossible to kick amongst the boulders where the water is still flowing this result does not unduly concern me.  The creatures will be buried well down amongst the rocks since the gravels at this site which usually contain the bulk of invertebrates, especially gammarus are now dry.  The forecast is for a wet day tomorrow so maybe levels will rise a little.  Still, we have been threatened with rain for some days now that has failed to materialise.

All the concrete dams at Ling Gill are now in place so the project can now move forward to the next phase which is to clear away all the remaining material, fix the irons to the dam edges,clean out the bed of the beck between the dams, remove the pump and restore the flow.  Then it's a case of drawing down every couple of days to remove any crayfish that wash into the dam pools and monitor the site for the next couple of years.

I took the Hon Sec to the site this morning to see what had been done.  He seemed quite impressed.  We stood by the water gate for a while watching a pied wagtail that's nesting in the bank close by and were surprised to see a newt clinging to a rock that's being washed by the outflow from the pump.  This was pale yellow, about 2 inches long and seemed not to have a crest.

The plan is to do the invertebrate check at Turn Dub late tomorrow morning provided that it's not too wet so I will post up the results of both sites during this coming week.

Ian