Hen Harriers in The Forest of Bowland

 Following on from the shocking news that "Sky" and "Hope"--the two Forest of Bowland hen harrier fledglings have mysteriously!!! disappeared on their home turf even though the nest had been monitored previously before they flew, it has been announced that a 5 year programme will be launched in the UK . The Hen Harrier Project  will be " aiming ‘to achieve a secure and sustainable future’ for hen harriers in northern England and parts of southern and eastern Scotland.

Funded by the EU LIFE scheme, this project will include elements of monitoring (at nests and key winter roosts as well as funding a national hen harrier survey in 2016), satellite tagging, habitat management, investigations work (two new RSPB Investigation Officer posts have been funded), community engagement, community consultation and stakeholder engagement.

The project will focus on seven so-called Special Protection Areas (SPAs) designated for breeding hen harriers, two in England and five in Scotland. These are:

Bowland Fells"  .....and others.
                                 Let's hope this beautiful bird gets the protection it deserves
                                           PHOTOS COURTESY OF ANAND PRASAD

Female "sky dancer"

Male

Male hen harrier

Our Vietnamese Water Filter

Our farm house water comes from the fells but it is has a lot of orange/red sludge which needs taking out before coming into our tap . All the farms up the valley have spring fell water and are not on mains like the village but ours is particularly prone to iron oxydisation, so:

from this

                                                                                                    

we can get this

                           

the hollow blue container holds our house water and is housed inside the solid black one

the iron oxidises into red iron oxide on contact with oxygen and sits on top of the water in the outside barrel

the fell water comes into the outside black container filled with sand and seeps  into the blue having been filtered by sand 

the outlet hole allows the floating orange sludge to flow out from the black container and into the ditch

happy pond skaters

disconnecting the inlet pipe allows any congealed sludge to escape before we clean the barrels

Rod and Ios scooping out the floating sludge

the sand will be left after the dirty water is removed

the inside barrel with water needs to be emptied too

the bottom pipe has a tap which is turned on to allow the water to escape into the ditch

almost clean from the scooping out

friendly visitor looks on

job finished and waiting for the barrels to refill

            inlet to the right and outlet to the left goes to a large old industrial orange juice barrel
( not shown )which holds the clean water

the finished product