Snipe move in to new scrape

The large scrape, one of three excavated at Scarborough Borough Council's wet grassland site was only finished a week ago but is already half full of water and attracting wintering waders. Wetland Project Officer Tim Burkinshaw, was surprised to flush 3 snipe from the field on a routine check of the works completed by Sellers Land Drainage Ltd in August.

The groundworks, funded by a Higher Level Stewardship agreement included 3 wader scrapes scooped into the peat field, under the watchful eye of an archaeologist from the Landscape Research Centre, Yedingham. These watery hollows provide ideal feeding habitat for chicks of ground nesting waders in spring. Soil removed in the process was laid in a low wide 'bund' along the eastern margin of the site, in an effort to retain splashy conditions across wider areas in the winter to attract wintering waders and ducks also.

Work also included the intentional blocking of plastic drainage pipes laid under the field during agricultural drainage scheme in the 1980s. This will have an immediate impact of re-wetting the peat soil, keeping it soft and moist for Snipe to probe around for earthworms, but also reducing the loss of the peat through oxidation.

Since the drainage the ground level has shrunk noticeably, revealing the gravel deposits of the Mesolothic lake shoreline as ridge across the west of the field. You can nowadays stand on the higher ground and imagine anient Lake Flixton stretching eastwards. Just across the River Hertford footbridge the gravel ridge slopes down again, once a peninsula into the lake and site of the famous Star Carr settlement, recently acclaimed as Britain's oldest dwelling at 9600yrs old.

A public footpath across the field links to farm tracks to Seamer and to Flixton, or you can follow the Hertford riverbank from the layby at Star Carr Farm on th A64.