Crayfish and pan traps

Thursday 21st July 2022

We had a meeting at Combe Mill in the morning so we stopped off on the way to do a recce for a walk next to the river. The river is really ow at the moment and you can see how cloudy and dirty it is - really bad. You can also see the crayfish burrows in the bank opposite. They are really bad for the environment - not only do they outcompete our native crayfish but they burrow into the banks and undermine them.

After the meeting I went back to the farm to pick up my insects! The tray on the left is all the tools neccessary, a tea strainer to pour the water through and sieve out the insects, a small plastic bottle to put the in and a small paintbrush to pick up the insects that didnt fall in the bottle. A bit time consuming - not least because I need to make sure that everything is correctly labelled! It took about two hours to go round and collect everything back up. Then I took them back to Wokingham to store them - will have millions by the end of this. I need to collect 6 sets of samples then start sorting them into insect families. I dont actually know much about insects so that i going to be interesting and informative!