Digging finished

The digger driver was back this morning, despite it being Saturday, to get the basic digging finished. By lunchtime the scrape had reached its full extent but there's still much to do before we can let the water on.
There's this lot to shift for starters:

And that's only half of it. It's amazing how much spoil comes out of a fairly shallow depression in the ground. The place is going to look like a war-zone once its spread around, but I suppose it will mean more mud for birds to poke about in especially once we get some winter rain and the marsh lives up to its name.
There's also the water control pipe to go in although its a very simple affair of a length of Osma drain pipe with a bend at the end which you just turn up or down to get water on or off the scrape.
Despite only having a trickle of water, when I went to chat to the digger driver this morning, a Ruff appeared from behind his digger and circled round over the scrape. It's a very long time since we've seen a Ruff on the marshes out here but it was clearly attracted by the mud and glint of water so I hope this is an omen of things to come.
Other birds of note today were 2 Swifts with a passage of House Martins, Peregrine and Yellow Wagtail. The Swallow is still sitting.