Interesting morning

Spent the morning being filmed by the TV crew that does Countryfile. All rather slow and laborious with things obviously having to be spot on.
Plenty of birds about, with my first cuckoo of the year seen and heard. However, we were there as volunteers for the Herts and Middlesex Wildlife Trust and were not actually expected to have a talking role. We were asked a few questions by the presenter, Ellie about how we became involved in helping Charlie Bell with her Living Rivers project. All good publicity, but as the whole show on May 11th is on the River Lee, I suspect today's filming will only take up a couple of minutes.
As can be seen, the camera really is in your face when talking.

Landowner  Nicholas explaining to the presenter the scheme he has signed up for: Living Rivers Stewardship

Us 2 volunteers looking through what we have netted from the chalk riverbed.

One creature we did come across was a crayfish. The white clawed (or English crayfish) is recorded as extinct in Hertfordshire, but this looks pretty good for it. However, more research is required as there are many introduced crayfish species. The most common being the well known American red signal crayfish, which this may not be

from the top

head features

underside

Edit; news from the county recorder that, disappointingly, this crayfish is indeed the American invasive species, just a young one, not fully grown.