Joan and Brian Kirkpatrick kindly donated a couple of crab apple trees and asked me to find a place for them.

I had just the place for them and with Joan’s help we planted them a few days ago.

I decided it would be worth making a little feature, so with the help of Charlie and Augustine ( a couple of my younger volunteers) we set to work.

Maybe a little planting round the border to finish things off but I’m happy. I hope Joan and Brian are too, they haven’t been shown yet!

My thanks to the person who kindly left a gift at the entrance of the reserve.

A crocheted Worry Worm, I didn’t know these were a thing!

Hopefully my worries are now sorted😁

Just the day after seeing our Little Grebe munching on my Newt population, I found a Grey Heron also indulging itself on my newts. Hopefully we have enough to go around!

I was watching our pair of Little Grebes feeding on the pond, at first I thought one had brought up some pond weed but on closer examination it turned out to be a newt!

Once caught it was then a process of shaking the life out of it.

It looks like this may be a Palmate newt rather than Smooth newt as Palmate newts do not have spots on their throats whereas Smooth newts do.

While sitting quietly in the woods this pair came wandering past, they came up to within 6 metres before they saw me and trotted off. I always find it an uplifting experience when you see these animals up close.

As you can see the buck has recently grown his new set of antlers (the old ones he shed in November) and they are still covered with velvet. This he will rub off over the next few weeks.

A little bit of sun and warmth and our frogs and toads have been out and about and producing spawn.

This large female toad has two males hanging on for dear life. She was sitting on the path near a pond, good job I was on foot rather than in my buggy or there would have been three flat toads!

There seems to be a fair batch of frog spawn on Woggle water pond, so I will be doing the same as last year, and putting a batch in my aquarium. We will release the froglets, when they appear, back into the same pond.

I spotted this little (or not so little, about 2cm long) chap sunning itself in the pond. It is a Greater Water Boatman.

I thought I’d share a few pictures, taken over the last few days, of our feathered visitors (and residents).

Very sad news today with the loss of Charles the second. He only arrived on site with Camilla about 10 days ago. We are now back down to one swan, hopefully she can find another partner before the breeding season.

I woke up this morning and found the farm had a power cut, a neighbor then rang to say they had seen a bright flash on the reserve. I went to investigate and sure enough I found Charles II below the power lines and unfortunately he was dead.

I have been in touch with Northern Powergrid to see if we can get bird scarers fitted to the lines. This is my second attempt to get them fitted , so hopefully, I am more successful this time.

Such a shame he was a beautiful bird.

I have found an interesting spot on the reserve or it seems to be interesting for quite a range of our wildlife. This was filmed over a day and night during the last week.

The interesting thing about this 24 hour period is that the Badgers and Rabbit family seem to be using the same hole in the ground, i didn’t know this was possible!

This is also the first time I’ve found evidence of a badger set on the reserve, so hopefully it will become an established set.