My fencer finished off our fence, at the bottom of Dunces field, late on Sunday afternoon. I arrived on Monday morning to find this:-

A very large chunk of oak tree smack bank on top of my fence. I had not even paid for it and it’s trashed😡.

Lots of branches down elsewhere and the odd tree affected.

The good news was there was no damage to the hides or classroom, hurrah!

Big thanks to the Northumberland Railway Walks Society for the help provided this week with our hedge planting project. Over two days they managed to plant over 500 hedge plants.

They braved wind, snow and rain, so respect for their perseverance.

Thanks to Jennifer for organising the society groups and Libby for organising the planting on the days.

I had a call from my next door neighbour yesterday to say there was a cygnet in their back garden. I went and had a look and there was one of my cygnets strolling around in the back garden. The main pond is frozen solid at the moment and all the swans and cygnets had departed (temporarily I hope), this one had not gone far.

The problem was that the neighbours have a dog and several chickens so not ideal for them to have this trespasser. The next day I tried to walk it back to the reserve but she was not cooperating. Plan B was this:-

Fortunately she was very happy to be carried😀. It’s amazing how heavy a cygnet gets once you’ve carried it for a few hundred metres!

She seemed happy to see her pond (once I’d broken the ice and given her some food).

Leaving the site yesterday I encountered a very cute but deadly visitor. It was doing a very thorough search of the log piles obviously looking for its evening meal. A weasel on patrol.

Despite there being two chances I did not find the pot of gold☹️

It’s been a busy year, so I thought someone may be interested in the numbers.

1. We had 41 school visits

2. We had 80 individual/family visits

3. We had 17 health enhancing visits

4. We had 31 work experience visits

5. We had 29 visits by our bee keepers

6. We had 24 bird ringing sessions

7. We had 11 visits from cubs/scouts/rainbows

8. We had 14 group visits

9. We had 7 moth survey sessions

10. We had 2 botany survey visits

11. We had 5 bird box surveys visits

12. I did 4 external talks

13. I did 1 external school visit

14. We hosted a 2 day chainsaw training workshop

Other projects we did during 2023 on site were:-

So it’s been a fun filled 2023 on the reserve and we have a big to do list for 2024. No rest for the wicked!!

Many thanks to all who have helped and supported us on the reserve during 2023.

We have seen our resident Roe Deer raise another set of triplets:-

Charles and Camilla our resident swan hatched 5 cygnets of which we have 3 survivors which will soon be leaving:-

We welcomed many thousands of new residents:-

I’d like to wish everyone a Happy Christmas and a Happy and healthy 2024

Sad to see two deaths on site, one was one of our cygnets so we are down from the original 5 down to 3. No identified cause for the death.

The second death happened last night, it was a young dog fox found on the edge of the reserve. There seems to be an injury on the rear leg which could be from being shot. So depressing to see such a beautiful animal killed. Look away now if you don’t want to see the animal!

Its mouth is full of winter wheat, I’m told foxes do this when very stressed.

I have started to progress the pathway to the newest part of the reserve, however the wet weather has real held things up on this project.

Many thanks to Ross for the loan of one of his dumper trucks.

Also thanks to Richard for digging my drainage trenches.

We still have a long way to go but we have made a start