I thought you may like a little update on our resident Roe Deer. As you can see above she looks fit and healthy, image taken today. She was with her youngster who also looks very fit and healthy.

As you may know he is a buck and you can see his newly forming antler buds on the top of his head.

I also had a visit from another Roe Deer family today which consisted of a doe, a buck, and a young doe. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture to show you.

It has certainly been a chilly few days and as a consequence almost all our Mallards have flown, probably down to the Wansbeck. Our two swans have decided to sit it out.

Even our Water Rail has taken shelter from the snow and ice

This little Robin has met me every morning, during the cold snap, to get his breakfast.

I now have a signpost to the bog, at the entrance to Dunces Lane off Coopies Lane:-

Many thanks to David Anderson for sponsoring this sign.

I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and thank all the volunteers and visitors for their support of the reserve over the last 12 months.

I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2023.

Do come and visit in 2023.

Our young Roe Deer has obviously not been watching the news recently as he ventured out onto one of our frozen ponds. The inevitable happened and he went through the ice with mother watching on nervously. Fortunately the pond he chose to wander on is only a foot deep, so he managed to get himself out of trouble.

I can’t resist a vole in a pipe, so I installed a couple of old clay field drain pipes in my dry stone wall in front of the Dunces Corner Hide.

My little voles have not disappointed and seem to enjoy using the pipes.

I was very kindly asked to give a talk to the NHSN on the Clarks Bog project. I did this on Monday evening and I would like to thank Chris Redfern and NHSN Director Clare Freeman for making me feel so welcome on the night.

They filmed the talk and anyone who is interested can view the talk on You Tube, you just need to go onto You Tube and search for ‘NHSN talks’. Even if you don’t want to listen to me drone on they do have other very interesting talks you can listen to or use the link below https://youtu.be/63IROFY4PCc

Thanks to my pal Andy Peaden for facilitating a meeting between myself and a company called Skill Mill.

Skill Mill is a social enterprise which employs young ex-offenders, working on environmental projects across the UK.

This week we have hosted Skill Mill who have been helping with a couple of projects on site. They have been helping with our winter program of pond maintenance and also construction of a second island on Dunces Corner Pond. Today we built a temporary jetty to enable materials to be taken out into the pond.

I’m very grateful for the help of Jonathan, Josh, Leon, and David who have done a great job this week.

Following my last depressing post, hopefully this is a little more uplifting.

We have a new visitor to Dunces Water Pond, an elusive little water bird that usually spends its time under cover. It is a Water Rail (maybe more than one?). We have had them on the reserve before but its about 5 years ago so its nice to see them back.

A worrying discovery on Dunces Corner Pond a few days ago when I pulled the bodies of three birds out of the pond.

The strange thing was the disparate nature of the species found, we had a Shoveller Duck, a Jack Snipe (new to the reserve), and a Fieldfare.

My first thought was ‘Oh no Avian Flu’ which it may have been BUT none of my resident waterfowl seem to have been affected. The Jack Snipe and Fieldfare are not pond dwellers usually.

My thoughts are that as these are migrants that maybe they were infected and happened to die while crossing the pond, which seems an unlikely occurrence when they were all found on the same day.

or

They are migrants that came onto the reserve at night and hit the powerlines above the pond.

I did report the finding on the DEFRA helpline, they did not appear too concerned. My fingers are crossed it is not Avian Flu, I found these birds last Friday and I have been checking the pond every day since and not found any further victims.