Its been a very busy week on the reserve with nearly 100 of Collingwood Schools students visiting. I had a request to help with the nature part of the forest school curriculum.

Thanks to Gavin and Rebecca, the teachers, and various teaching assistants who kept the youngsters under control , almost ;0)

Feeding the swans/ducks and plodging in the mud seemed to be the favourite activities, not sure that’s on the curriculum but why not!

Its sometimes surprising what you see on the way to the hides. I was not expecting to see a Stoat clambering through the trees. Very accomplished climbers I believe, not great news for the upcoming nesting season!!

A swan update, both of our swans are sporting rings on their left legs. With the numbers I was able to send them off to my birding experts and many thanks to Andy Rickeard (Northumberland Ringing Group) who sent the following information about our swan pair.

The male was ringed, as a cygnet, at Annisford Pond on 30/7/2017 and the female was ringed as a 2nd year bird at QE2 Park Ashington in 21/3/2019. The last couple of years the pair have been hanging around the pond at Hepscott so only a short flight to Clarks Bog.

Latest development today was the arrival of a young swan, not sure if it belongs to our pair but they keep chasing it off the water. No ring so we will probably never know.

Just an update on our pair of swans, they are still with us and have started to mate and appear to be preparing a nesting site on the island. They have been named as Charles and Camilla (thanks to Dougie for the suggestion ;0)

They now are waiting for me each morning demanding their breakfast. Lets hope they reward me with a few signets this Spring.

I had some new visitors and an old one for lunch on Sunday :-

They only stayed for one night but beautiful to see and quite friendly too.

My other dinner guest has made previous appearances and appears to be not for one night only, looks like a regular!!

I had a visit from John McGuiness and his friend Larry last week and he kindly sent me some of the excellent pictures he took when in Deer View Hide. He has kindly given me permission to publish them on the blog so here is a selection.

This cheeky chappie arrived while I was having lunch, only about a 4 feet away from me and quite chilled.

I had two projects in mind to complete before the Spring and they were a nesting area for Sand Martin and an Otter holt for any visiting furry friends.

The Sand Martin nesting bank proved a bit more problematic than I first thought, I had a couple of attempts to get this right!

If at first you don’t succeed:-

Thanks to Lynda for making these nesting boxes to go into the nesting bank.

All that’s left to do is to cover over the boxes and then do some landscaping (quite a bit of of work actually). The Sand Martin arrive in March so fingers crossed they take a liking to this housing development.

The Otter holt is based on a design given to me by the John Thompson, ecologist at EcoNorth. They have used it on other sites in Northumberland, so hopefully we may get lucky.

So its just the landscaping to do now.

Many thanks to all who have contributed to the nature reserve over the last twelve months. It may have been time, materials, bird seed or monetary donations. Any of these were very gratefully received and were very much appreciated.

I would like to particularly thank my very loyal volunteers John, Lynda, and Rob who have worked tirelessly over the year without complaint.

Special thanks to my wife Libby for her tolerance😜

A very pleasant surprise today when I spotted our first red squirrel of the year, on the reserve, today.

It was a brief view as I had some school kids from Collingwood school with me. This also meant I did not have my camera with me so no pictures I’m afraid.

Good to know we still have some reds in the vicinity.

Well that was a bit of a breeze wasn’t it!!

We have spent the last week clearing up after the big storm. The reserve was hit fairly badly from a tree damage point of view but we were lucky not to suffer any building damage. I always said that the hides could take a cruise missile strike thanks to Johns robust building methods and the storm seems to have proved me right. If they can withstand 100mph winds they should be able to cope with groups of school kids!

Here are a few pictures of the carnage:-