I’m pleased to announce the birth of our first fawn of the season, born over  the night of 24th May. Mother and babe doing well.

What appears to be a very pregnant doe and another young doe have been spending time the last few days mainly on the reserve. I am hoping the pregnant one is the same one from a year ago who had twins on the reserve last May. Hopefully she will have her young on the reserve, I will keep watching and update.

For those who gave blood, sweat and tears digging Woggle Water Pond it is nice to see the wildlife is enjoying the resulting pond area. Here are a few pictures to show some of our winged visitors:-

A Swallow feeding on the pond.

Our regular female Mallard arrives.

A male and female Orange Tip butterfly courting.

Happily for all those involved in the Clarks bog project we are now seeing the project put to good use. Over the past 5 days we have had more than fifty cubs and scouts through the bog as part of their Naturalist badge qualification.

The cubs from 6th Morpeth troop were given a tree identification exercise which they all seemed to enjoy. The scouts were from 4th Morpeth troop and they had to choose from  a mammal ID, flower ID, insect ID, tree ID, or pond life ID exercise. Again they seemed to enjoy themselves and they are back next week having done further research on each of the subjects.

All the participants survived the experience which is always a plus and we have further visits from other troops planned shortly.

Well done to all involved.

With a view to keeping our little furry friends (dogs) out of the reserve I decided to plant some hedging at the front of the reserve. Due to the generosity of Collingwood school who gave me a number of saplings and hedglings I was able to plant an 18 metre length of Dog Rose and Blackthorn hedge.

The classroom is taking shape, we are just about there with the internals.

Just a few pics from yesterday of our resident kestrel, reed bunting, and our occasional male mallard.

This little beauty was hunting around Veras shed, happy to run around not more than 2 metres away from me. To intent on finding a nice vole and shrew lunch.

Mrs Frog has been very busy recently. I have frog spawn in both ponds and in other wet areas of the bog. Looks like it may be a good year for frogs.

We had a couple of Princes Trust guys on the reserve for a couple of weeks work experience. We did some tree planting:-

Hazel fence panel building :-

Bird box location:-

And finished with some hazel and reed panel construction:-

Many thanks to Calvin who did one week and Aidan who did two weeks work on the reserve.