Our first chicks on Dunces Corner Pond have arrived and it is our pair of Moorhen that have been first to produce. I’m not sure exactly how many they have, the most I’ve seen together is 3 but I suspect there may be 5 or more. The parents tend to split the brood and look after a few each. I’m guessing these chicks are 1-2 days old.

Three chicks visible if you look closely

Hopefully I can get some better picture in the days to come.

Its that time of year again when our little black and white friends are traveling out from their homes and causing mayhem with my paths. I’m spending about half an hour a day filling in holes dug by the badgers. There must be a good supply of earthworms that they are tucking into.

I put the trail cameras out to try and catch the culprit and…..

For the last three days I have gone into Vera’s hide and found this little chap in my bird feed bucket.

Not sure how he/she is managing to get in as it has a lid and there are no holes in the bucket!

Yesterday, when I lifted the lid, it jumped out straight into my welly.

One well fed Woodmouse😁

The boys are out to impress the girls this time of year and I came across a couple who were fighting over a female friend.

The boardwalk down to Woggle Water Pond was in need of a refresh, so John K and myself have been working on this over the last few weeks.

So I think it now looks quite smart ( if I say so myself 😜), and hopefully more wheelchair friendly.

Thanks go to John for his help but also Phil for donating his old decking for the project.

Following our frog antics of last weekend it was time to initiate my frog incubator which worked well last year. So after a good spring clan and a reload with fresh pond water it was time to add the frogspawn.

We have a larger batch of frogspawn this year than last. I’m going to claim that as a success of adding our protected batch last season😜.

Once again I have only transferred a small amount of frogspawn, about 15%.

Hopefully we will raise a successful batch of froglets for release back into the pond!

We had a our first moth trapping session of 2025, which is the earliest we have tried it on site. It was a nice surprise to catch 10 moths of 4 different species. Thanks to Brian Harle for doing this.

Pale Brindled Beauty

That bit of sun and warmth yesterday brought out my frog population in force! They were croaking away in the sunshine and I could count at least 20 visible with a number more out and about.

Soaking up the sun

They have also produced a quantity of frog spawn so I hope the freezing weather is over. Difficult to see how much as they sensibly were right in the centre of Woggle water pond.

There were some quite big frogs on show.

I hope the Heron doesn’t take too many!!

Our whole swan family disappeared last week and I was not sure if they had gone for good! I was relieved to see them arrive back on Thursday afternoon.

I took a call today from a pond owner in Hepscott, I think where the swans came from 3 years ago. He was asking if I had seen the swans as they had been on his pond for the last three days, and he had been feeding them. He was relieved to hear they were ok and back at the reserve.

It looks like they just fancied a trip out😜