We had our first group visit of 2025 on Thursday. We welcomed Pumpkin pre-school from Felton for their first ever visit to Clarks Bog. We had two teachers Kate and Abi and nine 3-4 year old pre-schoolers.

They had a bit of adventure getting to the reserve needing to get two different buses to get from Felton, very brave teachers doing that with nine pre-schoolers😃.

They had a good wander around the reserve and watched the birds being fed, they particularly liked the ducks and swans.

Due to parental permissions I cannot post any pictures, sign of the times I’m afraid!

They appear to have a good time and have asked to come back next month.

Many thanks to Ron, one of our bee keepers, for the very kind gift of a bee suit. I can now get up close and personal when they are opening the hives.

A cute little killer visited the reserve today.

You have to watch the video clip a little closely as I did not have my camera with me just my phone. If you look closely we have a weasel picking up a vole, it had previously dispatched, and it carries it off.

Our bird ringers caught a new bird for the reserve. We have seen them before but never caught one. It was a Lesser Redpoll, a very pretty little bird.

I’m happy and sad to say Tiddles our young swan has left the reserve. It’s now 2 weeks since she was last seen so I’m pretty sure she has gone. Thankfully I have not found any piles of feathers so I think she was still alive and hopefully is off finding a nice safe home.

After a bit of a Woodchip shortage we have had a sudden rush over the last few weeks. We have been busily repairing our paths that have suffered over the winter months.

A big thanks to Phil, Libby, Dave & Brad (SkillMill), Finn and Rob who have all helped with this work.

Our Woodchip providers, Dave Saunders (Town & Country) and Barry Wilson and his team at NCC.

Only another 500 metres to go!!!

I was met today by Charles and Camilla walking their Christmas dinner off (maybe)😀

I wish you all a very merry Christmas and hope you have a very happy and healthy New Year. Thank you for your support during 2024.

I thought it would be good to use our new pond to trial a duck raft as I would like to put one on the Dunces corner pond. I made a pallet sized raft with the help of my little helper Finn.

So it all seemed to go well and I can now be confident to upscale this for a bigger version on the largest pond. We’ll have to see if the ducks appreciate our work!

Here are a selection if pictures I have taken over the last few months (Sept-Nov) to give a flavour of what has been out and about:-