Northern Power Grid paid a visit to the reserve this week, to replace a sixty year old transformer.

Unfortunately my path was destroyed, I’m hoping, having spoken to them, that they will be returning to reinstate my path!

There are still territorial battles going on across the site, below are some pictures of two of them. The first is a couple of Speckled wood butterflies fighting it out:-

The other battle was between a couple of Southern Hawker dragonflies:-

No winners, no losers but tricky to get a decent photo!

Here are a few pictures from the month of August:-

It’s been talked about for a while but now it’s nearly a reality, I’m talking about my fourth pond. I talked it through with Ross and Chris yesterday and boy did they deliver today. A very rapid conversion from meadow to pond.

Hats off to Andy the digger driver, despite the heavy rain last night he was digging the mud at 8am and had the pond probably 85% finished by 3pm. A bit of tidying up tomorrow and then its on to the path completion and pond overflow drainage to do.

I discovered our young cygnet has a liking for Jacob’s Cream crackers:-

Meanwhile Tiddles siblings are growing by the day:-

Hopefully they will not pick up her bad habits!

I thought it was worth showing an update on our new path through to the extra land we took on. Thanks to the continuing help of SkillMill and from Morpeth scouts, plus my volunteering stalwarts Phil and Libby!

Still a lot more to do but it’s looking smart so far.

If anyone knows of someone with a heavy duty woodchipper we could use that would be useful. We still have a lot of path to cover!

Some pictures from the month of July on the reserve:-

A first for the nature reserve, our first batch of Clarks Bog honey!

Ron Smith one of our bee keepers kindly supplied me with the first few jars of honey produced by our bees on Clarks bog.

Here’s the finished product:-

Hopefully the first of many.

I received a call yesterday from a friend saying they had sighted a young swan near the reserve, I asked if it had a red leg tag and they said yes. So I knew there was a fair chance it was our young cygnet that left a few weeks ago. So I set off in my buggy to see if it was indeed our youngster. When I arrived at Dunces houses sure enough it was our little friend surrounded by workmen throwing bread to her, she did seem hungry, and a little bedraggled!

I decided it would be best to take her back to the reserve as she was very close to a busy road. The next problem was how to get her back, I tried to put her in the back of the buggy but she just hopped out as soon as I started moving. So I picked her up, got in the buggy and sat her on my knee. I was pleasantly surprised to find she seemed quite happy to sit there and be chauffeur driven back to the reserve. Thankfully there was no wing flapping or signs of stress, as you can see below:-

She knew her way home and once out the cab quickly waddled her way down to her pond. Let’s see how long she stays!

I thought it would be nice to give you a flavour of what has been out and about on the reserve in June. So here are a few pictures of what has been seen this month.