Work began back in The summer of 2018 to replace the straw bale hide that our local rats had taken up residence in. It’s been a long road but we are nearly finished. Only the roofing felt, screws and paint have been bought all the other materials are salvaged, my little triumph for recycling! So we now have a comfortable wildlife watching hide with insulation and padded seats, luxury😀. Much thanks goes to my co builder John Bell for his time and patience working with a complete novice builder!

Our latest project is putting in a wheelchair friendly(hopefully) ramp to the entrance to hide 1:

Not quite finished yet but we are getting there.

One of our Princes Trust team came back for a weeks work experience. Alex got stuck in with building an observation mound with rustic seating. Although its not finished yet he made a good start.

Lots of lively little froglets have left the pond, mind your feet!

Once again we welcomed on site a work party from the Princes Trust. They saved me a lot of backache by helping move a couple of trailer loads of garden stone from a nearby neighbours garden to the reserve.

They also helped move a donated kennel from the same neighbour, having prepared the area they relocated the kennel and then gave it a nice camo paint job.

While this was happening another group started one of my observation mounds, this will eventually have a seat that provides a view over the reed bed.

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.