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😜

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!