Category Archives: Conservation and Environment

A return to my early conservation volunteering

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Sadly, I had to cancel my trip to Ramsey Island over August bank holiday week. Unforeseen circumstances at home meant that plans had to be changed and my trip was put off until next summer.

However, this did give me an opportunity to try out some local conservation volunteering instead. My company gives me two paid days per year to volunteer for social or environmental causes, so with Ramsey no longer happening I searched quickly for local opportunities. I soon found a two-day task with Northamptonshire Conservation Volunteers.

Last Wednesday I headed out to Abington Meadows Nature Reserve near Weston Favell. On a warm but grey morning I met rangers from Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire Wildlife Trust and a small group of other volunteers at the edge of the meadows. We walked out to the centre of the site, each of us carrying a bow saw and pair of loppers. We stopped at a central area where the rangers had already used a chainsaw cut down a number of willow trees. Our task was to cut up the fallen trees and to put them on a fire.

Whilst cutting down trees and setting fire to them might not seem the most conservation-minded thing to do, I have learnt over many years of volunteering that it’s an often vital activity in maintaining many protected sites. With so many of our water meadows and reedbeds having been lost since the Second World War, those that remain need to be managed. This is to prevent natural succession leading to them being overtaken by willow and eventually drying up. In this case, this was exactly what was happening. The trees needed to be burned as the amount of willow taken down couldn’t all be taken off the site and if left on the ground it would re-grow not just from the stumps but also the cut down timber and brash.

So, for two days, I cut up the fallen trees and put them on the fire and, when the originally cut down trees had all gone, we cut down some more by hand to reduce the willow further.

This was an activity that took me back to some of my original conservation volunteering in Cheshire nearly 13 years ago. I have spent many a Sunday out of a Cheshire Wildlife Trust wetland site doing exactly the same task and over that time have seen what a significant positive impact a group of volunteers can have.

The only sad thing about this experience is that so many of the similar opportunities are only during weekdays when I’m out at work. However, I did learn of a couple of weekend volunteer groups which I might have to give a try.

Ten years of blogging

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With this 570th post, I’ve reached ten years of blogging on this site. It is somewhat surprising that I’ve kept it going so long; I only set up my blog to ‘give it a go’ a see if some longer-form writing would give me an outlet for my thoughts beyond the usual social media.

The blog started 18 months after I retuned to work following a 12-month career break. So much of that year was spent in nature with a mixture of volunteering, wildlife trips and photography, that it helped me find a new enthusiasm for the world around me and gave me a much more positive and constructive life overall. Before the break I had very little to say beyond my work life and I would never have blogged about that; I’ve always tried to keep work and home separate and leave thinking about work to weekdays. Continuing to spend my time away from work in nature in a number of different ways led me to consider blogging. I had done some (pretty rubbish) creative writing as a mindfulness practice and it seemed to work in moving my thoughts away from work. Doing things more interesting and constructive with my free time also gave me more inspiration to write and it just seemed to be an obvious extension to my practical conservation volunteering and photography, adding another dimension and enabling me to dive more deeply into my interests.

I can’t say this is the most keenly read or most visited blog and certainly not the best written or most thought-provoking. However, it does have a small band of followers and it does have individual posts which continue to be read years after they’ve been written. It seems that my posts on Scottish Islands and my trip to the Falkland Islands (also nearly 10 years ago) continue to get the most visits. Perhaps a bit of Googling while planning a holiday is the main source of my visitors.

The most visited posts at the time of writing have always been those about my volunteering at the Glaslyn ospreys in north Wales, where for a number of years I did nest protection shifts each spring. From the statistics page for my site it’s very easy to see when I stopped doing those shifts as my visitor numbers have never been the same since.

The subject which I have most prolifically written about is probably Ramsey Island. Since 2012, I’ve spent one, two or three weeks a year there as a residential volunteer for the RSPB, which all culminated in a three month stay in 2019. When I’ve written so much about the place, it’s hard to think of new things to say but I’m sure I’ll be inspired some more by my next visit.

I also can’t say that it hasn’t been a struggle at times to keep it going and to generate the enthusiasm to do so. Certainly over the past two or three years my rate of posting has dropped markedly. I have a generally strong underlying angst over the state of nature, the country and the world as a whole. I find so many things so concerning and hugely negative. I often find it exhausting when thinking beyond my own little world and at times writing about nature, when I feel so depressed about it, is almost the last thing I want to do. However, perhaps my blog should again be a place for positivity in the face of all the negativity around us.

At this ten-year mark in my blogging, I have considered whether it’s time to stop. It would end the false pressure and guilt I put on myself for not posting but it would seem such a waste of all the effort I’ve put in over the last decade. I also feel I still have so much to say, possibly, in fact, more than I used to. Almost by chance, my work has started to encroach on areas I blog about, with rural transport and wider countryside and coastal issues being a key area of my weekday focus. I don’t want my private time and work to mix too much but my personal thoughts on some of the crossover subjects could form the basis for future posts.

So, at this 10-year point, I don’t intend to leave the blog behind but, instead, find some new energy and, hopefully, new ideas, to reinvigorate my site and continue posting for a good while yet.

I’ll finish my post with a video. It was shot on my phone at Snettisham on the Norfolk coast of The Wash a couple of weeks ago. My wife and I had a weekend away, staying in a lovely pub nearby. One evening we went to the shoreline at the RSPB reserve to watch the dusk flight of birds as the tide came in. The result was a natural spectacular with thousands upon thousands of geese and waders putting on a show at a scale seen in few other places in the UK. It was a truly inspiring sight and one that re-energised my love of nature.

Ending the week with owls

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To make the break between the working week and the weekend, yesterday evening we had a sunset wander at one of our usual spots in the Brampton Valley. Almost immediately after getting out of the car we spotted a white shape flying low over the rough grass area amongst the now empty arable fields. Looking through our binoculars it was instantly recognisable as a barn owl. We slowly made our way along the farmland track to get a closer view and a second owl a popped up. We watched the pair for about half an hour as the light faded until they both flew off towards a nearby barn.

We’ve been visiting the spot often since we moved into the area two and a half years ago but only in the early days did we see barn owls there. So this was a delight and we’ll go back more often at sunset to see if we can find them again.

Wicken Fen: Returning wilderness

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Moving to Northamptonshire from Cheshire has made the east of England much more accessible than it was. This has put many of the wildlife sites and reserves within easier reach of an hour or two’s drive. So far we’ve had some great trips out that way including to the Ouse Washes, the Nene Washes, the Great Fen Project and much further into Norfolk. Late this spring we went to one of the reserves I’ve been wanting to visit for many years, Wicken Fen.

The Natural Trust reserve is large at 255 hectares and consists of a fenland landscape of wet meadows, sedge and reedbeds that has been lost from most of its former area. It has navigable channels, boardwalks and grassy paths on which to see the site. As well as walking, we took a 50-minute out and back electric boat ride which gave us a very different perspective to walking around the paths.

Being springtime, one of our main aims was to see and hear some of the typical fenland birds in their prime and we weren’t disappointed. We saw 45 species during the day but with some real highlights. The warblers, as would be expected, we very prominent with cetti’s, grasshopper, reed, sedge, willow, garden, chiff chaff, whitethroat and blackcap all in abundance. The raptors were led by marsh harriers but also included red kite, kestrel and buzzard. However, the real star of the show were the hobbies, with up to five in one view catching dragonflies and eating them on the wing. The other bird of note, which I always long to hear, and hopefully see, was the cuckoo. We heard one a few times as we sailed and walked around the reserve but then we got a great view as it sat in one tree calling and then flew across a meadow and called from another tree, all with the hobbies circling overhead.

The visit was lovely in the warm spring sunshine and the birds alone made the trip very much worth it. However, there was another target species for the day which at first we only had a very distant, hazy view of. Like the not too far away Great Fen Project, Wicken is a generations-spanning project to restore the fenlands at a landscape scale. To support the process, the plans include not just supporting birds but bringing back large herbivores to the land. So far this has included both highland cattle and wild Konik ponies.

After that distant view of both the ponies and cattle, we didn’t expect to see them close up during our visit, despite going to the area closest to where they would be. As we headed back to the car, we had almost given up the hope but then we heard a commotion in the distance as we walked past the area we had previously looked. We suddenly saw a small herd of ponies coming into view across the meadows and shallow lakes. Rushing to get a better look, the view opened up to reveal a stream of ponies in different groups cantering across the landscape and getting closer and closer until they were right in front of us.

It was immediately apparent that these weren’t just some tame hacking ponies from the local livery yard but very much their wild cousins. There was a dynamism in their lives you don’t see in horses grazing domestic fields. They weren’t just passively nibbling at the grass and lazily swishing their tails to swat flies. Instead, they were living real lives of herd animals. The mares we’re staying close to their youngsters, guiding them as they splashed through the water but with the older foals gaining confidence and rushing around in groups. The stallions were the stars of the show. Their strength and energy was obvious as they rushed around their harems, warding off the advances of others. Squabbles and fights would break out, with biting and kicking, and occasional face-to-face thrashing of limbs and hooves as they stood high on their rear legs. There was a constantly whinnying and snorting as the males tried to keep hold of their mares.

The last group of ponies, a bachelor pack, galloped from the distance over harder ground with their hooves filling the air with a rumble and their cries growing louder. As they entered the water, they chased and bickered amongst themselves but slowed down to a trot as the water deepened. The stallions closest to their route were agitated by their advance and turned towards them, only for the group to halt their approach. Individually they stopped and dropped into the water, rolling to cover themselves in dark, watery peat-laden mud. They stood up and shook themselves, now blackened and dripping, their bedraggled manes plastered think against their necks.

This was a wild herd acting as wild animals. All of this was laid out in front of us in a landscape that is being transformed by their presence. It stirred something visceral, a feeling of wilderness and something long lost from the country. There are no true wildernesses left in the UK but at times a sound or view can bring a momentary link between the modern UK and its former more wild past. For a moment, a window opened to provide a view into what has been and what could yet be again.

A morning with swifts

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Searching through the pages of my blog, I’m not sure I’ve really given enough space to my favourite bird – the swift. I aim to change that and I’ll start with a post about yesterday when I had the chance to get up close to some of these birds. Having spoken to one of our fellow villagers, John, a few times since we moved here in 2021, last year he kindly showed me his swift nest boxes and the video feed he has from them. We spoke again recently and this time he invited me around to see the swift chicks be ringed.

John, the two ringers, Neil and Michelle, and I made our way up to one of his bedrooms where he can gain access to two of his nest boxes. The birds from one of the boxes had already fledged but there were two chicks still in the second. Unfortunately, on inspection, the chicks were too close to fledging to ring; it would have risked them flying out of the nest too early. We therefore had to abort the ringing but instead walked up to the church to inspect the nest boxes high up in the base of the steeple.

Three of us went up the three steep sets of ladders to gain access to the steeple and then John and Neil clambered over the bells to check on the two boxes. More chicks were found, revealing a very successful breeding year for John’s nest boxes with five boxes in total producing 10 chicks. 

Over the previous two summers we have lived in the village, we have frequently seen swifts but not often at low roof-top level around our house. However, during this third summer in the village, we have seen quite a lot of swifts flying close around our house and the neighbouring ones, hopefully, indicating not only that there may be more nests in the village but that they may be in the surrounding houses or out-buildings. 

I could talk and write for hours about swifts, and I aim to write some more, but I’ll keep this post short but just say that there is something rather nice about hearing a party of screaming swifts as I sit at my desk in my home office on a warm summer afternoon. It’s a sound I look forward to throughout the autumn, winter and spring.