August; last few weeks of the summer holidays!

Parndon Wood Honey on sale now!

August has absolutely flown by for us! Maybe it was because we were so busy! The first weekend in August saw our annual bee weekend alongside Harlow Beekeeping Association. This was a great weekend, with honey tasting, candle rolling, live demonstrations, honey cake for sale in the café and bee-themed arts and crafts for the kids to be occupied with. We had some excellent bee bags made, which went home filled with lovely was candles! With all things bee-related going on this weekend we also released our own honey for sale! It was by far the most popular honey of the weekend, so make sure you pop into the café to pick a jar up (Jut £5!).

Live bee hive demonstrations

Getting crafty with our bee crafts!

Following the good weather (at least it didn’t rain all the time!) we had our dragonfly weekend! We managed to find a few nymph cases from emerged dragonflies from our ponds. We snipped these off and had them available for our visitors to see. We also snapped a few, with our favourite snap being of a female Southern Hawker. The dragonfly weekend saw our visitors learning all about these incredible insects with our trail hunt and also gave them the chance to make their own lollipop dragonflies too! We have a funny feeling these will be making an appearance in our visitors’ school scrap books!

Southern Hawker Dragonfly

Bug Eyes

When the sun shone, our animal sightings went up too! Lots of deer have been spotted from our ‘Deer Hide’ throughout this month, along with several sights of grass snakes and lizards appearing on the spotters board in the visitor centre. Lots of visitors have also been spotting our toadlets as they walked around the trail, so keep an eye out for these and make sure you don’t stand on any! They’re quite small, only about the size of your little finger nail, so look a bit like hopping pebbles.

Towards the end of the month we held our final bat walk of the season. With nearly 80 of you turning up, we were certainly busy but all of you had a great walk! Lots of bats were spotted once again, so a special thanks to the experts from Essex Bat Group (Steve and Frances especially) who have helped us with these great walks. Keep an eye on the calendar next year for our next bat walks!

Hammer pictures

Forest school village making

As many of your probably notice, the clock is ticking down until the kids head back to school (is that a sigh of relief from tired parents we hear??). Some of you have been at ‘school’ already this summer by participating in out Forest school! We’ve had an excellent set of sessions this summer, which saw our students developing their identification skills, social skills and self-confidence. Some days the weather was kinder to us than others though! But regardless of weather, there were smiles all around! We’ve made some fantastic leaf pictures and managed to get a fire to make hot chocolate and toast marshmallows on in our final session! (Accompanied by biblical amounts of rain…who doesn’t like a challenge?!). A huge thank you to all the participants! The success of this school is such that we are planning our next session as an after school activity, so keep an eye on our Facebook, twitter and website for updates on this!

Toasting marshmallows in the rain!

We’ve had such a great year that we started looking for an extra member of staff, so step forward Kathy as our new Café Assistant! Kathy is a brilliant addition to the team here, so next time you’re in, pop in and say hello to her! 

July; Let the school holidays begin!

Stick man made in Forest School

This moth has seen the introduction of our new forest school programme, with the feedback so far being extremely positive. Forest school is an idea that children learn through play and through interactions with the great outdoors. We aim to encourage learning through play in a safe and secure environment, whilst also developing individuals’ social interactions.

Forest School Arts and Crafts

So far on the programme, we’ve made forest crafts such as beautiful 5 - point stars, and learnt about tool use and knots. We’ve also learnt how to tell the difference between tree species by looking at leaves, shapes and bark patterns and lots more! Very much looking forward to the next few sessions and we’re hopeful that this is something we can roll out on a regular basis as an after school event.

Learning through play

At the start of the month we also conducted a plant survey of the edges of the nature reserve. Some fantastic plants were recorded, including a Wild Service tree (which has fruit called chequers, previously used to flavour beer!), Wild Honeysuckle, Betony, wild strawberries and lots more! Some of these species we are looking to re-seed into the centre of the reserve, so a project our conservation volunteers have been working on this month is preparing a plant nursery for these species.

A house for a Twiggle

July also saw us run our 2^nd bat walk of the year (with our final one being on August 20^th). Once again this was a very popular event, with lots of bats being spotted on the walk, along with some other animals including some deer and rabbits! It’s not just bats we’re focusing on this month but also our bees! They’ve been hard at work since they were installed in April and we are already taking off honey! Just in time for our bee weekend at the end of the month, which is where we also hope to launch our own honey for sale in the shops and reserve. Can’t wait to try it all!

Smiling!

As most of you will have noticed, July also saw the start of the school holidays (aaaah!!) Luckily, the weather has been reasonable too, which has encouraged our visitor numbers to grow, especially during the week. Lots of people using the reserve and learning through activities such as pond dipping and bug hunting is a lovely sight to see! Great to see young explorers earning all about the natural world!

We’ve spotted lots of wildlife on our camera traps too! This months’ top spots include a Doe with two fawns trailing after her and a pair of foxes too! We’ve also had our visitors spotting the fox cubs frequently throughout this month and it is probably about time the cubs move out of their dens and away from their parents if they’ve not done so already!

Fox caught on a camera trap in July