Speeding through February!

Primroses out in bloom. 

February has flown by for us! We started the month by welcoming in a volunteer group from Harlow College. The students helped to complete a huge litter pick of the reserve, cleared out the ditches and helped move some fencing materials into the newly coppiced area. Tough work but they did a great job!

We also had our visitors popping in to make a bird feeder for their own gardens. Lots of fun and mess to be had by everyone, with the kids having a great time getting their hands stuck into the feeder mix! If you made a feeder and hung it in your garden, let us know if anything interesting comes along for a bite to eat!

We also had our 4^th Afternoon Tea, which was nearly fully booked! Lots of tea was drunk and cakes and scones and sandwiches were enjoyed by all. Everything looked delicious and went down a treat. The weather was also lovely, with the primroses opening up beautifully in the sunshine!

Practicing our fire lighting skills...and tea drinking skills.

February also saw half term activities, such as a pre-school fairy-tale themed fun day! Hundreds of you joined us for a free trail hunt, messy play and arts and crafts. Although it was a bit muddy on the trail, it didn’t stop the youngsters from running around and enjoying themselves, finding the fairy-tale characters along the trail. Glitter and mud is quite an interesting combination to try and remove from the chairs in the classroom though!

Baking on a campfire at the training week. 

For staff, February saw the Manager, Josey, heading up to Cumbria for a training week on Forest School. With the practical assessments completed, we’re hoping to start running regular forest schools at the reserve as an afternoon club, so watch this space!

Visitors have been busy spotting some great wildlife this month, with a possible sighting of a Kite over the reserve. We’ve also started to see the birds carrying out their courtship behaviors, with the woodpeckers drumming throughout the reserve and thrushes singing within too. Frogspawn has also been spotted, so we’ll grab a bit and set some up in the visitor center for you to see how the tadpoles develop.

February’s photography competition winner is Carol Gifford, with a beautiful shot of the Oak trees in silhouette against a blue sky. Wonderful! The theme for March is ‘Signs of Spring’, so get snapping for your chance to win a 2-4-1 coffee and cake voucher! Be it buds on a tree or birds gathering nesting materials, there is lots to see out there!

February's photo contest winning entry!