June - the start of British 'Summer' time...

Our campfire flag made for Father's Day Survival Day

Well, June was the beginning of the British Summertime….only we think the sun forgot the memo!

At the start of the month, summer looked promising and we had a lovely Bat weekend. Members from Essex Bat Group popped down with loads of information and a few special friends to show you and to talk everything about bats. Great for the kids to see and they will also be joining us for our Bat Walks later in the year!

We also were lucky enough to have some wonderful weather for he father’s day weekend events. On Saturday, we had a delicious afternoon tea, whilst on Sunday we had a father’s day survival day! Great to see so many families turning up to participate in the best dens built, the best family flags made and of course, who could light the best fire. We supplied the hot chocolate and marshmallows and forest popcorn and a few of you even brought your own sausages to cook, delicious! We had a great time and we hope you all enjoyed yourselves too! Excellent work on the fire lighting with (we think) all of you managing to light your own fires too! Well done!

Lots of Toadlets spotted this month on the trail!

We had planned to hold our first Bat walk of the summer this month, but unfortunately, the weather turned against us. On the 23^rd – the date we had organised for the walk – the heavens opened for what seemed like the entire week, with thunderstorms rolling over the reserve too! Not ideal weather to have a Bat walk in and not great it you are a bat either! IT was a sad decision, but we decided to cancel that walk. Our next Bat Walk is now scheduled for 21^st July, so we hope to see you all there!

Our volunteers have been working hard in all the weather too! The mixture of rain, followed by sun, followed by more rain is great if you’re a plant and this as lead to our brambles and ferns growing at a tremendous rate! We recorded about 1ft of growth on the Brambles in only 1 week! The volunteers have been bashing these down to open up views and keep the pathways open, so excellent job and a huge thank you to their hard work!

Our natural woodland craft picture made
 by threading leaves and grasses
through hessian material.

Some of the natural crafts produced
this month from the Birthday Parties

Although the weather hasn’t been exactly summery, we have had some great wildlife spots, with lots of Grass Snakes being spotted basking in the sunlight between the showers. The many school groups we have had in this month (we were fully booked for school visits and only have 1 day left available in July!) have been tuning their forest ID skills, looking out for Hornbeam and Oak trees, learning about the bugs and minibeasts that live on them and in the ponds, looking at the Toadlets around the trail. Quite a few newt tadpoles are being discovered whilst pond dipping. These are beautiful critters, and once looked at, are safely and gently returned to the pond. We also found a few female stag beetles too!

Russ Collins June photo competition winner!

Steven Browning with this fantastic runner up shot!

This month's photo competition was themed around the insects in the reserve. As ever, we had some fantastic entries and are pleased to announce R. Collins as the winner, with his great bumble Bee shot, with S. Browning as the runner up with this fab shot of an insect on a leaf. Great photos!

 

All in all a busy but good month, we just hope the rain stays away for the next bat walk in July!

Details for our next Bat walk in July

May - when the pond dipping opens!

Bugles,some of the many wild flowers growing in the reserve

May saw the re-opening of our pond dipping area after a period of closure over spring and winter. This coincided nicely with our free Pond life and Amphibian weekends, at the start and the end of the month, which allowed visitors to get up close to the life in the ponds and learn about them. Pond dipping is now available until the end of September/October, with nets being £1 to hire.

With the longer daylight hours, mixing with some showers and warmer weather, our brambles are shooting up, growing over a foot in a single week! This is giving the volunteers lots of work to keep them down and to also clear patches and open up the vistas. By clearing the brambles away in patches, we can create habitat piles with the plant matter and also open up the forest floor to encourage wild flowers to grow!

Something slithering in the undergrowth...

The habitat piles are already a hit with our wildlife, with a huge grass snake being spotted basking by one in the middle of the month. Keep your eyes out on a sunny day, and if you’re quiet enough, you too may spot our serpents.

A few of the signposts within the reserve were given a quick spruce up this month too as we had out green flag inspection. The Green Flag Award is the benchmark national standard for publicly accessible parks and green spaces in the UK. We have won it for the past several years, and hope to win it again for 2016/2017. Fingers crossed!

With the weather being very warm and sunny, the leaves in the trees have really opened up and become very lush, which makes wildlife spotting a bit trickier. However, the interesting spots this month include:

·         Grass snake

·         Greater spotted woodpecker near the trail with nest

·         Moorhen chicks

·         First dragonfly of the year!

The Blue Tit Family just after hatching. They fledged at the end of May. 

Our nest box camera has seen some action, with a family of Blue Tits hatching at the start of the moth. Mum and Dad worked exceptionally hard to bring up 8 chicks, all of who fledged on Wednesday 25^th May. Will there be a second brood this summer though? Keep your eyes peeled on the screen in the classroom!

April with all of the weather!

Male Blackcap caught on the bird walk.

April really was the month we saw all the weather from all the seasons arrive! We kicked off the month with our bird weekend, which we hosted with the RSPB. This involved a free trail hunt, learning about our wonderful birds, binocular hire and a guided walk in the afternoon each day. On the walks we saw a huge range of birds, including a Sparrowhawk hunting a wood pigeon (amazing site to see!), tree-creepers, green woodpeckers and nuthatches and even a vole joined us for a short time!

We also had our last Afternoon Tea until Father’s Weekend. Lots of delicious cakes, scones and sandwiches consumed once more! If you missed our last few months of Afternoon Tea, fear not! We have one more on June 18th and shall restart them once more on a regular basis later on in the year.

This month also saw the Warden, Josey, head to Sherrads Hatch Nursery to help them build a bug hotel. A Fantastic bug hotel was built with help from the students, who loved filling it with woodland materials! Can’t wait to see what moves in!

Green Woodpecker spotted on the Bird Walk

April marks the start of the busy period for schools visiting the reserve. Towards the end of the month we welcomed 145 students through the gates, all eager to learn about the woodland and wildlife in Harlow. Most of the time they were lucky with the weather, however there was one group who were fortunate to experience brilliant sunshine, hail, snow and rain, all within a few hours!

Our volunteers have been working hard to open up some of the vistas within the reserve by clearing away some of the huge numbers of brambles. By piling up the left over waste, we create habitats for reptiles to bask on, birds to nest in and rodents to live in too. What will you see in the new views?

Other interesting wildlife spots this month include a family of Blue tits setting up home in our bird box with a camera. Unfortunately, it looks like the camera has got some moisture in it, so the picture being transmitted isn’t always the clearest. We have a camera to replace, but shall wait until the family and their chicks fledge. In the closing days of the month our resident moorhens showcased 3 fluffy chicks on the main pond, so keep an eye out for those!

And a nosey Nuthatch also spotted on the guided bird walk!

Signs of Spring in March

Tasty Treats at our Afternoon Teas

Spring finally arrived this month, with a good few sighting of the sun throughout March!

We started the month with a delicious afternoon tea for our Mums on Mother’s Day. We were fully booked for the event, with mums being treated to some delicious cakes, scones and sandwiches! The weather was also fantastic, with the sun shining allowing visitors to wonder around and look at our lovely wild flowers starting to pop up.

Long-tailed tit gathering nesting material.
Credit: Carol Gifford

Some of the best spots this month have been focusing on our birds. With the trees only just starting to think about popping some leaves out, the birds are easy to see and are doing some fantastic courtship displays of bobbing up and down, flapping, diving and more! We had a photo submitted into our competition showing a long-tailed tit gathering some nesting material, foxes were spotted as was a weasel! (credit to Carol Gifford) At the very end of the month a very special young Muntjac was spotted in the reserve, who stayed with us for a few weeks.

A Fox spotted at the start of the month.
Credit: Carol Gifford

We also got creative and messy, with our Arts in Nature weekend! This is always a big hit with the kids and we are always amazed at how creative they are! We had some beautiful animals made of leaves and twigs, some woodland men and lots of other creations! We popped some up on our ‘wall of cool’ so make sure you check it out on your next visit!

The elusive Golden Eggs!

At the end of the Month, we had a very special visit form the Easter Bunny! He sneaked into the reserve before good Friday and hid some eggs around the trail! Loads of you turned up to find them, with some of you even managing to find the golden eggs! Well done to those of you with keen eyes as they were hard to find! In total, about 940 of you turned up throughout the weekend and ate some chocolate eggs, so the bunny was very tired afterwards!

The volunteers have been busy too, cutting pathways within the reserve to allow us to inspect the boundary easier. They’ve been working very hard, even in soggy weather, so a huge thank you to their work too!

 This month's photography competition was given the theme 'Signs of Spring' and we are pleased to announce the winner is Jon Clempners' Primrose shot! The theme for April is 'Parndon Wood Wildlife', so get out in the reserve and get photographing! Good Luck!

March's photography winner, Jon Clempner, with the theme 'Signs of Spring'

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!

A year of Blogging!

It’s January! Start of a New Year at the reserve so, Happy New Year to all! It's also a year sine we started blogging!

One of the noisy foxes!

As with the norm this time of year, we’ve been busy with our woodland work as always! With the warmer weather and mild winter, we’ve had, the trees are starting to bud and the sap inside is threatening to rise early, so our conservation volunteers are rushing to get the coppicing work finished around Harlow! The work within the reserve finished last month, however we now are needing to protect the coppice stools with fencing from the Fallow and Muntjac deer.

(The problem with the Deer is that their grazing of the stools whilst they’re trying to re-grow could kill the trees!)

Luckily though, most of the coppice is now fenced with a dead hedge and a larger, deer fence, so hopefully the trees are safe now! Our volunteers have also been processing the wood into logs and stacking them up Nordic-style! Have you seen the log stacks in the coppice area?

Nuthatch on the move

January was almost the only time Winter has really made an appearance with Snow! On our Hibernation themed weekend, the snow had fallen and visitors were greeted with a beautiful snowy wood. The Reserve is beautiful at the best of times, so looked simply gorgeous in the snow! I love the snow, not only because I’m a big kid, but also because it’s fantastic to show up footprints and tracks in! Whilst opening up in the morning I spotted Fox, Fallow ad Muntjac Deer, Pheasant, Squirrel and rabbit to name but a few!

Our feeders are certainly popular!

January is a great time to spot wildlife as the trees are skeletal and there isn’t much undergrowth to hide in. This month’s top spots were: Tree creeper, Nuthatch, Buzzard and the Foxes, who this time of year are busy claiming their territories. We’ve had local school groups enjoying the reserve during the winter months too, who were lucky enough to spot the foxes and several different bird species.

A Tree-creeper spotted by the conservation cnetre

The Bird were out in full force towards the end of the month, just in time for our Big Bird Watch, to coincide the RSPB’s Big Garden Bird Watch. We had our very own Parndon Wood Bird Spotter Sheet available to download for free from our facebook and website, which lists the most commonly spotted species. Over the weekend, birds who were spotted were: Heron, Wood Pigeon Collard dove, Black Bird, Jay, Crow, Jackdaw, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Pheasant, Robin, Dunnocks, Green Woodpecker, Greater Spotted Woodpecker, Coal Tit, Nuthatch and Tree Creeper, most of which were spotted outside the centre on our bird feeders!

We also had some building work done on the centre, with bran new, shiny, double grazed windows put into the classroom! They look SO much better than the last lot, and keep the wind and weather out, unlike their predecessors! The clear glass also lets in a lot more light and you can now see the trees around the centre too! Lovely!

Our monthly photography competition crowned a new winner too. With the theme set to ‘Winter Wonderland’, Dan Purdy was this months’ winner with a shot of a Robin in the Snow. February’s theme is simply ‘silhouettes’…good luck!

January's winning entry for the photo competition!

It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

As we enter the last few weeks of 2015, we still have plenty to do before we relax over the festive season!

Our volunteers hard at work.

Our volunteers worked extremely hard to finish our woodland management programme of the coppicing work. A relatively large area of the wood has been transformed! Not only were the Hornbeam trees coppiced successfully before the Christmas break, but a wonderful dead hedge was constructed with the smaller brash materials from the work. This is to dissuade visitors from entering the coppice, as well as to act as a barrier to our deer, who would graze and eventually kill the trees!





Brilliant work!

One of Santa's naughty elves!

Looking for a cuddle

It wouldn't be December without seeing Santa! In his busiest time of year, Father Christmas took a break from sweaty shopping mall grotto's to relax in our woodland grotto! He met lots of our visitors (some of which admitted that they may have be bordering the good list, but which were told there were a few days left until Christmas and that if they tried, they could get safely on the good list!). Our visitors even helped Santa to gather his naughty elves up by finding out which ones had run into the forest with our Elf Trail.

Now because the reindeer needed to save their strength for the work on Christmas Eve, Father Christmas brought some lovely Donkeys along for the weekend. We're still not quite sure who was happiest, the younger visitors to be able to get up close and stroke the Donkeys or the Donkeys to have a stroke constantly throughout the weekend!

The big man himself!

With the warm winter we've so far experienced, we have noticed some unusual sights for this time of year. Some of our wild Primroses are starting to bloom (usually an early spring flower!) as well as some blossom spotted within the reserve! Will winter arrive in early 2016? Only time will tell but we do hope that, if a cold snap does occur, it doesn't dessimate our wildlife who all seem to be a few months early!