Blogger: Emily Field, RSPB Volunteer & Farmer Alliance Project Officer

The other day was walking home from school with Tommy (age 5) whinging in the usual way "come on Tommy what's keeping you?”

he replied "I'm looking at the bees going into the ground mum!"

I go back and find, with Tommy, to my surprise, lots of tiny little bees, with shiny tails, and orange legs, digging holes into…

Author: Clare Whitelegg, Schools Outreach Project Officer

In 2015, thanks to generous funding from ALDI, the RSPB launched a programme of free outreach to primary schools across the UK.

I’m Clare, the Schools Outreach Project Officer for Norwich and the Broads. Since starting last September, I have worked with hundreds of children, helping them to explore the great outdoors and discover nature.

It’s truly a privilege…

Over the next few days we are sharing Mandy Foyster’s incredible adventure, paddling 75 miles of Norfolk’s rivers in a toy boat over 12 days, all in aid of the RSPB and Norfolk Wildlife Trust.  Here’s the next instalment of her amazing feat:

Day 6

I awoke on Thursday tired but looking forward to a slightly easier day.  However a familiar hissing noise from my boat soon made me realise that today…

Blogger: Lou Gregory, RSPB Volunteering Co-ordinator, Minsmere

In the world of wildlife, spring is that magical time of new growth, new homes and new families. In our world too, spring is bringing in the new!

This year, for the first time, we are excited to be the new home of BBC Springwatch at our flagship Minsmere nature reserve, nestled between Southwold and Aldeburgh on the beautiful Suffolk heritage coast.

Blogger - Erica Howe

I’m house sitting at the moment while our friends are off on a holiday of a lifetime! It sounds wonderful doesn’t it? I’ve left the city, living in the Norfolk countryside, in a bigger house with a garden – sounds like a holiday itself? Well, sort of!

It’s funny when you step into the shoes of someone else, live their life for a brief moment. That’s what it feels like when…

Blogger: Erica Auger, Communications Manager

For me, Christmas time seems to revolve around one rather important thing. Food! It is at the heart of our family get togethers, it’s what my friends and I gossip over and we do tend to overindulge a little tiny bit! It’s almost the complete opposite for our feathered friends and garden wildlife who need all the help they can get to stay full up this winter time. We can do…

I was lucky enough to go to a village school. There were only 6 children in my year and we had two classrooms; one for the Infants and one for the Juniors. We lived in the village down the road and on warm summer days we would walk the two miles to school through the fields. I’m not painting a picture of a Victorian idyll here; I left primary school in 1999. Connection to nature was a part of my daily life; I’ve grown…

Blogger: Aggie Rothon, Communications Officer

'Christmas is the one time of year that we collectively decide to go in to hibernation’ my colleague said the other day. ‘We don’t tell each other, everyone just knows that it will happen.’ Yet while we are all emerging from a restful and sleepy festive period, for birds the winter months are a continual frenzy of feeding activity. With little ‘natural food’ such as berries…

Blogger: Rachael Murray, Communications Officer

With Halloween around the corner, scary stuff is pretty de rigueur, but when the fear inducing fodder relates to our children’s connection with nature, we at the RSPB get unseasonably jittery.

Recent news stories on the subject have highlighted that our future generation are on average spending four and a half hours a day surfing the internet or watching TV and…

Blogger: Dr Rebecca Laidlaw

Last year Dr Jen Smart wrote a guest blog for Martin Harper called “Where have all the waders gone and how are we going to get them back?” In that blog, she identified some key things that will be important if our vision of landscapes with thriving wader populations, such as lapwing and redshank, are to be realised.

Wetland,  Mike Norton

Wouldn’t it be great if we had the…

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me … two turtle doves.

26 December is, as the traditional Christmas song goes, the second day of Christmas and the Operation Turtle Dove partnership is launching an exciting competition today!

Operation Turtle Dove is a new partnership triggered by the impending crisis facing turtle doves. However, the partnership logo of the special symbolic doves of love…

Written by Emily Kench. This blog post originally appeared as a feature in the Suffolk Magazine in the April issue 2017.

Spring: that glorious time of the year where we draw back the curtains, fling open the windows and once again turn our gardens into a multifunctional seasonal living room, dining room and playroom. A ‘room’ we must tend to when preparing for the lazy alfresco morning coffee, the long scone-consuming…

Blogger: Adam Murray, Communications Officer

What do you do in the bath? Every evening I have a bath with my 8 month old and we soak the bathroom playing with his plastic animal toys. When I was in the bath the other day I couldn’t help going through each of the different aquatic beasties and telling stories about them and my adventures (it’s a daddy’s prerogative). Pelicans on the California coast, green turtles from…

Blogger: Kim Matthews, Campaigns Officer

So yesterday was a big day for me.  Aside from having just about recovered from the lurgy-from-hell that has been sweeping through our office like a viral tsunami, I jumped on an eye-wateringly early (for me!) train to London to take part in my first ever guerrilla marketing action.

Ok so that makes it sound like I was donning camouflage gear and undertaking some James Bond-l…

Watching wildlife can be absolutely breathtaking. Regardless of your age or experience, spotting something you’ve never seen before or simply catching a glimpse of a cheeky robin in your garden, can leave you totally mesmerised. Most of my encounters with birds, mammals and insects have happened purely by chance, walking through the city, out on a bike ride or driving through the countryside. My latest wildlife adventure…

Blogger: Jacqui Miller, Conservation Officer

I used to go to lots of places to look for wildlife – everything from walks on the common to trips to remote Scottish Islands to listen to corncrakes, but always going somewhere. I would occasionally peer out at the garden, but it was a bout of flu that really made me look that bit closer to home.

I should have known that my garden would be a good spot for wildlife…

Author: Rachael Murray

The Suffolk coast is famed for its winter wildlife wonderlands. It’s a well trodden route for nature enthusiasts the world over and famed for the part it plays in the protection of so many special species. Chris Packham once famously called Suffolk Coast nature reserve, RSPB Minsmere, the ‘Disneyworld of wildlife’. I can only imagine he meant Disneyworld, Paris, because stroll…

In this final instalment, we hear about Mandy’s final few days on her epic fundraising adventure.  After nearly 12 days paddling 75 miles along Norfolk rivers in a toy boat, will her boat hold out?  What other wildlife will she see along the way? Will she make it all the way back to Norwich?  Read on to find out....

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Day 9

After a restful night floating on the river at Reedham I was joined by my friend Mr…

Blogger: Rachael Murray, Project Officer

I’m off on holiday to Turkey next week, and ever since I passed that tantalisingly irreversible milestone of booking my flight, I have been pondering what I will wear on my ‘tropical’ adventure. With blue skies and wall to wall sunshine in mind, my list consisted of tiny vest tops, shorts and flip flops...bliss!

So, imagine my dismay when the day came to check…

  Blogger: Aggie Rothon, Communications Officer

If winter is great grey waves bellowing against the cold shingle of the Norfolk coast then summer is Breckland. Crisp heaths baked yellow by a clear sky. Heather growing red and purple by the side of bare paths and gorse pods crackling open in the heat. Then the cool of the forest and the luxury of a tree canopy overhead.

Last week I spent a day in the Brecks with the RSPB…

Blogger - Simon Tonkin, Senior Farmland Conservation Officer

The signs from the EU in the last few days are that the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, is considering major cuts to pillar two of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). An essential fund that amongst other things pays farmers and landowners to manage their land in wildlife friendly ways (as pictured and taken just days ago)…

Blogger: Erica Howe, Communications Officer

I sat with goosebumps all over my arms and a tear in my eye. It was Sunday evening last week and I was watching the Tour de France on TV.

This sporting occasion was going to go down in the history books. I was imagining telling my kids about the day I sat and watched Bradley Wiggin become the first Briton to ever win the Tour de France, arguably one of the hardest sporting…

Why did the RSPB decide to use crowdfunding?

We decided to research alternative ways to fund projects; when we looked into crowdfunding, it seemed to tick all the right boxes for us. We know that Snettisham is an extremely special place for lots of people and rebuilding the hide was something many people told us that they, as individuals, would be willing to get behind and support.

As crowdfunding typically raises…

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