This month we have had more fantastic news from the #SnettsHide appeal. An individual has kindly donated £30,000 towards rebuilding the hide at RSPB Snettisham! And, the icing on the cake? We also received a cheque from a community trust for £2,000. This means we are nearly half way to reaching our target.

We continue to apply for further funding and if you do have any ideas, thoughts, suggestions or contacts…

Spooky spiders 

Head out into the garden first thing in the morning and witness these eight-legged creatures weave glistening dew-dropping webs.

Fabulous fungi 

Look out for mushrooms and toadstools in enchanted forests. If you’re very quiet you might see fairies resting there. Look, don’t touch! Use our fungi-finder bingo sheet to help you spot an amazing array of fungi.

Bursting berries 

Admire the…

Whenever I stand on the sea wall at RSPB Wallasea Island, with the dust-muddied estuarine water lapping at the sea aster, looking at an egret silhouetted against clouds resting on the tide, mottling the sun, I feel wholly wild.

Inside all of us is a wild thing. It gnashes, it gnaws and it roars, like an encroaching tide, desperate to be sated, longing to be let out. The beast within that we dampen in our day-to-day…

As Halloween approaches, creatures are hunkering down and hibernating, but across RSPB nature reserves, in the depths of enchanted forests, mystical marshes, frightening fens, and haunted heathlands there remain many beasts that go bump in the night.

You don’t have to go far to experience the #wildthings. This October half-term we'll be on hand to showcase beasts that creep, crawl, flap and slither, in a range of #wildthing…

Author: Martin Payne. This piece was originally published in Essex Life.

The temperatures may have dropped from summer highs but there is still plenty of wildlife to get out and enjoy, including the wildlife spectacle found every year along the Essex coast.  The brent goose arrives from its breeding grounds in northern Russia and Siberia to feed on the eelgrass along the coastline and more recently they have moved onto…