The 10th Annual Farm and Country Festival will be held this weekend at the Bassetlaw Museum.

Artists Julie Willoughby and Ruth Piggot will be there running workshops for the forthcoming Marsh Fayre, which is being held at Beckingham in September.  Julie will be making a 'Meadow Carpet' and Ruth will be making a backdrop mural for the dramatic performance that KISMET Theatre Group are producing for the Fayre.

Watching dragonflies and damselflies colonise Beckingham's ditches and scrapes has been one of the highlights of the project over the last four years.  Another species was added to the list last year in the shape of Hairy Dragonfly and one was seen again a few weeks ago.

Whilst on the reserve last week, I was delighted to add Red-eyed Damselfly to the site list and if that wasn't enough, Banded Demoiselle only…

Whilst the wildlife on the Marshes isn’t always that obvious, it has certainly been there in abundance this spring. Spring migration not only saw the usual suspects in the shape of Yellow Wagtails, Wheatears and Swallows, but also less frequent visitors such as Cuckoos and Whimbrels too.

The breeding season has started in earnest, with displaying Lapwings being an almost permanent backdrop recently. Young Brown…

I was joined on site last Tuesday evening by 50 members of 1st Morton Girl Guides.  The group actually comprised of 11 Guides, 11 Rainbows, 28 Brownies and 8 adult leaders.

The group spent two hours on site, taking in the visitor trail, learning about the reserve's history and seeing some of its wildlife.  Highlights included a group of five brown hares and displaying lapwings.

The group have engaged with the '500 Frogs…

http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/placestovisit/beckinghammarshes/f/12673/t/112125.aspx

A team from Biffa's Corporate Sales Hazardous Waste Team spent the day volunteering at Beckingham Marshes last Thursday. 

The team of seven came together from all over the country, to join forces and make a difference at Beckingham.

The task in hand - painting the reserve's visitor infrastructure - was tackled with relish and they thoroughly enjoyed themselves too!

Biffa Award have provided funding for numerous…

Thanks to volunteer Ruth Edwards for sending me the following link:

http://www.ntu.ac.uk/ecoweb/biodiversity/falcons/index.html?campaignid=falcons

Assistant Warden Jenny Wallace carried out an early morning survey at Beckingham Marshes this morning and heard not one, but two cuckoos singing on site.

In the four years that I've been working on this reserve, I've neither seen, nor heard a cuckoo at Beckingham, so this is very welcome news, even if they're just passing through. 

There are also two cuckoos at sister site Langford Lowfields today too.

 Whilst out on site last week, I phoned volunteers Joan Spencer and Mike Larke who were carrying out a perimeter check, to let them know about four wheatears that I was watching.

However, they weren't interested in the wheatears as A) they'd already seen them and B) they were looking at something rather more out of the ordinary (sorry wheatears).  They'd spotted a pair of grass snakes, mating in Beckingham Main…

I picked the following up from Nick Brown on the Derbyshire Natural History Yahoo Group:

'Chris Packham is frustrated by the fact that no UK TV company or channel will either make or broadcast what goes on in Malta each spring (and autumn) as thousands of migrants get blasted out of the skies.
So he’s funding his own initiative and has taken his own camera crew out there.

Starting tomorrow, Monday 21^st, Chris…

Thanks to Volunteer Warden Derick Evans for some great sightings from the reserve this morning.

I think the early bird(er) definitely caught the worm this morning!

At 06.00:

Tree Sparrow

32 Yellow Wagtail

4 Whimbrel

1 Curlew

1 Greenshank

Lapwing

Shoveler

At 08.15:

1 Little Egret

1 Sparrowhawk

1  Kestrel

Numerous Lapwings

Numerous Skylarks

5 Arctic Tern over pools briefly.

Discover Beckingham Marshes

 Sunday 13 April   2.30pm – 4.00pm

 Join the RSPB warden for a guided walk on this developing nature reserve.  Formerly arable fields, RSPB Beckingham Marshes is now a wet grassland, so come and see some of the wetland wildlife that has started to re-colonise the site over the last three years.

 £2.00 per head.  Booking essential, please call 01636 893611 or email paul.bennett@rspb…

This year marks the start of the last year for the Heritage Lottery Funded Beckingham Marshes project. That doesn’t mean the site’s going anywhere of course; it will just be the end of the first phase of the project.

What this means for us is that we’re going to be very busy! We’re working in partnership with Kismet Theatre Company who are working on a theatrical performance that tells the story…

• 1 Little Egret
• 1 Shelduck
• 3 Grey Heron
• 23 Teal
• 2 Gadwall
• 8 Mallard
• 2 Greylag Geese
• 1 Curlew
• 6 Lapwing
• 4 Grey Partridge
• c. 350 gulls - mixed flock of Black-headed and Common Gulls
• 26 Pied Wagtail
• Numerous singing Skylarks
• c. 30 Tree Sparrow
• 2 Fieldfare
• 1 Common Buzzard
• 1 Kestrel
• Numerous Brown Hares

There will be a hedgerow planting day at The Old Willow Works, Beckingham, this Wednesday 5th March (opposite Beckingham Marshes).

Local community member, RSPB volunteer and member of the Beckingham History Group, Chris du Feu, has sourced funding for 700 hedgrow plants to be planted in the Willow Works Community Garden.

These will be used to fill in the gaps in a hedgerow that was planted last year and will provide…

The Beckingham Marshes project is funded by The Heritage Lottery Fund and at the project's inception, we signed up to deliver various community engagement activities.  One of those activities was engaging with a local theatre group to deliver a theatrical performance that celebrated the project and the surrounding community.

We've been very lucky to have the Kismet Theatre Company already working in the local community…

Project Administrator Gail Talton and our education team ran a session in December for a group of home-schooled children. The activity again involved the dissection of pellets sourced from the local barn owls and was well received. After the session, the dissected pellets were passed on to Chris du Feu for closer inspection and to his surprise, he found the remains of Water Shrew.

This is the first record we have of…

For a wet grassland site, Beckingham Marshes had been looking rather dry during the run up to Christmas.  Beckingham Main Drain (where we abstract water from) was also very low.  Therefore, I turned on our windpumps in late December and hoped for rain (and wind of course). 

Yesterday we had our Annual Ecological Review, where site staff are joined by regional staff and national specialists to discuss how the site is performing…

All three chicks seem to be doing well and it shouldn't be too long before they fledge.

The image below (taken last Wednesday ) shows them looking a lot less fluffy and more adult-like.

The community garden adjacent to The Old Willow Works was officially opened by Councillor Liz Yates on Friday 15th November.

Thirteen dignitaries attended including members from the local community and staff from Groundwork Cresswell, Ashfield and Mansfield, who designed and constructed the garden.

Other special guests on the day were years 3 and 4 from Beckingham Primary School.  The children were invited along to try…

We still have three chicks, which are now about ten weeks old and we expect them to fledge sometime this month.

The image below shows two of them and was taken off footage recorded using the motion-sensor cameras. 

Children from Beckingham Primary School visited the Willow Works in October to watch the owls and dissect some of their pellets.

Students from the University of Lincoln have also been diesscting their pellets…

Please note that the level crossing on Station Road/Old Trent Road in Beckingham will be closed for long periods of time between 2nd November 2013 and 21 December 2013.  This is to allow Network Rail access to replace the rails.

The closures will mainly be during weekends, between 18.30 and 06.00, so is unlikely to affect vistors to the reserve.  However, the crossing will be closed during the week during the week commencing…

Volunteer Chris duFeu had a look at the barn owl camera last night and reported that three chicks have now hatched.

Chris also saw the female feeding the young birds and the male regurgitating a pellet.

Are you interested in barn owls and like the idea of your very own ‘Springwatch’ project?

Down at the Willow Works the RSPB cameras are recording live images of barn owls inside one of two nest boxes. This weekend (22 September) the very first chick of seven eggs hatched...

 If you would like to help us monitor the new arrivals in the nest box, and have an interest in recording equipment we would love…

Four Membership Development Officers (MDO's) from the Eastern England Regional Office (EERO) visited both Langford Lowfields and Beckingham Marshes yesterday, as part of a fact-finding mission.  I suggested that, while they were at Beckingham, they should have a look at the images of the pair of barn owls that can be seen on the screen at The Old Willow Works at the moment.

Well, they couldn't have timed it better…