Reproduced below is Michael Walter's latest report. It is slightly shorter than usual as he also wrote about Peter Curd's retirement party in Church Wood, which I have already covered in a previous post:

Occasionally my articles provoke an email or phone call from a reader, and I was intrigued to hear recently from a resident of Hillview Road in Canterbury that he had seen a short-eared owl hunting over Neal…

Yesterday the all the volunteers connected with the Blean Woods and Seasalter Reserves had their annual Christmas lunch. This year it was held at the Royal Oak in Blean and everyone enjoyed themselves. As a lot of people work on different days and in different capacities, it is just about the only time that all the volunteers get together and meet each other. Since last Christmas there have been quite a few changes, with…

On Wednesday November 25^th, a very special event was held in Church Wood. It was a surprise retirement party for Peter Curd, who has been a volunteer in the woods for 13 years - most of that working three days a week. He’s not retired completely as he is still working for the RSPB, collecting money for pin badges and in buckets outside supermarkets (last year alone he collected £2,161 in this way), but due to health problems…

This is Michael Walter's latest report:

Is it autumn or spring? This is not, perhaps, such a silly question as it sounds, and the mild start to November almost fooled me into thinking that I had slept through winter and that a new year was now awakening. Daily maximum temperatures have been consistently in double figures and on 6^th November reached 18°C; such balmy conditions are not unknown at this time of year…

Here is Michael Walter's latest report:

A feature of the past few weeks has been the passage of siskins, a bird that is increasingly seen in our gardens, but more frequently in spring rather than during its autumn movements. This year flocks of up to thirty have been commonplace, though none seem to have lingered. The siskin breeds mainly in the north and west of Britain, its principal southern outliers being in…

This is the latest report from Michael Walter.

Will anyone who has been complaining about the lack of rain for their garden please now shut up, as it seems as though the great tap in the sky has jammed open. It all started on 13^th August when we had at least 31.8mm of rain, most of it in the space of an hour. I say “at least” because my rain gauge tilted over under the sheer weight of water and some probably spilled…

Earlier this month Nick Covarr, the Assistant Warden, took some photos of dragonflies during one of the regular Wednesday working sessions in the woods. Below are the male and female common darter and a blue migrant hawker.

Finally a photo of a brimstone butterfly in the sun.

On Friday lunchtime, the Blean volunteers were treated to a Summer Social event by the Warden and Deputy Warden, to thank them for all the work they had done during the summer. As can be seen from the photo below, a barbecue on Whitstable beach was enjoyed by all. Summer work mainly involves path-clearing and this year over 13 miles of paths have been cleared. The volunteers aim to do the work in a sensitive manner and…

Last week I went on a day course on wild flower identification in Church Wood organised by Nick Covarr, the Deputy Warden at Blean Woods. There were about 12 of us altogether, a mixture of local RSPB staff and a few volunteers. The course was led by Dominic Price of the Species Recovery Trust, which is a small charity who aim to stop the UK’s rarest species from becoming extinct, mainly plants but some invertebrates as…

Michael Walter's latest report:

Heath fritillary numbers peaked at around the 15-year average of 400, but this was well below the figures for four of the past five years, and the cool spring weather doubtless contributed to this decline, causing the caterpillars to develop more slowly and so be vulnerable to predation for longer. No new colonies emerged this year, but several of the old ones inevitably vanished as…

This is the peak time to see the butterflies in the woods, particularly the heath fritillary, which is a very rare butterfly nationally. The easiest place to see them is in the clearing called Cook’s Glade, which is just a short walk from the Monkey Court Common entrance to the woods in Blean. On a walk there a few days ago, I saw not only heath fritillaries, but also ringlets, small skippers, meadow browns and a speckled…

On Friday June 26^th, I arranged a boat trip with Grove Ferry River Trips. If you get a group of 12 people together (the maximum number the boat will take) you have the boat to yourselves and can choose where you want to go, either upstream towards Fordwich or downstream towards Pluck’s Gutter. The twelve who went were all volunteers who work in Blean Woods, plus partners. Even more people expressed an interest, but not…

Michael Walter's latest report:

Bird survey work can be humdrum at times, but a routine woodcock count on 4^th June was rather special. For a start, the woodcock were most accommodating, and I recorded more flights of these weird whistling, grunting birds than ever before. As the sun set, gossamer cloud high in the west acquired a delicate pink wash, while a mackerel sky to the east assumed an equally elegant pearl…

This is Michael Walter's latest report:

One of the delights of my early morning spring bird surveys is the frisson when the unexpected turns up. Most of these weekly visits can produce a record that is a little different, usually along the lines of a nightingale in a new territory, but occasionally something totally unpredictable presents itself. Two weeks ago I was surveying a fairly quiet area. At such times I…

A couple of weeks ago I had a walk in the woods, starting at the Denstroude entrance. It was a sunny day and the leaves on the trees were all the bright green of new leaves. The wood anemones were beginning to fade but the bluebells were starting to appear and there were still plenty of primroses and a few lady’s smocks. The latter have lots of local names – I grew up calling them mayflowers and they are also known as…

I am posting slightly later than intended, but this is Michael Walter's latest letter on the Reserve:

A generally cold March and first week of April meant a slow start to the breeding season for birds; our resident species were reluctant to sing, and spring migrants were late arriving - my first willow warbler on 12^th was the third latest date in 34 years. Annual monitoring results so far suggest that numbers of…

This month Michael Walter's report includes a section about the dormouse found during a volunteer session in the Reserve. As I have already written about this, I have omitted that section. However, I wasn't aware at the time I wrote my post that the dormouse was transported to Wildwood in a glove. Michael takes up the story: The most suitable container to hand [to transport the dormouse] was one of Michael Thomas' leather…

On March 2^nd, the funeral of Brian Bundock, who lived in Blean, will take place at Barham Crematorium. Michael Walter, in this month’s newsletter, writes about Brian’s contribution to the Blean Reserve:

The immense value of volunteers is sometimes under-rated. Because they may work less than an eight-hour day and very few beaver away for their chosen charity five days a week, there can be a tendency to belittle…

Recently, the Friday gang of volunteer workers were in the Blean doing their usual winter work of coppicing trees and stacking logs. One of the team, Michael Thomas, noticed something unusual hanging on a branch nearby. He went to take a closer look and realised it was a dormouse. Suddenly it hopped onto his shoulder, as can be seen from the photos below. It was totally unexpected as dormouse aren’t usually active at…

Michael Walter's latest report:

Winter is an extremely lean time for birdwatching in the wood: on a New Year’s Day walk with friends I wasn’t aware of a single bird, though admittedly I was concentrating more on my duties as a host and leader. Nevertheless, it is somewhat disturbing to be in the wood for nearly two hours and not hear a squeak out of a blue tit, blackbird, wood pigeon or any of the other 25 or so…

This is Michael Walter's latest report:

All the marked pines that I referred to in my October report were felled in next to no time but, although lorryloads of logs have been trundled away, there remain some fairly impressive stacks of timber, the pungent aroma of resin detectable from a long way off. Resin is nature’s elastoplast for conifers – whenever a tree is damaged, this incredibly sticky substance oozes over…

On Monday all the volunteers who work in the RSPB Blean Woods Reserve had their Christmas meal in a pub at Tankerton, a thank you for all the hard work they put in during the year. It’s also a chance for those who volunteer on different days or in different capacities or even different venues now that there are volunteers working on the Seasalter Levels, to meet up. In some cases it’s the only occasion during the year…

A new report from Michael Walter:

October was milder than average and the first half of November has been extremely balmy, so it is not too surprising that some of the vegetation has been behaving in an unseasonal manner. I have seen rowan with a partial second crop of flowers, and several banks of honeysuckle in full bloom, long after the initial crop had faded and given way to red berries. It has also been rather wet…

This is a short introduction from the Reserve’s new assistant Warden, Nick Covarr, who joined the team in September.

'When I was offered the position I was warned I’d need to hit the ground running but one month into the role and I can’t believe how much work we’ve done! The rides have been mown, the glades have been strimmed and we have opened up a 500m stretch of hazel and birch to encourage next season’s cow…

The following update was written by Michael Walter:

It has indeed been a strange end to the season, summer sometimes flaring up for a beautifully warm, sunny day, with surprisingly good numbers of butterflies (mainly red admirals and commas) right through to the end of September. I also seem to have been aware of more moth caterpillars than usual, two of the more dramatic ones being elephant hawk moth and vapourer. The…