Hello there! My name's Heather and along with my colleagues Rob and Kerry, we're the new residential volunteer team here at the beautiful Coombes Valley. We’ll be updating this blog regularly with sightings and goings on from the reserve. Keep your comments and photos coming, we’d like this group to be as interactive as possible, and we look forward to seeing you soon down at Coombes!
It was a beautiful sunny day today so myself, Rob and day volunteer Becky had a long walk around the reserve, getting to know this amazing place and its wildlife.
It’s a really exciting time here as spring is coming into bloom! We saw Butterbur flowers, so called as its leaves were used to wrap butter in the days before refrigeration, Marsh Marigolds and Lesser Celandine. Several comma butterflies were also flitting about and stayed still long enough for us to get a good photo.
There have been plenty of nuthatches, great tits and blue tits on the feeder, chiffchaff and chaffinch song, noisy song thrushes, greater spotted woodpecker drumming, buzzards soaring overhead…and the first willow warbler of the year was heard yesterday too!
Also spotted loads of frogspawn starting to wriggle at the pond by the education centre… there’ll soon be frogs abound!