For your delight and delectation, I spent a couple of hours crawling around on my allotment this week, hobnobbing with the insects. There's nothing like getting down and dirty on a sunny spring day to press your 'wow' buttons. Here's who I met:

Female Tawny mining bee (Andrena fulva) out shopping

This lady may well live in your lawn, leaving little volcanoes of earth at her doorway. She's harmless…

This is the distance, as a crow flies, between Leeds and Cape Town, South Africa and represents the UK’s importance for birds that winter in Africa and breed here. All wheatear spend their winters in central Africa and come spring, the various races travel to north Africa, northern Asia, Greenland, north-west Canada and Europe. The Greenland race is a passage migrant to the UK on its way to its Arctic breeding grounds…

RSPB St Aidan's is home to hundreds of species, many of which are rare, but one in particular which is very special indeed.

Certain species of bird are so sensitive and rare that their location isn't disclosed in order to protect them (Schedule 1). However, if you've been interested in birdwatching in Yorkshire for over a fortnight, you've probably heard about our black necked grebes. They are all over social media…

This week RSPB Aire Valley gave a bunch of us volunteers a chance to learn some bird identification tips from volunteer ranger John at Fairburn Ings. The volunteers range from gardeners to meeters & greeters, shop assistants to rangers and bloggers, so we were a mixed group and it was great to meet some of the people doing different roles to keep St Aidan's and Fairburn Ings fabulous.

I got to the reserve…

Fairburn Ings is springing into life. The leaves are beginning to appear, there are new songs to hear around the trails & we've seen quite a lot of frisky activity from the office window!


Lin Dike

On the way top the hide, listen out for the newcomers - we've had the arrival of whitethroats, chiff chaffs and blackcaps.

Chiff chaff - Mick Noble (SIBG1@wordpress.com)

A very diverse mix of species this week…

One of my guilty pleasures is the Yorkshire Birds and Birders group on Facebook. This week it has been teasing me with photos of some of the 18 black-necked grebes that are currently at St Aidan's. They must have been feeling camera shy on my visit because I didn't see one. But you might! The word in the Visitor Centre was that the best place to see one is on the corner of Lemonroyd by the Causeway.

Black-necked…

Guest blog from John Ingham, RSPB St Aidan's Warden:

April marks a year since RSPB St. Aidan’s opened its doors, and what a year it’s been! As this winter’s work programme draws to a close, and we start our breeding bird monitoring, it’s a perfect time to reflect on what we’ve achieved in our first twelve months.

Our Caspian visitor

There have been all sorts of wildlife highlights…

Rosemary Despres

Pond dipping is back at Fairburn Ings for the summer! Although the creatures are starting slow (it's a bit cold yet), we've had at least one frog rrribbit out of the water!

St. Aidan's is also home to heaps of frogspawn in the ditches, these amphibians sure know how to make the most of a wetland.


Come on down to either site to hire a Bug Hunting Backpack (£3, free to members), or go…

Discovery Trail & Feeders

There’s a lot of activity around the Discovery Trail and visitor centre at the moment – it’s time when birds pair up and begin the hefty job of building their own specific nest. We’ve had nuthatches and willow tits singing frequently (we manage Fairburn Ings to have lots of dead wood for this species).

Ok, it may not be a real one but Fairburn's star species is…

Despite working in mostly harsh weather and freezing temperatures, the warden team have completed the ridge & furrow habitat improvements to enable more successful breeding. The predator fence around the wet grassland is now complete, but had to be checked for foxes trapped inside. On Friday 23^rd March, a small army of volunteers, mostly from the Swillington Ings Bird Group, walked across to herd any foxes out of…

One morning in mid-March, in a grove of trees overlooking the shimmering Mediterranean, a chiffchaff woke up, stretched its wings, and decided it was time to hit the sky-road and head north to sunny Leeds.

The chiffchaff is one of the earliest migrants to arrive back in Britain in the spring. I heard my first of the season on my walk to work the other day. It was flitting about in a silver birch across the canal announcing…

I love new Spring beginnings, cleaning out the house, dusting, organising and making room for fresh flowers on the windowsill.
It's a chance to appreciate nature's first signs of hard work. And celebrate the new season of colour in our gardens and communities. 
Last week all over the country we showed support for nature and the RSPB with the Show the Love campaign, but why not continue that all year round with these…

Spring is trying very hard to arrive at St Aidan's. The snow has been and gone, and been and gone again, buds are ready to burst, and many of the birds are looking for partners – some of them rather noisily. There was an absolute cacophony of black-headed gulls, many wearing their chocolate brown breeding plumage, over the reedbeds when I took my walk this week.

Black-headed gull - A sign of spring

Along…

I'm lucky enough to live 2.5 miles from my workplace, and I can walk there along National Cycle Route 66 – the Aire Valley Towpath. The first half mile is built up, and there's a noisy, smelly road to endure, but then I step away from the traffic onto the canal towpath and into nature. It matters to me that I do what I can to keep my carbon footprint low to protect the nature that I love. The RSPB is doing its…

Nature has always inspired creativity for me. From my first school poetry attempts describing seasonal changes, to university studies into natural plant dyes. I have always returned to wildlife for guidance and influence.
In my growing connectivity to the RSPB and a beloved interest in the animals they protect, I have rekindled a joy for observational drawing and painting. Looking for details in different species to create…

The sun shone for my visit to St Aidan’s this week. The place just sparkled!

I started my walk with a stroll along the Hillside. Great tits, blue tits and long tailed tits accompanied me as I crunched through the icy puddles, warming their voices ready for spring. The great tits are already practising their ‘teacher, teacher’ calls. Emerging from the still-bare trees I found a flock of greylag gees…

The days have dropped cold and misty again in winter’s last icy breath. The atmosphere around Fairburn Ings is serene but charged like the calm before a storm. The storm in this case being the hustle and bustle of upcoming spring.

A visit to the reserve in this weather opens the opportunity for quiet reflection over the end of winter and new beginnings. As drizzly as it was, I had the chance for a personal tour…

Well Poppy’s first Big garden Birdwatch was a fun weekend, my little amateur bird watcher had a flurry of visitors. Although like most wildlife she sees now they were greeted with excitable woofs.

Too ensure we got the most out of our weekend, we stepped up our offerings for the local birds. Normally we simply share our scraps on the bird table and the grass for ground feeders such as thrushes. But this weekend…

Did you take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch? My Birdwatch was from the comfort of my kitchen where I while away many an hour watching the visitors to the feeding station in my tiny urban back yard.

I installed my feeders about a year ago – a pole with a small tray, and 3 hanging feeders, and a bowl of water. There are 3 more feeders hanging from the edge of my shed. I put out fatballs, suet blocks, sunflower hearts…

January is a long and desperate month for us; cold, mostly dark and goes on forever. For birds and other wildlife, it is February, which is just around the corner. Food is scarce and hard to find, the nights are still long, the temperatures low (in the main) and bird’s hormones are kicking in to start their breeding cycle. You may have noticed signs of the hormonal changes; the dawn chorus is getting busier with the early…

The year has started with some great showings across the Fairburn Ings. Most notably a visit from a pair of white fronted geese at the New flash, who were joined soon after by pair of pink footed geese. They didn't hang around long en route, but it was a nice treat. If you are on the lookout for these visitors, be sure to have some binoculars handy. As getting a closer look at them is essential, due to the difficulty…

RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch is taking place at the end of the month! Sparrows, blackbirds, robins, how many will you spot in your green space? Half a million people took part last year and both Fairburn and St Aidan’s are hosting events to get you and your family prepared to welcome and record birds into your garden or local park.

As a new volunteer with RSPB I threw myself in the deep end and recently helped…

To the delight of St Aidan's staff and visitors we’ve had sightings of a male hen harrier at the beginning of this week. Spotted early Monday morning at the North of Ridge and Furrow and up onto The Hillside.
Deciding to stay for a little B&B in the area he was seen late on towards Western Reed beds and again the following morning over Ridge and Furrow and Hillside.
Hen harriers, currently on the RSPB red…

January. You could be forgiven for thinking it’s just a drab, grey, dive under the duvet month. The tinsel and fairy lights have been packed away, and the festive season feels like a distant memory.

But a squelch round St Aidan’s is probably just what you need to refresh your spirits – and work off some of those Christmas calories. Even on the dullest of days, there is a splash of colour - and possibly a patch…