Hi

I’m Sally, the new visitor intern.  What a whirlwind – two days ago I was lurking beneath the trees of a woodland reserve in the depths of the midlands. Now, here I am back in Yorkshire at last. Phew.

Fairburn Ings - David Wootton

I’ll be here for the next six months and suffice to say, I’m pretty excited. This is one of my favourite times of year and I’m ready to absorb as much as I can. I’ll admit…

Well 6 months have been and gone and now I am here on my final day here as visitor officer Intern at Fairburn Ings! Its been a whirlwind of an adventure but just to give you a sum up of my best bits...

Firstly the amazing wildlife, having no real experience of identifying birds or wildlife before the Internship I was really excited to be able to say ‘I know what that is!’ I remember one of my first weeks here and spotting…

Autumn is definitely in the air at Fairburn Ings! Just a quick walk around the reserve and you can already see leaves starting to look tired and droopy compared the fresh, bright reds of the newly emerged berries. I love watching the gradual change in the leaves as they turn steadily more and more reddish as the season changes. Rose-hips, blackberries and hawthorn berries are great for so many of our small rodents on…

It’s been a weekend of two halves with grey wet weather on Saturday and glorious sunshine on Sunday. The sightings book reflects this with very few sightings recorded on Saturday, let’s face it who wants to be out and about when the weather is grim! Whether that’s people out looking; or creatures not out and about to be seen!

Sunday however saw good numbers of Lapwing at Big Hole; 230 were counted,…

There is a growing autumnal feel to the sightings at Fairburn Ings recently, the fungi are popping up everywhere, including fly agaric along the Riverbank Trail. Increasing numbers of birds like wigeon and teal, which will spend the winter here after breeding further east in countries like Russia, have been seen on the Flashes and Main Lake.  These birds create the soundscape of the reserve throughout winter with their…

There has been an interesting recent sighting of a juvenile marsh harrier with green wing tags at Fairburn Ings. It is a juvenile male from Cantley in Norfolk. The British Trust of Ornithology (BTO) tagged him on the 1^st July this year; he was one in a brood of three (two males and one female). To date the BTO have tagged 165 marsh harriers with sightings coming in from all over Britain as well as main land Europe and…