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 over the year, but a couple stand out for me. We had our first ever Caspian tern hang around for a few days in July, a real treat! My personal highlight however was on a cold January morning. I had just got into the office, opened the shutters and scanned the reserve as I usually do, only to be met with a stunning male hen harrier quartering over the Ridge & Furrow.
Looking back at my work log from April last year, there are lots of blank spaces. This isn’t because we didn’t do any work, but because I was too busy to record what we were actually doing. As the first visitors came into the newly-surfaced car park, we were still frantically putting up signs, fixing fences and clearing footpaths, whilst putting together the finishing touches to the visitor centre.
It's official!
The RSPB leases the St. Aidan’s site from Leeds City Council. Prior to signing the lease which gives us full tenure of the site for the next 99 years, we had a management agreement with the previous landowner. This allowed us limited rights to look after the main habitats. These years were a frustrating time as I was often working here alone, or with a small group of volunteers keeping things ticking over, with the very few other people visiting the site. In some ways it was quite nice to have the place largely to ourselves, but I can’t tell you how good it feels to now be able to share this wonderful place with thousands of people from near and far.
April/May
One of the great privileges of being an RSPB warden is that I get paid to go birdwatching! We spend a lot of time during spring and summer monitoring, counting, mapping and logging as much information as we can about breeding birds. This means lots of early mornings walking round site, or sitting with a telescope watching thousands of wetland birds in beautiful surroundings. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it. It was a good year for bitterns (3 nests), black-headed gulls (around 1500 nests), common terns (22 nests), and black-necked grebes (10 nests). Another highlight was sand martins nesting for the first time in our specially-built wall on Bowers Lake.
June
Whenever we had volunteer work parties before we opened, we had a lovely visitor centre all to ourselves to shelter from the weather and have lunch. Now the building is being used as it was intended, we needed somewhere else to rest after a hard morning of counting lapwings. In June we took delivery of two new containers. We spent a couple of weeks laying a stone base, digging trenches and laying cables to connect them up with water and electricity, and they are now up and running as our workshop, storage and space for volunteers.
Not quite a 'cosy' feel...
July/August
We manage the fields on the hillside as traditional hay meadows, meaning they are full of wild flowers, bees and butterflies throughout the summer months. They are cut for hay in late summer and grazed with cattle in the autumn to encourage fresh growth the following year. Unfortunately the fences we inherited were in a sorry state and not suitable for keeping cows where they should be. So we had contractors install a new section of fence, replaced hundreds of posts and several new gates. We also had to dig and fence two areas to allow the cows access to drink from the ditch. All of this means that the fields can be safely grazed for years to come.
With 12km of paths around the site, we aim to provide walks for people of all abilities. We also want to provide rest stops where you can enjoy the sights and sounds, eat your picnic, or simply sit and contemplate the absurdities of life. So last summer we installed ten new benches around the main paths. For all those who have been asking, we have 12 more ready to go in this summer!
Autumn/Winter
It would’ve been nice to spend the first year taking it easy and settling into the site, but we had grand plans to make the site even better, and got stuck straight in. We wanted to get the wet grassland even wetter, so we raised the height of the sluice to get more water into the ditch. However, this would’ve flooded the path around Bowers Lake, so we spent most of the winter sifting thousands of tonnes of spoil to raise the footpath. We dug the spoil from the grassland, creating a lovely scrape in the process. There have already been several species of waders feeding on the scrape, in the corner nearest to the visitor centre. The wet grassland is now looking splendidly wet, and full of birds.
Dave Morris' aerial shot of the very wet Ride & Furrow
The other major project was installing an anti-predator fence to keep foxes off the wet grassland, as they are known to have a major effect on the breeding success of waders and other ground-nesting birds. Our contractors had a real challenge installing the fence in the ditch, but we now have a robust barrier, and over 50 Ha of safe habitat for lapwing, redshank and snipe to raise their chicks.
Foxes can swim, and they can jump, but not at the same time!
March
For the last few weeks the area outside the visitor centre has been a bit of a building site as we installed our brand new toilet block and sewage treatment plant. This is now all connected up ready for summer visitors.
Before the grand opening..
It’s been an incredibly busy twelve months and we will continue to work hard to make St. Aidan’s an even better place for wildlife and people.
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We have lots in store for the future. For wildlife watching we are currently in the process of designing a tower shelter and view point for striking views across the reedbed and Ridge and Furrow. This has been a popular suggestion from hundreds of visitors. For families, we are hoping to install a natural play area in the recreational zone near the visitor centre. This is in very basic planning stages however - so we need requests and suggestions for a fun and educational safe place for children to get stuck in. Please chat to us if you have any!
Bug hunting packpacks at St. Aidan's are a great way to be one with nature for the day!
To mark our one year anniversary, we are hosting ‘Behind the Scenes Warden Walks’ at St. Aidan’s on 27 April, 19 May & 13 June. This is your chance to really see the results we’ve achieved, ask lots of tricky questions and hopefully spot some rare spring wildlife.
For more information please visit https://ww2.rspb.org.uk/reserves-and-events/events-dates-and-inspiration/events/details.aspx?id=tcm:9-451390
We’re planning on lots more events in the upcoming year, so please keep your eyes peeled for updates on our website (www.rspb.org.uk/StAidans) or on social media (@RSPBAireValley on Twitter, @RSPBWestYorks on Facebook).