In line with Government guidance for #lockdown, the following facilities are OPEN at RSPB Ham Wall for local, essential, daily exercise only 

  Car park (5 am-6:30 pm)

  Trails (dawn-dusk)

  Toilets (5 am- 6:30pm)

The following facilities are CLOSED:

  Welcome Point

  Hides

  Refreshments

  Picnic Area

 Events

The car parks and trails remain open at Greylake and Swell Wood for local, essential, daily exercise only. The hides are…

  Ham Wall Christmas opening hours 

The reserve, hides and car park will be open as usual throughout the festive period.

The toilets, refreshments and welcome point will be closed on the following days

• 24 December – Christmas Eve
• 25 December – Christmas Day
• 26 December – Boxing Day

The toilets will be closed from 2 pm on 23 December and reopen at 9 am on 27 December.

We hope you are able to enjoy the…

Re-opening announcement 

We’re excited to be able to re-open some of our facilities for you on 2 December!

We are in Tier 2, so here's a quick summary of what’s available at RSPB Ham Wall:

 Car park open (5 am-6:30 pm). Car park machine card payment only, members park free.

 Outdoor, Covid-secure, staffed Welcome Point (Fri-Mon, 10 am- 4 pm)

 Reserve trails open (Dawn until Dusk)

 Toilets open (5 am-6:30 pm…

We know that for many of you, Ham Wall reserve provides enjoyment and solace in the natural world throughout these challenging times. In line with Government guidance on essential, daily exercise outdoors, during #SecondLockdown, our car park, trails and toilets remain open for you to visit. Please follow all current Government guidance around social distancing, who you can visit with, hygiene and follow all signage on…

*Please note that the starlings have now moved on from RSPB Ham Wall and so the murmuration season is over for another year. We'd like to thank everyone for their understanding during these difficult times and to all those who played their part this season in keeping RSPB Ham Wall safe for our visitors, staff, volunteers and the wildlife that calls the reserve home.

RSPB Ham Wall remains open for essential, local…

Tor View Hide reopen

We are delighted to announce that the rebuilding of the Waltons Screens and the essential maintenance to the Tor View Hide has been completed and they are all now open. You’ll notice we’ve made a few changes to keep everyone safe.  So that you can all safely enjoy watching the wonderful wildlife here, please be aware of the limited capacity and wear a face covering if able to. We've put…

We are delighted to share that the Avalon Hide is now open. You’ll notice we’ve made a few changes to keep everyone safe.  So that you can all safely enjoy watching the wonderful wildlife here, please be aware of the limited capacity and wear a face covering if able to. We've put hand sanitiser at the entrance to the hide, so please use it before going in. 

You'll see that we have spaced out the seating…

We’re delighted to announce we have now opened the Welcome Building at RSPB Ham Wall along with the car park and toilets! You’ll notice we’ve made some changes to help keep you and our staff and volunteers safe.

The Welcome Building will have reduced opening. We will be open from 10 am until 4 pm on weekends and during the week when we have a volunteer available.  We will be delivering our usual warm…

It’s Monday again which can only mean one thing – moths!  And it's Easter Monday no less - Happy Easter everyone!

It’s been an interesting week in our north Dorset garden.  The trap has been out on six occasions and with only one moth on Tuesday night and one moth on Wednesday night I was quite excited to get three on Friday morning.  And then it went crazy!  But I’m jumping ahead….. here’s how it all…

Well, we've made it through another week of lockdown. I hope everybody is keeping safe and well and that you have been able to enjoy wildlife in some form whether that is through social media, TV or up close and personal in your gardens or whilst taking your permitted daily exercise close to home. 

We may feel a bit restricted at the moment, but it's focusing a lot of us on what wildlife is on our own doorsteps and…

Well here's part 2 on ways to give nature a home in your garden. Remember, this comes from a complete novice at gardening  - but the information is out there. The internet is full of wonderful ideas - so now that you may have a little more time on your hands - what better time to give some of those ideas a go. 

In the first blog we looked at feeders for birds, placement, cleaning tips etc  and remember that filling your…

Welcome back to Moth Monday!  I’m happy to report that it warmed up a bit over the past week so I do have some new moths to show you from my garden in north Dorset.  But before we get onto those, here are the answers to last week's moth ID quiz:

Some fabulous (and quite long) names there.  Moths can have really interesting and sometimes quite odd names, hopefully we’ll encounter some of the stranger ones over…

Well, we've ticked off another week - my first full week away from the reserve since locking it down last Tuesday. I  have to say I am really missing the place as I'm sure many of you are too. I'm having to make do with wildlife sightings from my garden or from any encounters during the permitted exercise we are able to take each day. In fact I'm staring out of my windows now and can see house sparrows on my feeders…

Well, I've been asked to write a garden blog for the foreseeable future - given that the reserve is locked down for the moment. I thought I split it up a bit - get some sightings going like the normal Friday blog and perhaps dream about what might be going on at the reserve at the moment by sharing some stock photos. But also have a think about what we can all do to give nature a home in our own back yards - which is…

Greetings from north Dorset and welcome to our first Moth Monday! This is a new weekly blog about the moths and hopefully butterflies that I can find here at home, and I’ll be looking for your input too so please do get involved.

Although I’ve been working to improve it, my newish back garden isn’t a haven for wildlife (yet). Let's just say it's lacking in plant life and there isn't even much grass at the moment…

Hi everybody - I hope this, slightly different blog today finds you all safe and well. Things have changed very quickly in the last week or so and as I hinted in my blog on Monday much of the information I gave is already obsolete - in fact it lasted just a few hours with the new Government announcements on Monday night.

I have copied and pasted Abbie's message (our last blog post) which followed this announcement as…

Following the latest clear instructions from the Government for us all to remain at home apart from a limited number of allowed activities, we are closing our reserve to visitors until further notice.

This means we will close our car park, toilets, hides and the Mini Marshes to the public at Ham Wall and the car parks and hides at Swell Wood and Greylake. These measures are on top of the existing closure of our Welcome…

Obviously its a very difficult time for everyone at the moment with what's going on in the world. I'm not going to talk too much about it - only to tell you that currently Ham Wall remains open to the public and the parking is free. The visitor building and toilets however remained closed now until further notice. 

It's still okay to visit our wonderful reserve but it doing so follow government advice on social…

I was lucky enough to be out and about for a couple of hours on the reserve this morning. So nice to feel the sun on my face - been quite an unusual occurrence in recent weeks. Definite spring vibes everywhere I went.

It took me just seconds to hear a booming bittern of which there are now several across the reserve.Staff and volunteers from all the organisations across the Avalon Marshes were up before dawn yesterday…

It certainly hasn't felt like spring this week at times but meteorological spring started on March 1st (astronomical spring officially starts on March 20th this year). Wildlife on the reserve has been responding to the extra daylight and slightly warmer temperatures at times with several species nesting already. 

The traditional early nesters, Grey Herons, are well underway in the eastern side of Waltons and have been…

Amazingly this week, we actually had some sunshine!  Ok it was hidden in amongst the snow, hail, sleet, heavy rain and very strong winds but definitely sunshine and blue sky at some point, which was a pleasure to be out in with the volunteer work parties. Work progressed on the viewing screens along Tor View Hide path and we finished off various scrub work across the reserve, checking carefully for any early nests before…

Another week, another storm! This time, although Storm Dennis made things rather wet again, we didn’t have any more trees down thankfully. On Monday morning Steve was anxious to check the new viewing screen down the Tor View hide path for any damage but shouldn’t have worried, our volunteers have clearly done a brilliant job of making it nice and sturdy! The first replacement screen is almost ready for use but not quite…

We've had another busy week on the reserve this week including inspecting and clearing up some of the damage from Storm Ciara. A fallen tree along the main track and a unstable tree over the Avalon Hide path have been dealt with and are open but a larger tree has fallen across the Loxtons trail closing this loop - the other end of the trail leading to the screen is pretty flooded too, so we thought this was the best decision…