Staff News
We are very excited to announce that Alexis Johnson is returning to the UK and rejoining our field teaching team in March 2014. As many of you will know, Alexis has been living in the USA where she has been adding to her already extensive expertise in environmental education. We will also be welcoming Annie Ingram to the field teaching team. Annie has a wealth of knowledge and understanding of working with young people outdoors and skills in teaching orienteering, den building and team building, etc. Look out for them! They will be popping up at both reserves from March.
Many of you will already know that Wendy Murray has given birth to a little boy named Oliver. Wendy surprised everyone at Sandwell Valley on Wednesday by popping in to introduce him. Both are doing very well.
We also greet the arrival of Nadia Shadikh our new Community and Volunteer Development Officer at Sandwell Valley. She started work on 10th February. Some of us have already met her as she popped in yesterday to join us for some Fire Extinguisher training. She can’t wait to start properly and is looking forward to meeting everyone.
Keep your eyes peeled for details of a vacancy for a visitor officer. We need someone to help Alex out whilst Nicky is covering for Wendy’s maternity leave! Details will be advertised in the next few weeks.
On the reserves
Middleton Lakes
We are making good progress with the winter work with all the islands cut before the water levels rose again, a great effort by everyone involved to get these done! When the water goes down we should hopefully see some lovely exposed mud for those passage waders and hopefully a rarity or two. The arborists spent a week in the Rookery Woodland felling some dangerous trees and have left us with some really great habitat piles that the bugs and birds are going to love. They have also opened up the canopy in certain areas which will be great for the ground vegetation, the Bluebells are already starting to poke through so it should be a great year for them.
The cows were taken off the Jubilee Wetlands just before Christmas having done a really great job of grazing some of the vegetation levels down and not one of them escaped through the new fence! The fox however continues to elude us. The ponies are doing well in the Southern Meadow and a successful rounding-up attempt in mid-January to microchip Ash went off without a hitch. The EA are still on site but are really getting through the work now as they start to lay our access track and re-build the Fishers Mill viewpoint so it shouldn’t be too long before we can say goodbye to them!
We have had some nice birds on the reserve recently with good numbers of Goldeneye, Pochard, Shelduck, Shoveler and Wigeon a regular feature, several Chiffchaffs over wintering on the reserve and as many as 10 Little egrets roosting in the Heronry. The bittern was also seen skulking at the back of Fisher’s Mill. The Starlings have also been putting on a great show with as over 3000 roosting in the reeds on the silt pool most evenings.
The new benches in the pond dipping area of the play meadow are looking great. Many thanks to everyone involved in putting them in. They will make a real difference to our pond dipping sessions and we can’t wait to use them. The first eager groups will be arriving in March. So we are hoping that the access path might be a bit drier by then and that we won’t have to swim to them!!!
Forthcoming events at Middleton: Nest box building Wednesday 19th and Sunday 23rd February. Contact chris.edwards@rspb.org.uk if you would like to help!
Help please!!
We continue to receive requests for talks about both reserves. We could do with some help in delivering these – if there are any budding presenters who’d like to have a go then please contact Chris Edwards on 01827 259756. We will provide training as well as all the kit! It’s a lot of fun and brings in a considerable amount of donations!
Thanks as always for your support.
Nick Martin Senior Sites Manager
See you on the reserves,
Best regards,
Chris Edwards