Winterbourne Downs - Blog

Our human world may be in the grips of a national lockdown during the recent Covid 19 pandemic, which has sadly meant that the Winterbourne Downs nature reserve has had to close its gates as part of the RSPB's contribution to reducing the spread of the disease and keeping the NHS functional.  However, this has not stopped the progress of nature this spring with its relentless vigour at RSPB Winterbourne Downs. As the…

Local volunteers had the rare opportunity to return one of our vanishing wildflower meadows by sowing wildflower seeds, on a rather cloudy but cheery October morning at RSPB Winterbourne Downs.

Seeds had been harvested from one of the reserve's wildflower rich fields just two weeks earlier, and were sown by our bucket brandishing volunteers sowing handfuls of colour along cultivated strips in the 20 acre meadow. The strips…

No week is the same working on nature reserves, and one week in mid-May this year really summed up how all our work can pay off in Giving Nature a Home at RSPB Winterbourne Downs. Rather it seems that nature is starting to make itself at home on the reserve as was epitomised by a week full of new revelations and wildlife sightings this May.

Monday: It started on the Monday 13^th May with an excited telephone call from…

After a half a dozen or so marsh fritillary butterflies were first recorded on 26^th May 2017, it was really encouraging to see them in greater numbers in 2018. In the same part of the reserve it was estimated that up 50 individuals could have been present. Thinking that there was a chance they may have laid eggs a search for caterpillars was made this spring with Tim Bernhard a butterfly enthusiast from Natural England…

The Stone Curlews have all gone south but we are now seeing our winter visitors on the reserve. Large flocks of fieldfare have been seen (up to 1,000) together with groups of 100 or so redwings and similar numbers of starling.  The most recent Winter Bird Survey saw 40 or so lapwing on one of the vacant stone curlew plots and a flock of something like 70 skylark on Curtis field, not far from the Portway. These are bigger…

Success stories!

Our first Adonis Blues! On 31st. May three of these beautiful butterflies were seen on the reserve for the first time. This is cause for celebration as for some years now we have been trying to prepare the ground, as it were, in the hope of attracting them. Over the last few winters we have seeded and plug-planted the butterfly bank on Football Field with, amongst other chalk grassland plants, Kidney…

April and First Signs of Spring

Strange. There we were two and a half weeks into the coldest, wettest, windiest and downright nastiest April for years, some say seventy, and there I was having to close the curtains to keep the blazing sun off my laptop screen. A frustratingly brief two-day heatwave, the hottest April day since records began, soon degenerating into yet more wind and rain but nevertheless seeming…

As the weather warms up in May it is time for our sheep to be shorn ready for the summer. Here is a behind the scenes snippet of some of the work that goes on in the background to ensure our grasslands at Winterbourne Downs can be a home to the diverse denizens of the downlands.

Shearers Neil, Tom and Rachel busy at work on the RSPB flock by Patrick Cashman

It was a longer session than normal as we hadn’t crutched…

Fourteen years ago an area of woodland, mostly Ash, Alder and Willows, with occasional Downy Birch, Pedunculate Oak and Holly, was planted by the farm's previous owners alongside part of the River Bourne as it crosses what is now the RSPB's Winterbourne Downs reserve, on an area now known as New Woodland.

I can remember seeing them when first planted, all standing to attention in their plastic tubes; a welcome…

Volunteers have provided a befitting flourish of wildflower planting at the finale of the three year Heritage Lottery Fund “Saving Our Magnificent Meadows” project. This autumn and winter they have gathered time and time again to wield mattocks and trowels in the cause of giving nature a home - planting out 1036 wildflower plugs of wild thyme, rockrose, squinancywort, dropwort and hairy violet across 8 fields…

The successes of the HLF Save Our Magnificent Meadows project on RSPB’s Wiltshire reserves were celebrated with an event at the Newton Tony Memorial Hall near RSPB Winterbourne Downs on 16^th September 2017. This was also an opportunity to thank all the volunteers who had helped deliver the project over the last 4 years. All were invited, and the day began with RSPB site manager Patrick Cashman giving a presentation…

Zoom in close on the aerial images taken by Google in the last year and you will see a mysterious patterning of dark green rings spreading all over our new chalk grassland fields at RSPB Winterbourne Downs. These are fungal “fairy rings” which have slowly been colonising our new chalk grasslands. This colonization of fungi will actually herald wonderful changes in our grasslands as most of the nutrient recycling…

The recent blast of hot weather appears to have been great for butterflies. In addition to the swarms of small blue butterflies we have across the reserve, we have just seen several marsh fritillaries in a couple of fields bordering Porton Down.

This is a new reserve record and one of our hit list of iconic chalk grassland butterflies in the management plan that we are trying to create new habitat for at Winterbourne…

and the bumblebees are everywhere on the wing. Yellowhammers, and corn buntings are singing from field margins and lapwings are pairing up on the cultivated plots. Some plots even have the first of this year's stone-curlews back marking out their homes for the summer. A quick dash out at lunch time on 21st March confirmed that the warm butterfly banks are a great spot to look for early wild flowers, with cowslips, hairy…

The extensive dry grasslands of RSPB Winterbourne Downs have recently been adorned with two new dew ponds. The ponds are a fabulous addition to the mix of habitats on the reserve, and should provide better conditions for turtle doves and great crested newts, and possibly even tempt tree sparrows to make RSPB Winterbourne Downs their home. Dew ponds historically stored water for livestock, chiefly sheep, and were once…

Its been a while since the last blog, so I am afraid this one is going to be rather fact laden to give you a fuller flavour of how our work to give nature a home here is going. The end of season highlights have been a peak pre-migration roost of 16 stone-curlews, and an unusually late pair of stone-curlew with chicks well into October, a covey of 13 grey partridge, and 4 red kites together. Ring ouzel has been the pick…

A massive thanks to our industrious volunteers who have been busy throughout the autumn and early winter broadcasting wildflower seed and planting wildflower plugs at our RSPB Winterbourne Downs nature reserve. This is part of the Save Our Magnificent Meadows initiative to enhance the developing chalk grasslands at the reserve with wildflower chalk indicator species that our currently missing or under-represented at the…

Stone-curlews stayed later than ever this year at RSPB Winterbourne Downs. Our autumn pre-migration roost peaked at 16 birds on 10^th November dwindling to 3 birds on Friday 20^th November before a cold snap with northerly winds finally encouraged the stone-curlews to migrate south over the following weekend. We can only hope that the extended mild autumn enabled them to fill their bellies with worms to give them a comfortable…

Volunteers helped the RSPB add the final piece of an exciting conservation jigsaw this week sowing 2000 grams of chalk grassland flower seed attractive to chalk grassland butterflies on our latest butterfly bank. This chalk embankment excavated thanks to funding from the Biffa Award "Saving a place for Wiltshire's Endangered Butterflies at RSPB Winterbourne Downs" project, has been designer made for butterflies…

Stone-curlews are having a tricky season with an unfortunate number of nest failures this year, but the second broods are appearing and we keep are fingers crossed for a few fledges chicks yet for the season.  10 pairs of lapwing have nested, with most producing chicks but at yet we have not been able to prove fledging. Corn buntings are holding at least 5 territories and we have regular observations of grey partridge in…

Hundreds of the tiny small blue butterflies have been on the wing this spring at RSPB Winterbourne Downs. This is thanks to conservation works funded by the SITA Trust and the Heritage Lottery Fund via the Magnificent Meadows project.

Scrub has been cleared from two areas of south facing railway embankment, and an innovative 150m long south-facing “S” shaped butterfly bank dug out of the chalk in one of the nature reserve…

The big news this spring is that our warden, and regular blogger, Keeley Spate, left the team in mid-April to move to be with her future husband.  She is already greatly missed by all the team and volunteers, however in her absence we are trying to keep everything going and hence this spring update from your Wiltshire reserves manager. 

BIRDS: Well we certainly have had some exciting bird observations during the spring passage…

Although winter might seem like quieter time for wildlife, there are still plenty of things to see and find on the reserve and every day can reveal something new or different.

Over winter we have a dedicated volunteer monitoring our wild bird seed plots for us. We have four of these plots across the reserve. We sow areas of high seed yielding plants in the spring, and come the end of the summer the plots are packed with…

Help is always much appreciated at our Winterbourne Down reserve and over the past month volunteers have been getting their hands dirty assisting the team with some vital habitat creation and management work. Having recently started an internship with the Wiltshire team, I have had the pleasure of coming along and helping on a few of these events and thought I would share my experiences of what the work involved.

During…

2013 was a bad year for stone-curlews. The cold weather extending through in to spring meant that productivity was low, and many of the adults died we. It is estimated that we may have lost up to 20% of the population in one season. However, this year told a different story. With a fine summer and good invertebrate food availability, the Wessex birds have been busy rearing and fledging chicks, providing the population…