New scrapes and pools have been attracting wildlife at the Great Fen, including a visit by one of our regular otters; as you can see here. Egrets, ducks, geese and swans have all been checking out the new water features, as well as a woodcock that was using them to bath in!

As we are now getting more geese and swans at the Great Fen, particularly in the winter, UK Power Networks have been busy installing bird diverters on the power lines; so the birds avoid them as they fly in and out of the Fen. Birds travel to us from far and wide, and studying this forms part of our annual monitoring programme. Recently, we had a report of a song thrush, which visited us in 2019, being recorded in Spain this year, near Valencia!

We have had plenty of stonechats on site this autumn, and I have been able to do a number of online talks this year, about our stonechat colour ringing project; perhaps your local society would like a talk next year? If you see any stonechats on one of our reserves at the moment, I would be interested to know. I am looking into the history of this species In the Great Fen at the moment, so would love to receive any photos of stonechats at places such as Holme Fen and Woodwalton Fen (at any time in the past).

Our nature reserve at Ramsey Heights has been getting some attention in the last week or so, as staff and volunteers have been managing the ponds. Part of the importance of Ramsey Heights, as a nature reserve, is its great crested newts. This is a protected species, which has its stronghold in the UK, particularly around Peterborough. It needs shallow, open ledges in ponds, to mate and lay its eggs. We cut back common reed and scrub in parts of the ponds to allow light in. This enables smaller aquatic plants to grow, like water mint, which the newts lay their eggs on.

The reed is left to grow in other parts of the ponds, for other species to benefit. It is illegal to disturb the newts, so we carry out this work at this time of year, when they are not in the water but in hibernation on the land. The resulting piles (of cut reed) will provide habitats for grass snakes, small mammals, and many invertebrates.  We have been monitoring the newts to see how many we have and how they use the ponds, so it will be interesting to see how they do next year; a subject for another talk, perhaps.

You can find out more about amphibians, on one of our Wildlife Training Workshops, next year. Places are booking up fast, so don’t delay. We start with raptor identification, in just a few weeks.