This month we celebrated World Bird Migration Day, and so it seems an appropriate time to update you on an exceptional year, especially when it comes to wildlife on the move in the Great Fen!

Our study of stonechats has benefited from the best ever breeding year in the Great Fen, with several pairs of birds rearing many young, at multiple locations! It’s been such a good year for this species, this success won’t be just confined to the Great Fen, but still, it’s a significant step forward in the colonisation of the new land we are managing for wildlife. So this is something worth celebrating in terms of Great Fen conservation achievements, and also our stonechat research project itself, which was in the right place at the right time to benefit from this dramatic increase in the breeding population; we have now been able to track the movements of not just wintering birds, but also breeding birds and their young.

Now that summer has ended, the stonechats are on the move and we are keen to learn more about the movements of these little birds, within the Great Fen and beyond, so please look out for colour-ringed birds. Also, get in touch and let us have any stonechat and whinchat (the bird with the ‘eyebrows’) records in the Great Fen anyway, even if they are not ringed, as new birds are already arriving at the Great Fen, some of whom will stay to winter with us.

The breeding successes don’t stop there, as we are proud to announce the first breeding pair of marsh harriers on the restoration land this year. They successfully reared two chicks, and we hope that they try again next year; we won’t be providing any further location details, in order to protect their next attempt. If you would like to learn more about raptors and their identification, lookout for the Wildlife Training Workshop on the subject, taking place next January; it will be advertised later this year.

Another landmark in the conservation timeline at the Great Fen, is the first record of a cattle egret. These birds are becoming a commoner sight in Cambridgeshire, and so it’s about time they showed up at the Great Fen, right next to the Last of the Meres Trail in this case, this month! So have a wander along one of our trails, and take a careful look at any small, white egrets (with a yellow bill) hanging around the cattle, as opposed to the little egrets, which tend to be fishing in the ditches (and have a black bill). It’s not the only member of the heron family, which has been stalking around our restoration land. This year, once again, we have had sightings of bitterns outside of Woodwalton Fen, and this year a male was herd booming in the north of the Great Fen!

Much of the data we gather, through ecological monitoring, is achieved by staff and volunteers working closely together, so we are very grateful to our team of ‘Great Fen Monitors’ who are out on the Great Fen each week, feeding back useful information about how it is developing, I certainly couldn’t do without them. This year was the first, full scale glow-worm survey at the Great Fen, which recorded hundreds of these stunning beetles. While we know they were on site, the ‘where’ and the ‘how many’ was poorly understood; now we know a lot more, thanks to the volunteers in particular. Next year we would like to share some of these memorable wildlife encounters with you, so we will be running ‘glow-worm walks’ next summer; once again, check out our website for details nearer the time.

And if that is not enough about insects for you, we have more news on wildlife colonisation; the appearance of a rare, solitary wasp, which recently turned up at the Great Fen in a rather unexpected location, but perhaps that’s a story for another blog

With all this wildlife on the move, it’s clear that if we restore more of the Fens, we can provide the right conditions for nature to reclaim one of our greatest, lost wildernesses. Now is the time to seize an opportunity to link the northern and southern parts of the Great Fen, by purchasing over 120 hectares of land; a landmark in the wildlife conservation in this country. You can help protect the peat, support our native wildlife, and help our shared environment, by donating to the ‘Landmark Appeal’.

Henry Stanier (Great Fen Monitoring & Research Officer)