It’s been an incredible year for fungi and they are sprouting out everywhere in the woods behind the house. But NERD Club this week was all about grassland fungi – the waxcaps. This is a group of exquisitely beautiful fungi which, due to the scarcity of ancient grasslands – areas that have been neither ploughedContinue reading “Waxcaps in the rain”
Author Archives: nager
Bat survey and burning stuff
We met after a break in July to do a bat survey of the maternity roost at Upper Woodburn. The bats weren’t going to start emerging until after 830pm so we started the meeting by making a fire of all the rhododendrons we pulled out of the woodland back in the winter. We’d had aContinue reading “Bat survey and burning stuff”
Final nest box checks and a baby roe deer
For our last meeting before the summer break we did a final clear of of the nestboxes. This was to check for unhatched eggs and any chicks that didn’t make it to fledging. We only found one dead chick fortunately, it was the small one in box 4 that we were worried may not makeContinue reading “Final nest box checks and a baby roe deer”
Bracken bashing and tree care
Today there were only two nests of chicks to be ringed. The final two! We had a really productive season it seems according to the preliminary results we have to wait until next month when we will clear out the nests and check whether there are any dead chicks remaining to finally conclude what theContinue reading “Bracken bashing and tree care”
Baby birds and a wildlife whodunnit
May 18 2025 The nest boxes have now all hatched and seven of the broods were over the eight days old required for ringing so we headed into the woodland early evening on a very sunny Sunday. We took it in turns to do the various tasks. Ruedi showed us how to safely handle theContinue reading “Baby birds and a wildlife whodunnit”
Badgers and Ringing our nestbox chicks
May 11 2025 The first three nestboxes where eggs were laid are now old enough for ringing so we headed out to the woods with Ruedi. The window for ringing is 8-13 days for Blue Tits and 8-15 days for Great Tits. The first nests we went to were Great Tits who were 13 daysContinue reading “Badgers and Ringing our nestbox chicks”
Badgers and Bird Ringing
We had a fantastic April NERD Club meeting yesterday in beautiful weather. The bluebells are now almost fully out so the nest box checks in the woods were absolutely wonderful. We now have 12 nests with eggs and two at least are incubating. It seems like we have blue tits and great tits in theContinue reading “Badgers and Bird Ringing”
Nest box checks and iNaturalist: March meeting
We had a great meeting on 22 March. Parents and young people came together for a briefing on how to do the nest box checks and we did a full check of the nest boxes. Out of 25 boxes 6 already had moss in significant volume so that is good news for early in theContinue reading “Nest box checks and iNaturalist: March meeting”
Mossing and more rhodie bashing
a summary of the NERD club February meeting
Putting up the nest boxes
NERD Club January meeting. We had a great meeting today – thank you to all who came along! Map for Nest Boxes We managed to get all 25 nest boxes up and we recorded their positions on GPS and in a dedicated google map – you will all have an invitation to the googlemap byContinue reading “Putting up the nest boxes”
Upper Woodburn 