Guest blogger: Steph Morren, date with nature guru for Herts and Beds
It's not been the best start to our date with nature season. Every weekend in June, starting with last week’s Springwatch weekend, staff and volunteers were due to be showing visitors to The Lodge reserve our woodpecker nests. Both the great spotted woodpeckers and the green woodpeckers have nested close to the visitor centre this year, with great views of the parents flying in and out, and the red-headed chicks poking their heads out too! Visitors passing by had great views of this behaviour leading up to the official Date with Nature woodpecker watch, with the drumming of the great spotted woodpeckers and the cackling call of the green woodpeckers could be heard all over the reserve. Unfortunately, perhaps due to the extraordinarily warm and dry spring we have had here in the East, the woodpeckers began to fledge very early this year. Our great spotted ones fledged on 30 May and the green ones on 5 June. The story was the same with the chicks in other woodpecker nests all over the reserve and it's been seen on Springwatch too!
We had to do some quick thinking, having promised people nesting birds, so imagine our joy when we discovered spotted flycatchers building a nest in a nest box on the side of one of the Gatehouse buildings! With Springwatch bringing the story of the nesting pied flycatchers from Ynys-hir, people were fascinated to see these other flycatchers and learn about their long journey from Sub-Saharan Africa.
We believe our spotted flycatchers now have eggs and so we're hoping that this will be a bird we can show people right through June. Keep checking the blog for more updates!
We're up at the gatehouse at The Lodge today and tomorrow from 11 til 4, so come on over and see us! If you can't make this weekend, don't worry. We'll be here until the end of the month.