Print pageSeasonal highlights
Each season brings a different experience at our nature reserves. In spring, the air is filled with birdsong as they compete to establish territories and attract a mate. In summer, look out for young birds making their first venture into the outside world. Autumn brings large movements of migrating birds - some heading south to a warmer climate, others seeking refuge in the UK from the cold Arctic winter. In winter, look out for large flocks of birds gathering to feed, or flying at dusk to form large roosts to keep warm.
Spring
Nagshead has one of the most impressive lists of breeding woodland birds anywhere in the UK. Birds are more easily heard than seen, with many of the characteristic species most easily viewed at this time of the year. Summer visitors such as wood warblers, pied flycatchers, redstarts and nightjars join scarce resident species such as lesser spotted woodpeckers, woodcocks and hawfinches.
Summer
Birdsong subsides at this time and this is very much the time to enjoy the extensive broadleaved woodland and especially the old 'Napoleonic' oaks, dating from the early 19th Century and originally planted for ship timber. Nagshead has the largest surviving stands of old oak in the Forest of Dean. Woodland butterflies are at their peak during this time with silver-washed fritillary and white admiral at their most visible.
Autumn
Summer-visiting birds are replaced by winter visitors birds like bramblings, lesser redpolls and redwings. The autumn colour at Nagshead, together with all of the Forest of Dean, is simply spectacular with beech, oak, rowan, aspen, willow and cherry providing contrasting rich colours and textures with the added colour of Autumn fruits like rosehips and holly berries. October is the time of the deer rut, and fallow deer can be heard calling throughout the Forest for a brief two-week period, usually in October.
Winter
Resident bird flocks that include tits, treecreepers, nuthatches and occasionally woodpeckers can be seen at this time. Mandarin ducks can often be seen on the reserve and in nearby ponds and lakes. February marks the beginning of the nesting season for ravens.