Blogs

Had a fabulous day yesterday with a lovely bunch of volunteers and RSPB staff getting the 'top-nets' onto the crane aviary on the Somerset Levels and Moors. 

Firstly a tangled mess of net - that had been stored out on site, within a tarpaulin, but under 1m of water at the height of the winter flood.  It had also, rather unpleasantly had been used by Mink as a latrine and a store of half-eaten duck eggs and bits of dead coot and mallard. 

The Willows and Wetlands Centre at Stoke St Gregory has launched a photoraphic competition in conjunction with the RSPB."where people, nature and water weave their magic" aims to capture the Somerset Levels at their best. Win a private safari for up to 8 people with a RSPB guide and a £50 voucher to spend in the shop at the Willow & Wetlands Vistor Centre.

Closing date 30/9/2014

In his last blog Damon talked about his recent visit to Brandenburg in Germany which is the area where the crane eggs that are brought to Slimbridge come from so the Great Crane project has very important links with the team and area out there.

I have just returned from a wonderful week in the Schorfheide-Chorin Biosphere Reserve, Brandenburg, Germany  - helping the team there to catch and ring wild crane chicks. 

Eberhard and myself with a young crane            Cornflowers in the Rye crops

Hi - My name is Michael and I have just started an 8 month secondment as the Somerset Wetlands Community Officer. I have been working as the Information Officer for the RSPB at the Arne nature reserve in Dorset. It's is a very different place to Somerset and I have been used to working with heathland species like smooth snakes rather than cranes.

 Monty with his chick. Photo - Graham Hann.

 Monty with his chick - late May.

Monty and Chris, the pair of released cranes that have successfully nested at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire this year are currently very busy rearing a feisty young crane that will soon be 20 days old!  The young bird is one of two that hatched from Monty and Chris's clutch on 17th May.  Sadly, its sibling was taken by a fox at around 1 week old.

  Monty foraging with one of his chicks! 19/05/14

Over the weekend Monty & Chris, the pair of 2010 release year cranes that had been incubating on the WWT Slimbridge reserve not far from the Martin Smith Hide hatched a couple of chicks - and this is one of them  - the first photographed wild crane chick in the West Country in over 400 years!