St Nicks

Highlights A secretive bird… even more secretive mammals… Halloween beetles (and bats!)… a new gall for the reserve Commentary For various reasons, we were not able to complete a Wildwatch blog report for October, so this is a combined October / November report. We’ve been looking out for visiting winter birds, and had a few […]

Park Rangers Nick Denman and Harriet Lowery have just finished their six month volunteer internships. We sent them some questions about their time at St Nicks to find out more about the role and what they got out of it. How would you describe St Nicks to someone who hasn’t heard of it? Harriet: St […]

Summary of the day written by St Nicks Events Officer Ivana Jakubkova; more great photos can be found on Lewis Outing’s website We couldn’t have wished for a lovelier day on which to hold our annual Autumn Fayre this year, on 15th October! We had plenty of sunshine to keep us warm and there was […]

St Nicks patron and local poet Anneliese Emmans Dean was helping Autumn Fayre 2016 visitors write 2 acrostic poems about autumn. Here they are (or as much as we could decipher): Comforting cake for an acrostic Eating cake… Leaving allotment bounty on my godparents’ doorstep Ensuring environmental policies radically transform our city, our nation, our […]

St Nicks Recycling Coordinator Sam Taylor held a Recycling Q&A session and this is what happened. Join us for our next Q&A on the 19th October 2016 on Twitter and Facebook. On 21st September we held our first ever Twitter Question and Answer session on my favourite topic… Recycling! I thought I’d share the most […]

Highlights Bumper month for the “Blue Flash”.. Shieldbugs are September’s stars and Harlequin Ladybirds spring a surprise.. fungi starting to flourish. Commentary As Summer moves into Autumn, the flora and fauna at St Nicks changes. Flowering plants are dying back, insects are declining in numbers (although still plenty to see), Autumn colours are appearing as […]

Ivana Jakubkova, Events Officer at St Nicks, has a go at the ‘No Dig’ gardening method and explores its many benefits. Thanks to Audrey Miller for demonstrating her skills and Greenfields School & Community Garden for hosting the course. If you’d love to grow your own organic fruit and veg but digging really isn’t your […]

Hawthorn (Crateagus monogyna) is a native species, best known as a thorny hedging plant or large shrub. Left alone and given space, it makes an attractive small tree, growing up to ten metres high. As a bush, it adapts readily to light pruning, close trimming, and traditional hedge-laying. It must have been used like this […]

Highlights:  Return of the Head-banger. New butterfly record but butterfly numbers remain low. Look out for Kiwi fruit with antennae! Giant puffball and galling plant discovery. Weather Dry on all the Wildwatch Wednesdays, with temperatures ranging from 14C to 23C. The 24th was particularly hot, sunny and with calm winds. Birds As expected, August was […]

Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis) is probably the most “want-to-see” bird at St Nicks! For those people lucky enough to see them, the usual view is a brilliant flash of iridescent blue as the bird flies up and down Tang Hall and Osbaldwick Becks. But Kingfishers spend a lot of time perched, looking in the water for […]