June 2026

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We have 20  ‘reptile refugia’ mats across the nature reserve which, in the right conditions, attract slow worms and grass snakes. On rare occasions we find 2 snakes under the same sheet. Here we found three! 

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And if you ever wondered why slow worms are called SLOW worms this might explain it. Under this sheet there was a grass snake and a slow worm. It was a really hot day, so both were fully energised, but while the grass-snake shoots away instantly, the slow worm adopts a ‘play dead’ approach!

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This is the dead grass snake that I mentioned in April’s blog. When we took this video, it was half rotted, but you can see it is over a metre long.

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And here is the same snake skeleton today. We have cleaned it up and then preserved it in resin a tube. This means this fantastic specimen can now be handled by inquisitive school children with relative abandon. Just look at those teeth!

June has had a series of horrible heat waves, and our beehives have adopted the strategy of ‘bearding’ to cope. This is where they gather, in big beards, just outside the hive to cool down. 

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Here is a baby fox exploring our artificial badger sett (which we built a couple of years ago and is currently the home for various rodents) 

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The fox knocked over the camera, but it still captured this tussle between two cubs as they fought over a green woodpecker that they had killed. 

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Baby fox cub getting a refreshing drink from the stream before it dried up. 

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Four fox cubs being exuberant. 

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A lovely baby Tawny Owl. It visited this dried bit of stream regularly over a series of nights. Hopefully the foxes won’t find it (it’s the same location as the previous video of the 4 cubs). 

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Not the best video of an owl, but I am including it because there are actually TWO owls in this shot. One near and one at the back 

Following the sighting of 2 mink last year, we have had a Smart Mink Trap installed for the past few months. It has a ‘pheromone bait ball’ which should attract the mink into the trap. Once triggered, the trap sends a signal to my phone to inform me it has been activated. 

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 To date, the mink have completely ignored the trap, but the pigeons quite enjoy it as a floating perch

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 I arrived on site to find the trap had been turned over. I think a deer must have galloped through the woods, trod on the trap as it bounded across the stream and flipped it over (all happening so quickly the camera didn’t activate). Either that or we have a much bigger mink problem than first thought (ie they have coordinated themselves to work in a pack and turn over the heavy trap, and do all that without activating the motion-sensitive camera!)

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Trap reset, the pigeons re-take ownership of their floating perch. 

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You may recall the Sparrow Hawks from last month's blog; the male and female pair continue to visit the pond regularly…

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…and this is what they are hunting. Our Mallard ducks have finally hatched their brood, 9 adorable ducklings. 

I recently saw online an ecology tool that promised me it could capture the unique footprints of animals as they trit-trot across the woodland. When it arrived, I was slightly saddened to find I had spent £20 buying a short tube of plastic into which you put a piece of paper and an ink pad (ink pad sold separately). 

The idea is that the rodents tread on the ink trap and then leave a trail on the paper positioned inside the tube. I positioned it on a log crossing a stream where I knew rodents (rats, stoats, weasels and field mice) regularly crossed. 

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A Brown Rat suspiciously investigates the tube and decides against using it. 

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A Wood Mouse has found that climbing OVER the tube is more effective.

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The Grey Squirrel, complete with a nut, is completely spooked by it.  

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After 3 months in the position, here is a Wood Mouse almost deciding to enter the tube. Of course, had it actually entered the tube, it would have missed the ink pad completely, as it is positioned at the other end! Hard work this ecology monitoring lark. 

Talking of ecology monitoring, one of our ongoing research projects is to monitor bird song to see how the avian populations change as our various newly created habitats (hedgerows, ponds etc) develop and become established. This is a multi-year, multi-habitat project using a variety of different tools (Merlin, Chirrup, Wildcare), each with pros and cons. The idea is that the various data sets will ultimately overlap and provide a comprehensive picture. 

Some of the tools we are using are incredibly clever, using AI to determine the source of each birdsong (we set the monitor to measure for 2 hours before and after dawn and dusk each day), and it produces pages of data that I spend literally hours pouring over. 

Here is a partial screenshot from the birdsong monitor. You can see it shows not just the bird species but the number of calls and the confidence the AI algorithm has that it was correctly identified, ie 499 calls from a Wren with 99% accuracy. 

You may have noticed that in the above photo, the monitor detected a Turtle Dove (30 calls, with a maximum confidence of 92%). This was incredibly exciting. Turtle Doves are classified as Vulnerable (as shown by the yellow flag). We have a plan to enhance Aspect to make it particularly attractive to Turtle Doves. This data suggested that maybe they were already present (although that 92% confidence was a worry, I had been advised to ignore anything less than 95% by my more knowledgeable RSPB friends).

Fortunately, the monitoring kit is so awesome it enables one to isolate each and every call, so it can be analysed in more detail later. 

This is what a proper Turtle Dove call should sound like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGlNyKZCbL0. It’s a deeper call than a normal dove. One might say it almost sounds like a sheep bleating. 

And below is a link to our supposed Turtle Dove call...

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This is the highest confidence Turtle Dove call that our software recorded. It’s a frigging sheep!As noted previously ecology monitoring is hard work! 

We had our usual series of school visits during June, and we now have a new activity for the pupils: clay modelling. Using the clay dug directly out of the pond, the children enjoy 20 minutes of gloriously mucky fun creating something novel. 

Here is a selection of the creations made by the pupils. My favourite is the dragon/stingray (bottom left), which stands out as particularly creative amongst the array of pots, hoops, and something that looks suspiciously like a dog turd. For the particularly keen-eyed, there is also a small rabbit (positioned upside down on the right-hand side)

Finally, our friends at Gatwick Airport are hosting an open day to showcase what they are doing to create green spaces and enhance the local ecology. It is on Sat 4^th July, between 7 am and 230pm. You can find more details here: 

See you next month!