Welcome to the LDV NNR ringing blog, this blog is designed to share the experiences, findings and tales from a group of dedicated ringers. We specialise in conservation orientated research projects, largely focusing on wildfowl, waders, owls and birds of conservation concern, in and around the Vale of York NNR's.

NB - Whilst the purpose of this blog was initially designed to cover our nationally important wildfowl ringing activities, it now also features wildlife and work posts, explaining how we manage the NNR for both wildlife and people.

For daily sightings please visit our Twitter account: https://twitter.com/ldv_nnr (@LDV_NNR)

For details of events, volunteer tasks and wildlife images please visit our Facebook account: https://www.facebook.com/Lower-Derwent-Valley-Skipwith-Common-NNR

Thursday 11 January 2018

01/01/18 - HNY

Happy New Year to our staff, volunteers, supporters and visitors! 

2017 was an exceptional year in the valley, in terms of what we managed to achieve on the ground, which is down to the fantastic team of volunteers who support us each week, helping to maintain the paths and hides for our visitors, and adding extra pairs of hands for repairing gates/fences after the winter flooding, cutting the hay meadows in the summer, taking out scrub during the autumn and winter, and so much more. So a big thank you to our team for helping us achieve our goal, which is maintaining the LDV (and wider sites), both for people and wildlife. If you fancy coming along, joining in and taking part, then new volunteers are always welcome, and if week days don't suit then don't worry, we may have an alternative - we are currently in the process of setting up a weekend task day each month. Please feel free to get in touch if you think you might like to help out.


The last week before the festive break our team of staff and volunteers were busy carrying out a variety of jobs, several of the team helped the Dunnington Conservation volunteers erect a replacement Barn Owl box at Hassacarr Local Nature Reserve, much to the delight of Terry Weston and the rest of the Hassacarr team. Earlier in the week, following on from the work we recently carried out revitalising the pond and wildlife area at Long Marston School, Reserve Manager Fallon Mahon returned to attend a thank you assembly. Fallon and the team were presented with a booklet of thank you notes written by the pupils, and Ruby the piper dog, was awarded a little bag of treats – she was obviously a hit with the children!



The remainder of the week was made up of spraying Pirri-pirri-bur on Skipwith Common NNR, as well as extracting and logging up timber for next year, and getting the last few log deliveries out to the local area. Either side of the working day, several dawn and dusk cannon net catches also took place, with a sample of 160 Teal caught and ringed from the 10,000+ present in the valley at the moment. Many thanks to everyone involved – your help is much appreciated as always.

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