At Hauxley the project focused on improving the visitor experience. The new, accessible ‘Skua’ hide was installed, allowing a wider variety of visitors to view the birds visiting our feeding station. Meanwhile, in at the visitor centre and café our newly installed wildlife cameras stream live footage on our two screens allowing people a glimpse of what goes on in our bird boxes, pond and across the reserve. Highlights have included an epic battle between a blue tit and a tree sparrow and a raid on the stock dove’s nest by a stoat. Visitors also had an opportunity to participate in the creation of a wildflower meadow which was planted with390 plug plants including autumn hawkbit, selfheal and kidney vetch. Families spent a morning creating seedbombs before launching them with a giant catapult across the meadow. A path mown through the meadow will be open during spring and summer.

At East Chevington the habitat improvement works were heavily focused on habitats in and around water. Opencast mining in the area reduced the Chevington burn to a featureless channel which provided a fantastic opportunity for improvement. The project allowed us to work with Dynamic Rivers and TM Lindsay to restructure the watercourse over the course of a week in somewhat challenging weather conditions. The resulting waterway now gently meanders through a series of ponds, pools and wet woodland, responding to the rapidly changing water levels during rain, to slow the flow of water, trap sediment and create a variety of habitats both on and off-stream. The changes to the area were instantly visible but there was also an audible difference – for the first time we could hear the water flowing.

Downstream from the Chevington burn works, the south pool at East Chevington also underwent a transformation. Well known for its bird-life including marsh harrier, reed warbler and water rail, the reedbeds have undergone no management since being established after the opencast restoration. The Sustainable Water Company took on the challenge of reprofiling the reedbed. Using an amphibious Truxor reed-cutting machine affectionately name Gertrude, they cut a series of channels in the reed, excavated the rhizomes and relocated the material to create new areas of reedbed elsewhere. It is hoped that the increased area of reed margin will create additional opportunities for visiting bittern to feed.

Woodland was the key habitat at West Chevington. The closely planted conifer plantations were thinned by up to thirty percent, letting in a huge amount of light to allow natural regeneration of native trees within the woodland. Elsewhere 10,000 native trees including hazel, rowan, bird cherry and black poplar were planted to create a 1km hedgerow and seven new copses to create a woodland corridor across the site, from the well established woodland in the west to the less diverse plantations in the east. Access for visitors along footpaths and bridleways has also been improved, with new signage and waymarkers installed to create a routes which travel through a variety of habitats. Our next major milestone for West Chevington will be the arrival of cattle, who will continue our work improving habitats across the reserve through their grazing.

The work across our three sites would not have been possible without our amazing group of volunteers who turned up in all weather to carry out surveys, remove fences, plant trees, build bridges and donate a huge 2497 hours of their time to our project.

Collingwood School and Media Arts College have produced a series of short films to document our project which are now available to watch on our youtube channel.