A minicab picked up six of us from Stoke station and took us to the reserve, slowly climbing higher and higher until we had a glorious view of the Staffordshire hills. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and about 20 volunteers and their families met up to celebrate the success of the Birds Friendly Schools Project, run in the West Midlands by Anna Keen. Anna introduced us to her RSPB colleagues, some of whom were lucky enough to have a residential placement at the Coombes Valley reserve.
Anna summarised the impact of the Birds Friendly Schools project, telling us we had reached 4000 children. This is really positive and I hope that the project can continue next year.
Guided walk
Two enthusiastic and friendly guides took half of us on a guided walk of the reserve. We looked out across the valley, as Laura told us how it been carved out by glacial floodwater, in the relatively short time of 200 years. The reserve is a great place to see pied flycatchers, wood warblers and redstarts - we weren't lucky enough this time, but there were plenty of birds in the wood singing, and we heard coal tits, jays, great tits, and a nuthatch. The reserve is a mixture of oak woodland and meadows, and our walk took us down the hill to the main source of water, a stream, where a trout was spotted. There are also many varieties of plant, including common spotted orchid, which was by the stream side.
long grass. When we had checked to make sure we hadn't trapped a wasp or bee, we could carefully look inside the net and discover which insects were in there. There were a lot of flies about, and we also saw some froghoppers, bugs that hop like a frog, and start life inside what is known as "cuckoo spit." Part of the woodland walk had a large area with the vegetation covered in these white bubbles, which Tina told us the froghopper nymphs produce and stay hidden inside, until they are ready to emerge as adults.
Pond dipping
We then moved on to pond dipping, which I really enjoyed. The reserve is a good place for damselflies and dragonflies and I saw several blue and red damselflies over the pond. It was great fun to scoop out some creatures with a net and to identify them from a chart, and I learnt that I had found a damselfly nymph, which you could identify from similar creatures by looking closely at its tail and head shapes.
Finally, a few of us followed Anna into the cool of the woodland and we got creative, with some clay. People who had been there before us had made some animals and faces out of clay on the trees, so I gave it a go and came up with a bug!
It was great to meet the other volunteers, and to find out how they had enjoyed the Birds Friendly Schools project as well. It is always affirming to meet with other people who care about wildlife in the same way and who appreciate what is around them, and how important it is to care for it.
If you are interested in visiting Coombes Valley, Hannah gave me a leaflet on several activities such as those we had been doing, which are coming up over the next few months, which are listed on the website. Who knows what you will see!
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