site visits

Site visits will be taking place on the afternoon of Thursday 11 September. They are designed to complement the programme of talks and workshops and everyone is invited to book a place on one of them.

BOWLAND

A visit to United Utilities estate in the heart of the Forest of Bowland AONB. We will explore the Langdon Valley where we will see firsthand, the work done by United Utilities on its Bowland SCaMP (Sustainable Catchment Management Programme) project where it aims to restore raw water quality at source by implementing land management changes on the ground. Grazing reductions, tree planting, fencing out watercourses and peat restoration has created opportunities for high quality water catchment and enhanced upland habitats. Join Pete Wilson from United Utilities and staff from the Northern England Conservation team to learn about the RSPB’s long-term partnership with United Utilities on its estate and hear about ecosystem services, sustainable grouse shooting models and conserving the remaining English Hen Harrier stronghold.

OLD MOOR

BIRDING WITH BIRDERS

A chance for the less experienced birders amongst us to join Richard Bashford and other experienced birders for an exploration of the main habitats at Old Moor and gain a better understanding of some of the commoner feathered occupants of this wetland reserve. We will visit a variety of habitats and make use of the sites range of superb hides to show you what’s about. Out on the Mere we will show you the different ducks and water birds and at the wader scrape we will show you the commoner waders and hope to pick out some more unusual autumn migrants. Around the visitor centre, we will make use of the hides to give you confidence in identifying the commoner garden, farmland and woodland species.

OLD MOOR

SHOWING PEOPLE WILDLIFE

Old Moor is the perfect site for seeing wildlife: it has a mix of habitats and a good range of facilities to best view the species that use them. Join Matthew Capper for a tour and talk of the hides and viewing facilities at Old Moor that are designed to give different audiences different nature experiences. Matthew and the site team have recently created a number of opportunities on the site for photographers, so if you want to get a ground level view of feeding farmland birds, bring your camera and book on this trip!

ST AIDAN'S

Join the RSPB’s Mr Dynamism, Graham White, to look at boom and bust wetland management at one of our soon to be arriving new reserves. St Aidan's - a former open cast coal mining site in the Aire Valley - is now a thriving wetland home to Bitterns, Black-necked Grebes and breeding waders. Join Graham and members of the site team to hear about how the site was designed to facilitate dynamic wetland rejuvenation and learn how you could fit some dynamic thinking into the sites you manage. Graham will discuss water control, grazing, cutting and site design of reedbed, fen and wet grass habitats, much of which we should see in the flesh at St Aidan’s

FAIRBURN INGS

Want to learn more about the invertebrates that inhabit wetland habitats? Join Mark Gurney and our ecology trainees as we search out and identify some of the aquatic and terrestrial invertebrates of our Fairburn Ings reserve. Classroom facilities will allow us to bring back our catch for further study at the visitor centre where we will teach you the basics of invertebrate identification and get you up to speed on the most likely encountered species. Fairburn offers us a range of open water and wetland habitats with associated wet woodland so we should have scope to find a good range of species.