Hamstead Hall students leave their mark at Sandwell Valley

Since day one I have been hankering to get the railway bridge at the entrance to the nature reserve spruced up. Finally, the blank canvas of concrete has been transformed this week by a mural artist with the help of local school children.

Once a long stretch of greyish nothing, the bridge is now a bright and vibrant corridor, which is far more representative of the wonderful wildlife the reserve holds.

Where to begin, if you remember I blogged about Network Rail coming to prep the bridge with masonry paint back September (thanks guys). Well since then we have been very busy indeed. Children from the local primary school, Grestone primary and secondary school, Hamstead Hall Academy came to the nature reserve to try their hand at some natural art. Taking inspiration from nature the students created pictures that I sent to the mural artist to inspire a design that would transform the crossing.

Thursday morning came with thick cold wet mist that hung over the bridge like a cloak. The guys from Spearfish arrived at 8am and informed us that the walls were too damp and the spray paint that they were using to create the mural would not stick. Credit has to go to our community engagement intern, Jasmin, and Cass who quickly grabbed as much absorbent material they could get hold of and got to work wiping down the walls.

Rich Roberts, the artist, then got to work outlining the design of the mural. Myself and Cass, from Spearfish began to fill in the shapes that soon came together as one huge amazing piece of artwork. It was as though the bridge had come alive.

In the afternoon more students from Hamstead Hall Academy came to the reserve to try their hand at spray painting and to help get the work completed. Jumpsuits on, and facemasks in place, they soon got to work. I actually heard one of them say it was one of the best things they have ever done. J

Unfortunately the sinking sun stole the day away from us prematurely and we had to call it a day at 4.30pm. Rich and Cass had to come back for a second day to complete the work.

The pictures speak for themselves....it looks absolutely AWESOME! Come and have a look for yourselves, you know where we are!

A Natural Christmas at Sandwell... come join us!

Christmas is coming... it comes round fast and we have the perfect event to get in the spirit!

Sorry about the odd framing, took a photo of the wreath we made
on a phone and can't crop it... not that technical. 

On Sunday 7 December, 11am -3pm, we have once again planned our fantastic and popular Christmas Fayre event. But this year there is a difference. We have used natural materials to decorate the classroom in a more environmentally friendly way. We have used recycled materials and plant material that can be found in green spaces, so that we may inspire you to help protect nature when you decorate for Christmas.

At the event you can make your own willow wreath to place on your door to welcome your Christmas guests or put in your kitchen to make it festive. We will be using natural material that have been harvested in a way that won’t harm the natural area it came from. There will also be lantern making from recycled jars to brighten up your mantel piece and many other crafts and activities for the whole family to get involved in.

Follow our festive trail around the reserve in search of Father Christmas, before returning to the classroom for a hot cup of chocolate and a mince pie or two. Here you can buy your RSPB Christmas cards where all profits go towards nature conservation and have your face painted like some of the nature you have seen around the reserve or further afield. We ask for a small donation towards the crafts and activities that will go towards the resources.

This will be a wonderfully festive event, a perfect way to get in the spirit and gather ideas for your 2014 Christmas.

Andy Hay (rspb-images.org.uk) 

Pop along, stick your nose round the corner, say hello and get stuck into our festive activities. Have a chat to our staff and volunteers about how you can create a natural Christmas and get ideas.

We’re so excited for this event and look forward to seeing you there!

Jazz 

Wintery images of Sandwell

Good Morning all... 

The reserve was looking extremely magical this morning with frost covering every bit of nature and fog softly covering the valley. I had to take a few photos to share the beauty of the reserve so that I could share the views with you. Nature is so incredible all year round and the winter can be so spectacular! 

Foundations are in... an update on the building work

As I walked round the site on Tuesday I was expecting to see the same blank canvas of a building site; the empty footprint where the old centre had been removed has looked the same for the past two weeks. However I was so excited to see things have happened, the old foundations had been revealed!

Large trenches had been dug around the original foundation; maroon red bricks were visible from the edges, hidden for nearly 30 years. There were also a large number of fluorescently jacketed builders, contractors and managers looking hard at work. It was a rather cold morning, still some builders were wondering round in t-shirts... how? I don’t know, I was freezing!

The following day I returned for another photograph of the building work to put towards our time-lapse photograph. The scene of the construction site was full of heavy machinery, including diggers, dumpers and cement mixers. Foundations were being laid! It’s so exciting to watch the daily development of our new visitor centre. I have always been told you need good, strong foundations to build a sturdy building and with the amount of cement mixers we’ve seen going through I can rest assured these foundations are well cemented.

Keep up to date with the work on site but signing up to our blog. Simply enter your email in to the box on the right hand panel to make sure you get emailed when a new post has been put up. 

Glasses, long beaked birds and Sandwell, What happened there?

It was a rather windy and stormy day last Thursday. The night was starting to draw in and the light was slowly fading. We weren’t far off heading home when a man knocked on the door of the closed visitor centre. As he wondered in holding a large brown box I thought to myself, ‘what on earth is in there?’ The gentleman began to explain how he had found this bird wondering round the town centre. ‘On his way into specsavers’ he explained, ‘definitely not a pigeon’, ‘what could it be? In a town centre’ I wondered. Gradually he tentatively opened the lid of the cardboard box to reveal a beautiful mottled brown bird, about the size of a bag of sugar, rather timid and its defining feature, a disproportionately long beak. A snipe! In specsavers? It obviously needed a couple of new pairs of glasses.

Apart from being a little confused and un-phased by the three tall humans standing over it, the snipe seemed in fair health. We made the decision to take it down to a quiet part of the reserve to release it, close to the marshy area by the lake which offers some particularly good feeding. Historically the marsh in Sandwell Valley has always been excellent for wintering snipe, well into double figures. Every year volunteers flush the snipe out of the marsh in order to count the numbers, usually hard to spot feeding amongst the mud and long vegetation.

Image by Andy Hay (rspb-images.org.uk)

Once we made it to the chosen release area, my colleague and I placed the box to the ground, opened the lid and after a little encouragement the snipe tottered out and headed carefully into the undergrowth never to be seen again. Well we hope he/she has been seen again, but they’re pretty hard to tell apart from one another! Miss/Master Snipe definitely brightened a grey day in the office. 

Jazz

Hip hip hooray for volunteers!!!

Ever thought to yourself, ‘this looks dreadful, someone should pick all that litter up’, or ‘I wish they wouldn’t build on my local green space, someone should do something to stop that’, or ‘kids don’t know about the different trees and plants anymore, someone should be teaching the next generation about nature’...............well guess what?

Someone did!

Our incredible army of volunteers, over 17,000, decided to be that ‘someone’ and for over 125 years RSPB volunteers have been offering their time and passion and skills to support our work. Because of volunteers, the RSPB runs 200 nature reserves, fights developments that threaten native wildlife and even pioneers projects to save the albatross; and this is just the tip of the Iceberg. I started volunteering when I was at university because I was worried about wildlife and I was tired of wishing ‘someone’ would do something.

We have nearly 100 volunteers at Sandwell and they help us with everything from putting up fence posts to surveying wildlife, from answering our phones to educating the next generation about the birds and the beasties that make nature amazing. The list goes on, and on...

Susan Spencer receiving her 5 year service award.

One of our team has just received her 5 year long service award, so I thought I would use this opportunity to tell you a little bit about this wonderful volunteer.

Since 2009 Susan Spencer has volunteered on Sunday afternoons in our lakeside hide, binoculars at the ready and on hand to show passing visitors the wildlife that can be seen. Although Susan works Monday to Friday, she is happy to come down to Sandwell on Sunday afternoons as a way to unwind and relax. This visitor volunteer role is very important indeed. Susan, like the other hide volunteers, is our front line support and key to enthusing local people about the nature reserve and its incredible wildlife.

Like many of our volunteers, Susan wears many volunteer hats; she is now the (first ever) RSPB Sandwell Valley community forum Chairperson.

The community forum has been running for nearly two years. The forum represents different sections of our local community. They have identified target themes which include; youth, learning, family, wellbeing, history, volunteering, conservation, ethnic minorities and local residents. Our aim is to use the forum to direct the work we do at Sandwell Valley nature reserve so we can become a successful community resource, as well as an important home for wildlife in the midlands.

Sandwell Valley Nature Reserve is unique, unlike the majority of our nature reserves; this one sits tantalisingly close to thousands of homes, busy motorways and businesses. Working with the community in mind is so important. We want more people than ever before to visit, using the site for meetings, picnics or just somewhere to escape to for a couple of hours. Susan Spencer and the rest of the community forum will hopefully help us achieve this goal.

Susan has worked for more than 30 years in the voluntary sector and social housing in Birmingham, London and Wolverhampton. She has specialised in community outreach and engagement in disadvantage communities, working in Birmingham’s inner city and with minority and ethnic communities. We are so grateful that you choose to support the RSPB, so THANK YOU Susan Spencer.

If you feel like you want to be ‘someone’ too, then email me at nadia.shaikh@rspb.org.uk. 

What’s in a name?

Well quite a lot actually. Names are very important; we have named all the plants and animals here (and I don’t mean Marjorie the mallard), for example, the ‘rams horn snail’, it does exactly what is says on the tin. Naming the wildlife is really helpful because it allows us to keep accurate details of the flora and fauna in the valley; even down to the last mushroom, they all need names.  

We name landscape features like mountains and rivers, the river Tame for example runs through the nature reserve. Names give identity and familiarity to the world and it allows it to understand it better and to recall places we have been to. Not to mention the fact that you and I have names.

So what am I going on about? Well, there is a point in there somewhere. Since I started my role back in February this year, I have been on a quest to search for a name for the new visitor centre; I wanted it to be something positive and memorable; inspiring and relevant. This building means a lot to a lot of people so giving it a special name felt like the right thing to do.

The hunt was on.

We started by asking EVERYONE for their suggestions. We asked visitors, staff, volunteers, people on social media, basically anyone who came into contact with us. It was actually harder that we initially thought, coming up for a name for a building was tricky, as buildings often adopt names over time naturally anyway, but this hadn’t been built yet. The tool shed, for example, is know to staff and volunteers here as ‘the tardis’ because (you guessed it) it seems so much bigger on the inside.

After a couple of months we had gathered over 100 suggestions. Our next job was to whittle it down. We wanted to get local people to vote for their favourite, and 100 was just too many to choose from. We recruited our community forum volunteers to go through the names and choose the best two. After lots of deliberation and lots of tea and coffee (and biscuits), ‘the view’ and ‘nature’s reach’ made it to the final.

The vote was on!

You decided, the votes were counted and verified, we are happy to announce the name of the new visitor centre..................

Nature’s reach!

Nadia