Speaker: Matt Wickens
Reporter: Cath Robinson
Matt is in the relatively new post of Urban Reserve Manager of the NWT and gave us a history and description of the new Sweet Briar Marshes reserve close to the centre of Norwich. It comprises 90 acres of fen, rough meadows, grazing marsh, young hedgerows and young
woodland. One third is an SSSI on the basis of species rich grassland and the rest is designated as a County Wildlife Site. It was purchased recently (2022) by NWT following a public appeal. £600,000 was raised in only 4 months.

Speaker: Drew Lyness
Reporter: Sue Gale

Drew Lyness is an old friend of the club, and for our June meeting he gave us an entertaining account of two recent birding holidays in Europe. For the first holiday, the cold one, Drew gave us a cautionary tale about a few days in Estonia in mid-March. It started well. Landing in Tallin they could see that much of the winter’s snow had melted, and they made straight for the iconic island of Saaremaa. They met with 1000s of European White-fronted Geese (we see them here in small numbers), plus the occasional Tundra Bean Goose and pairs of Cranes everywhere. Getting there on a ferry with prodigious amounts of food available (!) they could see ice still on the estuaries, plenty of Smew and Goosander, White-tailed Eagles from the deck and a single Rough-legged Buzzard. Once they landed Drew’s friend Jake soon located a raft of Steller’s Eider Ducks. This is the most accessible place to see these special ducks. Inland they searched for Pygmy Owls in the dark before sleeping, only to wake up to the worst storm recorded at that time of year. Half of the island was without electricity and the other half had no water, but the ferry was still running. They made a bolt for it.

​Speaker: Jenny Donelan, BTO.
Reporter: Cath Robinson
Jenny is a BTO Training Officer who as part of her job creates and delivers educational materials and training activities to help with Bird identification and BTO surveys. She had an infectious enthusiasm about her role in communication and only at the end of her presentation told us she had never done it in this form before!

Speaker: Patrick Barkham
Reporter: Sue Gale

April brings the AGM, which can often seem a bit dry, but as usual the AGM business was dispatched in a few minutes and we moved on to one of the most entertaining talks we have enjoyed for a long time. ‘The Swimmer’ is the title of Patrick Barkham’s latest book – a biography of Roger Deakin who was an environmentalist among many other things and is credited with starting the current enthusiasm for wild swimming with his own book ‘Waterlog’. Indeed, the black Speedos he wore when swimming across Britain are to be found in the library at UEA!

Speaker: Dominic Buscall
Reporter: Sue Gale
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Dominic Buscall, a founder of Wild Ken Hill, gave a very popular and well-received talk about what they do there and about some of their current projects. The farm has developed over the last 5 or 6 years, from its original state of 75% arable crops and 25% wood and wetland to the current 3 areas of land management. The challenges were to do something about worsening biodiversity, exacerbated by the climate crisis, and to do this in a financially viable way, made possible by support from Natural England and the new farm subsidies which mean that work for the environment can at last be paid for. The three areas at Wild Ken Hill are: 1.
the rewilding area; 2. wetland and coastal scrub; and 3. farming using regenerative agriculture.