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John Muir Conserver Award 2023/2024

The Humphries Family – Rachel, Rory, Finn & Millie in conjunction with the help and support of Amber Bicheno of the Severn Gorge Countryside Trust have undertaken a fabulous project to:

Discover a wild place:
What wild places have you discovered?
What did you like or not like about the wild places you visited?
What’s special about them?

Discover:
The Rope Walk, Loamhole and Lydebrook Dingle are situated within the Ironbridge Gorge, Shropshire and are managed by the Severn Gorge Countryside Trust. The land is mostly native woodland with some areas of meadow following two streams that flow down towards the River Severn.
This area is important to our family as we live in the area and wish to see it conserved and protected as a haven for wildlife for the future. We explored the area throughout the year to discover all the nuances of the seasons both in the landscape and the wildlife as a part of establishing the nesting box programme.

The area within Lydebrook Dingle is hidden from the pathways and has little footfall making an ideal place for a nesting box programme.

The area is breathtakingly beautiful with unspoilt woodland just minutes walk from roads and paths, that is almost exclusively for our wildlife to enjoy.

We visited throughout the four seasons and only struggled to access the area when the wet weather had created a lot of slippery mud and that wasn’t pleasant but on spring sunny days with the birdsong as our backing music the adventure was exhilarating.

The area has a population of blue tits and great tits but the objective of the development of the nesting box programme is to encourage back to the area the pied flycatcher.

Explore its wildness:
What have you done to get to know wild places?
How have you experienced them?
What things have you found out?

Explore:
Through the year we discovered with trial cameras and personal observations signs such as tracks, trampled undergrowth, gnawed bark, animal droppings and even a skeleton of a squirrel head revealing through the seasons the huge variety of nature that the area supports – from birds, badgers, deer, squirrels, rabbits, foxes, to the wild orchids in the meadows and the trees in the woodland – all supporting the bird population we discovered.

We experienced the dawn chorus and learnt to identify some of the bird songs, including those of the birds warning of our presence when approaching the nesting box areas.

Working with the Severn Gorge Countryside Trust we discovered different sizes and styles of nesting boxes, how to make the right boxes for the size of bird for the monitoring project, how and where to site the boxes and how to establish a monitoring record ready to follow throughout the nesting season.