The RSPB is the UK charity working to secure a healthy environment for birds and other wildlife, helping to create a better world for us all. They work for the conservation of wild birds, other wildlife and the places in which they live in a wide variety of ways.
The RSPB has:
- Over a million members, including nearly 150,000 youth members.
- the invaluable support of over 12,200 volunteers.
- Resources available for charitable purposes in 2007 was £78.6 million.
- 200 nature reserves covering almost 130,000 hectares, home to 80% of our rarest or most threatened bird species.
- A UK headquarters, three national offices and nine regional offices.
- A local network of 175 local groups and more than 110 youth groups.
Kent RSPB Reserve: Blean Woods, Rough Common (Please click onto RSPB website above, for exact location).
A wonderful place for quiet walks in beautiful ancient woodland. Five trails of up to eight miles long meander through the woods. In summer, look out for damselflies, dragonflies and butterflies, including the rare heath fritillary butterfly. As dusk falls, you may see nightjars darting around on silent wings, and hear their ‘churring’ call. Listen also for woodpeckers and nightingales.
Kent RSPB Reserve: Cliffe Pools, Cliffe Village (Please click onto RSPB website above, for exact location).
Cliffe Pools is a new reserve where we are actively developing visitor facilities to make it a flagship reserve. Tightly-packed blue lagoons, nestled in a bend where the River Thames turns into estuary, are perfect for waterbirds. It is renowned for wading birds, with massed flocks moving onto the pools from the adjacent Thames Estuary in winter.
Kent RSPB Reserve: Dungeness (Please click onto RSPB website above, for exact location).
If you haven't been to Dungeness, nothing can quite prepare you for this landscape – mile after mile of shingle, wild and weird! On a cold winter's day, it is a delight to sit snug in the visitor centre and look out through a huge picture window at all the waterbirds on the large gravel pit just outside. Often a rare grebe or diver is among them, and it is perhaps the best place in the UK for the delightful little smew.
The nature trails lead around a series of hides where there is an excellent chance of seeing bitterns and bearded tits in winter. There is plenty to be seen at other times too.
Dungeness's position, jutting into the English Channel, makes it ideally placed to watch for migrant birds arriving or departing, with wheatears, swallows, martins and warblers regularly seen. In summer, redshanks, lapwings and reedbed birds breed, including, in 2007, two pairs of marsh harriers for the first time.
Dungeness is a great place for children to become 'wildlife detectives' and enjoy learning about nature at one of our regular family events. And with recently added hides and trails overlooking new wetland areas, there's more than ever to see.
If you are new to birdwatching , a good variety of waterfowl and seabirds can be easily seen from the visitor centre and hides. Staff usually on hand in the visitor centre to help with identification. Identification charts in all hides. Four beginners' walks run each year.
Kent RSPB Reserve: Elmley Marshes, Isle of Sheppey (Please click onto RSPB website above, for exact location).
If you thought that there was no wilderness left in the south-east, come and have a look at Elmley Marshes! The two-mile drive across the vast wetlands, managed by the Elmley Conservation Trust, to get to the reserve car park is an amazing start to your visit, where from your car you can watch lapwings, redshanks, wigeon and birds of prey at close range.
It is then a mile walk down to our first hide (elderly and disabled visitors can drive closer by arrangement), which overlooks a bird-filled scrape where avocets breed and thousands of wading birds drop in from the nearby Swale estuary.
So often at Elmley, the sky is filled with birds – flocks of curlews or golden plovers, teals and pintails, starlings spooked by the merlins, hen harriers, marsh harriers and short-eared owls which hunt daily in winter. Our new viewpoint at Capel Fleet a few miles drive away on Sheppey is perhaps the best bird of prey viewpoint in the UK, with the rough-legged buzzard regular in winter.
The area can be exposed, so wrap up well, and prepare for an amazing trip.
Kent RSPB Reserve: Nor Marsh & Motney Hill (Please click onto RSPB website above, for exact location).
Nor Marsh is a saltmarsh island in the Medway Estuary. To the east is Motney Hill, another area of mud and saltmarsh. In the winter at both sites, large numbers of wildfowl can be seen, including brent geese, pintails, shelducks and goldeneyes along with grey plovers, knots and avocets. In the spring and autumn, look out for black-tailed godwits.
There are no RSPB-run facilities, but there is a full range in the Riverside Country Park run by Medway Borough Council.
Kent RSPB Reserve: Northward Hill, High Halstow (Please click onto RSPB website above, for exact location).
On a ridge overlooking the Thames Marshes, Northward Hill includes a lovely bluebell wood where nightingales sing in spring. Over 100 pairs of grey herons nest in the trees, with what is one of the UK's largest and most famous colonies of little egrets, whose numbers have increased year-on-year since they first nested here in 2000, reaching an amazing 93 pairs by 2007.
The reserve also includes great swathes of flat marshes, where lapwings, redshanks, and avocets breed. In winter you can see wigeons and teals, buzzards, hen harriers and merlins. There are many miles of trails through to the Heronry Viewpoint and some of the most inspiring views of the Thames valley.
Kent RSPB Reserve: Tudeley Woods, Pembury (Please click onto RSPB website above, for exact location).
Get away from it all with a walk in the woods and across the newly restored heathland. In some areas there are grand old trees; in others the traditional woodland management called ‘coppicing’ lives on, which opens up the woodland floor to allow the woodland flowers and butterflies to flourish for a few years before the canopy closes back over.
The age-old practice of charcoal burning is still active in the wood and the products are sold in the local area. Where areas of heathland have been restored, tree pipits, woodlarks and nightjars are arriving, and the Dartford warbler looks set to colonise.
The woods also support over 1,000 species of fungi, and in spring you can enjoy orchids intermingled with an impressive carpet of bluebells and primroses.
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RSPB Kent
