Well after feeling like I only ever visited Snipe Dales in the rain, my last day working with James was an absolute treat. The skies were bright blue and full of sunshine and after a few weeks of feeling like I was always waiting for summer, it seemed to have arrived.

My first job of the day was to cut the grass around the entrance area of the Country Park whilst Andy cut back the vegetation that was encroaching onto the path. Although there is no visitor centre at Snipe Dales, like those on our reserves at Gibraltar Point and Whisby etc, it is important to maintain the entrance of the Country Park area as this is where visitors and school groups will come and sit on the benches to have lunch. The paths have to be cut for safety and it’s not possible to let everything here just grow wild. It demonstrates the mixture of managing land for people and wildlife, and how the both can be interlinked, such has cutting paths for a new habitat but also for people to walk and explore the reserve. Snipe Dales often acts as an outside classroom for school groups and it is important that certain parts are accessible for them to come and learn about nature.

It didn’t take much for the sweat to break, and even though the mower was doing most of the work, it was eye opening how much the heat can affect your productivity when outside all day.

The next job required all of us and even a little bit of kit. You may remember in my last blog I mentioned that the council had funded new picnic benches for the Country Park. We used the tractor to carry away one of the old wooden benches and carried over the new bench from the trailer.

Once we found a position for the bench that we were happy with, we each used a spade to dig a hole roughly the depth of each of the legs - using the spade handle as our measurement! The next part was all about getting the bench level so it didn’t feel like you were eating on a slope, with James and I adjusting the soil in each hole whilst Andy checked the reading on the spirit level.

The finished bench looked rather nice and enticing in the sunshine – which was why we roped it off so that it wouldn’t get sat on before the cement had set!

There was a lot of planning over lunch on how to best tackle the afternoon’s jobs. A few of them involved leaving the site and preferably being in two places at once. Luckily, as there was three of us this was possible. It had been very dry for the last few days and the plants from the woodland flora project that were still in their pots needed to be watered. James and Andy transported the tractor and trailer to some hay bales that needed moving whilst I got on with watering them. It was a great last visit as the day was rather reflective, looking back on all the projects I had helped out with over the year. It was hard to imagine the orange leaves peppering the woodland floor when I was out planting back in November now that the sun was shining and the myriad of greens were engulfing the site.

When I was finished watering, I headed over to help James and Andy with the hay bales. They were divided into sections, and the ones that were rich with appropriate wildflower seeds were going to be imported to Sow Dale where the land has only limited grass species. Until I started visiting Snipe Dales and taking a closer look at how James worked, I would have had no idea how interlinked all the reserves are, from the hay being transported around different places to the cattle that are sent from Woodhall Spa Airfield to Snipe Dales to graze.

The day was absolutely stunning, and I was so glad when James asked us if we would check on the ponies in the reserve whilst he went to Horncastle to collect some fuel for the equipment. The reserve had gone through some remarkable changes since my last visit, as if it had burst into life with towering vegetation. The sun also had something to do with it, encouraging the insects and birds out in good numbers. I could hear the sound of yellowhammer and chiffchaff singing throughout the reserve, as buzzards soared in the cloudless sky above.

It was especially nice to see butterflies again on the reserve, with meadow browns and large skippers fluttering around, and even a small copper that landed on the ground centimetres away from me! We had to wait a long time for summer to arrive this year, but it was definitely worth the wait. It was extremely hard to stay disciplined and keep on track with the task at hand when all I wanted to do was walk around and soak it in. We finally got to the ponies and checked them over. I remembered back to my first day encouraging the cattle into another field with only a bucket of food. It has been amazing to learn over the year more about the importance of grazing on our reserves from James, and how different species can obtain different results. I personally would never have thought of all the different things that went into managing a nature reserve when I walked around Snipe Dales as a visitor, before I started spending a day a month with James.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my blogs throughout the year, following the shift of work from grassland to woodland management as the seasons transformed and the fauna on the site also changed. If you have missed one – or want to look back at something specific – they are all on the ‘blogs’ section of the website. I feel incredibly grateful to James to have been able to see all the work that goes on at a few of our nature reserves from the viewpoint of a warden and hope you have learnt a lot too! Our wardens are doing such an amazing, tiring and fulfilling job at looking after some incredible wild places in Lincolnshire, and without them, both our wildlife and us would be a lot worse off.