We're delighted that BBOWT's Chief Executive, Estelle Bailey MBE, has been named in the inaugural edie 100 list of the UK’s most impactful sustainability leaders! 👉 You can find out more and read the list here: buff.ly/qWsOGyl

💧 Help us Save Our Chalk Streams! Thanks to your help, for the first time, chalk streams have explicit mention in the National Planning Rules! This is a step forward, but we need to see more robust recognition of chalk streams. 📷 Paul Colley

🏡 We're bringing swifts back to our streets! The Crowthorne Men’s Shed had a lifelong dream of helping the local swift population, and our Community Organising Officer, Barbara Polonara, was more than happy to step in and support.

Over winter, small birds like goldfinches form roving flocks that forage together. The bold red mask, golden back, and bright yellow wings of the goldfinch make it one of our most striking birds.

Meet Kim, one of our heroes across the Bernwood Otmoor Ray landscape, who is managing her land to restore nature and reconnect it to the wider countryside. Find out more about our RBOR partnership project at bbowt.org.uk/rbor

"I have underestimated the team again. This task was supposed to take three sessions. In just one, it is nearly done. We step back to admire our work. The area is brighter, lighter, renewed, and marked by human care." Read the latest blog from Finemere Wood 👉 buff.ly/flnOxUf

Keep your eyes to the sky to catch a glimpse of our magnificent birds of prey displaying high over head.

With their delicate pinky-purple petals, vibrant yellow stamens and deep-orange stigmas, crocuses are one of our prettiest spring flowers. The stigmas of some species are also the source of spice saffron, which is often more expensive than gold. 📸 Pete Hughes

🐝 Bumblebees are back! This is the time of year when queen bumblebees, who have spent the entire winter hiding safely underground, emerge from their holes. 🌼 The first thing the queens do on emerging is find spring flowers such as snowdrops, crocuses or daffodils, to drink all the nectar they can.

Goat willow is a small willow tree found in ditches, reedbeds, wet woodland, and on urban waste ground. It is one of the UK's commonest willows and is known for the fluffy, silver-grey, male catkins - or 'pussy willows' - that appear in January and turn bright yellow in March.

We are looking to grow our ecology team! 🌿 Join Future Nature, our Wildlife Trust consultancy, as an Ecologist or a Bat Ecologist and help deliver exceptional projects where every pound of profit goes straight back into protecting and restoring wildlife. Apply now: www.bbowt.org.uk/jobs

🐸 You may see great jelly masses of early frogspawn in ponds in February if the temperature rises enough! It may look like a huge amount but very little will survive to become adult frogs. Instead much of it will provide food for predators from birds to dragonfly larvae.

We’re hiring at College Lake Nature Reserve! Join our café team and help nature recover. We are currently recruiting for two roles: Café Shift Leader 🌿 Create a welcoming experience, and help ensure the smooth operation of our café. Apply now: www.bbowt.org.uk/jobs/cafe-sh...

🥾 Thank you to Emmie from the Wildlife Fundraising Central team for sharing her pictures from a winter walk at our Sydlings Copse nature reserve near Oxford! From dangling hazel catkins and bright yellow gorse, to fungi and moss adorning fallen branches, there's plenty to see even on a drizzly day.

We’re hiring! 📣 Join our friendly team as a Café Assistant and help nature thrive while serving smiles at our busy Nature Discovery Centre café. Apply online (www.bbowt.org.uk/jobs/cafe-as...) or pop in for an application form! 🌿

🪺 14-21 February is National Nestbox Week! If you're planning to add a new nestbox to your garden this year and want to find out more, our friends at Vine House Farm can help you out. 👉 buff.ly/my9Jfvw

🐾 We have three species of shrew in the UK, and all three were spotted at Wells Farm, thanks to camera boxes built by Paul, volunteer warden for Wells Farm and Oxfordshire Mammal Group!

💞 Great crested grebes have an elaborate courtship dance! If you're lucky enough to live close to a pond or lake with these elegant birds, watch as the males and females mirror each other on the water, diving down and rising up in perfect unison. 📸 Andrew Parkinson/2020VISION

Exciting days at @bbowt.bsky.social Dancersend tackling thick scrub in a south-facing clearing lost to scrub/secondary woodland in the 1970s. The amazing RoboFlail made short work of pulverising followed by volunteers raking up. Scarification should help release special flowers from the seed bank.

Join @bbowt.bsky.social Chilterns Group for their next wildlife themed talk next Tuesday 17 Feb in Great Missenden. Chris Williams, CEO of the Royal Forestry Society, will tell us 'The Story of Forestry in the UK'. All welcome!!

📢 Speak up for nature, take our simple action to have your say: action.wildlifetrusts.org/page/183790/...

🐦️ Blue tits are active feeders, hunting insects and spiders among smaller branches and leaves of trees in woodlands. But they are also well-adapted to towns and will visit birdtables and peanut feeders; they are even famed for breaking tops of milk bottles and taking the creamy top off the milk!

Many thanks to Ed Griffiths for the BBC guided trip around BBOWT College Lake this morning. Considering the weather recently we were lucky to have a dry day. It was great seeing new faces, new members, new comers to birding and of course the Slavonian Grebe. 34# species #ukbirding

Monday in the C S Lewis nature reserve #bbowt #narnia #oxford

🍭 For a long time it was thought that slime molds were types of fungi, but they're actually more closely related to amoebas! This species (Comatricha nigra) is a widespread slime mold which grows on decayed wood, and was spotted at Aston Clinton Ragpits by volunteer warden Phil Townsend.

🪖 For a long time, it was thought that woodpeckers had spongy skulls that absorb some of the impact and protect the brain – people have even copied this idea to create safety helmets. 📸 Mark Hamblin/2020VISION

🌱 Children's Mental Health Week acknowledges the vital role of belonging in our mental health and wellbeing with the theme 'This is My Place'. Alongside having a place to belong, having access to high quality, local natural environments is critically important for wellbeing in young people.

Another good turnout of our volunteers at BBOWT Dancersend Reserve coppicing and clearing fallen ash trees along one of our rides to let more light in to benefit wildflowers like Stinking Hellebore, seen in the foreground here. @bbowt.bsky.social

🐁 The harvest mouse is Europe’s smallest rodent, a tiny 4–6-gram mammal, classified ‘Near Threatened’ in Britain. Not much is known about their distribution, but searches by BBOWT volunteers have revealed their nests at several of our reserves, including Chimney Meadows, Wells Farm, and Moor Copse.

🦋 Want to make a difference for nature where you live? Find out more at bbowt.org.uk/community www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Lpm...

📣 Wildlife and natural places need more protection, not less. But the UK Government is thinking about making it even easier and cheaper for developers to destroy our last few natural spaces.

Happy Friday from our handsome Hebridean sheep at Dancersend Nature Reserve! 📸 Phil Townsend

🐴 Chinese New Year is just around the corner, and 2026 is the Year of the Horse! Celebrate the season and go paperless with an e-card from Don't Send Me a Card: buff.ly/I0aAvEK

Look out for these pops of colour starting to show in our woodlands - Scarlet Elfcup seen today at BBOWT's Bowdown Woods, nr Newbury @bbowt.bsky.social @tverc1.bsky.social @the-wildlifetrusts.bsky.social

🦋 We're incredibly grateful to 13 BBOWT volunteers who braved the cold last week to count 49 brown hairstreak eggs at Bernwood Meadows nature reserve, a significant increase on the 21 counted there in 2023.

We’re hiring! Join us as a Volunteering Engagement Manager and help nature recover by delivering dynamic recruitment campaigns and growing a more diverse and inclusive volunteer community. Apply now: www.bbowt.org.uk/jobs/volunte...

I'm getting a bit fed-up with endless dull, dreary, damp days whenever I can get to @bbowt.bsky.social Dancersend but have to admit that at this time of the year it is the dark, damp, weedy corners of the reserve where the jewels are. Thank goodness for snowdrops, Scarlet Elf-cups and slime moulds!

🦢 We may be a ‘wet’ nation, but wetlands – wildlife-rich, carbon-capturing oases – are in shorter supply than you might think. On World Wetlands Day, learn about these vital ecosystems 👉 buff.ly/LNPjsAw 📸 College Lake Nature Reserve by Katharine Walley

📣 Because we've had such a great response to our offer of half-price membership for one year, we have decided to extend the offer until the end of Wednesday 4 February! So you still have time to join for as little as £2.25 per month 👇 bbowt.org.uk/join-us 📸 Mark Hamblin/2020VISION

We’re hiring! Join us as an Assistant Reserves Officer (North Bucks) and help nature recover through hands-on habitat management across woodland, wetland and floodplain meadow reserves. 🌿 Apply now: buff.ly/rfEodit

It was a very pretty drive down to @BBOWT Dancersend Reserve for our Wednesday work party - still below freezing down in the Vale and the Chilterns showing up beyond Mentmore Towers. Clearing scrub and fallen trees from one of our most important grassy clearings soon warmed us up.

🌳 "Light will reach the woodland floor, allowing species adapted to open conditions to thrive; the coppiced hazel stools will, in turn, provide shelter and protection for invertebrates and small mammals alike." 👉 Read the latest blog from Charlotte Karmali, Finemere Wood Warden: buff.ly/wy3TQHj

Finally made it here from Twitter. Hoping to find old friends and have a more civilised, respectful time. Here are recent photos from my world - Dancersend BBOWT reserve in Bucks, which is what I will be mostly posting about.

We're hiring for a Café Shift Leader at College Lake! Support wildlife & deliver great customer service in our lively visitor centre café. Apply now: buff.ly/WcKMOVY

📣 Help us speak up for nature by spreading the word on social media! Download our social media graphics and suggested text to encourage your friends and followers to speak up against the Nuclear Regulatory Review which could have catastrophic consequences for struggling species: buff.ly/Jg14jlg

🍄 With its glossy, golden-orange caps, the velvet shank is quite commonly seen growing in clusters on stumps of decaying hard wood. It is also known as the 'Winter Mushroom' as it is one of the few mushrooms that can be seen throughout the winter months. 👉 More January highlights: buff.ly/7o31iNR

We’re hiring: Head of Fundraising Lead fundraising across philanthropy, trusts, grants & partnerships to help nature recover — in a culture that values wellbeing, collaboration & balance. Join a supportive leadership team that’s committed to sustainable growth. Apply now: buff.ly/MfHzHaL

🎉 Great news for chalk streams! @buckscouncil.bsky.social has unanimously passed a cross-party motion to protect Buckinghamshire’s chalk streams. www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDSn...

🐦 Kick off 2026 with a feel-good boost, knowing you’re helping nature thrive!  For as little as £2.25 a month, you can join the Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust and become a real local nature hero. 👉 Join us today: bbowt.org.uk/join-us 📸 Alexander Mustard/2020VISION

⚠️ Yesterday the Government released a National Security Assessment which confirms what we've known for a while - continued nature loss is a global threat and would have dire consequences for all of us. 🧵 (1/7)