Winners of the 2006 Living Wetlands Award
Hundreds of people enjoyed the LOHP Summer Fayre on the Frith on 29th June, celebrating the completion of our Heritage Lottery Fund 'Your Heritage' grant. Visitors were entertained by demonstrations of working sheep dogs, bird ringing and birds of prey, live music and Morris dancing, local food and crafts.
The Emperors of Hinderclay Fen The rich variety of wildlife at Hinderclay Fen is again in evidence this year with the discovery of one of the UK's most spectacular moths, the Emperor. The males fly during the daytime, searching for the nocturnal females. The equally spectacular caterpillars feed on heather (Calluna vulgaris) which thrives on the sandy heathland above the fen.
Groundworks near completion at Bleyswycks Bank and Parkers Piece, with the construction of culverts to allow access over the ditches, and grinding-out of the stumps of the plantation trees felled in February. The next phase of work will involve both fencing the site to allow grazing, and removing degraded peat to expose a surface, closer to the water table and more suitable for the re-establishment of fen plants. This work will start after the end of the bird breeding season. Public access routes will be openned in 2010, once major restoration operations are completed.
£40,900 Biffaward for restoration project: the LOHP is delighted to announce that Biffaward have given a substantial grant towards the restoration of Parkers Piece and Bleyswycks Bank over the next two years. Biffaward is one of the major the Landfill Communities Fund schemes: it awards grants to community and environmental projects using funds raised from landfill tax credits (the tax paid by landfill site operators)donated by Biffa Waste Services. Click here to keep up-to-date with the restoration work.
Lambs return for Easter - or is it Christmas? The welcome return of lambs to the Frith, along with the song of the first chiffchaffs, usually heralds spring in the Little Ouse headwaters... but this Easter saw them playing in the snow. The cows have also returned to the Lows for the 'summer'. As well as being a familiar and much-loved element in the landscape, the grazing stock on both of these sites play a vital role in restoring swards with a richer mix of flowers, grasses and the many invertebrates that they support.
The Birth of a Fen: In mid-February the first step was taken in an exciting programme to re-create fenland on Bleyswycks Bank, one the LOHP's two newly purchased landholdings. Clearance of the plantation woodland from the site will be completed before the bird breeding season: later in the summer the area will be fenced for grazing, and part of the surface will be lowered to re-create a wetter and less enriched substrate suitable for the establishiment of many of the species for which the Little Ouse and Waveney valley fens are internationally famous. Public access to the site will be opened in 2009 once the major restoration work is completed.
Winter Warmer Walk: 26 people and a record number of beautifully behaved dogs shook off the Christmas pounds and enjoyed the winter landscape and wildlife of the Little Ouse Fens on our traditional annual walk. For other events and ways to improve your fitness while enjoying this beautiful valley in 2008, click here and here!
The LOHP is delighted to announce that we have just completed the purchase two important pieces of land adjacent to the Little Ouse River in Thelnetham. The parcels of land will be named “Parker’s Piece” and “Bleyswyck’s Bank”, after the previous owners who were keen to see their land maintained for nature conservation and for the enjoyment of current and future generations of local people and visitors.
The purchase has been made possible by a major contribution from the Tubney Charitable Trust
together with generous donations from the DJ Getty Jr Charitable Trust, St Edmundsbury Borough Council, the Alan Evans Memorial Trust and the Garfield Weston Foundation. Restoration of this neglected land to its former glory as species-rich fen, together with creating good public access, will cost an estimated £120,000. We have already made a start on fundraising for this important work with grants from the Tubney Charitable Trust, the national charity Plantlife, the Kirby Laing Foundation, the Linley Shaw Foundation and the Fitzmaurice Charitable Trust: applications have also been made to other grant-giving bodies to meet these costs.
More information on this project will be appearing on the web-site in the near future.
Hunt for local treasures: all revealed! For the intrepid hunters who cycled, walked or drove round the headwaters in search of local treasures in glorious sunshine on Bank Holiday Sunday, all is now revealed: click here to download the questions and answers:
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Cycling or driving route
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Driving: Mr & Mrs Parker, Redgrave
Cycling: The Tooth family, South Lopham
Walking: Julia Stansfield & Jeremy Bloomfield + Ben
The LOHP is very grateful to The White Horse at Thelnetham, the Cross Keys at Redgrave, the White Horse at South Lopham and Gressingham Foods Ltd of Redgrave for donating the prizes.
Kings of the Little Ouse:
Our bird ringing team at Hinderclay Fen have ringed a bumper crop of kingfishers this year: nine birds by the end of August, including three juveniles. They are best seen from the bridge between Blo'Norton and Thelnetham Fens - usually as a flash of brilliant blue passing along the river at high speed. If you are lucky, you may spot one fishing from a low branch of an alder or willow overhanging the water.
Hundreds of new homes
for bats are appearing on trees in the Headwaters, thanks to donations to our Riverlink Appeal, the generosity of the suppliers, and the invaluable help of local bat experts Arthur Rivett and Nick Woods. The boxes should provide roosting sites for several of the bats species recorded in the valley, which include local and national rarities. They are made of Woodcrete, a concrete and sawdust mixture that should keep them safe from attack by woodpeckers - watch this space for reports on their popularity!
Four-spotted and broad-bodied chasers
were amongst the dragonfly species spotted on Betty's Fen on the LOHP's June Dragonfly walk. Although the damp weather limited the number of species on the wing, it helped everyone obtain excellent views of these magnificant insects sitting on the vegetation, waiting for the sun to come out again. Our thanks to local naturalist Arthur Rivett for his expert guidance. Betty's Fen boasts over 15 species of dragonflies - on sunny days, many of can be seen easily from the raised walkway.
Mud meets muscle:
our May work party saw a muddy but happy band of volunteers digging a new pond on Blo'Norton Fen. Our increasingly dry summers mean that water for aquatic plants and animals is in increasingly short supply - new ponds are needed to ensure that standing water remains throughout the summer. Look out for it, and for dragonflies that will colonise it in the coming weeks, as you walk along the river-edge board walk.
Re-discoveries and new discoveries at Hinderclay Fen this year underline the importance of this of this lovely site and the success of the LOHP's management work. Recording by the eminent naturalists of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' Society, together with computerisation of our growing inventory of past records, is helping to build up a more complete picture of the fen's changing wildlife. Highlights have included the re-discovery of green haristreaks and the fist appearance of hairy dragonflies!
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Thistle-pickers picnic!
In temperatures more like July than April, volunteers embarked on our third annual thistle-dig on the Frith. Thistles can become a real pest in pastures and hand-digging is the most environmentally friendly way of controlling them whilst getting a superb sun-tan! Join us for the May work pary when will be getting very muddy instead, digging a new pond on Blo'Norton Fen.
Record numbers of volunteers
enjoyed the spring sunshine at our March workparty on Hinderclay Fen. They also completed a fantastic amount of management work, helping to improve the wildlife habitat on this beautiful and varied site. They were rewarded at the end of the morning when a barn owl flew out from a tree and across the fen. Click here for more information on LOHP workparies. 
New life for old pond:
the Frith field pond, infilled in the 1960s and re-excavated last autumn (see below), is already teaming with life! After a bone-dry start, the pond filled during this winter and to our amazement has alreay been colonised by aquatic plants from dormant seeds in the old pond bed. A crowd of aptly-named whirlygig beetles are also a delightful feature of our lastest patch of water.Click here for more information on the Frith. 
Bash and mash
- or was it mud and spud? Hinderclay Fen's open work party (scrub bashing!)on 13th February was followed by a very successful winter picnic lunch of baked potatoes and beans, cooked in the embers of the morning's fire. The Fen wardens led a post-lunch guided walk for regulars and new visitors to see all of the exciting restoration work that has been done on this lovely site in the last few years. Click here for more information on the fen. 
Bumper year for moths on Hinderclay Fen Suffolk Moth Group's nocturnal visits to Hinderclay Fen last summer revealed a rich moth fauna. The 249 species recorded included Poplar Lutestring, Lobster Moth, Reed Dagger, Double Lobed, Mere Wainscot, Silky Wainscot, Cream-bordered Green Pea, Pinion-streaked Snout and Blackneck, all of which have very localised distributions.
Walking into 2007
Thirty people (and a few dogs) enjoyed one of the few dry mornings of the Christmas break on the LOHP's now traditional walk to shake off the Christmas excess and enjoy the quiet lanes and footpaths of the valley. This year's pace was brisk making the walk successful on both counts! Watch this site for summer walks and events if you would like to see more of the valley and its wonderful wildlife. 
Mulled wine, mince pies ...and more of Blo'Norton Fen restored to wetland. Volunteers at our December work party enjoyed beautiful sunshine and seasonal refreshments while removing recent scrub from the west end of this internationally important fen. Saw Sedge, one of the most important features of this site, still survives below the some of the scrub that invaded the fen when it dried out in the second half of the last century but it is being lost as the shade increases. Join us at our January work party to complete this important task. 
Mystery of the Waveney/Little Ouse valley solved...
LOHP members and friends were privileged to hear Professor Richard West FRS, explaining his exciting new theory about the formation of our unique valley and its fens at our AGM in December. His theory, based on his own extensive field work, explains, for the first time, the mystery of why the sources of the Little Ouse and Waveney arise on either side of a flat field - the Frith - in a through valley at the height of only 25m (75') above sea level. For those of you unable to join us for his talk, we will be producing a printed version of his lecture in the new year. Watch this website for more information.
The LOHP is Spring Watching! We are grateful to Andrew Woodger of BBC Radio Suffolk for inviting us to make a series of Video Nation Springwatch films for the BBC 'Where I Live' website for Suffolk. The first of these, made in spring 2006, at the end of a long bleak winter, can be viewed by clicking here, the second, about bird ringing in the valley, can be viewed here, the third, about restoration of the Frith can be viewed here and the final film, made at a work party on Blo'Norton Fen, can be viewed here.
Restoration of the Frith gathered pace this autumn with new projects starting to return some of the lost features of the field.
A pond that was infilled in the 1960s but is visible on maps going back as far as 1833 has been re-excavated: sadly, the current low water table means that we will have to wait for it to re-fill but we hope that it will eventually provide a wetter area for snipe and other waders in winter and a home for dragonflies in at least some summers.
Heather seed, harvested from Knettishall Heath Country Park a little further down the valley, has been spread on an area of the field to see if we can start to restore the heathland that was lost when the field was bulldozed in the mid-1950s. We are very grateful to Suffolk County Coucil and their staff at Knettishall Heath and to Natural England (through the Countryside Stewardship Scheme) and our Riverlink Appeal funders for making this work possible. For more information on the Frith, click here.
Walking with bats At the LOHP's second successful bat walk 35 people enjoyed a seeing soprano pipistrels emerging between the door and the top of the gothic arch in the dusk at Thelnetham Church. Walking down to the valley's fens in the gathering darkness we were accompanied by constant bleeps from the bat detectors. The ultrasonic voices Soprano and Common Pipistrels were a constant feature but later analysis showed that we were also accompanied by brown long-eared, Serotine and Barbastelle bats. New funding through the Riverlink Appeal will allow us to make the fens even better habitat for these amazing animals: this will including the installation of bat boxes. Our thanks to local experts Arthur Rivett and Nick Woods and to other members of the Suffolk Bat Group for a brilliant evening.
Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists record recovery of the Blo'Norton Fens Some of the best naturalists in the county have been busy recording the recovery of the wildlife on the recently restored Betty's Fen and adjoinng Blo'Norton Fen this summer. Many typical and uncommon fen species have already re-appeared, including stoneworts and pondweeds in the new scrape, and scullcap and brookweed around its margins. One hundred beetle species have been recorded already and the list continues to grow. This beautiful eleplant hawk moth caterpillar was found on greater willowherb.
Blo'Norton opens its fens On Sunday 13th August forty local residents joined a series of guided walks around the village fens: Betty's Fen, Blo'Norton Fen, the Lows and Little Fen. For some this was a regular route, but for others it was a first introduction to the walks, wildlife and landscape available on their doorsteps. The LOHP has an open access policy: the Blo'Norton Fens are always open for walking and quite enjoyment of our unique valley.
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New kestrels for the valley Broods of kestrels on the Frith and the Lows were ringed before they fledged from our new boxes in mid-June - you can see the action on our Video Nation film! The rings will provide information on the life-span and dispersal of the birds if they are recovered in the future. Changes in the management of the valley's grasslands and fens are providing more suitable habitat for kestrels and we look forward to our new youngsters gracing the skies in the coming months.
Housing boom at LOHP sites Demand for the new nest boxes put up on the LOHP sites this spring has been very high, with almost all now occupied by young families. New residents include two families of kestrels and one of tawny owls, for which the LOHP sites provide excellent hunting grounds. Generous donations to the Riverlink Appeal enabled us to buy the new boxes, most of which are made from recycled car seats (for supplier see our Links page)and are both more durable and vandal-proof (greater spotted woodpeckers and grey squirrels the chief culprits) than wooden ones. 
Norfolk and Suffolk united!On 27th April the new footbridge across the Little Ouse, uniting Blo'Norton Fen in Norfolk and Thelnetham Fen in Suffolk, was officially opened by Cllr John Baskerville, Chair of Norfolk County Council, and Cllr Jeremy Clover, Chair of Suffolk County Council. The event was attended by local people, representatives of the local councils, visitors from our partner 'TEN' projects in the Netherlands and Germany, five species of butterflies and a cuckoo, all making the best of a perfect spring day. Funding for the bridge came from the European Union through the TEN project: project leader Ben van Os said that it was a 'truly European bridge', linking not only Norfolk and Suffolk, but also all of the countries who had taken part in the project.
The bridge was built by Norfolk County Council's Engineers and arrived in spectacular manner by helicopter last November.
New boardwalk for Blo'Norton Fen To make the going easier for walkers, and to protect the fen vegetation on the wet ground along the paths, this winter has seen the construction of new boardwalk at Blo'Norton Fen and the protection of other sections of path with a tough 'Netlon' mesh. The boardwalk is made from recycled plastic which lasts much longer than wood and gives a non-slip surface. The mesh can be a bit slippery but is rapidly 'disappearing' as the vegetation grows up through it. The new path across Betty's Fen has also been stablised with mesh and has been open for public use since the beginning of May.
Art and information All of the LOHP sites now have interpretive pannels, designed by Norfolk student Erica Phillips, with information about history, management and wildlife. They are displayed on oak trunks sculpted by local tree sculptors Ben Platts-Mills, Andy Manning and Ray Brooks. 
LOHP wins Living Wetland Award It was announced at the World Wetlands Day Conference in London on 1st February that the LOHP had been chosen as the winner of the CIWEM/RSPB Living Wetlands Award 2006. This national award recognises multi-functional projects that demonstrate the sustainable use of wetland habitats. The award was presented at the CIWEM (Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management) Annual Dinner in April.
This is a major achievement for our small, voluntary project and we would like to thank all our volunteers and the funding organisations who have contributed to this success.
In addition to receiving the award, the LOHP is featured as a "best practice" case study on a CD-ROM produced to launch "A 50-year vision for wetlands", an initiative sponsored jointly by the RSPB, English Nature and the Environment Agency.
'Quiet Lanes' initiative reaches the headwaters After a successful pilot scheme in North Norfolk, this County Council designation of lanes in South Norfolk is intended to promote quiet enjoyment of our rural lanes.
