Turning coal faces into wild spaces

Biodiversity at Fairburn Tips has made a joyously swift comeback. On some of the tips, heather is spreading naturally, creating a lowland heath habitat – it’s a wonderful environment for bees and butterflies, including Essex Skippers and Common Blues.

Black garden ants are building raised anthills on the tips. These ants are common all over Britain but they usually create their nests underground. As an ex-mining site, the soil and substrate clearly don’t suit underground living, so they’re building up instead.

Here and there on the anthills you can see evidence of green woodpeckers breaking in to feed on the ants. Woodpeckers also use a natural fungicide given off by the ants for a clever bit of self-care, called anting – they roll around in the ants or pick them up and rub them on their feathers.

In the scrubland, silver birch is strategically managed to attract willow tits, a species that has declined 94% across the UK since the 1970s but thrives and breeds at Fairburn Ings.

On the lake, there are several natural islands where birds nest and breed. Unfortunately, climate change is leading to more high intensity rainfall, spiking the water levels and washing away those nests.

In order to help common terns and other birds nest without fear of flooding, a new artificial pontoon has been installed, which will rise and fall with the water level.

Around the lake, reed beds are carefully maintained to encourage the booming bitterns, cormorants, egrets and herons. It’s been a record-breaking year for spoonbills at Fairburn, with seven successful nests and 14 thriving ‘teaspoons’ as the young birds are affectionately called.

The successes at Fairburn Tips show that turning back the clock and giving land back to nature really does work.

Over the next few years, there are plans to reconstruct some of the wetland areas, creating new pools and bodies of water.

There’s also improvement work to be done on the heronry and the team there are hoping to install another pontoon on the lake, so more tern chicks can survive the intensive spring rainfalls.

Since the Fairburn Tips purchase, Ecotalk + RSPB customers have helped to buy an extension to the Berney Marshes Nature Reserve – a vital home for migratory waterfowl and breeding waders in Norfolk.

Right now, we’re raising funds to secure Horse Common, a vital extension to the Franchises Lodge Reserve in the New Forest, as well as Wast Neaps on the Island of Yell, Shetland, home to skuas, merlin, snipe and otters.

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