About the reserve

With meadow flowers like devil's-bit scabious and black knapweed, this is a good place to see butterflies. Dozens of ringlet, meadow brown and dark green fritillary can be seen fluttering about in high summer, with the speckled wood and orange-tip making an appearance in late summer.

The coppiced alder make excellent conditions for a number of warblers like the willow warbler, blackcap and chiffchaff.  The denser areas provide shelter for marsh tit and the increasingly scarce willow tit.  There is a no dogs rule here to help the ground nesting birds survive. 

Heath spotted and marsh orchids thrive in the wet fen meadow amongst the meadowsweet, cuckoo flower, ragged robin and opposite-leaved golden saxifrage.

Fantastic waxcap fungi appear in the autumn, with around twenty different ones recorded here.  Look out for the pink meadow waxcap fungus with it's dusty pink umbrella style in the shorter grass.