Farewell to Sherborne

We’ve spent the past year as guests of the National Trust at their Sherborne Park Estate in Gloucestershire. Springwatch series editor Rose Edwards looks back on this series and an amazing year.

I’m sitting watching the rehearsal for our penultimate 2018 Springwatch show, and thinking – where does the time go?

We’ve spent the past year as guests of the National Trust at their Sherborne Park Estate in Gloucestershire and we couldn’t have been made more welcome.

It started as a hypothetical question. Could we spend 12 months in the same place, following the local wildlife across the year? Oh - and could that location be in the heart of the UK countryside to show everyone that there is wildlife right on the doorstep if you take a little time to look for it.

The idea became a reality when we found Sherborne and now 12 months later we can look back and say we have been treated to a wealth of wonderful wildlife.

Last year – the kestrel chicks in the church tower, the buzzard, barn owls, and kites brought their own magic to each episode. As a stoat mother grabbed rabbits and jackdaws to feed her kits – so she in turn was mobbed, losing her lunch to the buzzards. Throughout autumn the lesser horseshoes enchanted us, whilst in winter the badgers took centre stage and by the end of January we had our own band a Sherborne buzzard of musical mustelids – Marc Almond, Kate Bush and David Bowie.

Spring came round again and offered a very different cast of characters to those we celebrated a year ago. It was the turn of the farmland birds – the yellowhammers, yellow wagtails, lapwing, and skylark. Despite their threat of constant predation the sight of our yellow wagtail’s fledging is something I’ll not forget in a hurry. And so too our first ever mandarin duck nest. Watching a host of tiny ducklings fling themselves from a treetop nest, hell bent on following their patient mother back to the water made me realise just how incredible our wildlife is.

And so it is goodbye and thank you to Sherborne, to the National Trust and the generosity of the farmers here who have shared their fields for so long. We’re off on another wildlife adventure – new places to find, new stories to tell. BUT we go with very fond memories of our year in the country.