National Trust Sherborne Park Estate

Springwatch has chosen the Sherborne Park Estate as its home for the next year as it wanted to represent the heartland of the UK, and its wildlife.

Published: 23 May 2017

Sherborne is not only situated right in the heart of the country, but it also boasts a fantastic variety of habitats and wildlife that represent the sort of animals and environments accessible to most people in the UK.

The estate has a good mix of woodland habitats, providing excellent nesting opportunities for woodland birds such as tits, finches and woodpeckers, as well as raptors such as buzzards and sparrowhawks. Meanwhile many mammals also use the woodland for cover, from the dormice in the treetops to badgers and foxes on the ground.

The historic open parkland, with its beautiful mature oaks provides excellent hunting territory for barn owls and kestrels, and the two waterways that criss-cross the estate, the Windrush Rover and the Sherborne Brook, are rich in fish life, waterfowl and mammals such as otters and water voles.

The estate is a working one, with five tenant farms providing a huge variety of habitats for farmland specialists such as hares, skylark and yellowhammer, as well as wildflower meadows full of colour and invertebrate life.

In the middle of the estate is the village of Sherborne, home to swallows and house martins, garden birds such as robins and blackbirds, and with traditional Cotswold walls providing cover for weasels and stoats, and even colonies of lesser horseshoe bats.

The area also includes an 18th-century water meadow, perfect for insects such as dragonflies and damselflies, and a disused airbase, active during the Second World War but now used for arable crops and a favourite hangout for the red-listed corn bunting.

Planned live wildlife highlights at Sherborne

  • Nest Boxes: As ever the Springwatch nest boxes will provide a daily soap opera, with new surprises turning up every year - from attacks by stoats and snakes to blue tit parents bringing up great tit chicks.
  • Barn Owls: Remote cameras installed months ago will hopefully bring us live images of a pair of breeding barn owls as they work tirelessly to rear their chicks.
  • River Cam: With good signs of otters and water voles along the rivers on the state, cameras placed by the water will hope to reveal their nighttime antics.
  • Swallows: A Springwatch viewers’ favourite; the shallow cup of a swallow’s nest always bring high-drama and moments to remember.
  • Buzzards: With several pairs nesting on the Sherborne estate, a camera high up at buzzard-eye level will show the incredible resourcefulness of these well-known British raptor.
  • Badgers and Foxes: Sherborne has many active badgers setts and fox earths - and with the help of scientists Springwatch hopes to follow their fortunes closer than ever before with special GPS tracking collars.

Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan will be based at Sherborne for the duration of Springwatch, with regular live reports from Gillian Burke who will also be live with Martin Hughes-Games during the three weeks.