Every year, our team go to Dronfield Nature Reserve, near Kimberley in the Northern Cape, South Africa to take part in the annual week of fieldwork ringing and tagging African White-backed Vulture chicks. This year we sent our Africa Project Officer, André Botha, along with Angus Anthony, former manager of Dronfield Nature Reserve, who we have been working with for a number of years. Here is André’s fascinating account of his trip:

Here you can read more about Nature’s a Hoot, and access resources, photos and extra insights from our fourth episode, Wildlife and Well-being with special guest environmental psychology lecturer Dr Kayleigh Wyles from Surrey University.

April 2020 marked the 25th anniversary of the official opening of Reg’s Wildflower Meadow, a special place of great value and importance to our team, our visitors and also our local environment. We’ve caught up with Trust Founder and Life President, Ashley Smith, to find out more about the history of this special place:

Here you can read more about Nature’s a Hoot, and access resources, photos and extra insights from our third episode The Future of Nature. In this episode we catch up with inspiring young conservationist Indy Greene, and Hannah and Tom talk about Extinction: the Facts, the recent BBC documentary featuring well-loved naturalist David Attenborough.

We’re often asked about the different types of equipment that we use with our birds at the Trust. Mike Riley from our Bird Team makes a lot of these items and has shared with us here an insight to the different items.

During lockdown, we were very disappointed to have to temporarily suspend some of our conservation and research activities. Fortunately, we have since been able to resume most of them. This time, however, did allow us to focus our efforts on projects we usually don’t have time to get to. For Dr Matt Stevens, our UK Conservation Biologist, this included developing a new app to aid the survey work he carries out with the help of a loyal band of volunteers. This app allows volunteers to record their research in a more streamlined way and this feeds, in real time, to […]

Plan your next visit to the Hawk Conservancy Trust for this autumn and make the most of all we have to offer. Book your visit now!

Saturday 5 September is International Vulture Awareness Day (IVAD). At the Hawk Conservancy Trust, we love vultures, and we work every day to raise awareness and educate the public about the plight of these wonderful birds and the vital conservation and research work we do to help vulture populations in the wild. Our International Vulture Programme (IVP) has projects in southern and East Africa and south Asia, and we are extremely grateful to our IVP partners who help to fund this programme.

Read more about Nature’s a Hoot, and access resources, photos and insights from our second episode, ‘British Owls’. This episode delves into the magical world of owls; Tom and Hannah reminisce about the owls they have seen in the wild and share their tips on spotting owls where you live.

We’re ecstatic to welcome to our team a five month old Bald Eagle who we have named Wallace. Our naming theme for this year is naturalists so he’s been named after Alfred Russell Wallace, the British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, biologist and illustrator. We’ve teamed him up for training with Simon Christer from our Bird Team and we’ll keep you up to date with his progress over the next few months.