Tarras Valley Nature Reserve

16/06/2026

What a stunning photo of a Common Blue Damsel Fly taken by local photographer Martin England at our Lower Tarras wetland ponds. We love how its captured the early morning dew drops!

We have had so much wildlife spotted on the ponds recently including dippers, kingfisher, grey wagtails, otters, dragonflies, heron, swallows, frogs, toads and house martins. The wildflower seeds we have scattered have also started to bloom 🌸 providing lots of pollinator food! 🐝🦋

We’ve set up some camera traps along there to see what else we might have visiting that hasn’t been spotted yet! We’ll update on what we find 👀

10/06/2026

Take a seat!

Tarras Valley Nature Reserve have been working with Langholm Walks and multiple donors including Rotary International to place 6 new benches across the reserve.

The benches are located along the Hallpath to Longwood loop along the pylon line and back along into the ancient woodlands. There are now some nice rest spots along the steep hill climb out of Hallpath to take in the views over the town. Two older broken benches in Longwood have also been replaced with new ones overlooking our beautiful ancient oak trees.

The others are located on the Lower Tarras 'new figure of 8' track through the new regenerating native woodlands and looking over the new ponds.

As always its been a big team effort. A huge thanks to local builders Kevan and Ruairi Hotson who assembled the benches, Cheesy and Kenneth from Simon Richardson Contracting who installed the benches on site, to Gavin Graham, Mike Tinker and Charlie Graham who organised fitting the brass plaques and all the sponsors of the benches!

If you have any suggestions for future bench locations on Tarras Valley please do get in touch with us and we'll add them to a list of locations for when there are further funds available.

08/06/2026

100 hours of Volunteering!

We were delighted to see our young volunteer Emily Ferguson, 16 from Canonbie hit her 100 hour volunteering target and achieved the Saltire Award. The Saltire Awards are the Scottish Government's way of celebrating, recognising and rewarding the commitment, contribution and achievements of young volunteers in Scotland.

Emily has been volunteering weekly for over a year at Tarras Valley initially getting involved with weekly practical volunteering sessions like tree planting and then has honed her interest in helping with schools sessions and outdoor classroom activities with local children as well as helping with wildlife surveys. She also has attended the recent Holywood Trust young people's awards in Dumfries which was recognising the work and efforts of young people across the region.

Emily has been a real asset to the team and we've really enjoyed seeing her grow in confidence over the past year while she's been volunteering with us. She has been really dedicated and shown such enthusiasm showing up in all weathers to get stuck in with whatever has needed doing! It's been lovely to have a young volunteer as part of the team and it's great to see Emily get an award like this to recognise all her hard work.

Emily said 'the opportunity to volunteer at Tarras has been the best , it’s just like one big family and I feel like I just fit in, I love wildlife and nature and the chance to be part of the full restoration project over the reserve means a lot to me to be able to see the growth of Tarras over the years to come, I’ll be aiming to add on as many hours as I can to achieve my next certificate'.

A huge well done Emily!

05/06/2026

👷‍♀️Cronksbank Cottage refurbishment starts!! 👷‍♀️

Its been a long time since we undertook the first Housing needs and demand survey which was the start of the journey to refurbishing Cronksbank Cottage as an affordable, energy efficient local residential property – but we are finally there and have officially started with the building works!

The cottage was part of the community buyout in 2021 from Buccleuch and whilst the property had been fully gutted before the purchase, it did need full refurbishment. We have been working with JD Gilbert Architects to look at sustainable construction techniques to help ensure the property will be as energy efficient as possible to minimise running costs for any future tenant as well as helping to reduce environmental impact.

We would like to thank the Scottish Governments Rural Housing Fund, South of Scotland Enterprise and Crossdykes Community Benefit fund for the funds they have offered to support the project which have been in addition to our own funds to make this all possible.

We are really pleased that the contract for the refurbishment is being undertaken by local contractors Roger and Geoff Maxwell who bring a great deal of experience to the project.

The works should be complete in Autumn and we hope to see property occupied before Christmas – we are still working on the allocation process for the property, as you can imagine we have had lots of interest already! We will be advertising for any interested parties in due course.

We are aiming to have a drop in session soon to explain the works we are doing to improve energy efficiency so watch this space for the date.

29/05/2026

26/05/2026

👷Pond upgrades in progress 👷‍♀️

One of the ponds that was installed at Hallpath a few years ago had recently become a bit silted up and had sprung a leak so it hadn’t been holding very much water.

Thanks to local contractor Kenneth Dickson it has had a much needed upgrade, leaks are fixed and some of the silt removed to help improve the pond habitat. It’s still settling but we hope it will be able to support lots more wetland wildlife now! 🐸

Next stage is to plant some marginal pond plants like Water Mint and Yellow Flag Iris and install some rocky shores around it and we’d love your help! 🌱

We’ll be holding a volunteering session at Hallpath on:

🗓️ Saturday 13th June 10-2pm which is open for anyone to come and join!

15/05/2026

We’ve really enjoyed seeing the photos people have captured in the past few weeks while out and about on the reserve.

Please do keep sharing them with us and tagging us! 👀

In order of appearance:

📷 Curlew - Shug Ferguson
📷 Hen Harrier - Alistair Moulstone
📷 Cuckoo - Shug Ferguson
📷 Sparrowhark - Shug Ferguson
📷 Stonechat - Rob Mansbridge
📷 Kestrel - Rob Mansbridge

12/05/2026

A beautiful green-veined white butterfly enjoying the Bluebells today 🦋

11/05/2026

We were delighted to welcome Forestry Masters course back to Tarras Valley for their 5th annual visit to us last week!

Their visit was slightly later in the year than usual and so the group got to see Hallpath and Longwood in all its spring glory!

We really do never get tired of seeing people get a glimpse of the beautiful ancient and veteran Oaks for the first time! 🌳🪾