Welcome to the official page of RSPB The Lodge Nature Reserve and Gardens, as well as for Fowlmere Nature Reserve! The Lodge
Whether you are after a family adventure or a solitary meander, The Lodge is the perfect day out for all; exploring ancient sea-beds, walking over an iron-age fort, listening out for the drumming of woodpeckers and watching the Greylag Geese laze about in the Gardens. The Lodge boasts woodland, heath and acid grassland that cover an area of some 220 hectares, and now form the largest stretch of heathland in Bedfordshire. Between December and January, our farmland areas come alive with hundreds of hungry finches among the wildbird crops. Winter thrushes feed on the acid grassland from January - March, and you can see woodland snowdrops, daffodils, then bluebells. The gardens are most colourful from May, with flowering of the rhododendrom / Azalea collection and start of the roses. Summer sees breeding and hunting hobbies over the heath, and the heather flowering in August. In a warm damp autumn you can experience some of the 600 species of fungi. Summer has dragonflies and butterflies around the ponds and heath with hobbies hunting the dragonflies. Newly-fledged birds - blue and great t**s in the woodland and green woodpeckers on the heathland. Common lizards bask with their young on dead logs. August is a great time to see the heather turn purple. Fowlmere
Fowlmere Nature Reserve is a well-loved wildlife oasis set within farmland. Its former water-cress beds are now reedbed, fen, chalk grassland and scrub, water rail and barn owl and winter roosts of reed bunting. Bearded t**s and bitterns are found occasionally in winter, and otters and water voles are regularly seen. The reserve holds a small but fine example of a chalk stream, one of the UK’s rarest habitats. In spring and summer, you can hear a wide variety of warblers singing, while little grebes and lapwings can be seen on the mere. Orchids flower in the meadows and barn owl chicks can be seen peeping from specially provided nest boxes. Large flocks of winter thrushes forage on the berry bushes in some years. It's possible to see water voles and occasionally otters! Autumn and winter are good times to see flocks of finches, buntings, thrushes and starlings roosting or feeding in the scrub, and catch a glimpse of a kingfisher and occasionally bittern or bearded tit. Brown trout breed in the chalk stream (River Shep).
