Environment

Oxwick farm, is an exciting brownfield site surrounded by both pastoral land and nature reserves, including Lower woods, a SSSI and the largest ancient woodland in the south-west. We hope to contribute to improving biodiversity on our small patch of land, reducing the ‘edge effect’ and providing resources for local wildlife.

Within our buildings, We have a satellite roost of lesser horseshoe bats, as well as common pipistrelles regularly foraging closeby. We have a pair of swallows return every year to the derelict side of main building, while also have house martins trialing our outer barn. It’s fairly difficult to miss the Jackdaw rookery looming in the coach house, but do look out for for our other corvid visitors…and eggs going missing in the campsite.

This year, we had 3 successful broods of blue tits living in the walls across all out stone buildings. We have also counted 7 robin territories across the entire site; look out for fights erupting when one gets a little too close. At night, listen out for the screech of the barn owl, he lives nearby and loves searching for rodents in both the rewilding site and festival fields. We have also had sightings of a stoats, foxes, deer and badgers which you can see on our camera trap footage below.

The ‘rewilding site’ is the 3 fields closest to the main Wickwar Road, which have been left fallow for almost 4 years. Working with FWAG , we took part in the Great Crested Newt district licensing scheme which means that we have 2 small ponds in the rewilding site. eDNA results, carried out by the EA, confirmed that we have a good population of Great Crested Newts using our ponds, although our regular heron visitor is certainly reaping some benefits. While we are keen to develop this further to provide quality habitat, we are looking for funding for fencing and tree planting to enable this.

We are keen to get involved in more schemes and projects to improve biodiversity in the area and are open to suggestions on how to best do this. If you would like to help, do get in touch: clare.pitt98@gmail.com.

Wickwar has it’s only environmental action group. You can find out more via their facebook group.