The quarterly newsletter from Pamber Forest Nature Reserve

These dazzling wetland hunters are so captivating – here’s how to find them through summer, explains our guide, Trust Ecologist Tom Selby.

When wildflowers are in full bloom and butterflies are on the wing, our summer days are awash with spectacularly vibrant colours. But amongst the dazzle, the chalkhill blue (Polyommatus coridon)…

The thick-legged flower beetle (Oedemera nobilis), also known as the swollen-thighed beetle, is one of the county’s most striking insects.

As the light begins to fade on warm spring evenings, a remarkable migrant returns from Africa to woodlands and heath. The nightjar, a master of camouflage and one of Britain’s most intriguing…

Buzzing meadows and humming heathlands come alive in summer with the sounds of grasshoppers and crickets. These tiny insects form a part of the season’s soundtrack, filling warm days with their…

As spring sunshine warms our gardens and woodlands, one of the earliest and most energetic pollinators to appear is the tree bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum). With its distinctive ginger brown thorax,…

Among the many butterflies that grace our countryside each spring and summer, few are as instantly recognisable, or as dearly loved, as the striking peacock butterfly (Aglais io).

The call of the cuckoo ‘cuck-oo, cuck-oo’ is one of the most evocative sounds of spring, carrying over open countryside, reedbeds and edges of woodland. Males are the first to return and they…

Few sounds define the English countryside as powerfully as the song of the nightingale. Arriving in southern Britain from West Africa each spring, this small, unassuming migratory bird transforms…