An unlikely combination...

Quite an exciting day for me! Just after Christmas I'd been persuaded to enter five of my photographs into the Wildlife Trust's annual photographic competition. I didn't think I stood much chance of a prize, as the Trust has many excellent photographers distributed over the counties of Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire. In the middle of last week I was notified that my image of a sallow kitten moth, sitting on a lichen covered background, had won first prize. Today Chris and I went to the Ecology Groups conference where I was presented with a really nice pair of binoculars by the Trust's president, Dame Barbara Young. I was also delighted that two of my other competition entries were used to illustrate the talk given on the Wildlife Forecast Photographers project.

Chris and I returned home in the middle of the afternoon, and on the spur of the moment we decided to go out to King's Dyke Nature Reserve. We nearly gave up half-way there as the light was grey, fading fast and there were flurries of fine snow. But Pete egged us on, and in the end we had a good time, and I was able to watch two marsh harrier with my new binoculars! We also saw a snipe flying towards the Nene Washes, the first I've seen for a while.

My image is a view across the newest part of the nature reserve, showing the chimneys of the King's Dyke brickworks in the background. You can also just see McCain's chip factory and two of the wind turbines that help to power it. There has been a tradition of brickmaking in the Peterborough area from at least the eighteenth century, but these were small yards operating seasonally and using the more superficial clays. From the 1880's onwards experimentation with the lower Oxford Clay allowed the mass-production of bricks on an industrial scale with the rapid formation of several companies all competing to exploit the new process. Indeed many houses in London and the south-east are built from 'fletton' bricks sourced form either Peterborough or Bedford. Most of these companies were acquired by the London Brick Co Ltd before the end of the 1920's, and now Hanson owns the remaining two works at King's Dyke and Saxon pits.

When not infilled with domestic or industrial refuse, the abandoned brickworks offer a haven for wildlife. As a result, several have been notified as Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Indeed the ridge and furrow topography at Orton Pit supports such an important wildlife assemblage that it is notified as a Special Area of Conservation, showing that it is important in a European context. The King's Dyke reserve is a County Wildlife Site, and probably should be an SSSI. There is a significant population of great crested newts, several rare and threatened plant species are present and the reed bed shown in the image regularly supports two pairs of breeding marsh harrier as well as the occasional bittern. At the moment Hanson are funding sympathetic management of the reserve, and it is to be hoped that this will continue, despite the ongoing recession.