Sunday at Bill's Mother's: 21st June 2026
Our Nature Recovery Strategy is here, at last! Diet planning with finches. Sheffielders count more nature than Manchester. And more out there news.
Morning. We finally have a plan for nature recovery. The long-awaited South Yorkshire Local Nature Recovery Strategy landed on Friday, and we have a very early look at how we should expect our county to rewild itself in coming years.
We also see nature recovery in action, alongside Elesha Searles of Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust who helped Sheffield beat Manchester (and Nottingham) in the first ever Sheffield City Nature Challenge this spring.
We have our usual Out There News section, and some thoughts from reader John le Corney on how adopting the RSPB’s new garden bird diet plan will save you money, and probably avoid morning Sparrowhawk horror shows.
And: our friends at the Sheffield Tribune are celebrating today, after reaching their crazily ambitious target for new subscribers. (You can still join in their pay what you like for two months offer here).
We’re fairly happy too, as we’ve almost reached 90% of our target of 380 full paying supporters of our social enterprise magazine.
Soon, we hope, we’ll be able to bring in new writers, and get going on our new Commoner’s Muck section for the wonderful volunteers who look after our wild spaces.
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Nature Recovery Strategy (Finally) Arrives
Two winters ago, I chatted to ecologist Angus Hunter about the South Yorkshire Nature Recovery Strategy, which he’d help steer for the Sheffield area. It was desperately needed, he said, because nature was in crisis here - and everywhere else, he added.
The strategy would guide South Yorkshire’s planners and decision makers towards making at least 30% of the county ‘good for nature’ by 2030. He hoped it would be out for consultation soon, he said, because we really need it to get to work.
Sadly, Angus passed away early in 2025, and many of us will be looking at the strategy with his sense of urgency in mind.
The South Yorkshire Nature Recovery Strategy was finally published on Friday, and the authors and enactors of the plan would very much like your opinions over the next six weeks of its public consultation period.
All local authorities have a legal requirement to produce nature recovery strategies, so cynics might question their commitment. But I’ve spoken to South Yorkshire Mayor Oliver Coppard about nature recovery, and reckon he genuinely believes his statement that our wild spaces are part of the identity of South Yorkshire, and, as he says in the strategy foreword: “Nature isn’t just central to our identity, it’s fundamental to our future.”
I’ll be chasing up the city council and South Yorkshire Combined Authority (SYMCA) to help us understand how the strategy will work, and covering the plans in more detail too.
A very brief glance suggests the county accepts the landscape scale ideas suggested by Sir John Lawton in his Making Space For Nature report to the coalition government of 2010. We need “more, bigger, better, and joined-up spaces for nature” as Lawton put it. It’s taken 16 years for those principles to be set out clearly for South Yorkshire.
Headline grabbing elements include plans to remove several weirs in city rivers, and create a bunch of new meadows and woodlands. And on the species list for priority attention are some surprises (to me), including Cranes, Goshawks and Nightingales, three species of Egret, the elusive Hen Harrier, and 🥁… the Red Squirrel.
And there are official reintroduction plans for the Hazel Dormouse, the Pine Marten and, of course, the Eurasian Beaver.
The big questions from early conversations with nature-minded citizens who’ve been waiting for this document for ages are: fine, but how will all this be paid for? And just as importantly, if we haven’t actually got enough money to make the wild spaces we already have 30% good for nature by 2030 (ancient woodlands, for example), how can we set our stall out to do even more? And if we don’t know if the funding will arrive, what is this wonderful strategy for?
I’ll try and find out the answers to these questions, of course. But for now, please take a look and let SYMCA know what you’d like to see out there in our wild and not yet so wild spaces before the deadline at the end of July.
I remember Angus’s parting shot when I spoke to him that winter long ago. What usually happens, he said, is that everyone works hard for years on these things, then they’re published with a fanfare, until they find their way to a back shelf of an office where they gather dust while nothing much continues to happen.
Let’s hope this time it’s different, he said, because time is pressing. 2030 is now less than four years away.
Seed Capital
Reader John le Corney has taken the RSPB’s summer bird feeder advice: avoid seed feeders and definitely abolish flat bird tables, the charity says, to try and stop the nation’s finches being painfully starved by mouth and throat infections caused by the parasite Trichomonas gallinae.
Greenfinches and Chaffinches are particularly at risk from the Trichomonosis disease, with declines of 62% and 37% respectively from 2011 to 2021. Organisations like the National Trust and Wildlife Trusts have joined the campaign and usually removed their seed feeders too.
There’s evidence that although some birds can increase their populations due to garden fast food takeaways, if there are plenty of insects and other natural food around in spring and summer, parent birds will happily feed their chicks the old fashioned way.
John’s photos show flocks of amazing rural bird species so bountiful his feeders also brought in hungry Sparrowhawks. (His photo of the result is too gory for a family publication). Here are his early thoughts of the new garden diet plan.
May 2026: Opening The Curtains In The Morning - by John le Corney
I’ve fed birds in tubular feeders in my rural Derbyshire garden for many years and contributed to Garden Birdwatch since 2009 - 60 Siskins, 30 Goldfinches, 20 Blue Tits and 20 Chaffinches are among my recent records, along with Nuthatch, Coal Tit, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Redpoll, Stock Dove and winter Reed Buntings and Bramblings seeking my sunflower hearts. (And even a stray Hawfinch).
Over the years I’ve read the literature on the value of garden feeding birds. The recent advice from BTO and RSPB persuaded me to cease feeding when my latest bag of sunflower hearts was exhausted early this May.
Wot, No Birds? - In a couple of days the birds departed my organic vegetable, flower and fruit tree garden. Blackbirds stay faithful, but only occasional singles of disappointed Siskin, Blue Tit and Chaffinch visit today. Even the pair of Robins, who I assumed owned my garden as their territory, have become irregular visitors.
Knock On Effects - The neighbourhood cats who hung around the feeders, hoping for an overconfident or young bird, have found better things to do. Meanwhile, a new family of mice have eaten two sowings of my pea seeds. And the local Sparrowhawk, an often successful visitor, will have to work harder for dinner.
The Good News - I’ve spent the cost of the bi-monthly sack of sunflower hearts on a pond liner, and my old pot sink is slowly filling up. I spend a fraction of the time filling in my weekly Garden Birdwatch records. And November will soon arrive and my feeders are cleaned and ready.
Leaner, healthier and fitter birds will be back.
More Out There News
Broken Loop - waterside access campaigners have waited long enough for our east end river and canal paths to be fixed. The Five Weirs Walk along the Don from Washford Bridge to East Coast Road has been closed for seven years, while a section of the canal towpath between Bacon and Cadman Bridges has been closed since last autumn, with no-reopening in sight.
There’ll be a public meeting about next steps to get the paths reopened on Weds 1st July (6pm at The Library Café Bar in Attercliffe) where everyone with an interest in Sheffield’s broken Blue Loop path is invited.
Chelsea Elm - the old elm tree on Chelsea Road has finally passed away. The tree, a focus for the city’s Street Tree campaign, and runner up for the Woodland Trust’s Tree of the Year award for 2023, finally succumbed to a combination of damage from an earlier pruning and Dutch Elm disease, and was felled last week.
Professor Ian Rotherham’s recent piece on the Chelsea Elm is here, noting that planted on an urban roadside, the tree probably did well to reach the age of 130 or more. The Chelsea Elm also provided a home for rare White-letter Hairstreak butterflies, and helped inspire the council and the Nether Edge & Sharrow Sustainable Transformation (NESST) group to plant new disease resistant elms in the area. I hope to be talking to Paul Selby of NESST soon to find out more.
On The Verge - the campaign covered last week to save the Dobbin Hill grass verge from development (and potentially other verges all around the city) seems to have taken a step forward. The council are now planning to meet the campaign group, and point out that no decision to sell off the verge has been taken as yet.
Sheffield United 4,169 - Manchester United 2,886
We’re in a tiny sanctuary of wildness by Matilda Street, 200 metres from the Leadmill. “Yellow Flag Iris,” says Elesha Searles. “Crack Willow, Goat Willow, Buddleia, Cleaver, Sycamore. Lots of nettles. And look at all those ladybirds!”
While other lunchtime visitors are checking their phones, Elesha checks her Field Studies Council guide to Playing Field Plants.
The nettles are buzzing. Huge ladybird nymphs, larger than the ladybirds themselves, are everywhere, along with native 2 Spot Ladybirds and imported Harlequins, some of which appear to be either eating or mating with each other.
In April, Elesha, from Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust (SRWT), set the city a challenge to spot as many wild things as possible. “You could go out for 24 hours if you had time,” she says. “Or just look around you on the way to the shops, or for a few minutes in your garden.”
The first ever Sheffield City Nature Challenge ran from 24th to 27th April 2026, with over 200 people submitting an impressive 4,169 wildlife records covering 681 different species of animals and plants. Part of the international City Nature Challenge originating in California, Sheffield joined 753 other cities across the world with their magnifying glasses this April, from Seattle to St Petersburg.
At the launch earlier this year, Elesha told me she hoped to get over 50 records, and ideally more than Manchester. As a Grey Wagtail bobs along the Porter Brook she grins as she notes our 4,169 records swamped Greater Manchester’s 2,886 this year. And Nottingham’s 3,115.
“It really put Sheffield on the global map,” she says. “But people taking part are not just engaged in their local green space, or in a certain event. They’re just going out and noticing things in their local surroundings.”
And if they do that, she says, people then start asking questions about how to look after their local wildlife, and how to improve the wild spaces of their city. The records, as they build up, can also be helpful (she’s already planning the challenge for 2027, which might also include Rotherham).
“But if you’re noticing stuff, then you can build a picture of what we’ve got and how we can make it better,” she says. And you can carry on spotting throughout the year, she adds.
iNaturalist, who help organise the global City Nature Challenge, catalogue records internationally from groups, cities and individuals all the time, and Elesha says the SRWT Nature Counts system does a similar job for Sheffield, but allows local conservationists to access those records more quickly to help with local projects.
We find an egg-laying shield bug, a Common Carder Bumblebee, a Buff-tailed Bumblebee, Goldfinches, Moorhen chicks, and on the riverside wall, three species of lichen, and a succession from post industrial grime to wildness, as a team of mosses build soil for what might be a Purple Toadflax.
It’s a sunny day and Elesha carries on spotting and cataloguing with her magnifying glass among the lunchtime traffic. “Couch Grass,” she says. “St John’s Wort. “What are they scurrying around? Red Velvet Mites!” She writes it all down on her clipboard.
“Doing this gives people a sense of ownership about nature and wildlife,” she says, “and that they can be a part of it. Our wildlife doesn’t belong to the council, it doesn’t belong to the wildlife trust. It belongs to everybody.”
We aim to have a Supporter’s Supplement with more photos and information about this year’s Sheffield City Nature Challenge early this week.
More What’s On Out There (from Sunday 21st June)
A tiny selection from our (regularly updated) What’s On Out There news and listings post. Full version for full members, preview (& this week) for all at the link above.
Sun 21st - Yorkshire Rose women’s cycle rides - Clumber
Mon 22nd - Wardsend Cemetery Bird Survey
Tues 23rd - Nature Natter - Heeley Trust sessions in the woods around Gleadless
Weds 24th - Sheffield CTC cycle rides - Stoney Middleton
Thurs 25th - SRWT Volunteering - Sunnybank
Sat 27th - The Forged By Migration 5K social run - part of Migration Matters festival
Sat 27th - Launch of Trees for Streets crowdfunder (Bents Green & Burngreave) - evening music event at the Church at Bents Green
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