Matt Phelps

White storks’ revival: what happens when we stop asking ‘why’ and start asking ‘why not’ - Knepp Matt Phelps | Lead Ecologist This spring, a piece of history is being written in Sussex as we witness another successful breeding season for white storks, thanks to the efforts of the White Stork Proj...

#StorkNatureFest2025: Storrington celebrates. What an excellent article by @mostlyscarce.bsky.social on the @whitestorkproject.bsky.social at Knepp. knepp.co.uk/2025/05/whit...

By donating to this campaign, SOS will help finance part of a series of works to improve the area including a freshwater control structure, a bund built to separate the freshwater areas from the brackish water areas.
@mayfieldbirder.bsky.social @mostlyscarce.bsky.social @jamko69.bsky.social

Had a fantastic recce at Knepp yesterday ahead of our long lens assignment. Special thanks to Matt Phelps @mostlyscarce.bsky.social, Ryan Greaves and Paul Stevens for showing us around!

Photos by Irina Patrut, Ed Prendeville and Hannah Wise.

Rove beetle (Platydracus sp.)

Hi Ben, sorry for the slow reply. So glad you enjoyed your beaver pen tour! So we now need to look at how and when we could apply for licence to release beavers into the wider Adur catchment, as that is how the wild release process will work. Hopefully in due course we can remove the fence!

Will do Karin, got a bit out of the habit!

We have TWO new podcast episodes!

In Ground Control to Ranger Tom, Penny speaks to Knepp woodsman @therusticranger.bsky.social about Knepp's ancient trees.

In Dam Good News for Beavers, Penny chats with Knepp's new lead ecologist @mostlyscarce.bsky.social

🔊https://knepp.co.uk/wildland-podcast/

Four birds in a blue sky - two White-tailed Eagles and two Red Kites. The eagles are significantly larger than the kites.

White-tailed Eagle and Red Kite flying close to one another in a blue sky, photographed from below.

Two White-tailed Eagles and a Red Kite flying high in a blue sky. The eagles are over to the left-hand side of the image while the Red Kite is just in shot on the right.

White-tailed Eagle and Red Kite together in the sky.

White-tailed Eagles over the garden yesterday morning. Red Kites purposefully left in shot for a sense of scale! 👀

Also only one of a handful of times I've heard WTE call - such a bizarre, almost wader-like yelping!

YouTube video by Channel 4 News Rewilding: beavers legally return to the wild in England

Great video by c4 news on the first legal release of #beavers into the wild in England. Previously, they have been released into enclosures. #nature #rewilding
youtube.com/watch?v=0XNW...

On the beaver news today, Knepp's Isabella Tree said:

“We are absolutely delighted that the UK Government will allow licenced reintroductions of wild beavers into river catchments in England, and we commend them for this decision which follows years of campaigning by nature restoration leaders.

What does rewilding mean to you? Image credits: John Bryant / Knepp Wildland.

Just one month until #WorldRewildingDay on 20 March 🥳 

This year’s theme is #RewildingTogether – for people, the planet & our communities.

What does rewilding mean to YOU? Share your thoughts 👇 – we might feature your comment in our celebrations!

📸 John Bryant / Knepp Wildland

Lone male Hawfinch in among the branches of an Ash tree.

Silhouetted Hawfinch atop a bare tree in front of an orangey sky.

Hawfinch and Greenfinch in a bare Ash tree.

Hawfinch in flight showing the large and obvious white wingbars and terminal tail band.

More Hawfinches, I hear you cry? Oh go on then!

A few recent photos of these chunky beauties, mostly taken from home. Last photo of the one in flight was at @kneppwilding.bsky.social yesterday morning.

Nature geek photographing a beaver chewed tree branch!

A beaver chewed tree branch.

Thanks to @therusticranger.bsky.social for capturing me in my natural habitat at @kneppwilding.bsky.social.

Tom's view vs my view 😄🦫

At Knepp we've recorded 527 different moth species, including some rare & declining ones: sloe carpet, rush wainscot, webb’s wainscott, dusky thorn, figure of eight, ghost moth & bulrush veneer.

More: knepp.co.uk/rewilding/wi...

📷Pippa Reay, Neil Hulme
🧠 Matt Phelps @mostlyscarce.bsky.social (2/2)

Blue Tit in winter

Scientists from the University of Sussex are calling for the government to urgently reassess the environmental risk of pesticides used in flea & tick treatments after finding that 100% of the nests tested contained fipronil.
Source @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/environment/...
📷Alison Playle

...but also a wealth of feeding opportunities for wintering species. This is particularly significant this winter when we have been experiencing both an influx of Hawfinches into the south of England combined with a shortage of some of their other typical food sources such as Hornbeam & Yew seeds.

Note in the photo here the left-hand bird was clearly interrupted mid-meal! This is very exciting as it proves what we had been suspecting; that the rewilded scrubland landscape at Knepp is not only providing a resurgent sanctuary for scarce breeding species such as Nightingale and Turtle Dove...

Rummaging through the leaf litter under the hedges I was very pleased to find plenty of split sloe stones, sliced open by the finches' incredibly powerful bills (capable of exerting over 60kg of pressure per square inch!).

While out and about in the Southern Block at @kneppwilding.bsky.social on Friday, I visited an area that Hawfinches have been frequenting recently and saw ten flying up from an area of Blackthorn...

Marvellous to join a field visit to Boothby Wildlands Landscape Recovery project in Lincolnshire with colleagues from Natural England, Environment Agency, Forestry England & Defra, to learn of brilliant ambitions for Nature recovery being led there by Nattergal. Real Nature recovery in action.

Inquisitive Exmoor pony on my winter bird survey at @kneppwilding.bsky.social yesterday 🐴

A Hawfinch perched on a bare ash tree branch.

Hawfinch perched on a bare branch.

Hawfinch perched on a bare ash tree branch.

Hawfinch perched on a bare ash tree branch.

Some Hawfinch photos from home recently. Up to three of these normally elusive, chunky finches have been regularly visiting the yew tree in our neighbour's garden since Christmas.

It really is an incredible treat to be seeing these wonderful birds on an almost daily basis at the moment 😍

Like so many named days throughout the year, so called 'Blue Monday' came about as the result of an advertising campaign twenty years ago. Don't buy into it. There is beauty and wonder to be found in nature every day, and it costs nothing!

I particularly recommend spending some time watching pigs 🐷

Thank you Citizen Zoo for a thoroughly hopeful and inspiring two days!

Hope keeps me going, it's why I do what I do and it's why I truly believe rewilding can change the world. After all, one only has to listen to the many inspiring stories coming out of this weekend's conference to realise that it already is.

Every time I spend time out in the wildlands at Knepp I feel it. My esteemed predecessor Penny Green always refers to those of us lucky enough to work in the world of rewilding as being 'conservation optimists' and it is so very true.

In the twelve years since George Monbiot's Feral first blew my mind open in terms of my previously somewhat entrenched ideas about land management, and nine years since I first visited Knepp Wilding and started dreaming of working there, hope has been a continuous theme throughout.

A man, Jacinto Mathe, stands in front of a screen depicting a landscape scene with elephants and the caption "To rewild is to restore hope for nature and people".

"To rewild is to restore hope for nature and people."

It can be hard to sum up the concepts and ideas involved in rewilding in short, buzzy phrases but I think this one with which Jacinto Mathe closed his brilliant presentation at the Rewilding Futures conference this morning does it pretty well.

Panellists onstage at the Citizen Zoo Rewilding Futures conference.

Elliot Newton from Citizen Zoo talking onstage in front of a projected picture of two lynx with the caption "a rewilding future: confidence, imagination and practical hope"

Hugh Webster from Scotland The Big Picture talking onstage in front a screen showing the caption "Is Scotland ready for lynx?"

A glass case at the Cambridge University Museum of Zoology containing various skeletal remains of the extinct Great Auk.

Great first day at the Citizen Zoo #RewildingFutures conference! Lovely to see so many friends from across the community together in one place and lots of inspiring talks.

Also, in the University Museum of Zoology, a stark reminder of why we do what we do... (Great Auk skeletons)

Bring on day two!

Two Whooper Swans in flight.

Four Whooper Swans in flight.

Two Whooper Swans in flight.

Two Whooper Swans in flight.

Portraits of Whooper Swans from High Fen Wildland last week 🦢🦢🦢
www.nattergal.co.uk/high-fen-wil...

Hi Bluesky 👋

My first post will be a tree, unsurprisingly! 🌳

The Walking Stick Oak, @kneppwilding.bsky.social

#tree #knepp #ancienttrees