A Week on the Estate: Rolled Mustard, Wild Wonders & Steve’s Expertise

While we’re talking about the wild wonders of the Wolds, you might be pleased to hear that we’re once again planning to celebrate May’s Lincolnshire Wolds Outdoor Festival with a full programme of activities including pushchair and pooch-friendly walks and nature-discovery walks with experts. We caught up with local horticulturalist and wildlife expert Steve Lovell for a chat about bird-spotting walks, biodiversity and a lifelong love of natural wonders.

“I’m originally from Lincoln,” said Steve. “My wife and I moved to Norfolk in the 1980s. Later on, we moved back to Lincolnshire and had a smallholding near Spilsby with sheep and goats and a nursery. We also rehabilitated wild birds. It was an awful lot of work. Now we’re getting on a bit, we’ve scaled down. Life’s good – I’m semi-retired and loving it.

“My love of nature goes back a long way. When I was seven or eight, my mum picked up a bird-spotting book and she’d cover the text, show me the artwork and get me to ID the birds. Then she’d ask me about feeding, habitats and brood-size. My dad took me out fishing and I’d soak up the environment. I’m still far happier in the wild than in a city.

“Plenty has changed over my lifetime. When I went out on my bike as a kid, the purring of turtle doves in hedgerows was common and now it’s rare. I would fish at Hartsholme near Lincoln and it felt like the middle of nowhere. Now it’s surrounded by houses and it feels like there are fewer trees. There are more people which means more pressure on the environment.

“I qualified as a horticulturalist thirty-plus years ago. Where I could, I did wildlife-friendly gardens. For decades, I’ve been teaching and doing talks. Off the back of some courses I taught, I started doing mini birdwatching breaks, which was a long-held ambition. Covid disrupted those plans, unfortunately, so I picked up gardening again as you could do that and be socially distanced.

“Now I’ve packed up gardening and I’m doing plenty of talks and tours. The wildlife tourism sector is picking up. There is positivity out there. Inspirational landowners are committed to rewilding. You’ve got areas like Sussex and the Somerset Levels where farmers are working together with joined-up thinking to create large areas of biodiversity.

“RSPB Arne is a good example of a super reserve – a large area that hosts significant breeding populations of key wild species that can spread and join up with others. South Ormsby Estate is a substantial area which will hopefully produce good numbers of wild species that will then spread out. That kind of success can inspire others. I’m particularly struck by the number of red kites here. It’s unlike anything else in the area.

“Nature is undoubtedly my passion and I’m happy to be associated with what South Ormsby Estate is trying to achieve. We’re in on the ground-floor of something special. I’ve been trying to build up nature-guiding in Lincolnshire. I’ve got tentacles everywhere in nature-friendly projects. I’m in touch with Doddington Hall who are doing some rewilding. I’ve done some volunteering for the RSPB, including setting up a peregrine project at Lincoln Cathedral – that should have taken six months but I stayed for two years!

“I’ll be running some walks at South Ormsby Estate during the Lincolnshire Wolds Outdoor Festival in May. I’ll scout it out beforehand and the trees and hedgerows should be full of song. You never know what you’ll find but it’ll be the right time for swifts, swallows, martins, warblers, flycatchers and more.

“I took a look at South Ormsby Estate with Pete Staves, Ash Young and Farmer Mike a few weeks ago. We didn’t have to go far to see something good: a flock of 80+ bramblings on the rise towards St Leonard’s Church. They were there for the beech mast and it’s been a really good year for that. It was such a good buffet, they didn’t have to move far.

“Certain locations can surprise you. There’s an overgrown, rarely disturbed pumping station near the distillery. It’s a really lovely habitat and there’s good potential there for bullfinches. There’s a good rule of thumb: make the right habitat, ensure a good conservation mix, and the wildlife will come.

“I’m semi-retired but I’m still busy. I’m updating my website very soon with fresh blogs and the chance to sign up for my birdwatching course for beginners. Wildlife tourism is picking up and all sorts of people are getting into it. I’m looking forward to meeting fellow nature-lovers at South Ormsby Estate during the Wolds festival in May and showing them some wild wonders.”

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