BASTON FEN NATURE RESERVE
 Late April 2010

There are many nature reserves in the Bourne area administered by the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust and Baston Fen contains a wealth of animal and plant life to delight even the most reluctant photographer.
The ditches and verges of the adjacent farmland have an increasing display of daffodils that have been spreading over the years and it could be that these flowers originated from earlier times when they were grown commercially in the surrounding fields although it has been suggested that the bulbs may have been dumped here with garden rubbish and then proliferated. There are many other wild flowers hereabouts, not least the celandine which graces our hedgerows in early spring and even a sprinkling of white narcissus.
The Counter Drain is typical of many of the channels built to maintain water levels in this low lying landscape and the waterway at this point helps drain Baston Fen by feeding excess water to the large pumping station at Pode Hole, east of Bourne.
Macmillan Way, a long distance public footpath which runs from Lincolnshire to Dorset, passes nearby, following the banks of the River Glen from Kate's Bridge to South Fen Road, also a favourite spot for cattle to enjoy the warm spring sunshine after many months in a shed during the long hard winter.
There are many lagoons and an abundance of sedge and reedmace, or bulrushes, the tall spikes still shedding their seeds from last year's growth and providing an ideal habitat for mute swans.