ST NICKS
Family-friendly urban birding on a former rubbish tip
ST NICKS, or St Nicholas Fields, is a lush pocket of scrub, woodland and meadow tucked away in the Tang Hall area of York, just one mile from the bustling city centre, with its many tourist attractions, and many tourists! It’s a great place for all the family to get close to nature, and has a good roll-call of common species, with a particularly generous helping of Bullfinches, common warblers through the summer, and plenty of Siskins and Redwings in the winter. Some more unusual birds have turned up, including a Ring-necked Parakeet seen in January 2017, and a Water Rail which stayed throughout the winter last year. St Nicks became a local nature reserve in the 1990s, and has previously been a landfill site and a brick works. It is now a hub for education, ecotherapy and green living, with regular events and an Environment Centre that opens on weekdays.