Skylarks fly high over the colourful wild flowers at Chimney Meadows nature reserve, filling the air with their bubbling, joyful song; across the wetland comes the plaintive call of the curlew.

The presence of these classic farmland bird species breeding here in west Oxfordshire is a sure sign of success for the wildlife trust. When 200 hectares of land at Chimney Farm was bought in 2003, one of the main aims was to convert the fields that had been used for arable crops into meadows like those of the neighbouring National Nature Reserve (NNR), a Site of Special Scientific Interest that is a gene-pool of wild flowers and grasses.

Using green hay harvested from this gene-pool, the wildlife trust has painstakingly restored hundreds of acres of arable farmland to traditional hay meadows.

Today cattle and sheep graze the meadows during the winter, helping to ensure the diversity of flowers and grasses, including cowslips, red clover, sweet vernal grass and great burnet. Hay is cut in July, producing sweet-scented and nutritious forage, which is baled and stored for feeding the wildlife trust’s livestock in winter, and also sold to local horse owners.

This year there will be less hay for the animals because some will be used to replenish the original gene-pool at the NNR. The summer flooding of 2007 waterlogged parts of the lower fields, destroying the grassland and leaving bare areas. This July, green hay freshly cut from the newly-restored meadows, will be strewn on the bare patches. As this fresh hay dries, the seeds of flowers, herbs and grasses will fall out into the soil; in a few years’ time the original meadow will be fully restored.

At 260 hectares, Chimney Meadows nature reserve is the largest in Oxfordshire managed by BBOWT. Thanks to the generosity of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Tubney Charitable Trust and hundreds of people who raised £250,000 in a public appeal, BBOWT was able to buy Chimney Farm.

Today, the reserve forms the core of the Upper Thames Living Landscape, and showcases what can be achieved by farming profitably for and with wildlife.

Whatever the season you can be sure of seeing wildlife here in abundance: barn owls hunt across the fields, seeking shrews and voles emerging from deep grass at the edges of burgeoning hedgerows where tree sparrow colonies are nesting. Damselflies and dragonflies flit along the ditches in high summer, positing their eggs in the still water, and bats fill the air at dusk.

The reserve’s southern boundary is the River Thames, which is liable to flood, so the network of ditches across the reserve is vital for managing water levels to prevent the meadows from becoming waterlogged.

Hedgerows and willow trees above the ditches help to absorb water, and also provide dense vegetation where otters can lie up.

The return of wildlife to Chimney Meadows could only be achieved with the help of countless volunteers who care for and safeguard this very special place.

During the last 10 years, hundreds of people have given their time to plant many miles of new hedgerows, re-lay old ones, carried out surveys of butterflies and water voles, planted trees and pollarded others, laid boardwalks and built hides to enable more visitors to see wildlife close up.

Some of the regulars have been coming here for years, others were on team-building days from local businesses, and all of them have played their part in creating a wildlife haven like no other.

If the last 10 years have been successful; what’s the future for the next 10 years?

The wildlife trust is starting work on Upper Common, bought last year to extend the reserve. Bounded by the Great Brook on one side and the Thames on another, there will be more features for rare wetland birds such as curlew to nest and feed.

The land will be prepared for green hay to be strewn and, over time, the fields will return to flower- and butterfly-filled traditional meadows.