Exploring the estate at Belton

Sheep grazing in the parkland with the house in the background at Belton House Lincolnshire. — Explore Belton's parkland over the spring and summer months | © National Trust Images/Mike Selby

With 1,300 acres of parkland surrounding Belton House, there's plenty to explore beyond the garden, including wildlife-rich open grassland, the River Witham and ancient woodland. The deer can be easily seen on walks across the parkland, with plenty of opportunity for some great photos.

Woodpecker Trail!

Discover the resident Woodpeckers that call Belton home on our Woodpecker trail through the parkland. Enjoy a wander through the parkland on this trail and see if you can see or hear our feathered friends, while learning more about them.

Summer highlights in the Belton parkland

Belton bathed in cloudless skies and warm sunshine is glorious, and it’s not only our human visitors who enjoy the added warmth and longer daylight hours. The summer heralds plenty of new arrivals around the park, whether they’re newborn or fully-fledged.

Summer wildlife

Fawns

With the previous autumn’s rut nothing but a dim and distant memory, the deer herd have overwintered as best they can. The warmer weather and all the new growth that it brings means the bucks will be eating their fill – recovering lost condition, casting their antlers, and putting on as much weight as they possibly can.

Fawns are generally born in June and early July. The female does take themselves away from the herd. They seek out a secluded spot with rough grass or nettles for protection and give birth to a single fawn. After 20 minutes or so the fawn will be up and about and the doe will return to the herd with her fawn beside her.

Fallow deer can be seen across the park throughout the year, but during the fawning season, you’re more likely to see them at a distance in woodland areas. During this time, it’s important to take care not to disturb them.

It is vital that the fawns are left undisturbed by humans or dogs at this time of year. They haven’t been abandoned, far from it – they’re just waiting for mum to come back from feeding. Once the fawns are strong enough, they’ll run with the rest of the does and fawns in the herd and be fully weaned by the time the rut comes around again in October.

Swifts, swallows, and house martins

When these chatterboxes perform their aerial acrobatics over Belton’s Oval again, you know that summer has well and truly arrived.

Sometimes easily confused, the swallows have white bibs, red chins, and long streamers to their tails; the swifts are a dark-blue all over (even underneath) and make a distinctive screaming noise as they wheel overhead, and the house martins have white bibs but a much less showy v-shaped tail.

The birds you see at Belton arrive in the UK from Southern Africa; they fly vast distances of up to 200 miles a day in a migration route that takes them all the way across the Sahara.

Swallows are often seen in the summer — Swallows | © National Trust Images/Dougie Holden

Butterflies and wildflowers

Belton's butterflies and the wildflowers come hand-in-hand. Good early nectar sources, such as hawthorn trees and hedges, play an essential part in supporting the butterfly and moth populations, as do the wildflowers and flowering grasses found across the parkland. Look out for whites, orange tips, common and holly blues, peacocks, small tortoiseshells, and speckled woods, to name but a few.

Livestock at Belton

Look out for the ewes and lambs in the park. These animals play such an important part in helping to manage Belton’s grassland habitats sustainably.

Without livestock, the ranger team would be battling rank grasses and mountainous spoil heaps from the healthy population of meadow ants (great for the green woodpeckers!). But with their help and in partnership with local graziers, Belton’s rangers can keep the parkland healthy and in balance without the need for any drastic intervention. The livestock look pretty happy for it too.