Natuurreservaat Bospolder, Ekers Moeras en Muisbroekbos

Natuurreservaat Bospolder, Ekers Moeras en Muisbroekbos covers more than one hundred hectares of Ekeren, a district on the edge of Antwerp. Grassland, rough vegetation, forest and wetland alternate across it, threaded with shallow ponds. Natuurpunt manages the site, and Galloway cattle graze it, cropping different plants in different places. Their grazing maintains a patchwork of habitats, and that patchwork supports a wide range of plants and animals.

The deep ponds scattered through it owe their shapes to storms. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, surges such as the Saint Felix flood and the All Saints flood broke the Ekerse Dijk. Each breach left a deep pool, and local people fished eel from these wielen for generations. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, sand from the newly dug docks filled the ground as the port grew. Nature slowly reclaimed the sand, and in 2002 the very first nature restoration project in Flanders finished here. It cleared the old wielen and rewetted the marsh, opening the ground to wetland plants and animals again.

Dry, nutrient-poor grassland now shelters the brown argus butterfly, whose caterpillars mine the leaves of cranesbill and stork's-bill. A caterpillar eats its way inside a leaf, leaving the upper skin intact. Reed beds along the ditches and open water hide reed warblers, reed buntings and ducks, and the reserve forms part of a chain of internationally significant bird sites. Four marked walking routes lead through these landscapes, from just over three hundred metres to more than two kilometres. Two birdwatching huts and a birdwatching wall stand along the way, with one hut and the wall open to wheelchairs. You can walk here in every season, and in spring the reeds around the old flood pools fill with reed warbler song.