Post 477 - A happy return to Haggewoods

Removing Deer guards

Hey everyone, Post 477 today and a quick one about a lovely morning I had revisiting a place I wrote about back in Post 410. It's a great project just south of York - Three Hagges Wood Meadow - essentially since 2010 they've turned an old barley field into a completely new and brilliant habitat, a wood meadow. It's now so full of wildlife and insects it's amazing. Even today, almost in November, there was lots to see.

I went along to do a bit of volunteering for the morning. A small group of us took some deer guards off a few rows of young trees that will be forming some hedges. That was quite tricky as you had to cut the guards off around all of the branches that had grown through them, but we managed.

Raking mown grass

The next job was raking up and collecting some of the grass that had been mown off of the meadow. This was hard work but nice to do in the lovely sunshine. I don't think there were any clouds about at all. It was soon too hot to have coats and jumpers on.

Sowing Yellow Rattle

It took a while to get all of the grass raked up. Dad and I did this while some of the other volunteers collected it up in wheelbarrows. The reason for doing this was to help the meadow by taking away the cuttings which reduces things like Nitrogen and Phosphorous in the soil. This makes it harder for the grass as there's not so much to feed it and that gives the wildlflowers more of a chance.

The other thing we did to give the wildflowers a chance was to sow yellow rattle seeds. This is a plant that also makes life harder for the grasses, it's a sort of a parasite and weakens the grass again giving the wild flowers more of a chance to get going. Well it didn't seem to take long for the morning to go, it was lovely being out in the meadow in the sunshine.

A young Toad

After that we went back to the table by the volunteer hut to have a chat. The main reason I went down was that I was invited by Rosalind one of the people who's developed the Hagges Wood project, who wanted to have a chat with a few people about some of the ideas I'd written about in the Yorkshire Naturalists Union magazine - I did an article called 'From Grey Beards to Green Teens - an engagement conundrum'. It was basically a write up of the event and some thoughts about getting more young people involved in nature and conservation. Well Rosalind,  Justin who was volunteering there, Nick a filmmaker who's done some work at the wood, Kat the project volunteer co-ordinator, Dad and I all had a great discussion and came up with lots of ideas. There may be a new project here in the making which I'll tell you more about as it develops.

So a great morning, during the volunteering I found a toad and two frogs in the long grass and we were treated to nice views of a Kestrel and two lovely (I think) Red Deer who passed over the field quite close to us and headed into the woods. I'll be looking forward to going back and seeing how the yellow rattle gets on next season!

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.

Post 476 - #OwningIt & #OurBrightFuture

The raw materials

Hey everyone, post 476 today and it's the start this week of a fantastic new campaign. A few months ago I was lucky enough to be asked to give a talk at a local youth nature summit organised by Tomorrows Natural Leaders (see blog post here). This is one of a series of projects around the country being run as part of the Our Bright Future programme led by the Wildlife Trusts. It was really good to be involved with so I'm glad to see that something they mentioned would be happening has started this week.

The site

This is a new campaign called #Owningit. In the words of #OurBrightFuture it's about this:

We are asking organisations, projects and young people both within and outside of Our Bright Future to join the #OwningIt movement. We want to illustrate the large-scale impact that can be made to the environment when many people take small actions. The campaign will provide inspiration and ideas to excite young people and encourage them to take action.

You can read more on their website, there's lots going on, loads of organisations and young people are showing how they are trying to make a difference.

Cutting logs to size

Well after giving me a chance to do my talk and as I'm very passionate about connecting young people with nature I thought I just had to do something to mark the start of the campaign. So today I finished a project that I've been meaning to do for a while, that is create a bit of a new habitat in my garden. It's really easy to do and if everyone did something similar it could make a big difference to our insect populations which are sadly struggling!

We've had a pile of cuttings lying around the garden for a while taking up a bits of space here and there and looking a bit untidy. Although that's not such a bad thing today I used them and with a bit of help from Dad we made a great log and stick pile which should be great for beetles, toads, frogs and hopefully some wasps, bees and other species will benefit from a place to hibernate or feed. The original idea was to build a hedgehog house in the middle of it, but I think we'll do that another time and put it in another place. Thinking about it it would have made the job of cleaning the hog house out very difficult.

Halfway there

So this was quite an easy thing to do really. All of the stuff was free and all of it had been collected from our garden as it was trimmings from bushes and trees that needed cutting back. We like the garden quite wild and full but every now and again it does have to be tamed a bit! All of the trimmings were gathered together and sorted into piles of different sizes. The only thing that wasn't from our garden were four pieces of wood that came from my grandparents house just up the road and they were recycled fence posts. They were just knocked into the ground a bit to make a frame.

All of the logs and sticks were then just piled in, the bigger stuff on the bottom and smaller stuff on the top. It's built directly on to the soil and it's placed under our Magnolia tree so that it won't dry out in the summer. Putting fallen leaves on top will help retain moisture too. I'll add to this as the leaves fall more. There you go, an easy DIY bug house.

The finished product!

Dead wood like this should support lots of insect life. Slugs and snails will no doubt like hiding in it too. Frogs and Toads should like the damp nooks and crannies too and hopefully will have lots of slugs to eat. If I'm lucky Wood Mice might take up home too. Then of course birds like the Wren and the Robin will probably have an explore for a meal or two.

I'll be watching with interest!

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.

Post 475 - A Marvellous Gathering for YWT Annual General Meeting

The clouds cleared and it was an incredible day
for the members day at Potteric Carr

Hey everyone, Post 475 and a little post to let you know about a great meeting I went to yesterday. It was the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust AGM. This year they made it into a member's day, so that they could attract a few more people and make the meeting not just about the facts and figures of the last year. The idea was to make it more interesting and to show off Potteric Carr visitor centre, which is one of the big projects they did last year. Did it work? Well for me it did, I had a really great day!

Dad and I set off early as Doncaster is quite a way from us, pretty much the other end of Yorkshire, but we got there in plenty of time. A bit of a co-incidence but the first people that we bumped into when we got there were some people Dad has worked with in Northallerton where we live!

Everyone got a cup of tea before the morning activities started and most people were gathered outside on the decking by the visitor centre as the day was glorious, it was hard to believe it was October. We got to say hi to Richard and Jono from YWT too before things got going and it was good to see them as they've been very helpful to me. More on that in a bit.

A highlight was this Grass snake.

So the member's day started with activities in the morning and a choice of a long walk around the reserve, a short walk or an introduction to bird spotting. Well as it was such a sunny warm day it had to be the long walk. Potteric Carr is a lovely and huge reserve and we find new bits every time we go. It was nice to have a walk around with the visitor centre manager and learn some more facts about the place and where to see some nice species. A spring visit for Lesser Spotted Woodpecker is being planned! The highlight of the walk was seeing some lovely Grass snakes!

After the walk it was back to the visitor centre for lunch. This was in the visitor centre cafe and the catering staff there made us a wonderful lunch, I ate loads as it was so good!

So then onto the afternoon when it was a series of talks including all of the AGM business. Well they were all really interesting. I was looking forward to the first one as it was Lindsey Chapman talking about some of her Unsprung experiences. The last time I saw Lindsey, Springwatch and my Dad had arranged a surprise while I was bird watching, and she presented me with an Unsprung Hero award (there's a link to it on the right >>>). There were some funny insights into the world of Unsprung and it made you appreciate how hard it is to pull the show together live! It was a great talk.

Very proud of this!

Then came the AGM bits. I didn't know if I'd enjoy these bits but it was interesting to learn about how the organisation works, where it gets its money and how it spends it as well as learning about some of the projects. We also had to vote in a couple of new board members.

Last speaker was Rob Stoneman, the Chief Executive and he gave a really powerful presentation about how important the work of the Wildlife Trust is, how fragile a lot of our habitats and environment is but also how some projects are working and making a difference.

Thanks so much YWT and Northwold

So it was a great day and I really enjoyed it but the best was still to come. I'd been working since the summer with YWT to produce a 2018 calendar using some photos I'd taken when I was on my 2016 challenge to visit all their reserves (there were too many and Yorkshire is too big - but I did get to around two thirds :-). Well I had been waiting for the calendars for a while as very kindly Northwold Print were doing them for me as half of the profits are going to YWT. The company is owned by one of the board directors Gurdev and he very kindly brought them with him that morning.

I was having a look through it and Jono and some of the YWT board members had a look through it with me. It looks really good! The photos are pretty good but the graphic design was done by Sally Henderson at YWT and it's made it look so much more professional than my last calendar, thanks Sally!

It was after this that Lindsey came over to have a catch up and we had a chat about some of the things I'd been up to. She was surprised how much I'd grown since the Unsprung Hero filming, but it was quite a while ago now. One of the things we talked about was the calendar, happily she really liked it, so much she asked if she could have it :-)

Well I wasn't going to say no and Lindsey was happy to have a photo taken with me. I never expected the first one to go to a celebrity or to get such a great endorsement! Thanks Lindsey.

Great to catch up with Lindsey
and so glad you like the calendar :-)

After saying goodbye to Lindsey we went off to see Richard in the shop to get a few calendars to bring home to sell and Richard will have them up for sale on the YWT website soon!

Have to say a big thanks to Jono, Sally, Richard and Gurdev for all the help - they look incredible and I'm really proud to see my photos in something so professional.

So a great day, and I was really glad to be part of it. It'll be a hard job to do a better event next year!

Hope you enjoyed,

Z. 

Post 474 - Brilliant Butterflies of 2017

Hey everyone, sorry it's been a little while between posts. School work has been taking up a lot of time again! I hope this post makes up for not posting for a while.

Duke of Burgundy

A little while back I was in touch with Butterfly Conservation on twitter. I'd sent a few pics of butterflies I'd seen and they asked me a question. Well today in post 474 I'm going to sort of answer it and in future years I hope to be able to answer it better.

Orange Tip

So what was the question? It was... had I seen more or less butterflies this year. It's tricky to answer as I have seen some more species this year as I've been out deliberately looking for a few new species. I think I've seen four new species this year, but at the same time I have not seen three of the species that I've seen other years. The new species were the Large Skipper, Duke of Burgundy, Greyling and Silver Washed Fritillary, the ones I didn't manage to see were Holly Blue, Marbled White and Swallow Tail.

Green Veined White

The other reason it's hard to answer is because I haven't started keeping very good records of what I've seen and when yet. It seems like I've seen a lot less in my garden at the start of the year, it got better at the end of summer but it has gone quiet again now. I've definitely seen less Painted Ladies this year and less Peacocks. So I need to record what I see better so that I can answer properly. I do do the Butterfly Count but I'm going to keep more records. 

A challenging Comma

I'm still hoping to see a few more in the garden yet this year, the Michaelmas Daises are still out and I've got lots of fallen apples so there's still lots of food for them. Fingers crossed for a few still sunny days when I'm at home. It's something simple we can all do to help butterflies and many insects, grow a few nectar rich plants that they like. In our garden we have three Buddleia bushes that they especially like but quite a few other plants too that they like.

Peacock

So what have I seen this year? Well let's start with a rare beauty, The Duke of Burgundy. I was told about this butterfly a little while ago by two different people and that there was a spot near me to find it. (Thanks Dave Renwick & Whitfield Benson). I didn't know at the time until I looked it up again that it is one of the UK's rarest butterflies. So this year I set off to see it and happily I did! I'll be back next year I think as it was a lovely walk out on the North York Moors to find this spot.

Swallowtail Caterpillar - amazing!

One I always try to see but I often miss because I go to Norfolk just at the wrong time of year (school needs to break up earlier for summer!) is the Swallowtail. I have had the odd fleeting view of this magnificent butterfly but never well enough or long enough to get a photo of one. Their larvae I see more often though and they are very pretty as well. Here's a beauty I saw this summer.

Silver washed Fritillary - a little worn

I like looking out for new places and new species so when we were on our Norfolk holiday this year we went to Holt Country Park. I've been to the market town of Holt a lot, and this year rescued a baby hedgehog from the churchyard while Mum was shopping. Afterwards we popped to the park and saw an amazing list of butterflies that had been seen. One that was meant to be in abundance was the Silver Washed Fritillary. I managed to see one but it wasn't in the best condition.

Brimstone

Hummingbird Hawkmoth

I also saw a lovely Brimstone there and a wonderful Hummingbird Hawkmoth. I know it's not a butterfly but I love seeing them. I get them in my garden too - this year I only got a quick glimpse of one on the red Valerian outside of the house so it was great to get this shot of one at Holt.

Large Skipper

A lovely little butterfly I saw, and have probably seen before but never really stopped to photograph or appreciate is the Large Skipper. This is one that hangs around a forest I go to quite often on the fringe of the North York Moors, Silton Forest. I'm not sure what made me pay attention to this one but perhaps it was because it sat still for me!

On the same bit of path in Silton Forest I've also been able to see some lovely Common Blue butterflies too this year. Males and females both sat nicely enough for a photo.

Common Blue

Well, there's a lot more to mention, like Speckled Wood, Painted Lady, Peacock, Red Admiral, Tortishell, a brief view of a White Admiral, Small White, Large White, Green Veined White, Orange Tip, Wall, Meadow Brown, Small Heath and Ringlet. I think that's probably all that I've seen this year.

There's still quite a few species I've yet to see so I'll be looking up where and when I can see something new next year. It's always such a buzz to see a new species and especially with something as beautiful as a butterfly!

Hope you enjoyed,

Zach.