Come and join us on Thursday 11th December at the Victoria Hall Tisbury where we will be having a Christmas celebration. Festive snacks and drinks will be available from 7pm and an opportunity to meet up with other members of the society.

At 7.30pm, Edward Mayer will be joining us via Zoom, to talk about Swift migration. Here is a short YouTube video from a talk he gave to Lauren Davies, Founder of Designed Ecology in 2021 where he talked about his work ensuring that the swift population continues longer than the human population! I am sure that it will be a great evening.

If you are unable to join us in person, we will be able to arrange a Zoom connection. Please let us know ASAP by emailing us and we will arrange to send you the link.
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As always, the evening will be free for members and anyone under 21. Visitors will be most welcome and we ask them to donate £2 at the door.

Emma Procter

Put this date in the diary and we'll send more information nearer the time. Meanwhile you can find out more about the film here

A full Victoria Hall heard a talk entitled “What’s in the Nadder”, where speakers from the Wessex Rivers Trust and the Nadder Valley Farmer Group presented the results of recent testing for phosphates, nitrates and bacteria. In addition, silt traps were used to check for the impact of soil runoff, which can smother in-river vegetation. All this focused on the Nadder, between Semley and Dinton, and included its tributaries.

The Environment Agency (EA) monitors water bodies to assign an ecological status based on biological, chemical, physical and hydrological criteria. In 2022, the Upper Nadder was rated as Moderate; while the Headwaters (up to Ludwell through the Donheads) were Poor. More recently, budgetary constraints have curtailed the amount of monitoring. So, the results of the work done by the Trust and Farmer Group allowed a reality check on the current situation.

Broadly, the results showed that the situation was little changed, but the good news is that there are improvement plans. Septic tanks are a feature of rural areas, treating sewage from one or more properties and then releasing it. But these discharges can sometimes be nutrient rich and pollute the river. Wiltshire Council is funding the replacement of old septic tanks under a project named “Revamp your Tank” to reduce that source of pollution. Farms are now inspected to ensure that farmers are complying with the regulations and given guidance on how to undertake improvements and best practice to minimise runoff into rivers.

But, as well as the contaminants mentioned above, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, cleaning products and other inputs get into our rivers. Sewage treatment works are designed to remove solids and return treated water to the river, but cannot deal with chemicals. Obviously, there is little we can do to prevent medications passing through our systems and into our wastewater. But it would help if we all thought carefully about what we put down our toilets, sinks and drains. For toilets, we should stick to no more than the three Ps (Pee, Poo, Paper). We have all heard about fatbergs created by cooking fats building up with solid objects (from cotton buds to nappies). The recent story about the woman fined for putting coffee down a storm drain is a prime example of thoughtlessness. Yes, it was only a small amount but if everyone did it…. All of us use water and all of us create wastewater, which eventually gets into the Nadder, so we all have a part to play.

​Andrew Graham

October's was talk was given by Connor Goddard, Freshwater Delivery Manager at the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust (WWT). The WWT’s Water team comprises 10 staff members, who coordinate projects in Wiltshire with volunteers and other organisations.

Connor came to talk specifically about the Wylye Valley Landscape Recovery Project. This is a long term project which has four aims; to improve the river Wylye’s climate resilience to extremes of flow and temperature, restore habitats, restore species abundance and reduce the pollution load. Connor gave an outline of the project, which was in the 2nd tranche of competitive Defra tenders, with a two year scoping phase, followed by a ten year implementation stage. Wylye Valley Farmer Cluster members are involved, pledging land along a 20 km stretch of river to be involved in several different regenerative actions.

Connor outlined how the river will be re-connected with its floodplain. Where the banks have been raised to stop water overtopping them in times of high flow, water will once again flow into the meadows presenting flooding further downstream. In places, the river has been straightened or diverted, so where possible, meanders will be reinstated. In several places, the river will be allowed to regain its old path at the bottom of the valley, rather than perched on the side of it.
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Finally, Connor showed us slides of other works the water team do, such as pegging woody material into the river in strategic places, to narrow the bed, and as a consequence to increase the flow to enable the water to scour the river gravels clean, for spawning Salmon.

Shortly after the talk, it was announced that WWT’s Water team had won the prestigious Sanctuary Environment Enhancement Award for the West Chisenbury river restoration and wetland creation from the Ministry of Defence. Follow this link to see Alice Eley and Connor Goddard receiving the award from Senior Ecologist Jenny Bennett.

Peter Shallcross

You may have seen Debbie Carter, a licensed dormouse handler, on the Wiltshire Woods edition of Countryfile on 2 November, but if you missed it, catch up on the last 10 minutes of the programme found here.

​Debbie was in Oyster Coppice checking the dormice boxes with Caroline Longley (Wiltshire Wildlife Trust) and Charlotte Smith from the Countryfile team. They found dormice and caught some footage on camera, much to everyone's delight. TisTalk interviewed Debbie this week, so you will soon be able to hear all about her experience. 

The topic this month is Pine Martens in the New Forest and will be presented by Marcus Ward, manager of the Guided Tours side of Wild New Forest,  a not-for-profit Community Interest Company which was established in 2016. They "support the conservation of threatened and poorly understood species in the New Forest by conducting surveys and research, sharing the data generated with key stake holders in the New Forest." They also run a Wildlife Explorers group for young nature enthusiasts. 

​If you scroll down on the Guided Tours website you can see Marcus on BBC Countryfile. 

The talk will take place in Victoria Hall on Thursday November 13th at 7.30pm. The bar opens at 7pm.

No need to book. As usual, free for members and £2 for visitors.

With the abundance of fruits, seeds, and berries in the countryside this autumn, the migrant birds which visit us during the colder months should be in for a feast. This may make them less reliant on our bird tables. Thrush species, especially the redwing and fieldfare will particularly favour the hawthorn and holly berries which glow red along the hedgerows and through the woods. Only when they have exhausted all that supply will they move onto the open fields to look for food there. These birds will have travelled large distances from their breeding grounds to wintering areas; other species make much shorter journeys. Solitary birds, small groups, or whole flocks may arrive in an area overnight and then just as quickly move on.

By keeping an eye on the skies for a while on a regular basis it is possible to pick out those movements which are local – for instance short flights by cormorants between lakes in the area – and longer distance – for instance the continuous movement of swallows gradually working their way south at the end of summer.

Birders call watching such movements visible migration, or vismig for short. This contrasts with nocturnal migration or nocmig.

If you want to experience some nocmig for yourself at this time of year, keep your ears open when walking through the village after dark. Especially on nights with low cloud, one can often hear the calls of redwings passing over-head. Their distinctive, high-pitched “tseeep” call is easy to identify but they are by no means the only species to migrate at night. Many others, of which we may be blissfully unaware, will pass through under cover of darkness. Increasingly, recording devices are being employed, especially at coastal bird observatories, to monitor birdcalls through the hours of darkness. Then, with the help of the ever-improving bird call ID applications such as Merlin, it is possible to pick out which species have been passing over while we are asleep. This is telling us more about bird movements than we could previously determine from daylight observation and bird ringing.

Abrupt and significant changes in weather or food supply can prompt major movements of birds. It is always worth looking, listening, and considering where the birds around us have come from and are going.

​Andrew Graham

About 20 members were met by Jonathan Thompson and Matt Somerville and ushered into the classroom, where Jon gave us a brief overview of the nature reserve.

After buying the 30 acres of newly-planted deciduous plantation, Jon has been working hard to increase the diversity of habitats with small-scale re-wilding. Jonathan explained that, at Underhill, this means mimicking the effects of the large native animals currently missing from the local environment, such as wild boar, beaver and wild cattle. For example, ring barking trees to create dead-wood habitats and opening the woodland, to let light penetrate the forest floor.

We then split into two groups; one led by Matt and the other by Jonathan, before a half-time change over. Matt started by showing us the inner workings of a natural beehive, teaching us about Propolis, which is like a bee glue, with amazing qualities, which bees use to fill holes with and prevent pests taking over. Matt makes something like a hundred natural hives each year, in two styles: Rocket and Log types. We walked onto the reserve to look at several of the log hives, one of which was humming with bees. Wild honeybees have recently been classified as endangered, and it was terrific to have a deep dive into their life and ecology by a real expert.

Jonathan took his group to see newly dug ponds and scrapes which had just started re-filling with water after the summer’s drought. Holding water year-round, whatever the rainfall is, the lake has a large population of amphibians and lots of other wildlife, Jonathan has even seen otters. Near the lake is an example of ‘conservation hedge-laying’, a really thick, wide and tall hedge, where each stem has been cut half-way through at the base and pushed over to forty-five degrees. One of Jonathan’s students has surveyed the invertebrate community in this one hedge and has written a paper on it. Also, a book has been written about it, by a local author!
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Finally, Jonathan took us down to a small stream where the students of the John Muir award scheme made dams, to simulate the activities of beavers. These dams hold up the water, creating pools, which clean the sediment and enable a new community of wildlife to exist.

​Peter Shallcross