Further to the blog post on 18th May, this is a reminder that we are taking part again in the National Hedgehog Monitoring Programme and we need more volunteers to help us.

Can you give us a hand on on Sat 25th July 2026 (extension to Sun 26th if necessary) when we install the cameras?

We will be taking down cameras on Mon 24th August 2026 (extension to Tues 25th if necessary) and will need help again.

We also need volunteer spotters to identify animals in trail camera footage online.

If you would like to get involved in any of these, please get in touch
via the contact page and we'll pass your message on to Inés. All training provided!

Last year volunteers from the Tisbury & District Natural History Society took part in the pilot for the Hedgehog Monitoring Programme and we'd appreciate your assistance again this year. The information is repeated below for any newbies!

Don't forget that we have an additional talk this week from Inés López-Dóriga who helped to crew a tall ship across the notorious Drake Passage to Antarctica. She will be reporting on the wildlife and the unique flora and fauna found in this stunning landscape.

​As always, doors and bar will be open from 7pm, free for members and people under 21 years of age and £4 for guests.  

Our indoor meeting this month is a talk on Thursday March 12th at 7.30pm by Gareth Harris talking about Wiltshire bats. Gareth is the Wiltshire Recorder for Wiltshire Bat Group and Wiltshire Mammal Group.

This talk will highlight the importance of dark skies for these amazing mammals.
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As always, doors and bar will be open from 7pm, free for members and people under 21 years of age and £4 for guests. 

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.

The first of our series of autumn talks was given by Dr. Tom Lewis, Conservation and Research Manager at Longleat, who came to speak to us about his conservation work on 11 September. This followed on from our excursion to see the beaver territory at the estate earlier this year.
 
Most of us living locally will know of Longleat as a Safari Park, where they also do a popular light display over the Christmas period. What most of us don’t know is that there is more at Longleat than that! And thanks to Tom we gained a better understanding of what is going on there, and the role that large estates like this can play in local nature conservation.
 
Tom started to become interested in conservation by joining bird ringing groups and witnessing the disappearance of willow tits. He then spent some years abroad working in conservation projects in exotic locations, and saving species from extinction. Back in the UK, after two years at Longleat, he has witnessed the re-occurrence of two key native species which have been virtually absent for centuries: beavers and pine martens!
 
None of these two species were released by the Longleat estate. They either made their way there from other locations where they have been reintroduced, or were unofficially released by unknown persons. But the important thing for us is that they are welcome there and thriving, and perhaps we will have them soon established in our immediate area too (if we don’t already!).
 
Tom showed us some stunning aerial footage and told us how every 200 metres of waterway at Longleat now has evidence of beavers. Beavers have transformed small streams of barely 1 m width, fast flowing in winter but which used to dry up in summer, into wetlands with bodies of water of about 20 m wide and which retain water throughout the year. The slow moving waters now support minnows, toads and newts for example, and the species that feed on them.
 
One of Tom’s jobs was to find out how healthy the beaver population is, so he set up trail cameras to try to find out how many beavers were actually living there. Although his first attempts were not very successful at recording beavers, many other interesting species were recorded. The birds included: kingfishers, herons, grey wagtails, egrets, canada geese, marsh tits, jays, crossbills, sparrowhawks, spotted flycatchers… The mammals, foxes and otters. We saw beautiful footage of all these creatures displaying natural behaviours and were finally rewarded with the beavers and their kits, 4 babies in 2024! 4 babies is the upper range of beaver litters, and Tom attributes the high number to the quality of the habitat. It seems this year only 3 beaver kits were born, and one was sadly found dead.
 
Next, Tom told us about his pine marten work. Pine martens were discovered in the estate through some unusual poo, and this was later confirmed by trail camera footage. Tom has since been trying to establish how many are present and he showed us some interesting footage of 2 playful pine martens having a romp this year. Recently, a pine marten with a tracker from Exmoor (the Two Moors Pine Marten Project) has been found in the New Forest by Wild New Forest, showing how large distance movement is possible.
 
Tom mentioned future plans in his work, including analysis of bib patterns (the white marks on the chest of pine martens, unique to each individual) and DNA of scats. He fleetingly mentioned dormice footprint tunnel surveys, bat surveys, wild boar and bird counts. We are happy to hear all this is happening at Longleat and would like to hear more in due course. There is other information on their conservation projects in their website: https://www.longleat.co.uk/things-to-do/animals/conservation/uk

Inés López-Dóriga

I really struggle during heatwaves. At home, I do all I can to keep the house cool and to make sure there is some shade into which we can retreat at the hottest time of the day. But, how is wildlife, which has evolved over long time periods to be adapted to our normal climate, impacted by the increasingly frequent hot and dry spells? Well, in numerous direct and indirect ways.

We will see in our gardens how fruit and veg may mature too quickly and drop fruit prematurely. In the field, this can mean that crops of berries, nuts, and fruits that birds and animals normally rely on in autumn, may be gone by the time they need them. Although we can water our wilting garden plants and seedlings, in the wild they may perish, and a new generation will be lost. If the plants provide food for the larvae of insects like butterflies and moths become desiccated and die, the larvae won’t be able to grow sufficiently to progress to their overwintering stage, diminishing the numbers that emerge next year.

Anyone trying to dig into their flowerbeds will know how rock-hard the soil can get. Well, imagine if you rely on muddy soil with which to build a nest, or on digging into that soil to get food – as badgers, hedgehogs and many birds do. Life becomes very difficult for them. And things are just as bad for the creatures in that hardened soil, making it an inhospitable place. The worms and invertebrates that moles feed on are harder to find, so they must dig deeper to find moist soil and food.

While every creature needs to drink water in some way, amphibians such as frogs and toads rely on being able to keep moist, but as cool damp areas become increasingly rare, they risk death from dehydration. During heatwaves, water temperatures in ponds and rivers rise, resulting in reduced dissolved-oxygen levels, which in turn can kill fish. At the same time, the warmth encourages algal blooms, which can smother other wildlife and become toxic. If ponds dry out completely before tadpoles have competed their transition to froglets or toadlets, they will die.

Added to all these problems is the increasing risk of wildfires, or, even worse, deliberately started fires. This is a particular problem on our southern heathlands, many of which are close to built up areas, which seems to increase their vulnerability.

Obviously, it is not all bad news. Some species undoubtedly benefit from the heat and drought. But cumulatively, repeated heatwaves will favour the more resilient species, which can adapt in the short term or can move to more favourable locations and are able to recolonise later. Sedentary species, or those whose population take many generations to rebuild, may become locally extinct, eventually leading to a reduced flora and fauna of robust, adaptable species. Unfortunately, many of these are what we currently think of as pests. In future, our flora and fauna may be less diverse, less interesting, and significantly different to what we are comfortable with.

Andrew Graham

Tisbury and District Natural History Society is taking part in a pilot project to monitor hedgehogs, run by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) and a number of partner organisations.

Do you want to be involved? There are two main ways in which you can and the best part is that you can be a volunteer for both tasks or just one of them! Please contact us.

Part 1: taking pictures
As part of this project, we will deploy 30 trail cameras in a number of locations across the outskirts of Tisbury (please note the camera locations have been already chosen). We need your help to set up and deploy the cameras and then take them down after 1 month! You don’t need to have any experience with trail cameras, as training and supervision will be provided for volunteers. You can give as much or little time as you would like to. Please get in touch with us if you would like to take part in the Tisbury survey.
 
Key dates:
31st of July: deadline to contact us to volunteer with the camera deployment.
 
We are setting up cameras on the 9th and 10th of August.
We are taking down cameras on the 8th and 9th of September.
 
You can be a volunteer for both tasks and dates or just one of them!
 
This is part of a larger survey plan, with other surveys being undertaken within the Wiltshire hub in other parts of the county at different times and other regional hubs. If you would like to be involved with the survey outside Tisbury, please contact the coordinator at PTES (link to form).
 
Part 2: checking pictures
Help is needed to check pictures taken by trail cameras and identify where any animals are present. Some degree of computer literacy skills are needed for this part of the project! Please note there are pictures already from previous years of the survey and from other locations outside Tisbury. All the information for this is online! (link to BHPS)

Further information from the partners of this project can be found in a separate document here

We recently had a fantastic excursion to Longleat, where we saw an impressive beaver territory, under the expert guidance of Dr Tom Lewis, Conservation Manager at the Estate.
 
We observed a series of dams and ponds, feeding stations and food caches, a lodge, a coppiced area… all the result of beaver activity since 2020, when these mammals - once extinct in Britain - were recorded in the area for the first time in hundreds of years.
 
Tom explained how beavers interact with the environment and each other and the transformation of the landscape since their arrival. We had heard beavers are ecosystem engineers and we saw how well they live up to the name!
 
A once temporary stream which used to dry up in the summer now has a permanent flow of water, thousands of tadpoles were swarming in the ponds, groups of spotted fly catcher families congregate in autumn to feed on the insects and the high canopy woodland now supports openings of freshly coppiced trees which provide lots of grazing opportunities for herbivores.
 
We felt very privileged to be there and see it all and we are very grateful to Longleat and Tom for letting us visit and guiding us there. We hope to be able to visit again in future to witness further beaver progress in the landscape!
 
This trip was not advertised on social media as numbers were limited and spaces were quickly filled from our mailing list. If you missed out, get in touch so we can add you to our mailing list and be the first to find out about our activities!

Inés López-Dóriga
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