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Our AGM will take place at 7.00pm on Thursday 13th February at the Victoria Hall, Tisbury and will be followed by a talk at 7.30pm entitled The Future of the British Landscape by Peter G Thompson, formerly of Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. 

Doors and the bar will open from 6:30pm.

Peter worked for the trust for more than 30 years until his retirement in 2018. In his position as farmland biodiversity officer, he is described as a huge inspiration for many of the Trust’s current farmland conservationists.

Before joining GWCT Peter worked as an agronomist and crop consultant for commercial companies. At the same time, our farmland research group, building on Hugh Oliver-Bellasis’ work, had developed many management techniques to help support grey partridges, especially developing insect-rich brood cover and nesting cover.
These ideas needed to be promoted to farmers by someone who understood arable farming – especially pesticide use - who was BASIS trained and could speak with confidence to farmers. Peter was perfect for the role.

Known for his ability to translate science and communicate the message effectively, Peter toured the country giving advice about arable crop management and partridges. People always understood him and were enthused by his passion for wildlife. He inspired people to do better and achieve more on their farms.

Peter was at the forefront of the development of Farmer Clusters and his ideas, drive and advocacy for a bottom up, farmer-led approach to conservation have helped influence current and future agri-environment policy. A farm walk led by Peter was always a jolly affair, but packed full of knowledge and useful advice.
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Peter is also a keen birder and has taught himself the identification of UK moths.

Emma Procter

At this time of year I keep an eye on my garden bird feeder for two rather small and easy to miss finches: the siskin and lesser redpoll. Both are drawn to the sunflower hearts, and I assume they visit when their usual food, seeds, particularly those of alder and birch trees, are becoming depleted in the wider countryside. The skin is not hard to identify. It is smaller than a greenfinch but is a similar yellow-green colour streaked with black on the wings and crest. It also has a distinctive forked tail, and a narrow beak suited to prising out the tiny tree seeds it favours. The redpoll is the same size and largely brown but for the red marking on the top of its head and down the breast.

Now, like me, I expect most readers will have struggled with spotting the difference between the common repoll, lesser redpoll and arctic redpoll. Well, there is good news. Those nice people at the International Ornithological Committee have recently decided to lump all the above into one species – the redpoll. Advances in genetics have allowed biologists to assess the genetic similarity of the birds previously considered as different species. While the birds may have slight variations in plumage, distribution, and size, genetically they are almost identical. It has been decided that this variation is just within the species, rather than representing the kind of difference which prevents interbreeding.

This makes life considerably easier for most birdwatchers although it does mean that keen twitchers have lost two species from their potential year lists. At the same time, the hooded crow – found in the north and west of the British Isles – has now been deemed to be one species with the carrion crow we see around Tisbury.

There currently seems to be quite a few changes in what is and isn’t considered a separate species. The red grouse, found in the uplands of the UK and Ireland had until recently been considered a subspecies of the willow grouse/ptarmigan found widely in northern Europe and Russia. Now it has been found to be a separate species, endemic (i.e. found nowhere else) to the British Isles.

Before this, the only endemic bird species in the UK was the scottish crossbill, which was only identified as a separate species 30 or so years ago. Its size, structure and voice are intermediate between the red crossbill and parrot crossbill and its separation is still a point of discussion. Indeed, the best clue to separating it from the other species appears to be that you see it in Scotland. However, I should imagine the Scottish Government at Holyrood House will be keen to avoid the loss of the appellation “scottish” and having the bird lumped in with the red crossbills that we can see in some local woods.

​Andrew Graham

Now that the trees have shed their leaves their branches are more clearly visible and this highlights the colour of some willow species. Beside Fonthill Lake, near the arch, are a few trees which catch the eye, as they shine orange in the afternoon sun. Elsewhere you might see willows with purple, yellow or red twigs. There are many willow (Salix) species and a huge number of varieties which have been bred for different purposes and their colour. Over the centuries, people have found numerous uses for willow and given it different names, such as osiers or withies.

In the past, chewing willow bark was used to relieve pain. Nowadays, the painkiller Aspirin is derived from salicin, a compound found in the bark of all Salix species. Baskets of all sizes have been made from willow all over the world for centuries and put to a multitude of uses. Willow was also used to make furniture, hurdles, lobster pots, cages, fish traps and, of course, cricket bats. Somerset is an important area for the production of willow, where hundreds of acres are dedicated to growing different varieties for varied uses.

The advent of plastics replaced many uses of woven willow - also known as wicker – but new uses continue to be found, for example sculptures large and small, and you can now even get a wicker coffin. The latest development is planting willow as short-rotation coppice, which can be mechanically harvested and used as a perennial bioenergy crop. This can use land less suited to food production and, because it regrows from the cut stool each year, doesn’t require annual planting.

Willows can be found throughout the country, especially the commonest, the goat willow, also known as pussy willow or great sallow. In common with all other willows, it is pollinated by insects and has male flowers on one tree and very different looking female flowers on another. In full bloom in spring, the catkins provide a huge, early source of nectar for insects. Their foliage also provides a food source for the larvae of several moths, as well as the wonderful Purple Emperor butterfly.

Willows are very prone to hybridise with other species of willow, which makes certain identification difficult. But it has resulted in a great variety of forms including the fabulous weeping willow. To confuse matters further, poplars which are closely related (but wind pollinated) also have catkins and alternate buds and leaves like willows. However, poplar leaves are triangular, or diamond shaped, while willows (apart from goat willow) are long and thin.

Although willows are relatively short-lived trees and not valued for their timber, they are nonetheless an important but easily overlooked element of our countryside, without which many other species would struggle.

​Andrew Graham

​The next in our film series is After Antarctica. This film follows legendary polar explorer, Will Steger's journey as an eyewitness to the greatest changes to the polar regions of our planet. Now, thirty years after his historic expedition across the coldest continent on Earth, Steger heads out on the ice once again, at a time when he is not only known for being the first in history to complete these historic feats - he is also the last.


You will be assured of a very warm welcome at the Victoria Hall from 5.30pm on Monday January 13th when the bar will be open and the film will start at 6pm. The screening will be free for members and guests are asked to pay £2 at the door.

There is a new programme for 2025 and you can find the lists of our talks, films and field trips on the relevant pages of this website. We just need to complete the document which holds the details of the field trips and we'll let you know when it's ready.

Our first indoor talk of 2025 will be at 7.30pm on Thursday January 9th at Victoria Hall. We are delighted to welcome Dominic Couzens to talk to us about his passion, birds, particularly our garden birds.
 
​Dominic describes himself as an award winning nature writer, with over 40 book titles to his name. He believes passionately in communicating greater understanding about the natural world and also about threats to nature and what we can do to help our planet.

The doors to the Victoria Hall will be open from 7pm and the bar will be available then too. Members are free and guests £2 at the door.

Every year, the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI) hold a citizen science photographic opportunity at New Year and we would like you to join in. To participate, you need to take a photograph of a wild flower blooming between December 29th 2024 and January 1st 2025. Email it to us by midnight on 2nd January 2025.

Make sure to include details of your name, an identification of the
wild flower and where the flower was blooming (a postcode or grid reference would be great but the name of the nearest place will be fine.) We will send a group entry of all of the photos to Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland. In addition, we will display all of the photos on our website for everyone to enjoy. Below is some more
information about BSBI. 

    "The BSBI is for everyone who is interested in the flora of Britain and Ireland. We trace our origins back to 1836, when the society was founded as the Botanical Society of London. We are now one of the world's largest contributors of biological records: our data inform scientific research and underpin evidence-based conservation.

Whether you’re new to plant hunting or you’re already a botanical recorder, we need your help to discover which plants are managing to bloom in the middle of winter across Britain and Ireland.
 
Thousands of people take part in the Hunt every year and this is helping us build up a better understanding of how our wild plants are responding to changing autumn and winter weather patterns. The more we know, the more we can help conserve our wild plants and all the other wildlife they support."

Good luck with your quest! We are looking forward to seeing what you find. Find some top tips for your plant hunt here
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Don't forget we have our Christmas drinks and a talk from Georgina Starkie on Dormice ecology and conservation on Thurs 12 December at the Victoria Hall, Tisbury. Doors will open at the earlier time of 6:30pm for drinks and food, with the talk starting at 7:30pm.

Georgie has extensive experience of dormice, having worked under the late Michael Woods and she delivers training for organisations such as The Mammal Society and the Wiltshire Mammal Group. She has worked as an Ecological Consultant since 2006 and has experience in ecological site appraisal, in particular for protected species and she holds Natural England licences to survey for bats, great crested newts and of course, dormice.