This December we are having an animal track ID workshop, this is on Saturday the 2nd of December at 2pm.

We will go on a little walk in the local area in search of footprints, feeding remains, scrapes...

If you would like to join, please get in touch for further details.

This November, on Sunday the 26th, between 9 am and 1 pm, we are having, in partnership with Wiltshire Mammal Group, a training session on the dissection and analysis of owl pellets. This aims to support the Mammal Society's work on finding out more about the newly discovered shrew species in the UK, the Greater White-toothed Shrew. 

As we will be bringing a diversity of owl pellets collected in the area, this is both a training and data collection exercise. If you know where we can find owl pellets in abundance, please let us know too! This exciting session will be led by Ric Morris, from the Shropshire Wildlife Trust and an expert in this field. The training will begin with a presentation explaining how to dissect the pellets and what you might find. This is followed by two sessions of hands-on practical work so that, when you have finished, you will feel confident to carry out this survey work independently in the future. 

We are providing tickets at £10 per person, which can be purchased through Eventbrite. Any young members of our group wishing to attend, need to buy tickets in advance but can request a refund from us after the session. This activity is only suitable for people above 12 years old and minors need to be accompanied by a responsible parent or tutor.

Last October, a few of our Young Nature Watchers headed to the beach for a nurdle hunt, learning about plastic pollution and collecting valuable data for environmental organisations fighting for the health our planet. You can see our results and the bigger picture on Fidra's map:

This October we are thrilled to be taking part in a nurdle hunt! Our activity will feed into the Great Global Nurdle Hunt organised by Fidra and happening everywhere in the planet between the 1st-31st October.

Nurdles are also known as mermaid's tears and have very interesting stories behind them; unlike many other types of microplastics, they do not originate in domestic rubbish but they are equally very harmful to wildlife. 

If spending an hour on a beautiful beach learning about and taking steps against plastic pollution sounds remotely interesting, join us on the 15th of October. The time will be dependent on the tides and will be confirmed closer to the date, but it will likely be in the early afternoon.

The meeting point will be at the Western Road surface car park, Poole (postcode: BH13 7BN), from where we will walk for 200m to the beach, armed with hunting equipment for nurdle searching.

If you would like to take part, please get in touch so we can notify you of the exact meeting time closer to the date.

Head over to our social media channels (Facebook or Instagram) to find out what we discovered on our carrion beetle survey!

On Saturday, 2nd September between 10 and 12 am we will be carrying out a survey of Sexton or Carrion beetles at a local farm.

This event will be led by the knowledgeable Peter G. Thompson, who will tell us about the incredible diversity of carrion beetles and their peculiarities. We will check the carrion baits that we will have set up on the night previous. After looking at the beetles, we will release them.

If you’d be interested to take part and want more details, please get in touch.

The Big Green Week runs between the 10th and the 18th of June, you can have a look at the programme of events in our area here: https://www.greatbiggreenweekshaftesbury.org/

On Tuesday the 13th June between 3.00 and 6 pm, we will be at a stall at the Nadder Centre with information about our society and a range of nature activities, including bug hotels, owl pellet dissection and small mammal bone identification and moths for admiration and identification! Other stalls will be offering food and interactive activities on a nature recovery theme. This event is FREE and is being facilitated by the South West Wiltshire Area Board and the Cranborne Chase and Chalke Partnership. Come and visit us!

Our regular YNW monthly event is on Saturday the 17th June between 11 and 12 am (unless we have bad weather). We will be meeting in a flower meadow in Chicksgrove to undertake a pollinator survey (FIT Counts for the POMS, more information here: https://ukpoms.org.uk/fit-counts). Joining us, you will gain a greater understanding of the types of insects that have an important role in pollinating flowers (HINT: it's not just bees!) and we will also show you how to identify typical meadow flowers. We will be providing you with training to do this very easy survey, which only takes a few minutes, in your own garden at your leisure, contributing to very important research on pollinator declines.

As usual, members and under 21s come free. Non-members need to pay £2 for attending any event. Our annual membership fee is only £10 per adult. If you have not paid online beforehand, you can do so by cash on the day! If you would like to join us on this event, please get in touch so we can update you nearer the time with meeting point details.

Did you know that May has the International Dawn Chorus Day?

On Saturday 13th of May, we are going on a Dawn Chorus walk around Tisbury with local birders Andrew Graham and Debbie Carter.

Please meet at the Nadder Centre car park (SP3 6HJ) at 4.50 am ready to depart at 5 am prompt.

We will do a round walk listening to the amazing vocal display that birds do this time of the year, and Debbie and Andrew will give you tips to identify birds through their song.

We will be back on time for breakfast at your own home or at one of the great local cafes!

As usual, members and under 21s come free. Non-members need to pay £2 for every event. Our annual membership fee is only £10 per adult. If you have not paid online, you can do so by cash on the day!

In April, we were extremely lucky in being able to visit a beaver site near us. We didn't see any beavers but we saw plenty of evidence, which was fantastic to see for the first time in this area, after hundreds of years of no beavers.

We are very grateful to our local guide for taking us there and the landlord for allowing us to visit the site (which is not open to the public).

We only advertised this amongst our YNW mailing list, as we wanted to keep attendant numbers small due to the nature of the site. If you regret missing this, why not join our mailing list so you can find out on time about these events? Get in touch if you would like to join.