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.

On Saturday the 11th of March we will do a dung beetle (or beetles in dung) survey with the ecologist and Wiltshire county recorder for bats and mammals Gareth Harris. Why is this mammal specialist interested in beetles and dung? Come and find out! We will do this survey at 10 o'clock at Wallmead Farm; specific meeting point to be confirmed closer to the time and for those who book their space.

Thank you to everybody who came to our bat box workshop. We hope our participants will also encourage bats by creating a diversity of habitats in their gardens that will provide food sources for our favourite flying mammals. Have a look at the pictures of the workshop on our Instagram account post.

On Saturday the 25th of February at 10 am we will be making bat boxes from ready made kits that you will be able to take home to install (we will give you advice on how to improve habitats for bats and put the boxes). The boxes will be partly financed by the Tisbury and District Natural History Society, please make a £10 contribution for each box you will take with you. Please register your interest in this activity by Sunday the 12th of February so we can buy the right number of boxes for the event.