On Saturday the 5th of July we will be checking the footprints in a number of small tunnels we will have set up some time in advance, to find out which small mammals are present. We hope to see evidence of hedgehogs, woodmice and dormice if we are lucky! We will be meeting at Old Wardour Castle at 10 am, and head on a walk to find the footprint tunnels. If it has rained recently, we will also check for any footprints in the mud in the tracks! Please let us know if you are coming in advance.

Our Young Nature Watch event for June is an opportunity to go birdwatching at Langford Lakes on Sunday June 22nd from 10 until 12. We will be with Andrew Graham, our expert birder, to help us to identify as many different species as possible. Langford Lakes is a Wiltshire Wildlife Trust reserve in the Wylye Valley between Salisbury and Warminster (directions: https://www.wiltshirewildlife.org/langford-lakes).

There are four lakes and a wet scrape which provide a vital stopping off point and resident habitat for about 150 different bird species. The reserve has level paths and five hides overlooking the lakes. There is an on-site cafe, open until 3:30pm.

We will meet at 10 outside the cafe but please let us know if you are coming in advance.

We are doing owl pellet dissections as part of the Langford Lakes bioblitz this weekend, come and join us! More info: WWT website.

Hannah Good gave us a fascinating workshop at Ladytree Designs earlier this month. We first watched Hannah's demonstration of a volcano erupting - we loved the vinegar and bicarb eruption model - and heard how the magma and dust sediment, mixed with water, trapped the bones of animals in the rock, gradually dissolving them over millions of years, to give us rock fossils of their bone imprints.

We gathered round a large table covered in fossils of all shapes and sizes, many found in a chalk pit behind Hannah's former home in the Cotswolds. Young Nature Watch attendees handled anything that caught their eye and Hannah talked through some key pieces like the large knee joint of a likely Jurassic era bird, comparing it to the smaller sized femur of a swan from our era; a section of fossilised tree trunk where the grains of wood were still soft inside the cracked open rock; and a mammoth's tusk which still smelt of keratin when you cut it.

The children then made casts of fossils with clay to take home with them or leave to be fired in Kate Good's kiln. The table was covered with impressive sea horse, ammonite, sea urchin and other clay imprints. They also dug for a fossil and small crystal each in the sand pit to take home as mementos of their day.

Dr Jocelyn Elson-Riggins has kindly forwarded the final programme for the festival so you're all set for planning your visit!

Waiting list only: After sending out the newsletter this week we received a flurry of requests for spaces and filled the list quickly. We have sent out personal replies to all those who contacted us.

Head over to the Dorchester Science Festival for an extensive programme of events and activities for all the family over a 10 day period.

Dr Jocelyn Elson-Riggins, who is our speaker for the Tisbury talk this month, will be running the "Whale Poo Game" in Dorchester on Sun 16th March and invites you to come and play the game! Afterwards, you can see phytoplankton under the microscope and learn about environmental DNA and how to match DNA to a specific marine organism.