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

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.

Every year, the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland 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

Registrations for our bird box workshop this month are now closed and we have ordered the materials for those who have expressed an interest. We are looking forward to this event on Saturday the 17th.

Following our AGM yesterday, our new programme for the remainder of the year and early next year is now published. You can download it as a PDF.

Here's a message from Ines (from which I note almost unbelievingly, that it's scientific name is Micromys minutus!!  Sounds very un-scientific, although of course that's how names are established.

To makes things easier for those who are joining (and for those who aren't too), some info:

Very general: 
https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/mammals/harvest-mouse
https://www.mammal.org.uk/science-research/harvest-mouse-project/
https://www.saga.co.uk/magazine/home-garden/gardening/wildlife/mammals/harvest-mouse

Interesting details:
https://www.mammal.org.uk/species-hub/full-species-hub/discover-mammals/species-harvest-mouse/
- and a delightful poem in this one, by an 18thC enthusiast
https://www.rushcliffewildlife.co.uk/hm/harvest-mouse_nesting.html

Recorded in Wilts this year (page 4): 
https://wiltshiremammals.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/wmg-newsletter-spring-2020.pdf- 

(Elizabeth Forbes)