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

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.

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.

Our last event of the year was an eco-friendly wreath making workshop. In spite of the freezing weather, we gathered some materials from the environment to make a set of wreaths to take home and gift to our friends and families. 

See our pics on Instagram: here and here.

Don't they look great?

We had a great morning back on our fungi walk in Wardour Woods, thank you to all who came and our walk leader for his time.

You can have a look at some of our pictures on our Instagram channel here, here and here.

Thank you to our young nature watchers for coming to our hedgehog home building event and learning how to encourage hedgehogs in gardens.

You can see some pictures from the day on our Instagram account, here and here.

We had an amazing bug hunt on Saturday the 13th of August. Thanks to Mariko Whyte for giving us her time and providing expertise in ID. Also to Dick Budden for hosting us in his land. We saw the following species:

Crickets and Grasshoppers
Roesel's Bush Cricket
Field Grasshopper

Butterflies
Gatekeeper
Speckled Wood

Beetles
Dock Beetle
16-spot Ladybird

Flies
Thistle Gall Fly (Urophora cardui)
A hoverfly (Sphaerophoria scripta)

Dragonflies and Damselflies
Banded Demoiselle

Spiders and Harvestmen
Garden Cross Spider (Araneus diadematus)
Common Candy-striped Spider (Enoplognatha ovata s.l.)
Nursery Web Spider
Furrow Spider (Larinoides cornutus)
A Long-jawed Orb Weaver (Tetragnatha sp.)
A crab spider (Xysticus sp.)
A fork-palped harvestman (Dicranopalpus agg.)
A harvestman (Mitopus morio)

True Bugs
Red-legged Shieldbug
Common Spittle-bug (Philaenus spumarius)
Dock Bug
A plant bug (Malacocoris chlorizans)

Other
A lacewing larva (Chrysopidae)

Oak Apple Gall Wasp (Biorhiza pallida)

You can have a look at some of our pictures on our social media: here and here.

Thank you to all who came to our bug hotel workshop and helped us make bug hotels, we had a great time and we hope to provide refuges for garden critters! You can see some of the pictures on our social media, on Instagram and on Facebook.

We made so many bug hotels that we had some for fundraising at the community fete at the Nadder Centre yesterday. The money raised will help us organise more events, so thank you to those who donated! If you missed it but would like to get a bug hotel, please get in touch!

Have a look on our Instagram for some of the artwork created by the participants of our art workshop in June and also for the review by the artist, David Garnett!