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Happy new year to all Young Nature Watchers!
We had a fantastic nut hunt last December, see our Facebook post (link) and one of the participants pictures on Instagram (link) to find out more about how it went. Nut hunts are a superb way of helping wildlife charities and researchers tracking the presence/absence in specific areas of endangered species such as dormice. As it is a completely unintrusive survey method, you can be sure that you won't disturb any little critter and you won't need a license to look for nuts in the forest floor (most other ways of dormice surveying require a license). Find out more about nut hunts in the PTES website. We hope our nutty participants will put their new knowledge into practice in woodlands of their choice!  On a sunny day at the beginning of May, two excited groups of children accompanied by parents were given the rare permission by the Teffont Fishing Club to walk along the river bank to look for signs of the protected Water Vole (Ratty in Wind in the Willows). We are lucky too have a good population here as the species has declined by 90% countrywide. My group started at Stubbles and walked downstream and under the railway bridge where they found Otter footprints in the mud. There were many burrows along the bank we were on, some with ‘lawns’ of nibbled grass round them. We could see many large burrows on the opposite banks. After much searching we found some footprints down by the water and a few pieces of reeds eaten in a typical way at a 45 degree angle at each end. We also found a few distinctive cigar shaped droppings. We did not see any voles but they are most definitely there and they are shy and we were not very quiet!  Ines and Izzy up to their wastes in the Nadder Inés took her group along the river from Catherine’s Ford and counted approximately a burrow per every meter along a 170 metre stretch.
The children had a wonderful time and Inés sent the records off to the Mammal Society. Debbie Carter Izzy Fry has also written a lovely account with some great photos, on her blog here. It looks like having been a lot of fun and fascinating as well.  Finding a harvest mouse nest - Photo: Ines A review of our recent harvest mouse survey and our owl pellet workshop was published in the Wiltshire Mammal Group newsletter (here, p. 9). These are the photos that were entered for the photography competition last September. Above are Izzy's winning photo on the left, and Shona's runner-up on the right. Below are two more entries, from Reuben on the left, and Lydia on the right. Our Owl Pellet Dissection workshop on 13 December was a great success - go to our Facebook page for more details and photos of that.
As you can imagine, we had to transform our events into something appropriate to the new government regulations. However, this didn't mean we cancelled them!
Our Autumn leaves and fungi walk, was transformed it into a self-guided walk. The plan was to take lots of pictures of fungi and share them with us afterwards! For photos of winning entries go to our Facebook page.  Llez, CC BY-SA 3.0 Micromys minutus is such a gorgeous name for these enchanting creatures - and very happily, it turns out they are alive and well and living on our Chairman Peter Shallcross's Wallmead Farm. Their nests are about the size of a tennis ball, and built into the stems of tough grasses and other flowers, usually about a foot up from the ground and often below brambly hedges or in reeds near round ponds. If you want to have a go at looking for nests yourself, there's a great website, Rushcliffe Wildlife, which has a lot of really useful information. Such as, if you want to go hunting, don't choose a bright, sunny day because you won't be able to see into the depths of brambles or grass. So our day was just perfect - cloudy but dry and not a breath of wind. After briefing by Peter Thomson (an advisor to the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust, who will be giving the talk at our indoor meeting on 19 November), we set off in our group up onto the hilltop where the lapwing nest site is and the pond. We spent a very happy two hours bent double, poring over tussocks of likely-looking grass and occasionally giving a triumphant cry at sighting one of these incredibly difficult-to-spot nests - difficult even if they had been 'planted'. I'd love to see a female building - they hold the grass in their paws and tear it into narrow strips with their teeth, weaving from the inside out, pulling in new stems. A new nest is usually built for each litter, so the greener the nest, the more recent the breeding.
We tried to record where we'd found the nests, and although many had been 'planted' the teams together found several 'natural' ones. So we felt really good to have contributed in a small way to knowledge of wildlife in our area. To encourage us to best efforts, there were winners ie each team's finds were logged. Announcing the results, the organisers said, 'We were almost going to declare a tie as several groups had found a very similar number of nests (19!) but after some difficult deliberation we eventually declared as winner the team lead by Peter Thompson, as it was the one who found more green harvest mice nests (and without his help!). 'The winning team was composed by Vanessa Harriss, Izzy Arundell and Henry, and Beck Barber and Martha. The runner ups were Elizabeth Forbes' group with Kaitlin, Ebony, John and Rufus, and Izzy; and mine (Ines's) with Sadie Flower + family. Congratulations, well done all of you!' This was such fun. (Elizabeth Forbes) This nature photography workshop was led by Abby Eaton. She was joined by Craig Morris, a wildlife and bird photographer who'd helped her get to grips with her own photography and was an RSPB guide at their reserve near Sandy in Bedfordshire. They invited people 'to learn some great camera basics with your mobile and try a DSLR while trying to snap something fly past at 90mph. We'll even tell you what it was.'  Izzy Fry, who is co-organiser for YNW with Ines and whose great blog brightens my own life, was among the small group who walked round Fonthill Lake, where there's plenty of opportunity to practise photography skills. She said, 'We learned how to use a camera and tried out different lenses. We walked through fields looking for bugs and butterflies, woodland for birds and leaves and round the lake watching grey wagtails and dragonflies. My favourite subjects were the ladybirds, leaves, brimstone butterflies, grey wagtails, blackberries and dragonflies! We tried our different lenses, including large zooms and wide angled and we were given advice and support on using the camera manual settings.' 'It was a really enjoyable morning and I learnt so much with the expert advice from Abby and Craig. It was a fab day out and we'll certainly be planning more.' Abby and Craig challenged the group to take a photo of a 'clip-on' robin in the most unusual way (??!!). The winner was Izzy, the runner up Shauna. Here are their prizes!
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Young Nature Watch (YNW) is a branch of the Tisbury and District Natural History Society (TNHS). Our first event was on July 2020.
YNW is free for under-21s! Young people always have priority at any of our activities but accompanying adults are required for under-12s. Whenever possible, we will aim to split attendants into three different groups: - Families with young children - Teenagers only - Young-at-heart of all ages For adults, annual membership for the TNHS (£10) or a £2 fee per event (for non-members) is due. YNW activities are organised by Inés Lopez-Doriga and Izzy Fry (find out more about how it all started in Focus, p.27). Join our mailing list to be the first to hear about our events! You can also follow us on:
YNW logo design by Izzy Fry.
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