Naturalists

Seven for the Price of One

Wed, 02 Mar 2022 16:26:00 GMT

It has been a busy time for the Young Naturalists. Here's an update on what they have been up to over the last seven months, snorkelling in the Dockens Water, making besom brooms, helping pollard willows, learning about bird ringing, smelting pewter and much more besides.

The native and the more exotic

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 08:57:20 GMT

We have just had our centre's wifi improved enabling us to teach online whilst outside, which is great for our fortnightly Young Naturalists sessions and, although too late for this term, will also allow us to offer virtual sessions to schools as things slowly return to some kind of normal in the autumn.

Boxes for birds and bugs

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 09:12:00 GMT

At the end of January the Young Naturalists made bug homes and bird boxes. They took their bug homes away with them but the bird boxes have since been put up on the reserve by volunteer Brenda who monitors them throughout the nesting season.

Fungi spotting

Thu, 17 Oct 2019 09:40:00 GMT

Autumn is a great time to go looking for fungi, so on Sunday after spying a few whilst unlocking the reserve in the morning, we decided to head off in search of more during our Young Naturalists session.

We began however with a rather nice job of weeding the path which leads to our campfire – although possibly not the most exciting of jobs, it was one that needed to be done and it was very satisfying to be able to see just how much they had managed to clear in the hour or so we were out there. We did however decide to do the rest another day when the showers became heavier!

After lunch and a disappointing rummage through the light trap which contained a number of crane fly but not much else, we headed off with a couple of guide books and cameras to see what we could spot. Fungi is definitely not my strong point, so it was a learning curve for all but we enjoyed looking out for different types and photographing them to hopefully identify later.

Camping out

Wed, 14 Aug 2019 09:51:00 GMT

This summer our Young Naturalists once again spent a night on the reserve, cooking dinner and breakfast over the campfire, setting and checking mammal traps, listening to bats, sleeping under a poncho or tarp shelter and getting up nice and early for a morning stroll up to Lapwing Hide.

Meeting in the morning, our first task was to finish off the bug hotel which we had almost completed the month before. To finish it off, we lined the roof with pond liner before adding a piece of wood around each of the four edges which enabled us to add a layer of gravel on top of the liner. We then put some sedum matting which had been left over from the construction of the Welcome Hut on top of the gravel.

Should it rain heavily, the top of the bug hotel will be protected by the liner which will stop water from seeping down and the gravel should allow a space for drainage ensuring the sedum does not become waterlogged.

Bug-ingham Palace

Thu, 01 Aug 2019 10:20:00 GMT

Last Sunday our Young Naturalists made a rather magnificent bug hotel in a sunny spot close to the new dipping pond. The improvement works here on the reserve resulted in a rather large number of pallets accumulating, so it was great to be able to put some of them to good use.

We stacked the pallets one at a time, packing them with various different materials to create lots of different nooks and crannies, including bark, sticks, pine cones, old roof tiles, bamboo, off-cuts of roof from the old Tern Hide, pebbles and sawdust. We also drilled different sized holes in some of the bits of wood.

We still have a few more gaps to fill with more pine cones, dried plant and reed stems and dry grass and I’m hoping we can add a green roof to finish it off, but we were pretty pleased with our efforts:

Bluebells to Beaulieu

Wed, 10 Jul 2019 10:28:00 GMT

I have been very absent from the blog this last few months, so this is another quick round up of what our Young Naturalists group have been up to since April – it seems like such a long time ago now!

At the end of April we visited another Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust nature reserve, Roydon Woods. Spring is a great time to visit and we had timed ours perfectly with the flowering bluebells.

The group also enjoyed photographing and identifying some of the other spring flowers, including Bugle, Greater stitchwort, Wood spurge and Wood anemone.

Odd jobs and enjoying the view

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 10:32:00 GMT

On Sunday it was time again for our monthly Young Naturalists session, and we began the day by choosing a few items for our new Welcome Hut. These would hopefully be a talking point for both our new welcome volunteers and visitors, both young and old, and make the hut look more inviting. As we are still waiting for the interpretation we didn’t get too carried away and the group chose one item each. As a result, the hut does still look pretty empty, but we’re looking forward to filling it properly once the signage is all in place.

They selected a nice mix of items, including a pike jaw bone, roe deer skull, barn owl, fallow deer teeth, long tailed tit nest, badger skull, sea urchin fossil and three ducks, a widgeon, mallard and teal. I think they managed to convince Bryn and Jan that all the items were worthy of a place in the hut! We also gave the volunteers a peacock butterfly which was perfect for looking at in more detail under the microscope and popular with visitors throughout the day.

Weaving dragonflies

Fri, 08 Mar 2019 11:54:00 GMT

At the end of February our Young Naturalists worked with willow artist Kim Creswell to create three dragonfly sculptures that will form part of our new ‘Wild Walk‘. To those familiar with the reserve, the walk is the loop closest to the Education Centre that takes you past the Woodland Hide, Ivy South Hide, over the boardwalk and the bridge across the river then follows the path to the right, along the river and round to the larger bridge where we river dip with school groups and on family events.

The sculptures along the trail have been funded by the Veolia Environmental Trust and include the four chainsaw carved sculptures by Simon Groves as well as a number of willow sculptures by Kim. Kim is back with us tomorrow to work with a small group of children and young people from our local Home Educators group who will be having a go at weaving wasps for the walk, and will also be bringing some willow deer with her which we are very much looking forward to seeing!

Kim began by sharing her plan of the dragonflies with the Young Naturalists, before dividing them up into three groups and giving each individual a body part to work on, either the head, thorax, abdomen or wings.