connecting communities and nature
Check in for ways to be wild in your home, garden, patio, balcony or on your window ledge or wall.
Find out more about some of the species you might see and how to help.
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Your garden, the local park or while out on walks are all perfect for an urban nature scavenger hunt. The idea is simple – you discover the nature in your town or city by exploring crooks and looking at unusual times.
For example, try an evening walk to see some of our favourite nocturnal mammals, foxes and hedgehogs, or sunny spaces with some plant life give you the best chances of seeking out butterflies.
Continue reading “The Urban Scavenger Hunt”
Whilst they may not be many people’s idea of a perfect housemate, there are a number of spider species that happily make our home their own. Some of these may cause us a slight shiver or involuntary gasp as they suddenly appear running across the floor or when we shift the sofa, others however would struggle to worry even the most committed arachnophobe.
Continue reading “Spiders on lockdown”
During the last month, the warm weather has sent frogs in search of somewhere to cool down – and should you have a suitable pond in your garden, frogs will discover it surprisingly rapidly. We recently built a small garden pond, and within three weeks, we found a little juvenile frog enjoying a swim. The common frog (Rana temporaria) is one of two native frog species in mainland Britain; the other is the pool frog (Pelophylax lessonae). The native populations of pool frog became extinct a few decades ago, but there have been attempts at re-introducing it. There is another native UK species, the agile frog (Rana dalmatina), but it is only native to, and found in, one site in Jersey.
Continue reading “Species Guide: The Common Frog”
Thanks to the internet, the public can easily contribute to research about UK wildlife – in a multitude of areas. A large number of charities, conservation groups and research organisations offer ‘citizen science’ projects. Citizen science is volunteering centred around information-gathering. Some projects involve measuring data, some involve tagging images, and identifying species.
Many projects take the form of simple surveys you can do from home, or from your local area. Some surveys focus on whole ecosystems, like woodlands or rivers, while others concentrate on a single species. And there are a vast range of animals to survey too, no matter whether you’re interested in hedgehogs, seabirds, garden birds, moths or bats. There are so many different surveys to choose from, I’ve rounded up a selection below.
Continue reading “A Round-Up of Citizen Science Wildlife Projects”
The roads and skies of the UK have been quieter than ever during the lockdown. The peace and stillness has been remarkable – and many of us hadn’t experienced anything like it before. That we felt this way reveals just how used we’ve become to incessant background noise. Even while walking in the deep countryside, you can hear the faint thundering of motorways and the rasping of jet engines.
There is emerging evidence that noise pollution is bad for our health. But what about how noise pollution might be affecting the natural world? Well, luckily, academic interest is growing in this topic, with many scientists and researchers now investigating how noise might be impacting various species. So what sort of noise is involved, which animals are affected, and how?
This article was written for CJS Focus on Environmental Education & Outdoor Activities
This article is designed to help you to take the first steps towards designing your environmental education programme. This is a huge area, but don’t forget, Wild Ideas can help without cost to your organisation.
The health and the breadth of our ecosystems is in steep decline. Species are becoming endangered and extinct at an alarming rate. And at the forefront of our battle with the degradation of nature is the environmental educator.
Continue reading “Planning Your Environmental Education Programme”
Slow worms (Anguis fragilis) are living evidence that names and appearances can be deceptive. The first thing anyone will tell you about a slow worm is that it is a lizard, not a snake. They look similar to snakes, because these lizards have evolved in such a way that they no longer need legs – a similar evolutionary process that gave rise to the snakes.
There are some tell-tale signs that these little creatures are lizards. They have eyelids, and blink; snakes, on the other hand, don’t. Slow worms’ tongues are rounded – in contrast to snakes, who have unmistakable forked tongues. Like many other lizards, the slow worm can detach its tail when trying to escape from a predator. And a slow worm’s head is usually the same width as its body – that is, there’s no narrowing behind their heads – whereas snakes have an obvious ‘neck’.
How do I identify one?
Common toads (Bufo bufo) are noticeably larger than our native frogs. Toads have drier-looking skin than frogs, and their skin is characterised by a rough covering of warts, ridges and bumps. Toads are usually brown or olive-coloured, and their eyes are often golden or copper in colour. Toads’ eggs are usually laid as a string of single eggs, in contrast to frogspawn, which is found in clusters. Frogs have much longer legs than toads. Look at the animal’s movement – if it hops, it’s probably a frog, whereas toads usually ‘walk’!