The North Wales Wildlife Trust has reserves where it is trying to involve the public but also wants to encourage long-eared owls to breed. Surprisingly, perhaps, long-eared owls do not build their own nests and there are only about 2,000 pairs, usually adopting unused nests of other species. These owls are threatened by the growing population of buzzards and corvids, so Jonny Hulson and his colleagues from NWWT are working to encourage the owls to nest, by getting the public to build nests with wire, twigs and moss, as shown in the picture below.  Jonny hopes that the nests will also be used by hobbys and merlins. Read more...

Brighton in Sussex is home to Britain’s largest population of Elm trees. These 19,000 elm trees are known as The National Collection. Elm trees are increasingly rare due to the blight brought by Dutch Elm disease principally in the 1970s.  Initially this came into the UK as long ago as 1926.  Dutch Elm disease is a fungus carried by beetles and affects only elm trees. In response to this attack, an elm tree will automatically produce tyloses, an effective natural defence against the 1926 strain of Dutch Elm disease. Tyloses occur in the xylem - water conducting vessels of the plant / tree, sealing them off and restricting the movement of the pathogen. However in the early 1970's,  a new strain of Dutch Elm disease was imported from channel ports, linked directly to the Canadian Rock Elm. This strain travels faster through the elm trees and kills them before they can produce tyloses. Since the introduction of this strain of Dutch Elm disease to Britain, the number of elm trees has gone down from about 3 million to fewer than 200,000 and many of these are very young ones which will certainly succumb to the disease. Elm trees reproduce by root stalks more often than by seed and so this transmission mechanism quickly spreads the disease between elm trees and along elm hedgerows. Read more...

My recent investment in a 3D printer was unusually adventurous but I wanted to know what three dimensional printing was all about.  The Solidoodle 3 machine is intended for home use and cost around £700, but the family has been getting its money's worth, running it most days and often at night-time. The software is free to download and there are hundreds of downloadable designs of things you can re-create on your Solidoodle 3 including mobile phone covers, cogs, propellers and models.  The gecko (pictured here) took about 20 minutes to print Read more...

Often one sees sap coming out of an old tree, usually where it is healing up, but usually these "bleeding" areas heal up quite quickly. Recently I came across a most remarkable yew tree when I visited the ancient village of Nevern in Pembrokeshire. It has a 6th century church (St Brynach's Church) and in the churchyard there are a number of ancient yew trees (Taxus baccata). One of these yews near to the gate is called the "Bleeding Yew" which is about 700 years old and here are some photos I took of it. It has a blood-red sap running out of it which has the consistency of blood - though it dries pink rather than brown. I dipped my finger in it and there wasn't any distinctive smell or stain, but as people say that most parts of the yew tree are poisonous, I didn't taste it. Read more...

Sion Jinkinson has two aims in life: to promote biodiversity and to keep traditional crafts alive. So scything old churchyards satisfies both objectives - these churchyards are often neglected habitats which are havens for wildlife and scything means the grass is cut unevenly and not too short. This is part of The North Wales Wildlife Trust's "Living Churchyards" project and has led to a way of baling up the cuttings into what Sion calls "Holy Hay Bales". Instead of relying on mechanised large-scale baling machines he uses a manual hay baler (as pictured below).  These are a sort of alternative technology which is now also adopted in Africa and plans for such balers are available on the internet. Read more...

pollardAfter the last Ice Age, plants, animals and humans moved back into the vast areas vacated by the retreating ice.  Plant, and then, animal communities became established and much of the area was covered by what has been termed ‘wildwood’ – see previous Wildwood blogs.  These areas would also have been home to human populations migrating from the hinterland of Europe and Doggerland.  Communities developed and we may suppose that areas of forest/woodland/wild wood would have been cleared - for housing, the grazing of animals, to provide firewood/timber.  Such forest / woodland would have been managed to a greater or lesser degree. Read more...