Tag Archives: BioBlitz

Nature Detectives are go!

We’ve been overwhelmed by interest in two Nature Detectives days for schools we are holding at Kings Weston later this month. The two day event will be led by Steve England and we have been generously loaned the use of Kings Weston house as a mini-lab. We are delighted that a lot of the local schools were the first to come forward and book places for the event which is now over subscribed.

Fingers are crossed for good weather!Kings Weston Schools event

Tree trail walk announced!

The third in KWAG’s series of free nature walks will be led by expert naturalist Richard Bland and explore the historic trees of the Kings Weston Estate. Come along and discover the many different and unusual species growing here, from familiar native trees to exotic imports grown to impress! Find out how to identify different species and how, when and why they were brought to Kings Weston.

Walk starts from Shirehampton Road Car Park. Please arrive at 10:15 am. The walk will commence at 10:30pm and finish around lunch time

Places are limited so book early. Accompanied children well behaved dogs on leads are very welcome.

Places are limited so book early. Accompanied children are very welcome.

E-mail kwag@theweasels.plus.com or call 07811 6666 71 to book your placetree walk poster

FREE! Kings Weston Bat Walk – 23rd August

The next walk in our programme will be a night time BAT WALK! This will be led by David Brown of the Avon Bat Group on Friday 23rd August and, as before, we need to book you a place if you would like to come along. There will be bat-detecting equipment in use to help identify the different calls and apparently Kings Weston has all but one of the native UK species so come along to find out more. Please find attached a poster/flyer giving full details of the event and feel free to pass this on to anyone who you think might be interested.

BAT WALK

The first of our natural history walks – wild food foraging with Steve England

As part of our All our Stories project with the Heritage Lottery Fund we have organised a series of free natural history walks. This first of those, a Wild Food Forage with local naturalist Steve England was today. We trekked across the estate in search of all things edible and helped ourselves to a few titbits along the way. We even ATE some of the historic avenue of lime trees!

Steve was a great knowledgeable guide and everyone who came along was thoroughly engaged. Here is a gallery of a few photos recording the event.

 

Bioblitz data available now!

Thanks to Liz and Extraverte Community Projects we now have a full list of all that was found during the Kings Weston Bioblitz. You can download your own copy from here: https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=620BA4062B4BA348%212066&authkey=%21AEmNlKf9Qn823Os

This is really the starting point for us now and we want to use this information in whatever way we can to improve people’s awareness of the natural history of the estate. The web site will be one way, but we are running a series of free nature walks this summer and a bulb-planting session in September. So don;t miss out and get in touch if you’d like to find out more.

 

Website Developments

After the frantic activity of organizing and having the Bioblitz, there’s been a short relaxtion in the proceedings whilst we all regroup a little bit.

By the end of June we should have the final species count and we can then start to pull all the information into a number of different forms so everyone visiting the park can understand a bit more about it.

So whilst we’re working towards that, we’ve been having a think about all the things we need to do for the next few months.

We’ve spoken to a lovely web developer who is going spruce up the website and help us make it the core of our online presence where people can see what’s going, how they can help and to get as much information about the park as we store here.

Other things we’re going to be doing include:

  • Some nature guides and tree name tags (if possible) so that people can identify the plants and trees they see as they walk around.
  • We’re going to identify some suitable native species that we like to plant in the park, and we’re planning to have a community bulb-planting day.
  • We’re putting together an exhibition panels which will be designed by a local school

So…quite a lot to be going on with so don’t think that it’s all gone quiet here at KWAG-central.  The busy bees are busier than ever.

 

Findings

Today, I managed a little time away from base camp where I was mostly on “site” duty to accompany a walk to find spiders.  I took my camera with me and here are a few pictures of what I saw on the walk (clue:  not all of them are spiders).

DSC_5836 Scorpion Fly DSC_5838 Scorpion Fly   DSC_5848 Spider DSC_5855 Cow Parsley DSC_5856 Spider DSC_5857 Spider DSC_5861 Bluebells     DSC_5871 Harvest Spider

Rain, rain go away

Rain definitely did not stop play today.  We were a little damp this morning but this seemed to encourage more invertebrates to brave the open air.

Eventually, the sun took over and we had a glorious afternoon.

We had walks…

DSC_5886 walk

Spider catching…

DSC_5845 Spider Hunting

…and some new young stars in front of the cameras

DSC_5879 Young Naturalists

If you didn’t make it to the BioBlitz, why not try one of the “Bristol 99” events – there’s probably one near you in the next couple of weeks.

It’s all happening at BioBlitz headquarters

The field lab at Kings Weston House is abuzz with naturalists identifying and verifying the species discoveries from around the site. As well as microscopes to help identify grasses via their minute differences, there is also a range of kit for people to come and borrow.

If you have an unidentified species, or need some help with ID, pop into the field lab!

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