Volunteers – Bedgebury’s Half Term Heros
Nine days of Big Forest Find activities later and the Bedgebury project is nearing 900 observations of birds, insects, plants, arachnids, amphibians, reptiles and mammals; as well as one human....
Our half term heros turned out in force! We'd like to thank our heroic volunteers who supported 16 led activities over May half term. We're going to take a deeper look at the data before summing it up here. The project is live all the way through summer until October. Therefore we want you to keep listening, looking, and studying the wildlife at Bedgebury National Pinetum and add it to the project!
In the meantime, as it's Volunteer Week, we'd like to celebrate the current successes of this project.
We have a huge contingent of regular volunteers that dedicate hours of their time each week to complete the laborious hand removal of weeds, mucky mulching and carefully caging young tree specimens. They carry out vital work to conserve and protect a variety of habitats in the pinetum to care for our endangered tree species. For May half term we welcomed 25 Big Forest Find volunteers to the fold as facilitators, data experts or wildlife experts. Their enthusiasm was fantastic to witness on walks, activities and based at our Visitor Centre and entrance. They were sharing knowledge on discoveries and encouraging others to get excited about recording wildlife to help conservation in action.
A big thanks goes to our partners to deliver the events too! Wildlife and conservation organisations sent experts to contribute to the fantastic level of data that we're now collating:
South East Rivers Trust
Kent High Welad Partnership
Kentish Stour Countryside Partnership
The Amelia, Tunbridge Wells
Forest Research
Highlights of the first nine days recording are not, for us, the rare or engangered species spotted. You can check out the Friends of Bedgebury Pinetum website bedgeburypinetum.org and visit their wildlife pages for lots more information on that and previous years records...
We've enjoyed hearing yelps of surprise as new discoveries are made; and seeing groups of young and old stood stock still in complete awe gazing at the tree tops. Another highlight must be the many well attended bird walks for all the family, and it was a pleasure to watch really young visitors using binoculars to spot 'baby' greater spotted woodpeckers being fed in ancient oaks. Furthermore the bat walk finished by the calm waters of the Visitor Centre lake in the dark with a specacular show of numerous bats flying against the deep azure sky. Back during our open hours it was brilliant that our butterflies took second spot beside the day flying moths and their beautiful patterns in the recorded observations count. Take a look at the striking Cinnabar moth - currently sixth most recorded species in the project!
Our learning team dressed up valiently as a ladybird and a bee so that little ones could start the 'Spot that bug' drop in sessions with a hint of what they might find. Dragonflies, damselflies and mayflies emerged in the sun near the lakesides, which gave our experts the first sightings of some species this year, such as the four spotted chaser dragonfly. And last but not least, the Bedgebury tree team led a walking tour of the nursery behind closed gates. There were entertaining stories of trips to Japan collecting wild seed and how donuts are being trialled as the next new way for gardens to reduce stress on young plants in dry periods (of course they're water, and not jam, centred donuts!).
We're excited to find out more about the wildlife as the seasons change and more records are submitted! Thank you to everyone that's been spending time observing our wildlife, volunteers and visitors alike. Not forgetting a huge thank you to those helping from afar by verifying records and making identification suggestions. We hope to spot you in the pinetum one day too.
Keep up the excellent citizen science!
Thanks from the whole team at Bedgebury National Pinetum, Forestry England
