2022 highlights
For a photo review of more of our achievements with EuCAN in 2022, click on our Flickr link here
Dry-stone walling on Ham Hill
Our dry-stone walling hero, geologist Geoff Rowland, has been leading our volunteer group on Ham Hill on almost every Monday since autumn 2021 and they have achieved a fantastic amount. Anyone interested in joining in should contact Geoff by email: rowland.geoff@gmail.com
Barrington Hill National Nature Reserve, near Ilminster – our EuCAN Somerset Volunteer group has been working on the re-instatement of a very overgrown former pond in the SW corner of the reserve.
Yetminster Primary School nr Sherborne – our volunteers have been working at the school this spring and summer to maintain the new wildflower area and to help create the owl’s eyes in the centrepiece of the area known as the ‘Bug Hug’. The children have designed a mosaic of coloured glass for the eyes.
The wildflowers have been stunning, humming with insects
We filled the eyes with rubble and rough concrete
then filled in with a layer of smoothed concrete
the children then created a coloured glass mosaic
White Horse Hill Osmington There has been a lot of local concern expressed recently about the state of the White Horse monument on the hills close to Weymouth (in our opinion, quite unjustified!). After our session this spring, we are really pleased with the way King George looks now. (though his arm and reins need to be enhanced a bit! go to this page..
Since the burnt areas recovered, the monument has greatly improved!
Wyke Farm, Chedington (west Dorset) Survey weekend July 8th to 10th 2022
We held our third Chedington weekend in July. This is the fifth year of our association with Wyke Farm and but the 2020 and 2021 events were held as moth trapping sessions because of the covid pandemic. The land area linked to Wyke Farm is now around 1000 acres and includes the wonderful Whitevine Farm which is just over the Somerset border and part of which is a SSSI hay meadow.
Click here for an outline programme for the weekend.
The area is hugely varied and includes coniferous and deciduous woodland, hazel coppice, a lake and reedbed, withybeds, extensively-grazed pastures and wildflower meadows. As a result the biodiversity is fantastic: every year we add to the species lists.
Some of the 28 participants stayed locally but most camped in tents or campervans in the field by the lake. A few attended on a non-residential basis. On the Saturday evening our hosts Rob and Alex Appleby laid on another of their famous barbecues.
Hoverfly Chrysotoxum bicinctum
The aim of the weekend was to bring together people with expertise in certain fields and others with an interest but less knowledge and experience and try to find out together what species we could add to the lists of fauna and flora so far accumulated for the area and at the same time help the learners build up their experience and id skills.
Cloaked Pug, one of the area’s specialities. It flies in July
Ringing a female Blackcap
Chedington Woods and the surrounding farms are on the Dorset/Somerset border -see this map. Postcode: DT8 3HX.
A comprehensive survey of this land was carried out between 2006 and 2010 and we held our first weekend event there in 2018. The owners, Rob and Alex Appleby, are very keen to continue this on a regular basis to develop the database of information about the site to inform the management of the woodland and the farmland.
Some of the results of previous survey work here are shown on the EuCAN website: http://www.eucan.org.uk/previous-years/2018-2/ (scroll down), and for the spreadsheet of records produced by the Dorset Environmental Records Centre after the 2019 weekend, click here.
And there are albums of photos on the EuCAN Flickr site for the 2019 weekend here and for the 2018 weekend here . In 2020 we did a moth trapping session there – photos here .
This year’s weekend is remembered in photos in a Flickr album – click here
And some of the moth photos are here
Records from the 2022 weekend: Bird ringing results and recaptures (Richard and Rebecca Taylor), Invertebrate records from Max Cantrell, Moth records (Tim Norriss, Jack Oughton et al.), invertebrate records (Andy Foster)
The Wyke Farm Butterfly Transect: Stephen Brown and his team put the finishing touches to the new Wyke Farm Butterfly transect route over the weekend and this was surveyed over the weekend and for the remainder of the season as a trial. The transect route map is here; these are the results of the transects on Saturday July 9th and Sunday July 10th , and the end of year results sheet is here.
Wyke Farm is now in the process of developing its own website – click here
