Passengers are promised “a special intervention” by Ms Dean to entertain them on the way from Bridport to Powerstock Hut
Posts tagged “Dorset Wildlife Trust”
A stag beetle on a log, photographed by Nigel Brooks. Britain's largest beetle likes to live in dead wood.
UNUSUALLY high numbers of stag beetles are being seen in Dorset this year.
Dorset Wildlife Trust says the county’s unusually hot Spring seems to have brought these fantastic creatures out nearly a month earlier than normal.
Steve Halliwell, project co-ordinator for the Trust’s Wildlife On Your Doorstep Project, said: “Early this June, as I was relaxing in the garden one warm evening, I saw at least a dozen male stag beetles fly over, a phenomenon I have never witnessed before.”
Stag beetles are globally threatened. In Britain they’re protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.
To see just one is a treat.
The male can grow up to 7.5 cms long – it’s Britain’s largest beetle – while the female rarely gets past 4.5 cms. However, the male is harmless, while the female can have a nasty bite.
Stag beetle numbers have been dropping since the 1940s, because of the destruction of their favoured dead wood habitats.
Dorset Wildlife Trust wants people to be less tidy in their gardens, and leave out old logs as possible places for stag beetles to live.
The Trust’s ‘Wildlife On Your Doorstep’ project offers a free information pack including gardening tips, wildlife identification charts and recording sheets.
For more information see www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/woyd or contact Steve Halliwell at shalliwell@dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk or ring Dorset Wildlife Trust on 01202 692033. The code is for the conurbation because Bournemouth is one of the UK’s hotspots for stag beetles.
SHOPS around Bridport are being encouraged to get creative and decorate their windows with butterfly-inspired designs. A competition is being held to promote Dorset Wildlife Trust’s Wild about Bridport Butterfly Bonanza on June 4.
The contest is meant to colour Bridport’s streets with the splendour of butterflies and to show how anyone can get involved in helping wildlife.
WATER is flowing through a new Dorset chalk stream created as part of a project to restore the county’s alluring network of winterbournes.
Six hundred and fifty metres of land were dug out at Winterborne Herringston about two miles south west of Dorchester.
A new channel being created at Winterborne Herringston. Photograph by Sarah Williams.
Water flowing through the new channel at Winterborne Herringston. Doesn't it look great? Photograph by Sarah Williams.
It’s hoped it will provide a habitat for a rare water crowfoot and invertebrates such as the threatened mayfly Paraleptophlebia werneri and the rare blackfly Simulium latipes.
Brown trout are among the fish expected to use the new stream for spawning in wet winters.
Winterbournes are wild rivers that only flow during wet winters when the land can soak up no more.
They have a lovely lively swing.
The Dorset Wild Rivers project is being co-ordinated by Sarah Williams of Dorset Wildlife Trust. Areas covered include the Frome and Piddle Valleys and the chalk stream tributaries of the Stour, Allen, Tarrant and North Winterbornes.
She said: “Winterbournes are very special, appearing and disappearing quite naturally and providing a rare environment for wildlife.
“With our partners we want to see them flourishing again in their secretive way as part of Dorset’s network of wild chalk rivers.
“We have had previous success on the South Winterbourne at Winterborne Came, with both rare mayflies and blackflies recorded in the first season, so we have great hopes for Winterborne Heringston this spring.”
The Dorset Wild Rivers project is being led by Dorset Wildlife Trust with funding from the Environment Agency and Wessex Water.
Other partners include the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG), Dorset Biodiversity Partnership, the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), Queen Mary University of London, Natural England and Purbeck Heritage Committee.
I WAS thinking the other day about Colin Varndell, because I was trying to draw up a list in my head of excellent West Dorset people and organisations.
By excellent, I mean almost gratuitously obsessed with quality, and with the means and the skill to produce superb results.
The first individuals that came to mind were the West Bexington chilli growers Michael and Joy Michaud, the Beaminster furniture maker John Makepeace, the Bridport tiler Tony Bird of ASB Tiling, the West Milton cider maker Nick Poole, and the Netherbury wildlife photographer Colin Varndell.
Then I got distracted, and forgot all about it, until Dorset Wildlife Trust sent me some images from their new 2011 calendar, all given by Colin Varndell, and all – you guessed it – excellent. Really tremendous. See:
Dormouse, hibernating: January's image on Dorset Wildlife Trust's new calendar Wildlife Encounters. Copyright Colin Varndell.
Nuthatch, February's image on Dorset Wildlife Trust's 2011 calendar. Copyright Colin Varndell.
Otter: Pictured for September 2011 on Dorset Wildlife Trust's new calendar Wildlife Encounters. Copyright Colin Varndell.
Mr Varndell is a long-standing member and supporter of Dorset Wildlife Trust. He said: “Dorset is one of the richest counties for wildlife in Britain. If it is to remain so, it is the responsibility of each and every one of us, as custodians of this natural heritage, to protect, preserve and improve it for future generations. We can all help to achieve this by supporting the Dorset Wildlife Trust.”
In other words, and entirely reasonably, given his own generosity in supplying pictures, he wants people to buy the Trust’s new calendar.
Myself, I think that’s an excellent idea.
The calendar is called Wildlife Encounters and it costs £5. It’s available from Dorset Wildlife Trust at www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk/calendar or call 01305 264620.
It’s also stocked by most Dorset Tourist Information Centres, including Bridport, Dorchester, Shaftesbury, Wareham and Wimborne.
A PAIR of ringed plovers have bred in the far west of Dorset for the first time.
The wading birds have raised four chicks at Chard Junction Quarry.
Site owners Bardon Aggregates and Dorset Wildlife Trust turned a disused part of the quarry into a community nature reserve about a year ago.
Bardon Aggregates are still extracting gravel from are another part of the quarry, but when the company heard of the plovers’ nest, quarry manager Tony Pearson ordered an exclusion zone to make sure the pair weren’t disturbed.
He said: “It’s fascinating see how these birds have progressed, considering the natural predators that share the same area, including foxes, badgers, crows and buzzards. We just hope they will become regular visitors now.”
Dorset Wildlife Trust’s Joy Wallis said: “The birds could leave any time now, possibly to winter on the coast, but we hope they will be back to breed here next year.”
Ringed plover. Photograph by Monique Vanstone.
Ringed plovers have increasingly chosen to nest inland on sand and gravel pits, even sometimes on old industrial sites, as well as on coastal beaches.
The species’ future has been concerning conservationists; ringed plovers have amber status, indicating they need places to feed and breed.
Chard Junction Quarry nature reserve is near Chard Junction, at grid reference ST 345045. Open daily, free of charge, it includes a path, bird hides, woods, ponds and establishing grasslands. There is no other nature reserve nature in the area.
Reserve leaflets are available from Chard Tourist Information Centre.
More information can be obtained from Bardon Aggregates on 07730 832767.
The Dorset coast mapped so far
A MAP of Dorset’s seabed from Abbotsbury to Swanage is now on Google Earth.
The DORset Integrated Seabed map – known for short as DORIS – shows the sea floor in enormous detail.
Lulworth Banks sponges & bryozoans: Peter Tinsley - Dorset Seasearch
Reefs and wrecks, rocky ledges and wildlife hotspots can all be studied through images and links and lists.
Never before in Britain has such an advanced map been made feely available.
DORIS began with an acoustic survey, plotting the exact contours of the seabed. Later stages involved hundreds of dives and thousands of photographs to find out more about different habitats.
It’s hoped over the next two years to cover all of the Dorset coast.
Work’s been done so far by Dorset Wildlife Trust, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and Channel Coastal Observatory. The Viridor Credits Environmental Company gave £300,000 through the Landfill Communities Fund.
This map of Portland and The Shambles was produced - like the one at the top of this page - using data from DORIS, a collaborative project involving Dorset Wildlife Trust, Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Channel Coastal Observatory and Royal Navy, with major funding from Viridor Credits Environmental Company. Other partners include Natural England, Dorset Strategic Partnership, University of Southampton and the National Oceanography Centre.
Peter Tinsley, marine conservation officer at Dorset Wildlife Trust, said: “This map marks a huge step forwards for the marine environment. Already it has enabled us to find important wildlife hotspots and we want to continue pushing back the boundaries of knowledge about a part of the county that still holds many mysteries.”
Dorset Coast Forum’s C-SCOPE project will use DORIS to create a marine plan for Dorset, and it’s an incomparable resource for divers.
A Dorset Seasearch volunteer diver (Dorset Seasearch)
Mr Tinsley said: “Recreational divers can now choose an interesting or unexplored spot from the map, take the GPS co-ordinates and head straight to it.
“We are particularly keen for volunteer divers to help us to continue the surveying so that we can fill in more habitat information.”
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency is going to use the map to update navigation charts, and the Channel Coastal Observatory will provide information to coastal engineers.
Lisa Nelson, general manager of Viridor Credits, said: “We are delighted to have been able to support such an interesting and unusual biodiversity project. There is still so much to learn about the seabed and the marine environment. I know that the DORIS map will make a huge difference to everyone from scientists to leisure divers and be quite fascinating for older children.”
You can see the DORIS map in Google Earth at http://tinyurl.com/dorismap with linked photos appearing as you zoom in.
NB: You need to have Google Earth dowloaded on to your computer, from http://earth.google.com/intl/en/download-earth.html
Divers interested in helping to record Dorset’s underwater wildlife should contact Dorset Wildlife Trust on 01305 264620 or see http://www.dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk
Editor’s Note: I love the fact the map is called DORIS. I remember the painter John Skinner – who was obsessed with the Dorset coast - once remarking: “A man came up to me in the street in Bridport and said ‘Did you know that Doris was the mother of the Nereids?’”
Nereids being sea nymphs…
John Skinner lived in Bothenhampton, and had a studio in Abbotsbury. He moved to Dorset so that he could paint the sea. I seem to remember that for a while he was anxious about swimming in it, off Chesil Beach, because the currents might pull him under, but his fearfulness was eased by the Wytherstone art collector Sir Michael Culme-Seymour suggesting to him that the tugs he felt were simply Nereids wanting to play.
And to think that Doris is generally regarded as an un-artistic name!