Island 2000 Trust Blog

An intrepid band of children worked with Danny and Kev to build solar powered boats and cars last week. We’re one of the practitioners in this Creative Partnerships Southampton and Isle of Wight funded project in Greenmount Primary School.
As you can see from the picture the solar powered cars were hugely popular - we weren’t able to test the boats, unfortunately, as I underestimated just how long it takes to inflate a 12 foot paddling pool using a single foot
pump. Even with the help of a whole bunch of children we couldn’t get the thing blown up so we’ve put off the boat testing until our next session.

I’ve also included a picture of Danny.

ahhhhh.

In an effort to standardise office procedures and normalise our environmental impact we’ve settled upon a funky Education Team uniform. We’re still waiting for the rainbow dungarees to be delivered but thought it might be useful to model our new safety footwear range. The picture shows Suzie, Jill and Kev demonstrating how useful our clogs are for impromptu, stand-up meetings.
[Here's one for the kids - If Kev's wearing the pink trousers can you figure out who the hairy legs belong to?]

I’ve also included a picture of Danny for no reason other than I know he likes to see himself online.

Ian and Suzie met pupils from Love Lane Primary School on the Cowes-Newport cyclepath this morning on the hunt for ferocious minibeasts and bugs. A fantastically

warm sunny morning - perfect for butterflies and bees feasting on the hedgerow flowers we passed.

Unfortunately we didn’t find anything dangerous, but there was certainly a lot of life in them there nettles.

Ian brought the bush-sweeper with him so that we could tap the hedgerows and discover the life within. We found a lot of spiders, beetles, leaf hoppers, ladybirds, earwigs, crickets, caterpillars, a red admiral and a white admiral. Not bad for an hour’s work.

The amazing Isle of Wight Festival was at its spectacular best this year and in weather that turned the free cider into a gift from the gods. Island 2000 was busy in the Kids Zone, run by Liz Cooke, creating the big paper murals we’ve tried and tested at community and public events over the years (Gavin Hodson’s brilliant invention - thanks, Gav). Children of any age (adults similarly) can come along and make

whatever shapes, patterns and drawings they fancy. We work with permanent markers and nice soft pastels for the mark-making and colouring and then wash over it all with bright drawing inks. And then for that touch of magic - going over some of the drawings and polishing them with a dry cloth that brings all the bright colours through and makes the whole thing glow. We had many many happy face-painted children busy making masterpiece after masterpiece while their exhausted face-painted parents fell asleep in the shade of the Field Maple. And that’s what it’s all about.

Now that summer’s here, lovely high pressure and warm southerlies (now and then) it’s good weather for dragonflies and damselflies. What’s the difference? Not much really - the big damselflies are about the same size as the small dragonflies, although generally they’re slighter and daintier. But there is one very obvious morphological difference between the two groups: damsels’ eyes don’t touch in the middle of their heads but dragons’ do. So there you are. This one is a fabulously beautiful Red-veined Darter Sympetrum fonscolombei photographed by Island odonata maestro Dave Dana. It’s quite common in southern Europe but is turning up more and more regularly as a migrant in the UK. It’s hard to imagine these little things travelling such huge distances but there is quite a list of regular migrant species that visit us annually and so it’s more than mere accident. We monitor dragonflies at all of our major wetland sites as they can be very useful indicators of the general health of the habitats we’re working on.

We’re doing quite a bit of botanical and other ecological survey work at the moment through one of our trading subsidiaries - Arc (this is how we fund parts of our organization and work). Amongst the many other interesting things to spring up on a particular bit of old and abandoned arable farmland currently awaiting development were dozens of plants of this beautiful thing: Tragopogon porrifolius or Salsify. It’s just a big dandelion in many ways but with striking purple flowers that open and close during the course of the day. It’s a naturalized Mediterranean species and widely cultivated and eaten as a delicacy elsewhere. It’s also called the Oysterplant because the root apparently has just that taste. These scrawny feral ones wouldn’t taste much of anything I shouldn’t think, but the big fat pampered ones have fleshy white roots that can be prepared and cooked in all manner of ways in all manner of dishes. It is also said to ‘ splendidly deosbtruent ‘ (a word that means exactly what you think it means) so don’t say I didn’t warn you.