Three of us were lucky enough to go on a Dormouse Ecology course this month, held in Cheddar by the Mammal Society.Dormice are European Protected Species, due to their sadly diminishing numbers, and it is illegal to handle them or check their nestboxes without a licence (renewed annually).
Once they come out of hibernation in May, dormice look for places to use as daytime rest areas, as they’re nocturnal creatures, and also to start building their summer nests in. We were taken up to Cheddar Gorge to see a survey area where 50 nestboxes have been provided. After a few false starts (other creatures such as Wood Mice or small birds are partial to nesting in the boxes too!), we were lucky enough to find 3 occupied boxes.One of the cute critters is shown here – undoubtedly a huge ‘ahhh’ factor involved!
Island 2000 were asked to help out in a number of ways with the big green picnic. One of our tasks was to get people to the site, and so it was time to implement Dan’s printing-press-bike once more….. See the video below or click here to view, comment and rate the video on the Youtube site.
Well, it is now upon us. The Big Green Picnic kicks off in about two and a half hours. Island 2000 have been busy preparing all kinds of stuff, from lollipop signs to entrance way arches. Gift to Nature will be there throughout the day, with an opportunity to see video clips of our work and have a chat with staff about our Friends scheme and the projects it helps bring to life. Magpie has turned some rubbish into incredible creations which will be on show around the Biffa waste displays. There will also be some interesting on-street signage, but more of that after the event…. I’m not going to post any images of the amazing creations that will be there, as you should come and see them for yourself. County Hall Car Park, Newport from 10-6 Saturday and Sunday. Oh and there’s lots more interesting stuff from other people too!
We now have a lovely new logo for our Magpie project created by Ventnor based illustrator Nicola Winsland.
Magpie is all about reusing and recycling scrap or unwanted materials in a creative way. This can be for a whole range of purposes and often results in a bit of ‘upcycling’ (which is a rather clunky term meaning making things better than they were in the first place!).
Most recently we have been asked to create some signs for the Council’s Big Green Picnic this weekend. Fortunately we have some expert Magpie scroungers on our I2k staff and we’ve managed to get a hold of some old lollipop sticks that aren’t used for school crossings any more and we’ve made them into handy signs that will be used to help direct people to the site.
Look out for Dan’s giant ‘Welcome’ arches on the day too.
We’ve also been working with the IW Festival and Biffa to get artists to decorate some large bins that will be used during the festival. One of them will actually be a giant collection box for bee conservation work so we thought who better do design it than artist and actual Bee (albeit the musician kind) Aaron Fletcher.
Last but not least, The ‘Dolly Mixtures’ exhibition is now up in the Learning Curve Gallery at Quay Arts. The exhibition has been brought together in partnership with St Georges school to help raise awareness and funds for their Dragon project (www.stgeorgesdragon.com) which is a unique project to help increase opportunities for pupils at the school. Catalogues are on sale from Quay Arts or Island 2000 (hannah@island2000.org.uk or 298098 ext 102) for £5 and they include a raffle ticket for a draw on Thurs 29th May where all of the dolls in the exhibition will be raffled off. There’s some real gems in there so make sure you buy your ticket in time.
Dave Dana, dragonfly recorder extraordinaire, has reported 2 very exciting records from the Gift to Nature pond at the sandown Wetland Walk. He found Hairy Dragonfly Brachytron pratense and Four-spotted Chaser Libellula quadrimaculata, both rather scarce on the Island and the former scarce just about everywhere! This is a great reward for the conservation efforts of the Trust, many volunteers and Southern water who own the site. Here’s one of Dave’s fabulous pictures of the chaser.
Is this the year of the Lesser Whitethroat? I’ve never heard so many around as in the past couple of weeks. It’s great to hear such an obscure little bird it out and about shouting from gardens,the seafront, the railway embankments but its such a skulker you just can’t get more than the most fleeting of glimpses. Quite a pretty bird in a dark kind of way, especially when they’re all freshly arrived and still quite neat: slate grey with a darker face and blue legs. The song is a machine-gun-like rattle, not terribly musical but quite distinctive. Listen out for it and so long as you’re not near a war-zone or on MOD land you can be fairly confident that you too have heard the Lesser Whitethroat.
As part of our work for Yarmouth Harbour on all things Yarmouth Pier, we were asked to put together a show to celebrate the pier and mark its re-opening. The Not-The-End-Of-The-Pier Show was born. A certain member of staff who shall remain nameless decided it would be a good idea to claim we could light up the pier as part of the show. We calculated we had around £1,000 to illuminate the 609ft long pier. A quick bit of online research turned up various projects to light piers. Saltburn Pier had been lit, but permanently. Cost? £380,000. hmm… New Brighton Pier came in for a more modest $50,000NZ. Nowhere I looked had a budget of less than £25K, even for temporary installations. Oh dear. The Island 2000 team kicked around various ideas, including illuminated balloons, which would have looked beautiful but gave us too many issues of reliability, safety and marine environmental risk. Out of this however was developed a simple, low cost idea. Post event we had enquiries from people wanting to replicate the idea, and I thought it might prove helpful to others looking to light large structures to blog details on how we did it.
We bought tiny LED packages designed to insert into balloons from Ebay and threaded them together with garden wire in groups of 3. Each group of 3 was then strapped to the enormous handrail with 4 long cable ties linked together at 4ft intervals (or 4 plank widths - it was the easiest way to measure, even if you look rather silly tiptoeing down the pier counting!). The local community helped light the pier, collecting a set of lights each from the bottom of the pier, then strapping them on where we had put out the cable ties. It was still light when we started, and we hadn’t tested the concept on the pier (only testing had been strapping LEDs on the back of my car one rainy night and running halfway down the street to check they were visible) so it was a nerve racking half hour as the sun set. As it got darker though it became clear that the effect was working. Once the lights were in place we deployed the last stage of our lighting, floodlighting the timber roundhouse at the end of the pier. We used a Ring PowerPack - a handy combination of heavy duty battery and inverter in one box, providing 300W of mains power to supply power to 4 low energy site lamps from screwfix.
The approximate cost breakdown was:
600 LEDs - £300
4 work lamps £160
Powerpack £100
Garden wire £3
Cable ties £50
Experimentation along the way £200
The end result was captured beautifully by Julian Winslow. Because of the angle of the shot (aimed at capturing the fireworks - not included in the budget!) you can’t see the lights close in to shore that well, but the ones at the end 600+ft away can be clearly seen. Click on the picture for a larger version.
I had the great privilege of joining in with Professor Boffin’s walking festival walk around Cowes and East Cowes “The Queen’s Bloomers” on Sunday. What a great walk! If he manages the trip across the Solent to present it again next year I would heartily recommend it. The YouTube video below gives a small taste of the days fun.
Newport’s first Riverfest held last Saturday was a great success! The weather was kind and the days activities were well received by the crowd of well over 2,000 who came along. Alan Titchmarsh arrived on the world’s smallest paddle steamer, which appeared to have the world’s loudest horn! The video below (also available on the YouTube site) gives a bit of a flavour of the day.
Saturday sees the launch of the Isle of Wight Walking festival at Riverfest, an event celebrating Newport’s rivers. There is a packed programme of activities throughout the day, and you’ll even have a chance to see Alan Titchmarsh if you missed him at the re-opening of Yarmouth Pier.
Take a look at the programme below for full details - click either image for a bigger version.
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