Know your Patch
Lockdown has meant your local area has become your world. Here Twheatear, gives a great guide on how to really appreciate and benefit from all things wild and wonderful, in your local area. So,…
Lockdown has meant your local area has become your world. Here Twheatear, gives a great guide on how to really appreciate and benefit from all things wild and wonderful, in your local area. So,…
The green sandpiper is a very rare breeding bird in the UK, and is mainly seen on migration in autumn. Look out for it feeding around marshes, flooded gravel pits and rivers. It even likes sewage…
As its name suggests, the smooth stems of soft rush are thinner and more flexible than those of hard rush. It forms tufts in wetland habitats like wet woodlands, marshes, ditches and grasslands.…
The large, sunshine-yellow flowers of the yellow iris brighten up the margins of our waterways, ponds, wet woods, fens and marshes. Also called the 'flag iris', its outer petals have a…
A key species in the story of conservation, the avocet represents an amazing recovery of a bird once extinct in the UK. This pied bird, with its distinctive upturned bill, can now be seen on…
Listen out for the 'drumming' sound of a male snipe as it performs its aerial courtship display. It's not a call, but actually its tail feathers beating in the wind. Snipe live on…
We take a look at swallows and martins, or more technically “The Hirundines”. We will also throw in the similar looking, but unrelated, Swift as well, (although the fascinating Swift really…
Sphagnum mosses carpet the ground with colour on our marshes, heaths and moors. They play a vital role in the creation of peat bogs: by storing water in their spongy forms, they prevent the decay…
Niamh loves to feed the birds, so makes natural feeders out of pinecones and berries, to help them through the winter. She’ll tie this to a branch so that the birds can feast from it safely.
The rare Norfolk hawker is a pale brown dragonfly, with a distinctive yellow triangle on its body. Until recently, it was only found in unpolluted fens, marshes and ditches of the Broads National…
This is a strange, sparse habitat of grassland growing on old mining tracks and slag heaps, on river gravels and naturally exposed metal-rich soils in the mountains. Only the toughest metal-loving…