This autumn a collaborative conservation effort began at Robin Hood’s Bay to restore the cliff slope grassland there. It will be followed up with a programme of enhancement management to maintain this important habitat and its species. You can read about it on the excellent Connecting for Nature Blog.
Land of Iron Volunteer, Adrian Glasser, has been applying his mind to calculating the potential velocity on Ingleby Incline. If you like equations or just want to see photographs of what happened to the runaway wagons – have a look at Adrian’s blog post. He has a way of explaining concepts that takes a lay person along for the ride.
Here’s another reblogged post from Land of Iron volunteer Adrian Glasser. This one is about his photogrammetry turntable prototype – a turntable should make photogrammetry modelling a whole lot easier. The Land of Iron are using photogrammetry as much as possible in order to model the remains of local ironstone industry structures and associated features in 3D (see Land of Iron Sketchfab page).
See Adrian’s recent blog post by clicking here.
The Land of Iron has been working with Adrian Glasser, a local volunteer with a lot of technological expertise, on a number of experiments. One recent success has been reinventing the moulding of pig iron, this time in chocolate.
‘Pig iron’ was liquid iron ore run into series of moulds coming off a main running channel which resembled a sow suckling piglets – hence the name – and then cooled. This basic product from the initial iron smelting in a blast furnace could be quickly produced and then easily transported for further refining into wrought iron or steel.
You can find out exactly how Adrian and Tom (Land of Iron Programme Manger) used one of the last surviving pig irons from the Grosmont Ironworks to come up with an edible Land of Iron treat. See Adrian’s recent blog post by clicking here.
The North Yorkshire Turtle Dove Project area is now considered a Turtle Dove Friendly Zone. These zones form a loose association of areas in England where Operation Turtle Dove is in action. Here’s a link to a recent Operation Turtle Dove blog post with a bit more info on what’s going on across the different zones including ours.
Richard Baines, our Turtle Dove Project Officer, has posted an update on the North Yorkshire Turtle Dove Project on the blog belonging to Operation Turtle Dove.
Last week Richard and Katie Pownall, our Conservation Research Student, showed RSPB people around some of the best local sites, and even saw a Turtle Dove.
Following on from Abi’s bee blog post a fortnight ago, it’s now Bees’ Needs Week 2018.
Top 5 Actions that people can take for bees and other pollinators – you don’t need to be a farmer or a major landowner:
If you’re interested in Turtle Doves as much as we are, you might want to have a look at a series of recent blog posts from Operation Turtle Dove – click here.
The Trees by Philip Larkin
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
If you like your poems recited by the poet and maybe animated – click here. Larkin sometimes thought his own poem was ‘bloody awful tripe’ – and at the same time upcoming spring might be ‘corny’ and predictable but it’s also reassuring and propitious.
The Freshwater Habitats Trust are asking people to record the locations of frog and toad spawn through their PondNet Spawn Survey 2018. The Trust are looking to build a national picture of where there are breeding populations and so help identify water bodies important for biodiversity.
We’re into the breeding season now – even through the cold our amphibians can be remarkably resilient given half a chance.
The official blog for the North York Moors National Park 