Wildwatch winter (December 2018 - February 2019)

Highlights Over-wintering Chiffchaffs are followed by St Nicks earliest ever Chiffchaff song. Other bird winter visitors disappoint, but the reserve’s Gorse Shieldbugs, Sage Leafhoppers, Seven-spot Ladybirds and Rosemary Beetles defy winter and appear most weeks.   Weather Winter Wildwatch began (on 5th December) with heavy rain, but that was the last we saw of it, […]

This blog was originally written by our Outreach Officer Ivana Jakubkova for Your Local LinkYour Local Link The bad news is, a recent report by the Climate Coalition shows that chips were shorter last year as a result of climate change. This may not sound like a huge deal but it confirms that UK harvests are […]

There’s been a lot of publicity recently about the closure of Harewood Whinn (read more here) so our Waste and Recycling Manager Sam Taylor has decided to compare landfill and incineration. In York your waste is no longer sent to landfill, instead it is sent to Allerton Waste Recovery Park where it undergoes a number […]

This months spotlight, written by Wildwatch volunteer, Kaye, is all about winter tree buds —proving we can identify trees without leaves and flowers!  Many people believe deciduous trees are hard to identify in winter.  Not necessarily so!  Some of our native species have very distinctive twigs and buds. Get to know these, and even without […]

Highlights The year’s butterfly showing continued to disappoint, but lots of bugs and hoverflies brighten up Wildwatch mornings… Unusual bird visitors included a Common Snipe and Water Rail… Two new plant gall records.   Weather Wildwatch days in September were disappointingly overcast and often windy, but brightened up for October which gave us a number […]

In January 2018, our Natural Habitats Manager, Jonathan, wrote a brilliant spotlight blog about the woodland structure, focusing on the understory. In this blog, Jonathan discussed the background of St Nicks woodland and talked about our plans for improvement as we launched our exciting new project; St Nicks community woodland, funded by the Postcode Local […]

This post was originally written by our Outreach Officer Ivana Jakubkova for Your Local Link magazine column. It may be getting harder to avoid news about climate change and global warming (should be “weirding” really) but it is easy to feel helpless and underestimate what we as individuals can achieve. What doesn’t get reported enough […]

This month’s spotlight has been written by our incredibly knowledgeable Park Ranger, Sean Garvey, revealing revelations about native shrub species, Alder Buckthorn. Let me introduce you to one of St Nicks’ scarcest shrubs: Alder Buckthorn , Frangula alnus. It’s an unassuming plant that is easily overlooked; but it has a fascinating, and literally explosive, back-story. […]

On a personal level zero waste is a lifestyle choice where we aim to minimise the amount of waste we produce. This means making conscious decisions on where we spend our money and being aware of the lifecycle of the items we consume. This results in less landfill waste, less recycling generated and no mindless […]

Our brilliant Meadow Keepers intern, Eithne Phillips, has written Octobers spotlight, giving us insight into the wonderful world of Tawny Owls. The Tawny Owl is one of Britain’s most familiar species of owl and has been heard throughout our forests, woodlands and parklands for thousands of years. Our relationship with owls has often been a […]