East Keswick Wildlife Trust will be at the Green Fair on Saturday 9th September in Bardsey Churchyard from 1-4pm. Come along to learn about our local nature reserves and have your say on the newly acquired Bardsey Fields.
The Yorkshire Dales River Trust is loaning their table-top Sustainable Drainage Village for children to mimic rainfall and see where it goes!
We hope you can come along and help bring our communities together. There is a very varied programme of eco activities, stalls and refreshments.
The Wildlife Trust is excited to hear that East Keswick Village Hall’s offer for the Illingworth Field, which lies directly behind the Village Hall’s garden, has been accepted.
The Village Hall has our full support in acquiring the Illingworth Field. We believe it will contribute to protecting, improving and extending existing local multifunctional green corridors. It will enable an increase in connectivity to the existing local habitat network, including the Ellikers nature reserve to the north of Illingworth Field, and offer the potential for wider links around the parish and beyond.
East Keswick Wildlife Trust is committed to working with the Village Hall to preserve this green space and create opportunities for the local community and visitors to learn and play a central role in working with nature to address the causes and consequences of climate change.
Peter Guildford and David Wort from the Village Hall committee meet David Smith, Chairman of East Keswick Wildlife Trust, to discuss plans to improve biodiversity on the land behind the Village Hall.
We will be holding our annual family day on Sunday 9th July from 2-4pm at the charcoal burn area in Oxclose Wood.
This year we won’t have the kilns lit, but will be loading them ready to burn – something that children love being involved with. We would recommend bringing gloves to protect your hands. It is a great opportunity to learn about the charcoal burns too, but without the smoke!
The pizza oven will be fired up and we will provide the dough. If you can bring tomato sauce and toppings that would be great. We won’t be able to provide seating, so please feel free to bring rugs or chairs.
There will be lots of fun for the children including willow weaving, scavenger hunt and drawing. Our Trust moth expert will have traps to show the children the variety of moths that live in the woods. There will also be the opportunity to learn more about the Trust, with talks on charcoal burns and how the woodland is managed.
This event is free for members or a minimum donation of £5 for non members.
We need to know numbers, to enable us to plan activities and prepare the right quantity of pizza dough. If you could let us know if you are coming and how many of you there will be, by Thursday 6th July that would be helpful. We are limited to the number of pizzas we can cook in the time available, so please book early to avoid disappointment. Please reply to thomasin@ekwt.org.uk, we hope to see you there!
Dan Carne, a director of the Wood Meadows Trust will give a talk ‘Forgotten Landscapes: wooded grasslands in Great Britain’. Dan will explore the history and ecology of wood meadows and wood pastures and make the case that these ancient agricultural systems have an important role to play in our modern landscapes. All welcome.
The winter bird survey took place on 14th January 2023. A total of 36 different bird species were observed during the walk from St Mary Magdalene Church on Moor Lane, through the Marsh and then along Moor Lane. We then crossed Harewood Road and walked along by the river, up Fitts Lane and back into the village.
On 29th and 30th October Ann Hanson and colleagues from the Yorkshire Mammal Group joined East Keswick Wildlife Trust to survey Fitts Fields for small mammals. 50 humane large Longworth traps were set on the Saturday evening and on Sunday morning we met to open the traps.
The children who had helped to set the traps were very excited to see what we would find.
32 of the 50 traps had small mammals in them, all looked healthy and were a good weight.
We recorded: 14 bank voles, 3 field voles, 14 wood mice and 1 common shrew.
This shows that there is a very good population of small mammals in these fields and although we did not find a harvest mouse this time, we do know that they are living here.
In August Trust members worked with the Yorkshire Dales River Trust to create leaky dams in Thorner. The dams are designed to slow the flow of water during flooding.
