Reserved

This week I've visited two nature reserves owned or managed by the Wildlife Trust for Lancashire, Manchester and North Merseyside. I've begun volunteering with the Trust's education and outreach department and so far I've been a Viking for the day and also helped with a survival day, learning how to build shelters and fires in the wild.

Both days were great fun (more about what I actually got up to later in the week) and I'm sure part of it was having the activities in such wonderful surroundings. My Viking experience was run on Booth's Plantation, near the Trust's Education Centre in Penwortham. The plantation is lovely thick woodland, well sheltered and far enough away from roads to feel like you really might have travelled back into Viking times- except for the large substation on the hill behind! Due to funding cuts (both for the Wildlife Trust and the National Grid who owns the land) this was the last event to be held at the Education Centre and Booth's Plantation. This is really sad as the Centre has been built up over 15 years with orchards, allotment plots and  beautifully painted classrooms with pictures of nature everywhere. The care and passion that has gone into producing such a wonderful asset is obvious and it must be devastating for those who work there to have to leave it all behind.

But leave it they must and move to their new reserve which will be the Trust's base at Brockholes. I haven't visited this site yet but hopefully I will soon, anywhere with a name that means "badger holes" in Old English has got to be a good place to protect wildlife!

The survival day I helped with was at Mere Sands Wood reserve which has a huge diversity of habitats from around Lancashire, including heaths, woodland, lakes and marsh. We worked in the deciduous woodland and while rain threatened all day it held off mostly. It was great to be out in the fresh air and nature and I'm looking forward to visiting the reserve again soon to have a proper look round all of the 105 acres.

With a chill in the air Autumn is a brilliant time to get out and warm up with a walk. Where's your nearest nature reserve? Why not find out this weekend and visit it, or if you already know it visit somewhere you've never been to before. That reminds me that I really need to go for my weekly walk before the weeks over!

Curtain Twitching

Going out for walks to see wildlife is great, but we shouldn't forget what's right on our doorsteps or out of our windows.

Yesterday I looked up from typing and saw two birds right at eye level flying past. They were black headed gulls, although already in their winter plumage their heads were confusingly white. While you might associate gulls with the seaside black headed gulls are more commonly found inland and are the most common inland gulls in the UK. You'll often see them flying behind ploughing tractors or anywhere with a good supply of worms, fish or insects. The way they glided past my window was breathtaking, completely still except for moving forwards with the wind.

Later in the day I saw movement in the corner of my eye and looked up again. A flock of about fifty starlings were flying round and round our row of terrace houses. Autumn starling roots are beautiful. What I saw wasn't really a proper roost spectacle, those at the RSPB Otmoor (video here) and Fen Drayton Lakes (video here) reserves are truly stunning. Thousands of birds flying in beautiful patterns just like shoals of fish in the sea. This behaviour helps to protect them from predators, flying in a flock makes it harder for birds of prey to pick out individual birds, but they also roost in large groups for warmth and to exchange information.
While these flocks are huge the starling population has dropped by 70% in recent years. There used to be common roosts over big cities such as Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle and Edinburgh but now you're much more likely to see them in rural areas. The reasons behind their decline aren't certain but could well be linked to increased use of chemicals on farmland and loss of permanent pastures.

So there are two really exciting birds I can see out of my window as well as my normal lovely house sparrows who are taking a while to find the new seed feeder, it's only two meters from the old one!

What's the most exciting wildlife you can see from your house? What's the most boring?

Party Time

The Green Party has one MP, two MEPs and 130 councilors on 43 councils across the UK. While not yet quite a mainstream party, membership has doubled in the last few years and is still growing steadily.

I've decided to volunteer one day a week for the Green Party's North West region; to gain experience in campaigning, media and general political policy. My first job will be to look at the regions university local groups, their current activities and what they need to expand.

Today I went to the regional meeting in Preston's County Hall- a very impressive building! I met with Emily Heath, their regional coordinator and a member of Lancaster City Council, to discuss what my volunteering might involve.

In the morning there was a choice of two workshops. I chose "Why Capitalism is destroying the planet", run by Joel Rasbash, a supporter of the Green Party in Carlisle and a very engaging speaker. Although I didn't know much about capitalism before the session was very interesting and informative. The workshop discussed the basic principles behind capitalism, it's historic relevance and the consequences for economics, society and the environment. Then the discussion was opened to the room and there was a 45 minute discussion of the key points. I didn't understand a lot of it but it was very interesting to see that the main points weren't environment based but social and economic concerns. It's easy to forget that the Green party isn't all about the environment. A lot of their policy is built around sustainable living, which involves renewable energy and recycling, but their policies stretch across all areas of governance.

The afternoon was taken up by reports from regional local groups, current campaigning updates and feedback from the Party conference which was help in Sheffield last month. I found the campaign updates particularly interesting. Currently the main concerns for the North West region are opposing the governments planned austerity cuts, disposal of nuclear waste, the national planning policy framework (which I talked about on Thursday) and Fracking-a very real concern for the region at the moment.