Conservation

Making an insect hotel

As part of the school conservation project, Settle Primary School in the UK built an insect hotel using recycled materials. The aim was to encourage a range of invertebrates to set up home in it and breed. This is an example of making a scientific enquiry over time.

Here’s a close up of the insect hotel.

Skegness Seal Sanctuary

The common or harbour seal is found on the coasts of North America, Russia and Europe. In 2008 it was estimated that the world population was between 350,000 – 500,000 and just over 27,000 live on the shores of the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Seals can suffer injuries and seal pups can be orphaned but on the east coast of England at Skegness there is a seal sanctuary where injured seals and orphaned pups are nursed back to health before being returned to the sea.

A common or harbour seal.

Baby seals waiting to be fed. The attendant delivers an entertaining talk about the seals as she feeds them.

I make a new friend…

… who helps to demonstrate how the refraction of light in water makes the underwater body near than the head!

I visited the seal sanctuary in April and recommend that anyone holidaying in the area should also make a visit. Find more details at Skegness Nature Land

Gibraltar Point

As a bird watcher from my youth I had to visit Gibraltar Point in Lincolnshire, a great place to see migrants as they pass up and down the east coast of Great Britain in spring and autumn.

It also produces surprises any time. A Little Egret, once a very rare visitor to the UK preened itself in the salt marsh. Avocets skipped about on the mud, once only seen regularly in Suffolk and a barn owl slowly flapped its wings and glided a metre or so above the salt marsh before disappearing into a wood.

The daily information board tells you what birds have been seen and what to look out for. I tend to think of it like an arrivals board at an airport.

An information board tells you about the plants and animals found on the reserve and about the action of tides and the wind in forming the habitat.

A view of the salt marsh as we walked towards the sea.

We were surprised to see these sheep on the reserve.

An information board told us how the sheep were being used to maintain the diversity of the habitat – a great example of conservation in action.

Cowslips – one of the species benefiting from the grazing of the sheep and a favorite of mine from my childhood in the Yorkshire Dales.

Gibraltar Point is just one of six nature reserves managed by the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust. Find out more about it and Gibraltar Point at http://www.lincstrust.org.uk