malmesburynaturalhistory.co.uk – malmesburynaturalhistory.co.uk

Big Garden Birdwatch 2026

malmesburynaturalhistory.co.uk — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 23:59:33 +0000

Athelstan 1100Walk on the Wild Side

malmesburynaturalhistory.co.uk — Sun, 30 Jun 2024 20:02:00 +0000

On Tuesday 2nd July at 2.30pm in Malmesbury Town Hall, our Chair, Miranda Shirnia, will be giving a talk as part of the Athelstan 1100 celebrations comparing wildlife in Malmesbury in 924 and today.

Here is a short film as a little introduction…

Tickets available here: https://www.athelstan1100.co.uk/…/talk-one-day-in-may…

Swift Awareness Week(29th June to 7th July)

malmesburynaturalhistory.co.uk — Sat, 29 Jun 2024 06:00:45 +0000

Swift Awareness Week is a national event which was first held in 2018 with swift activities promoted by groups throughout the country. This year it takes place from Saturday 29th June to Sunday 7th July.

In the Malmesbury area we are behind a lot of other small towns in that we have only recently founded a Swift Group to study and safeguard these birds. Our focus during Swift Awareness Week therefore is to try to get a good initial estimate of the numbers of nesting birds and thus provide a baseline to monitor how well they are doing in future years.

Our swifts should have young in the nest at this period, which means they will be bringing food to the nest location every hour or so, at least on mild days when there are plenty of insects available. Hence our focus during the week will be to try to confirm as many nests as possible by observing the behaviour of the swifts around the streets.

Our surveys so far have shown that there is an extensive colony of swifts in the area of Horse Fair and adjacent streets, particularly Burnham Road and West Street. There is a smaller colony which extends along King’s Wall and Burnivale.

Please keep your eyes open for any swifts, either in these areas or elsewhere, and if you find any apparently using nests we would greatly appreciate a report.

Here be Dragons!

malmesburynaturalhistory.co.uk — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 20:39:47 +0000

On Saturday, 20 of us went for a walk around Lower Moor Farm looking for Dragonflies and Damselflies.

We found Common Blue damselfly, Blue tailed damselfly, Red eyed damselfly, Common Darter, Four spotted Chaser and Black tailed skimmer (both female and male), a male Emperor Dragonfly patrolling his territory and a female egg laying.

We also found a number of Exuviae from both Common Darter and an Aeshna species. Oh and there were quite a few froglets about too…

Many thanks to Teresa Farr for the photos!

Black-tailed skimmer

Dragonfly nymphs

Common darter

Four spotted chaser

Clean up our rivers!

malmesburynaturalhistory.co.uk — Thu, 06 Jun 2024 20:49:39 +0000

Are you aware of the pollution being pumped into our river and does it worry you? Here are some photos of the impact of sewage discharges from the Noah’s Ark pumping station in Garsdon. Quite honestly they are revolting!

Sewage in the river at Garsdon

In 2023 there were 50 days of discharging from this pumping station alone – that’s roughly once a week and the people living nearby are noticing that wildlife is being damaged by it.

If this concerns you too, and you often walk along a section of a river near you, why not become a Water Guardian? This involves, walking the route regularly and reporting on the quality of the water. You can sign up on Wiltshire Wildlife Trust’s website https://www.wiltshirewildlife.org/water-guardians

You might just want to be involved in pressurising the water company to clean up their act. If so please contact us and we will be in touch.

Letters have been sent to all the candidates to become the new MP for the South Cotswolds constituency asking for them to commit to supporting our campaign to clear up our rivers and brooks should they be elected on 4th July. The sewage spills must stop and we want their support to do this.

Hedgehog Project Survey

malmesburynaturalhistory.co.uk — Mon, 27 May 2024 19:38:51 +0000

Great Somerford’s ‘Team Hedgehog’ were out and about installing camera traps for hedgehogs on the morning of 11th May. This project is a collaboration between Malmesbury and District Natural History Society, Wiltshire Mammal Group and the people of Great Somerford.

It was a beautiful morning for a walk around Great Somerford meeting with people who have kindly agreed to host a camera. We started at 10am with a demonstration of how to do it. Then, by 10.30am we broke up into teams of 2 with 4 or 5 cameras each to install. By 12.30pm they were all in – just a morning’s work and it was all done. ‘Team Hedgehog’ you were excellent, everything completed without any stress, in fact it was really quite fun!

Hedgehog survey Great Somerford

In all, 30 cameras are now placed around the village and will stay there for 30 days until the morning of Monday 10th of June when they will be taken back in again for the data to be analysed.

At the end of that week, Malmesbury’s ‘Team Hedgehog’ will be in action installing them at 30 locations around Malmesbury Town!

The cameras will be installed across Malmesbury on Saturday 15th June and removed again on Monday 15th July. At the moment we have 12 volunteers helping to install them and 11 helping to take them out.

We really could do with some more helping hands. It’s not a complicated process and people will be put into pairs so you won’t be on your own.

For those who are interested I have created a video you can watch showing you how to install a camera and the first camera installed on the day will be a demonstration too.

So, if you are free on either or both of those days please think about giving us a hand – it will be a quick and simple process with a few more volunteers. Please contact us via our contact page if you are interested.

This project is funded and run nationally by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species and the British Hedgehog Preservation Society

An Owl Pellet-tastic weekend

malmesburynaturalhistory.co.uk — Thu, 30 Nov 2023 11:38:11 +0000

On the Saturday 25th November, Malmesbury and District Natural History Society, in partnership with Wiltshire Mammal Group, Salisbury & District Natural History Society and Tisbury Natural History Society, delivered two owl pellet workshops, with the brilliant Skull Bloke Ric Maurice.

The aim was to increase records of small mammals and also to support the Mammal Society’s ‘Searching for Shrews’ project to see if the Greater White-toothed shrew (an invasive species) was present in Britain.

21 people attended our local event in Lea near Malmesbury, receiving training in the ID of small mammal remains in barn owl pellets, and then analysing pellets.

In all, pellets were analysed from 40 locations across the county – many people took additional batches of pellets home and will continue analysing and honing their skills.

What did we find? Whilst Field vole, Wood mice and Common shrew were the main species identified, smaller numbers of young brown rat, Pygmy shrew and Bank vole were also found, and a lucky few also found Water shrew, Harvest mouse, Yellow-necked mouse and a bat. Together, these data will add considerably to our knowledge of these species’ distribution.

Notably, we did NOT find evidence of Greater white-tooth shrew; monitoring of this potentially invasive species is one of the objectives of this work.

With thanks to the many farmers, landowners and barn owl nest monitors who collected pellets for us, particularly the Lewis Raptor Group in South Wiltshire, and Robert Hayden and his team of the SPTA conservation group (east) nest box team, members of the following farmer groups: Chalke Valley, Wilton Estate, Salisbury Plain, Pewsey Downs and Wylye Valley.

You can find out the latest results of the project on the Mammal Society website.