Adult swan on nest with cygnet
The cygnets have now reached the time to depart from their parents. Though they are not quite there yet, it will not be long.
Over the last few weeks we have witnessed greyish brown feathers turn into the beautiful white plumage of an adult swan.
Cygnet landing
Since 2009, The National Archives has held an annual Green Week for staff – each day of the week had a different theme, from Biodiversity to Waste Disposal. It was decided that this year instead we would just do it all in one day and invite local residents and The National Archives’ visitors to come along too. Uncertain if we would generate enough interest, we began to plan at the end of Green Week in 2011.
Stopping at the bug hotel
Tracey and Ruth planting herbs at Green Day 2012
It was agreed that I would be doing three Biodiversity tours, where I would point out interesting aspects of our Biodiversity Project, look out for local wildlife, and end at the beehives where our beekeeper would give a talk about beekeeping, honeybees and honey tasting. On the day it did threaten to rain so I wondered how many people would sign up for my tours – to my surprise there was such a good response.
Have you ever wondered what it might be like to fly? I know I have. Imagine being on the wing from birth and remaining there for the next three years or so. Well in that case you need to imagine you are a swift.
Swift photos by David Moreton
Each year swifts leave the skies of Southern Africa flying 14,000 miles to arrive here in the UK for three months and have done so since the time of the Romans. Noticing them flying above the ponds here at The National Archives a few years ago, I contacted Edward Mayers at the Swift Conservation Trust. I wanted to see if we could do more to help them, as the swifts are on the Amber List for endangered species. Edward came along for a visit to survey the site and, last year, we put up eight nest boxes and a couple of speakers to play the call of the swift – this encourages them towards the boxes. There’s an article about this on the Swift Conservation Trust news page as well as further information on how we can all help. Continue reading »
Tomorrow, Wednesday 12 September, is Green Day at The National Archives! We will be celebrating our environment between 10:00 and 14:00 and learning how we can all better look after it .
Meeting the beekeeper at Green Day 2011
The best way to explain the title of this blog is to begin by quoting directly from the Hedgehog Street website:
“Through Hedgehog Street, we are asking people to become Hedgehog Champions to rally support from their neighbours and work together to create ideal hedgehog habitat throughout their street, estate or communal grounds.”
I saw this initiative on BBC Springwatch a while back, specifically, one simple thing we can all do to become Hedgehog Champions – link your garden. Again to quote the Hedgehog Street website:
“Hedgehogs travel around one mile every night through our parks and gardens in their quest to find enough food and a mate. If you have an enclosed garden you might be getting in the way of their plans. Hedgehogs have enough barriers to contend with such as roads and rivers that we can’t do much about. However we can make their life a little easier by removing the barriers within our control – for example making holes in or under our garden fences and walls for them to pass through. The gap need only be around 15cm in diameter and so should not affect your pets’ safety.”
The idea of doing something so simple to protect our cute friends is a nice one. We’re converting one garden into hundreds, and combined with more naturally occurring wildlife corridors, potentially thousands. This is what we’re doing when we link data, the gardens represent our data and datasets and the link we’ve created gives users and machines unrestricted access to navigate from one dataset to another. It’s an almost perfect analogy – an analogy which I hope will help to open up the concept to all our readers, technical and non-technical alike.
Linky - The Linked Data Hedgehog
So who is swanning around, while the rest of us go about our business?
During each year we have lots of feathered visitors come and go, but for a long time we have not been visited by swans. Then, late last year, this all changed when pondweed grew and took over the pond – not good for the aesthetics of the pond, but great for biodiversity as it became a great food source for a family of swans. Continue reading »
Lots of sunshine and warmer weather means there is a buzz in the air, as spring finally arrives. The honey bees (Apis mellifera), here at The National Archives can now be seen collecting pollen and nectar from our bee friendly plants. I took the photo on the right last week on a sunny afternoon and the willow was alive with honey bees and bumble bees too.
In May 2010 honey bees were first introduced as part of the Biodiversity project at The National Archives, the idea was based on a number of suggestions from staff. Back then we started from scratch, this included assembling the hives and introducing honey bees that would suit the environment in which they were to be kept. This meant that they needed to be socially acceptable bees, you may laugh but this is true! So we selected Buckfast Abbey Honey bees, bred by Brother Adam at Buckfast Abbey in Devon to become very gentle honeybees – although like all honey bees they will still sting, they are bred to have a low sting instinct.
You may have thought The National Archives was all about preserving documents and, while you’re absolutely correct, we also want to preserve the wildlife and habitat that we are all privileged enough to share during our working day.