Blogs

To celebrate the launch of its new website, The Bees, Wasps & Ants Recording Society (BWARS) is offering everyone the opportunity to download their 'Bees in Britain' guide for free.

The guide provides an extensive introduction to British bees, with background information, species descriptions, photographs, and identification help.

In 2011, OPAL awarded £5,000 to BWARS to help them develop a new website with more than 500 species pages. When complete, these pages will include photos, distribution maps, species information and identification tips.

Related links

Take part in an insect carnival, meet local wildlife experts, and discover more about the natural world.

Big Nature Day is coming soon to the Natural History Museum in London. It’s a completely free event that's packed full of nature-themed activities, talks and displays.

Scheduled events include worm charming, insect carnival workshops, bee puppet shows and Nature Live presentations.

There's no need to book, just bring friends and family along on the day. We hope to see you there!
 

Sunday 27 May 2012,  11.00-17.00
Natural History Museum, London
(Wildlife Garden and Darwin Centre)

We had a fantastic response to our Plymouth Wildlife and Nature Photography Competition. More than 350 entries were received - some from photographers as young as eight years old.

The competition was organised by OPAL South West in conjunction with Plymouth University’s 150th anniversary celebrations. It aimed to inspire and encourage people to explore the beautiful wildlife and nature within Plymouth.

Winning photos ranged from stunning close up photography of wasps and beetles, to artistic landscape shots of woodland. A category for mobile phones showed that you can even take stunning images on the move – the winning photo was of a spider eating another spider.

Each winner received a high quality print of their photograph, and all images are being displayed at an exhibition detailed below. We hope the photos inspire you to explore your own local area.

See an exhibition of the winning photos at Plymouth University
All winning photographs will be exhibited by Peninsula Arts at Plymouth University from Monday 23 April to Saturday 28 April in the Cube³ gallery, Portland Square.

Admission is free and opening times are Monday-Friday 10.00-17.00 (appointments needed on Saturday – call Peninsula Arts Box Office: 01752 585050).

Graeme Castles, 47, is running his first marathon on Sunday 22 April. He is raising money for Trinity Hospice in Clapham, where his wife Gill Stevens died from cancer, aged only 45, in January 2011.

Gill Stevens was OPAL’s Deputy Director and a much loved member of staff at the Natural History Museum. She had a huge impact on the project in its first few years, working tirelessly to inspire people to take an interest in UK wildlife and do their bit to keep it safe.

Her aim was to involve amateur experts and members of the public in recording the natural world alongside specialists at the Museum.

A small garden called ’Gill’s Meadow’ has recently been planted in Gill’s memory in the Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Garden. It includes plants and wildflowers from her native Cumbria.

Graeme became a regular runner after Gill’s death. He has been training hard to complete the 26 miles and 385 yards in memory of Gill and raise as much money as possible to support the team who looked after her in her final weeks.

If you would like to support Graeme, you can sponsor his run at www.justgiving.com/Gill-Castles.

Find out more about the vital work of Trinity Hospice at  www.trinityhospice.org.uk.
 

Pupils of Westley Middle School were treated to a special day at the Natural History Museum as part of their prize for winning our Bugs Count Competition.

The competition was run in partnership with National Geographic Kids (NG Kids) magazine. It involved taking part in the Bugs Count survey, and then sending in a poster of where you went bug hunting and what you found. Judges were looking for creativity and colour, and Westley Middle School came out on top.

The children enjoyed a behind the scenes tour of the Natural History Museum and took part in a number of special workshops. The class also received £1,000 to spend on making their school grounds more nature-friendly.

A big thank you to to everyone who has submitted results for the soil and earthworm survey. Nearly 4,000 surveys so far!

Your results have helped us understand more about soil properties and the distribution of earthworms across the country.

However, there are some areas of the country where we have received very few surveys (see the map below), so we'd love your help to fill these 'gaps'.

Can you help us turn this map black?

• Dark areas show places where we've received large numbers of surveys
• White areas show places with very few surveys submitted

Any new surveys you can do will be extremely useful, even in the black areas - as your findings will help improve the patterns we have already found. However, surveys in the grey or white areas, would be particularly valuable to our research,

If you have done the survey in the past but have not yet submitted your results, it’s not too late. Please dig out those old survey answer sheets and send us your results.

The best time of year to do the survey is the spring or autumn when the soil is moist, and you'll find more earthworms. So, why not get outside in the next few months and contribute to our research?

Last month, OPAL hosted an Environmental Education Conference. This was a free one-day event in Nottingham that gave teachers and group leaders the opportunity to share ideas.

Workshops on the day explored different ways to engage audiences – everything from theatre and role-play, to GPS technologies and games.

If you weren’t able to attend, you can download many of the resources and workshop materials from the conference page.

Are you concerned about climate change? Join in a Climate Week event and learn how you can make a difference.

Climate Week is Britain’s biggest climate change campaign. It aims to spread the message of sustainable living by showcasing practical solutions from every sector of society.

There are hundreds of events taking place around the country. You can even register your own event.

Climate change Quiz
Test your climate change knowledge with OPAL's online quiz

Your climate change questions answered
Read answers to your questions from the experts at the Met Office.

OPAL climate survey - help with weather and climate research
Look for plane contrails, measure wind speeds and follow cloud movement.

The Met Office explains what is meant by climate change

Pupils of Baldwin's Gate C of E Primary School were treated to a special day at The Natural History Museum as part of their prize for winning OPAL’s climate competition.

There were more than one hundred entries to the competition, which ran in National Geographic Kids (NG Kids) magazine.

The winning entry was a creative collage depicting the sky and climate. It impressed the judges for its combination of fact and creativity.

The children enjoyed a behind the scenes tour of the Natural History Museum and took part in a number of special workshops. The class also received £1,000 to spend on green spaces around the school.

Class teacher, Steph Gardner said, 'We’re all very proud of winning the OPAL climate competition…..it is important that our children learn about the climate as it will be their responsibility when they grow up'.

Do you have a pond in your garden? Is it home to any frogs or toads? Take part in the Big Spawn Count 2012 and help Pond Conservation with valuable research.

The Big Spawn Count aims to find out how many frogs and toads are breeding in garden ponds.

By counting the number of spawn clumps in your pond and submitting your results online, you’ll contribute to the research.

What is spawn?
Spawn is the term used to describe the eggs deposited by frogs and toads in the water. Frogs deposit spawn in large clumps, while toads deposit their spawn in long strings.

The Big Spawn Count is a joint survey supported by Pond Conservation, Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (ARC) and Amphibian and Reptile Groups of UK (ARGUK).

Discover the health of your pond with the OPAL water survey
By identifying the creatures living in your pond, you can tell a great deal about the water quality.