Show Notes
Join me at Brighton’s Castle Hill National Nature Reserve for episode 3, where I’m hot on the trail of Britain’s most endangered insect: the Wart-biter Bush-cricket. They’re tricky to find so luckily I’m with my pal and brilliant entomologist, Alice Parfitt, who is leading on the species recovery programme of this impressive species through her work at Buglife and the Changing Chalk partnership. With the backdrop soundscape of Corn Buntings, Yellowhammers and Linnets we tune in to the distinc...
More from The Wandering Ecologist Podcast
In this bitesize episode I’m out in the field at the Wiston Estate with a team from the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust. They’re here to collect data as part of an exciting long-term study which, at the time of recording, has been running for 56 years. This study is the world’s longest-running scientific monitoring project measuring the impact of changing farming practices on arable flora and invertebrates. We learn how decades of data collection from a dedicated team carrying ou...
In this episode we shine the spotlight on the remarkable Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, one of Britain’s rarest and most secretive woodland birds. Join us as we hammer into the details of a pioneering survey with passionate woodpecker-philes, Ken and Linda Smith, who have been deploying innovative audio recorders to find out if these small woodland birds are more widespread than we thought. Ken and Linda share field stories from years of monitoring such an elusive species and how recent breakthro...
I head up to Norfolk to visit my pal Matthew Hay, at High Fen Wildland. This 292 hectare site was originally farmed for arable and daffodil growing but was too wet to farm commercially. So, in 2022 nature restoration company Nattergal purchased the site with a wonderful vision to recreate a mosaic of diverse fenland habitats, akin to how it might have looked before it was drained for farming in the 17th Century. Installing a series of sub-surface bunds to re-wet the site will boost spec...
In this episode I visit my friend Paul Stevens, just down the road from home, to gawp at a fantastic set-up on his house. His sidewall is bedecked in Swift nest boxes and House Martin nest cups, providing a beautiful bird metropolis where these declining red-list birds can thrive. Paul makes these boxes and nest cups from scratch himself, drawing on his experience he has gained from working with these birds. The successes he has had at home for Swifts and House Martins has really fired up a w...
Transport yourself to the beautiful mountains of northern Spain as we visit our lovely friends Katie and Luke at their Wild Finca – an old farm they are managing through agri-wilding, creating the most wonderful diverse habitat mosaics for nature and a refuge their young family. This episode is a departure from the normal format with a long and wide-ranging discussion on how they manage the land with Asturcón ponies and Casina cattle, the importance of environmental education for local ...