Category: Meetings

Stranglers at Wortley Hall

Saturday 2 October: Wortley Hall parkland and walled garden.

Doug and Barry led us on a visit last Saturday to Wortley Hall for fungi and veteran trees. A good visit made more exciting by Doug’s earlier discovery of a special rare fungus: one that parasitises and grows out of another!

The greyish parasite fungus (the Powdercap Strangler, Squamanta paradoxa) grows out of the much more common yellow host fungus (Earthy Powdercap)

YNU VC63 excursion

Saturday 23 July saw the Yorkshire Naturalists Union yearly meeting for south-west Yorkshire. We met near Monk Bretton Priory and walked downstream along the river Dearne. Unfortunately there was torrential rain but we made our way through the dense vegetation along one side of the river, had lunch sheltering under a viaduct, and after some botanising in a meadow made our way back along the other side.

Our first field visit in 2021

Midsummer in a Worsbrough meadow
Our first Nats evening nature walk in 2021 was on Wednesday 23 June to Worsbrough Country Park. We used the wider paths and more open areas to help with social distancing.

We enjoyed exploring the flowering plants in a meadow and seeing chimney sweeper moths in an area with their food plant pignut

Meetings suspended from 18 March 2020

We regret that the meetings on the Barnsley Nats programme for Wednesday 18 March, 1 April and 22 April will not take place; and field visits are suspended. In the meantime look out for shared news and information. It’s a result of the escalation in the Covid-19 virus situation and government advice.

Original post 17 March; Updated 23 March

Hedgerows in the Landscape

On Wednesday 5 February, we have a presentation on ‘Hedgerows in the Landscape’ by Catherine Artindale. It covers their history and importance in the landscape as well as their natural history. 
Catherine led two very popular and informative field visits last year – to hedgerows in the Stairfoot and Hoyland areas. Where we tested out the Hooper hypothesis on dating a hedgerow.
It will be interesting to hear more, from Catherine, about this topic.

Room 11, Barnsley Town Hall, 7 pm, Wednesday 5 February Experience Barnsley Entrance. The security staff will advise you on the room number; if we have had to move for any reason.

Members Presentation Evening

Wednesday January 22nd.
With the diversity of our members personal topics being so vast, this is a highly interesting evening. Filled with short talks, photo and video clips, as well as hands -on samples for us to observe. Fell free to add to the evening or just come and see what others have brought along.

Our members presentation evening was, as usual, action packed with a wide range of topics. Both hands-on and projected images.
May I offer a very big thank you to everybody for their presentations.

2020

May we take this opportunity to wishing everybody a Happy New Year.
You are more than welcome to come along and join us for any of our meeting or field visits.

We kick start 2020 with an indoor meeting on January 8th.
This will be a presentation by Alwyn Timms; entitled The Discreet World of Barnsley’s Small Blue Butterfly

We also have a field visit on January 11th. Details to be confirmed.
And on January 22nd our indoor meeting is a members short presentations. This is very much a nature wide array of topics.

Our updated 2020 Spring Summer Programme will be available for viewing shortly.

Bees

Our next Barnsley Naturalists meeting is Wednesday 27th November.

Bilberry bumblebee. Image: John Fielding / Bombus monticola / CC BY-SA 2.0

Tom Aspinall, from Moors for the Future, is our guest speaker for the evening. Tom is giving a talk on bumblebees and solitary bees. This will include identifying the different species, where you may find them, their behaviour and life-cycle. 
Lots to interest us.
All welcome, Barnsley Town Hall, 7pm.