Equal Night

The word equinox is Latin for “equal night”. The Spring Equinox is the official first day of spring, and today certainly felt like it with temperatures reaching a balmy 13 degrees centigrade; toads a-mating…

Primroses, ....

...Gorse and various other flowers starting to show, birds are busy looking for nest sites, and generally the air feels more Spring-like.

On the Spring Equinox, the Earth hits the turning point in its orbit where neither the North or the South poles are tilted towards the sun. As a result, the Sun spends a roughly equal amount of time above and below the horizon at every location on the Earth, so night and day are about the same length.

On the weekend we had 19 young people from the 1st Wensleydale (Leyburn) Beavers (and a few Cubs) to help us with some conservation tasks on the reserve. Luckily we had plenty to do with the continued clear up from the past few weeks of activity.

We were also graced with the presence of Clive the bear, from Hunton and Arrathorne Community Primary School. Here taking a well-earned rest from the work.

We made pine cone bird feeders…

….identified various trees,….

…as well as getting close and personal with them during our ‘Meet a Tree’ game

A special ‘thank you’ to Stuart who came in to assist us with this event.