Field notes: 01
Hello and welcome to my first Field Notes! On Monday lunch, I sat with the artist and fellow Nature-noticer, Hannah Nunn, whilst she kindly listened to my stream of ideas about where I’d like to go with Hey Nature. She told me her best piece of advice for new creators and makers, develop your newsletter and gather up a community of people who are interested in your work. She shares her Three Somethings, which are beautiful and heartfelt accounts of her own Nature encounters, alongside updates on what she is currently making and creating for the future.
I wondered about what I could share that ties in with my practice with Hey Nature, and I thought, let’s share field notes from my Nature Notebooks.
So here’s my first entry… I hope you like it, and if you do, please join the Hey Nature Club (a cool name for my subscribers list) and receive my notes from the field to hopefully inspire yours.
YoungWilders: Invertebrates Weekend at Castle Howard (25th July 2026)
It was a wonderful time Nature Notebooking with a lovely bunch of fellow Nature nerds at the YoungWilders Invertebrates Wayfinders weekend in July.
These guys are an amazing youth-led charity with rewilding projects all over the country. They run “Wayfinders” weekends where they explore their locations, share ecological expertise and help up-skill the next generation of environmental stewards.
We explored their site at Castle Howard, catching bugs and beasties, looking closely, learning cool facts from invertebrate experts Chris Berman, Kat Bruce and the group, and documenting our findings in our notebooks.
Keep your eyes peeled for other YoungWilders events here and do sign up to go! You’ll have an awesome time, I promise.
European Oak Bark Beetle (Scolytus intricatus)
As a planty person, invertebrates are pretty uncharted territory for me, so I was wondering how to make my usually botanical Nature Notebooking more bug-focused. I decided to look at plant-insect interactions, so we set to work to look closely and find some, and we encountered various examples, such as Ragwort and the Cinnabar Moth, and Oak and the Oak Bark Beetle.
Chris was delighted to share his encyclopedic knowledge of beetles with us, and we learnt more about beetles in a couple of hours than I’ve learnt in my whole life!
Here’s what I recorded in my Nature Notebook…
Nature Notebook page Oak Bark Beetle spread!
From Chris’ whistle-stop intro to inverts, I learnt that beetles are in the order Coleoptera and are characterised by their hardened wings, which are called “elytra”. They are a typical insect with 6 legs, 3 body segments, an exoskeleton and antennae. They have a complete life cycle, hatching from eggs as larvae, then pupating before maturing to adults.
Something interesting about bark beetles is that they use their antennae to detect volatile organic compounds, released as stress signals from dying trees, which attract them to their perfect habitat for reproduction. The adults bore through the bark and lay their eggs between the outer bark and the phloem (the nutrient-rich inner bark). When the larvae hatch, they feed on the phloem, leaving behind channels of “frass”, or poo, as they go! Cool!
Here are some others who chose the bark beetle as their notebooking subject, including the expert himself, Chris, as well as Kat, the queen of ants, and Anna, a friend from the Mountaineering Club of postgrad days in Norwich. What a lovely coincidence to meet her in the wilds of North Yorkshire!
A big thanks to the YoungWilders team, everyone who participated and to Theo and Roo for the connection. And a shout-out to Chris for the lovely photos and for sharing his beetle skills with us.
Hey Nature Updates
After the success of July’s Nature Notebooking workshops (I absolutely loved facilitating them, and I hope those who attended did too!) I’ve been dreaming up a Hey Nature Club which I’d like to start in the autumn - it will be a 6-week course on Nature Notebooking in the style of a field naturalist. This week has been computer-heavy with planning, development and a grant application. Hannah felt my excitement on Monday as I exclaimed "I wanna start a Hey Nature Club!” and advised me to follow that sparkle of enthusiasm, so please cross your fingers that the winds are blowing in the right direction for us!
In other news, the activity booklet I’ve been working on is now complete, and you can find it at the Seeds of Hope community gardening festival at Shibden Park 13th-16th August. Come along and bring your family, explore the 10 wonderful show gardens and earn your “Garden Explorer” badge! There are also loads of other great events happening, so do check out the website and plan your visit for next week!
