Category: Biodiversity and wildlife

Every household in Wales can collect and plant a tree as over 50 hubs open across the country Denmark Farm is taking part in the My Tree, Our Forest initiative, an ambitious Welsh Government and Coed Cadw project which will offer every household in Wales a tree, free of charge. Denmark Farm is one of […]

You may have heard these expressions – ‘Blind as a bat’, ‘Bats in your hair’, ‘Bats in the belfry’! Well actually they can see, and they don’t fly in your hair as they use echolocation to find their way around in the dark to find their food and to avoid bumping into things. Also, they […]

Aline Denton began volunteering for nature at Denmark Farm Conservation Centre in the late 1990’s and has recently returned after a short break. Here she explains more about her volunteer role, and highlights some of the other volunteering opportunities at Denmark Farm. I first started volunteering at Denmark Farm in the late 1990s after an […]

Regular visitors to Denmark Farm will be familiar with the sight of a small herd of Highland cattle who are on loan to us by local grazier Gwyn. Our mobile management team of Highland cattle munch our grasslands in just the right way to encourage a myriad of wildlife – tackling tougher plants so that […]

We’re delighted to announce that we have been awarded £49,981.37 from The Landfill Disposals Tax Grants to help wildlife and improve biodiversity at Denmark Farm. This, Landfill Disposals Tax Grants, will support our new two year project Cadw Natur Mewn Cof ~ Nature in Mind, starting during the Summer 2019. The grant will provide us with […]

The Shared Earth Trust at Denmark Farm Conservation Centre is proud to be a member of Green Key.  Green Key is the largest global eco-label awarded to more than 2,900 tourism providers in 57 countries worldwide. Green Key offers an environmentally sustainable choice when planning holidays, excursions or business trips. Green Key Wales launched in […]

The Shared Earth Trust is a small independent charity which was set up in 1987. The aim was to restore 40 acres of what was once an intensively managed farm with little wildlife into a variety of habitats which are now a haven for wildlife. In fact, over the last year or so we have […]

A MIXED PICTURE FOR THE BREEDING BIRDS OF DENMARK FARM Guest blogpost written by Ian Morris This year a total of 36 species of bird were detected during a series of surveys. This compares with 39 in 2016 and 45 in 2012. The overall total number of breeding pairs has also declined very slightly over […]

A special guest blog post by Richard Bambrey What’s That Box? It’s not a funny new kind of bird box! It is in fact a bait box for honeybees that has been put up at Denmark Farm. Why? For many years it has been assumed that the British black bee (Apis mellifera mellifera or AMM) […]

A SANCTUARY FOR WILDLIFE This is an article our own Jon Sayer (Trustee, volunteer, biscuit-eater) wrote for Lampeter’s local publication “Grapevine”. Their subject for this May’s edition was “Environmental Impact”.  It would be a shame for all you good people who don’t live in our lovely part of the world to miss out. The words […]

It is said that the best way to learn something is to actually do it. This is certainly true of conservation and land management. So when Neil and Barbara Taylor started out on their journey to create Denmark Farm Conservation Centre some 30 years ago, they were putting this into practice on a grand scale! […]

Guest Blog Post by Josie Bridges of The Vincent Wildlife Trust (VWT). I am incredibly pleased that Denmark Farm have agreed to adopt one of our Pine martens, and as one of their closest they have decided upon K(16)2. In the coming months they will be running a competition to give him or her a […]

The Shared Earth Trust at Denmark Farm is thirty this year! On Sunday 24th September 2017, between 1pm and 4pm we will be holding a 30th Anniversary Celebration. This event is not our traditional Open Day but a wonderful opportunity to bring together some of the key players in the development of The Shared Earth […]

…and other stories of wildlife recording. During the first 10 years at Denmark Farm, an intensive programme of wildlife surveys was carried out to monitor the restoration of the site from intensively managed grassland to a mosaic of wildlife-rich habitats. The vast amounts of records in filing cabinets and boxes bear testimony to the huge […]

Join us for a special day to celebrate our 30th anniversary on our Marvellous Meadows day on Saturday 1st July from 1-4pm, as part of National Meadows Day! Come to enjoy and discover everything to do with meadows, with fun for all the family, at Denmark Farm Conservation Centre near Lampeter. Throughout the afternoon, there will […]

This year The Shared Earth Trust at Denmark Farm is taking part in Grow Your Tenner, an annual match funding campaign run by Localgiving. This is an amazing opportunity for us to raise valuable funds to help maintain our unique 40 acre nature reserve. During this campaign Localgiving will match all online donations up to £10, and […]

This week summer has returned to Denmark Farm, along with all the butterflies and the campers.  During a peaceful lunchtime stroll around the meadows I was reminded of the wonderful passage in Miriam Darlington’s ‘Otter Country – In search of the wild otter’ about her stay on the Eco campsite at Denmark Farm:  “we set out […]

You may remember our most read blog post from last year ‘A Prickly Tale – Hedgehog Rescue‘. ‘Spike Bach’ (a juvenile hedgehog) was found wandering around at Denmark Farm last autumn, very underweight and disorientated. After a brief period of being looked after by Denmark Farm staff she was taken to the Carmarthenshire Bat and Hedgehog Hospital. Thankfully, with […]

Christmas came early for Denmark Farm last year, in the form of a grant for £17,627 awarded by the Volunteering in Wales Fund towards our new project ‘Holistic Habitats’. As well as supporting volunteers to look after our 40 acre nature reserve, the funding will also enable us to develop a kitchen garden – something […]

For the past week we have had the pleasure of a special guest, to keep us company in the Denmark Farm office. A hedgehog rescue is not an everyday occurrence, but we were delighted to be able to help one prickly little creature. ‘Spike Bach’, as she has been fondly named, was first spotted wandering around our car park […]

Here at Denmark Farm we regularly host a number of ecology and conservation courses, led by tutors from the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at Aberystwyth University. Our 40 acre nature reserve provides an ideal study site, and the wildlife records from these courses are a valuable addition to our species monitoring programme. However, […]

Human beings are really good at seeing patterns – especially ones that we are already familiar with. This is why we identify faces in the clouds, on the fronts of cars and even on our pizzas! Once we have become familiar with a particular pattern, we find it easy to pick it out in the […]

It is advisable to have your nest box installed by November if you want it to be used the following year – this gives birds time to get used to it before the breeding season – although you can put them up as late as February. However, it may take several years before a new box […]

The period between November and New Year is the best time to install new bird boxes and check existing ones. Birds will often start to inspect prospective sights by late winter. Of course, you can make your own but a wide range of types can be purchased designed to attract different species. If you are putting […]