Morecambe blog: February roundup

Morecambe blog: February roundup

Our trainee, Megan gives us a roundup of all the activity that's been happening in Morecambe during February!

It’s been a lovely start to the year in Morecambe with The Bay: a Blueprint for Recovery, and we’ve been having so much fun that it is already March!

We may have been battling many storms recently but we have still had some wonderful times out in nature, connecting with our local environment and embracing the elements. We’ve been blessed with some wonderful sunny weather during sessions and events which has made our mindful moments very calming; feeling the warmth of the sun on our faces as we engage with the senses and ground ourselves in the present moment. We have also seen and learnt about lots of local nature including an abundance of wintering waders, starling murmurations, and many rockpool creatures.

Since late December we have created three hubs around the Morecambe and Lancaster area where we are holding our weekly nature and wellbeing sessions. These are Happy Mount Park in Morecambe, The Storey Gardens in Lancaster, and the ECOhub at Lancaster University Campus.

At these sessions, our nature and wellbeing officer, Alex, and trainee, Megan, work with participants on a range of activities. At the ECOhub, we have been very creative, making natural crafts from willow fish to sea glass clay mosaics. At the Storey Gardens, we have been helping the friends volunteer group with gardening tasks and have recently started a D.I.Y. project making a bench out of old pallets to be used as a place to sell plants from the gardens! Finally, at Happy Mount Park, we have the luxury of the beautiful coastline which we have enjoyed on sunny days. Whilst in the park itself we have renovated a bug house, made bird feeders, and tamed the willow tunnels!

The Bay and Myplace teams working together to tidy up some land

We also took our Happy Mount Park group on a field trip over to Green Close Studios in Melling where arts, nature, and wellbeing collective Phoenix Rising are looking to renovate an old pigsty into an eco-retreat! We spent the day removing overgrown brambles and bracken and uncovered snowdrops and a wonderful space with great potential. We are looking forward to returning and helping with this transformation. We also hope to run more field trips with our groups, showing participants more of the local area and nature that lies not far from our doorsteps.

A group of people looking at birds in a park

We have also been holding many community engagement events. Our community engagement officer, Deborah, has guided groups of the public around some of our local area for bird walks at Happy Mount Park, Morecambe Promenade, and over to Red Nab in Heysham, all the while embracing winters chill. We have been spotting many species of waders and wildfowl, including Eiders, Wigeon, and Red Shanks, not least the iconic Oyster Catcher being the most abundant bird in our bay. Deborah has also been running two children and family nature events with Emma Garston at Heysham Nature Reserve as part of the “Connecting To Nature Project” with EDF Energy. It was fantastic getting children learning about different local wildlife and even making their own dens in the woodland!

Ecowild students conducting a shoresearch at Half Moon Bay

Finally, ECOWild from Green Lancaster brought a group of students over to Half Moon Bay for some coastal explorations. University students, led by Megan, carried out a walkover survey to look for lugworm castes. We then conducted soft sediment box core surveys into the muddy intertidal zone to look for invertebrates that feed our vast wading bird populations. We found catworms, cockles and many tiny mud snails before heading over to the rockpools where we saw anemones, common shore crabs and even a common blenny!

We have lots of shore search events coming up this March so make sure to have a look at our events page to see when you can join us to learn more about our local coastline.

Deborah is working on loads more events for the future: look out for a tidal event with the RNLI, some limestone pavement, nature, and bird and butterfly walks in Silverdale, Arnside & Warton, and hopefully we'll be rescheduling our walk around the Lune with the tour of Halton Community Hydro!

As the days get longer and warmer (yipee!) there'll be lots more events, so just keep an eye on our website and facebook pages.

If there's any events you'd like to see, drop Deborah an email at dwoods@edenproject.com and if you'd like to join our Nature and Wellbeing sessions with Alex and Megan, fill out a referral form.

Megan, Alex and Deborah from the Morecambe hub

Megan, Alex and Deborah from the Morecambe hub