Environment

The last day of September was quite a warm and still day and I was sitting quietly near a pond on Druridge Bay watching a pair of dragonflies, locked together in a ‘mating wheel’.

The Co-op has announced that it will replace plastic bags in 1,400 shops with compostable alternatives.

The geese are coming. Some have already arrived – the vanguard; a few thousand.

The culling of crows to protect the curlew, which has sparked controversy nationally, is not taking place in the Northumberland National Park, whose emblem features the wading bird.

The Sill: National Landscape Discovery Centre has successfully piloted a new eBike tour experience, which it hopes will transform the way visitors interact with the great outdoors next year.

A bike, DVD player, traffic cones, cotton buds and hundreds of plastic bottles and balloons – these were just some of the items removed from Northumberland beaches by an army of volunteer litter-pickers.

A rare hen harrier has disappeared in suspicious circumstances in Northumberland, the second one to vanish in the county in the past year.

A team of flood engagement officers have worked with more than 60 schools and 700 business during their first year in post to help communities be more resilient to flooding in the North East, including Northumberland.

Environmentally-friendly volunteers will be giving their beaches a spring clean, as part of a national tidy-up event.

Visitors to Northumberland Wildlife Trust’s Hauxley Wildlife Discovery Centre this summer have been by a placement student from Sunderland University.

A year-long survey of litter on north Northumberland beaches will be completed by volunteers taking part in this year’s Great British Beach Clean.

I recently attended Westminster Hall in London as a newly appointed ‘litter ambassador’ for Keep Britain Tidy.

It was described as hell on earth, with cars swept away, bridges destroyed, homes and businesses engulfed by water and residents evacuated.

People are being asked to nominate their favourite trees for a new conservation project.

Even the briefest perusal of a map of the Cheviot hills will reveal a profusion of so-called ‘hill forts’ in the landscape.

A community effort has spruced up the grounds of Willowburn Leisure Centre in Alnwick.

Iain Robson, from the Northumberland Coast AONB Partnership, this week takes up the reins of Nature Notes, a long-standing feature of the Gazette and collated by John Almond until he sadly passed away in 2016.