The spring programme continues on Thursday 16th February with a talk by Joshua Pike: Reconstructing past abrupt climate change in Patagonia. In it, he will explore how annually laminated sediments and tephra (volcanic ash) have been used to understand how the former Patagonian Ice Sheet responded to abrupt changes in climate during the transition from the Last Glacial Maximum into the Holocene.

This talk will be online by Zoom at 7:30 p.m. The link will be circulated to those on the CNHS mailing list. For online talks, your video and audio will be off when you join in order to give maximum bandwidth to the speaker. At the end of the talk chat will be enabled to ask questions, or you can raise your virtual hand.

The talk may be recorded and if so, members who cannot join the event, or who wish to hear it again, will be sent a link to allow them to hear it at their leisure.

Change of venue

The talk on Thursday 2nd March, on Moths by Matthew Gandy, will now be in the Audit Room, the Old Lodge, Kings College CB2 1ST (not the Department of Geography). The talk is at 6:45 p.m. and please make sure you arrive in time as it may not be possible for late-comers to gain admission. Enter by the porters’ lodge in King’s Parade, the Old Lodge is just two minutes away, on the left of the great lawn.

The online talk on Thursday 27th October will be given by the CNHS President, Harriet Allen. She will explore the ways in which data ‘from the air’ add to our knowledge of natural history.

ONLINE via Zoom. Members and those on the CNHS email list will be emailed login details nearer the time.

To be added the mailing list for events: email webmaster [at]
cnhs.org.uk To become a member: see details on this website.

The CNHS talk on Thursday 20th October will be 22 years of demonstration and research for nature-friendly farming.

This talk will be online via Zoom at 7:30 pm.

Georgie Bray, who manages Hope Farm for the RSPB, will talk about their experiences, gained over the past twenty years, of demonstrating that it’s possible to run a successful farming business, that produces food, makes a profit, and is valuable for wildlife as well. She will talk about carbon emission reductions, farm trials, and habitat management.

ONLINE via Zoom. Members and those on the CNHS email list will be emailed login details nearer the time.

To be added the mailing list for events: email webmaster [at]
cnhs.org.uk To become a member: see details on this website.

The next talk, which will be online on 13th October at 7:30 pm, is about the archives of Cambridge Natural History Society. Monica Frisch has helped look after the Society’s archives which include the first minute books from 1857. She will highlight some of the pioneering naturalists who have been involved in the Society, from its first president, Charles Cardale Babington to Oliver Rackham and David Attenborough, among others. The archives show how the Society has changed and adapted over the years.

ONLINE via Zoom. Members and those on the CNHS email list will be emailed login details nearer the time.

To be added the mailing list for events: email webmaster [at] cnhs.org.uk To become a member: see details on this website.

Now the summer holidays are – almost – over many organisations are starting to promote their autumn programmes. Brief information will be added to the CNHS Diary but fuller details will be on the organisations’ own websites.

Cambridge Geological Society talks are all going to be in person, on the 2nd Monday of every month from September 12th onwards. They will be at a new venue: Hall 1 in St Andrew’s Centre Histon  http://standrewshiston.org/contact-us/  at 7:30pm (doors open at 7:00 pm). Non CGS members are charged at £3.00. Their list of events can be found at http://www.cambsgeology.org/events

The first autumn talk organised by the Cambridge Group of the Wildlife Trust will be at the end of September, probably online.

Cambridge Natural History Society’s own programme of talks will start in early October and will include the 3rd online NatHistFest.

There are four online talks in the March programme. All start at 7:30 p.m. and last about an hour. Members will be emailed the Zoom link and login details nearer the time. To be added the mailing list for events: email webmaster [at] cnhs.org.uk To become a member: see details here.

Thursday 3 March Lower Wood Duncan Mackay, voluntary warden for this Wildlife Trust reserve to the south-east of Cambridge, will talk about the habitats in this fragment of ancient woodland, its fauna and flora and its management.

Thursday 10 March Measuring and monitoring surface melting
on an Antarctic ice shelf Rebecca Dell, a glaciologist at the Scott Polar Institute who has recently returned from a trip to Antarctica, will talk about her visit and her experience of working there and her research on ice shelf (in)stability.

Thursday 17 March How many butterflies are there in the Western Palaearctic? Martin Davies will talk about his lifelong obsession with butterflies. From his first butterfly book to the wonderful handbooks available today, the beauty and diversity of butterfly species has never ceased to amaze him. We may think we know how many butterfly species there are in Europe but how has our understanding of this improved over the years? Lots of wonderful places and species are featured in this wide-ranging detective story, from the Atlantic to the
Altai and the Arctic to the Atlas.

Thursday 24 March Fenland flora Owen Mountford has been studying the flora of the Fenland region for over fifty years and will provide an overview of the Fenland Flora project, in which Jonathan Graham and he have been surveying the entire Fenland since about 2005. The project is now reaching completion, and this talk will outline the results, drawing especially on the findings from Cambridgeshire.