We have added a new blog to wildlife pages and draw your attention to the Woodland Trust’s wildlife initiatives for exploring nature and photography:

Use their nature exploration packs for natural play around Cannon Hill and River Rea Linear Parks: Over a thousand free activity sheets to use in woods and at home. Guaranteed fun for young people and families throughout the year. Or why not take out the camera and join in with their volunteer photography scheme? With dappled sunlight and fresh morning dew, Cannon Hill and River Rea Linear Parks have great places to take pictures. Add your thoughts and photos and help us inspire everyone about woodland, wild life, wildflower plants, gardens, rivers and pools.

Lastly, there are a suite of new identification guides for download for the National OPAL website. These are very useful guides to a range of wildlife. Oh and don’t forget iSpot!

Tags: news, blog, Wildlife , Woodland trust, OPAL, Downloads

We have added two new live Twitter feeds: one to the park homepage and another to the wildlife pages. Keep an eye on both for updates on events, activities, plans, wildlife sightings and the like.

We have also moved the wildlife blog from its old site to this one. The old blog page will be retained as an archive.

Tags: Cannon Hill, Twitter

We have just created a new gallery of sound. There are not very many files available at the moment, but we have uploaded a range of the common bird songs heard in the park. We will be adding more as we get good quality recordings.

Tags: Cannon Hill, Sounds, Nature, Wildlife

Three artists (Kate Chapman, Charlotte Goodwin, and Nina West) have created a wonderful and rich run of audio walks for users of park and recently reopened Midlands Arts Centre (MAC). The project aptly called ‘Amplifying the Map’ is based around three interactive walks. Each one has a different theme and involves input from different people (e.g. the Rangers, local school children from Tindal School and so on). The idea is that you download the map and the sound files, placing the latter on your mobile phone or MPEG player, and then head off on the walk stopping at each point indicated on the map and listening to the appropriate audio track. This is a brilliant initiative and great way to spend 60 or so minutes on a walk enjoying the park.

All the files you need can be downloaded free of charge from the project’s terrific website - just click here.

It is fantastic.

Tags: Audio walks, blog

Check out the new Wildlife Blog on the site. See here.