CEI’s star species for May is the Dingy Skipper butterfly 🦋😃🐛 New volunteer Kevin Hassan has been learning about this very moth-like butterfly and has this to say… “During these uncertain times, hopefully you have had the opportunity to take advantage of the good weather and immerse yourself in the beauty […]
My usual daily commute to work involves walking hurriedly along a busy road that takes me past an old south-facing stone wall. For years I’ve dodged the furry bees that live in small holes along the wall but I’ve never taken the time to identify or to observe them. Last […]
The East Ayrshire Coalfield Environment Initiative (CEI) are celebrating their completion of 609 hectares (ha) of peatland restoration work in East Ayrshire! Weitshaw Muir, Sorn © CEI 2019 Our recently completed work at Weitshaw Muir in the Sorn Estate has delivered 130 hectares of blanket bog restoration on deep peat […]
New Cumnock Path Patrol! Join the CEI team (Daisy and Scott) on Wednesday 20th February to kick-start this year’s volunteer activities with a Path Patrol at New Cumnock. We’ll be checking some of the shorter paths around New Cumnock for winter damage, identifying over-grown areas and sections that might need repair […]
CEI has been working with a local farmer, RSPB Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage to manage areas of dense soft rush, creating habitat for wading birds in an area that buffers one of our peatland restoration sites. A mosaic of farmland habitats (including more intensively-managed land) is essential for wading […]
We’ve heard about Japanese concept of ‘Forest Bathing’, but what about ‘Bog Bathing’? Often overlooked as ‘that brownish expanse of unproductive land over there where the midges live’, at a distance peatlands can look fairly plain. The unique and untamed beauty of bogs is revealed when explored on foot and […]
Local wildlife enthusiasts joined East Ayrshire Coalfield Environment Initiative (CEI) at Low Moss, a raised peat bog near Lugar, to record moths as part of the National Moth Night 2018. The CEI have run an annual event for National Moth Night for the past six years at various locations throughout […]
To celebrate Volunteers Week 2018 our Vice-Chair, Lucy Filby, has written about her experience as a volunteer and how it helped her progress in her career… Why I volunteer Originally I volunteered to gain work experience after studying, ultimately to get a job. I gained a lot more confidence from volunteering […]
