Calling all budding artists & photographers!

Would you like to see your photo, drawing or painting in the Eastern Moors & Longshaw calendar for 2018?

The Eastern Moors Partnership has been producing a popular calendar for the past three years, full of photographs taken by their talented team of volunteers. This year we thought we would try something different and invite the public to take part in our calendar competition by sending in their photos, drawings and paintings. 

The calendar will feature a portrait format image for the front page and is expected to include a landscape format image for each month of the year. We hope that we will end up with a fabulous calendar with a mixture of photographs, drawings and paintings, which reflect the calendar's theme:

Captivating raw beauty, wild and open landscape, rich in wildlife, 

shaped by natural and cultural history, fought for and cherished by many.

Who can enter?

Photographers of all ages may enter. Drawings and paintings from those aged 16 years and under only.

What can you enter?

Either a photograph, drawing or painting of the Eastern Moors, Longshaw, Burbage, Houndkirk or Hathersage Moors. The image needs to reflect this year’s theme.

We will accept a maximum of two images per entrant.

Drawings and paintings will be scanned and re-sized to fit the A4 style calendar.

Photographs must be high resolution images of no smaller than 2551 pixels x 1789 pixels (landscape format), and for the front cover no smaller than 2551 pixels x 3579 pixels (portrait format). You will be asked to submit low resolution versions of these images in the first instance, and if your image is selected for inclusion in the calendar, you will be asked to submit a high resolution version.

The criteria for judging will be based on the creativity of the image, quality of the image, relevance of the image to the calendar’s theme, the image’s ability to create, along with other chosen images, a cohesive and sale-able calendar.

How to enter

You can send entries by post to: Calendar competition, Barbrook Cottage, Nr Owler Bar, Baslow Road, Sheffield, S17 3BQ. Or email low resolution photographs to: katherine.clarke@easternmoors.org.uk.

Please include:

• Your name, address, age if 16 or under, telephone number and an email address.

• Location of drawing, painting or photograph.

• Title of entry.

• For photographs only, date photograph taken.

Closing date

Entries must be received by the Eastern Moors Partnership by 5pm on 31^st August 2017.

Prizes

Each entrant with an image used in the 2018 calendar, will receive a free copy of the calendar and a free ticket (up to the value of £5) to any Eastern Moors Partnership event in 2017/2018, subject to availability. The entrant whose submission is featured on the front page of the calendar will win two free calendars and free tickets for a family (up to two adults and three children), to any Eastern Moors events in 2017/2018 (up to the value of £5 per person), subject to availability. Prizes cannot be exchanged for cash.

Competition timeline

Mid July – competition open

31^st August – deadline for submissions

Wk commencing 11^th September – winners informed (consents forms signed and high resolution photographs received)

November – calendars on sale.

Terms & conditions

1.1  By submitting your competition entry, you agree that you have read, understood and accepted these terms and conditions.

1.2  This competition is to have your photograph, drawing or painting selected for inclusion and therefore published within the Eastern Moors & Longshaw Calendar 2018.

1.3  This competition is open to all residents of the United Kingdom, for all ages for photography submissions, and aged 16 and under only for drawings and illustrations.

1.4  To enter the completion you must post or email your image, along with your name, address, age (if 16 or under), telephone number and an email address, location and title of image. For photographs only, you are required to state the date the photograph was taken.

1.5  Entries must be sent by post to Calendar Competition, Barbrook Cottage, Nr Owler Bar, Baslow Road, Sheffield, S17 3BQ. Or photographs emailed in low resolution format to katherine.clarke@easternmoors.org.uk.

1.6  Entries must be received by the Eastern Moors Partnership by 31^st August 2017.

1.7  The Eastern Moors Partnership accepts no responsibility for any entries that are incomplete, corrupted or fail to reach the Eastern Moors Partnership by the closing date.

1.8  The Eastern Moors Partnership cannot return entries.

1.9  Maximum two entries per person. Any further entries submitted by one person will not be accepted or judged and are ineligible to win.

1.10 During the competition period or any time thereafter, you may be required to provide original and or raw data file(s) for your image to the Eastern Moors Partnership. The partnership will contact you via your email address to request the relevant file(s).

2. SELECTION PROCESS

2.1 The Eastern Moors Partnership will select a judging panel. The criteria for judging will be based on the creativity of the image, quality of the image, relevance of the image to the specified calendar competition theme, the image’s ability to create, along with other chosen images, a cohesive and saleable calendar. The judges’ decision is final.

2.2 Entrants of images selected for inclusion in the calendar will be notified by email after 11^th September 2017. Entrants will be asked to complete and sign a permission form, and asked to submit (for photographs) a high resolution image of no smaller than 2551 pixels x 1789 pixels (landscape format), and for the front cover, no smaller than 2551 pixels x 3579 pixels (portrait format). If entrants of selected images do not return a completed, signed consent form and high resolution image (photographs only) by the required date, the Eastern Moors Partnership may withdraw the offer and relocate the selection to another entrant.

3. PRIZE

3.1 Each entrant with a n image used in the 2018 calendar, will receive a free copy of the calendar and a free ticket (up to the value of £5) to any Eastern Moors Partnership event in 2017/2018, subject to availability. The entrant who’s submission is featured on the front page of the calendar will win two free calendars and free tickets for a family (up to two adults and three children), to any Eastern Moors events in 2017/2018 (up to the value of £5 per person), subject to availability. Prizes cannot be exchanged for cash.

3.2 Prizes are strictly non-transferable. No cash prize alternatives are available in whole or in part. Event tickets must be used by the end of 2018 and are subject to event availability. Once an event booking has been made, the booking is non-transferable unless the Eastern Moors Partnership cancels the event.

4. WARRANTIES

4.1 By entering this competition, you hereby confirm that your image is wholly-owned by you and nothing in the Image infringes copyright or any right of any third party. You hereby hold the Eastern Moors Partnership (NT/RSPB) harmless from any and all claims and demands arising out of or in connection with the partnership’s use of your image, including but not limited to claims related to copyright or trade mark infringement, infringement of privacy or publicity rights, defamation, infringement of moral rights and any other personal and or property rights whatsoever in any jurisdiction.

4.2 By entering this competition, you also hereby confirm that you have obtained written permission from anyone who features in your image (or the person’s parent or legal guardian, if the individual is aged under 18) to submit the image as part of your entry into the competition, prior to entry.

4.3 Entrants submitting images which are selected for inclusion in the Eastern Moors & Longshaw calendar 2018, will be asked to sign a permission form. The permission form gives consent for successful submissions to become the property of the RSPB and National Trust. They may be stored on RSPB Images, National Trust Images and by the Eastern Moors Partnership, and used by the RSPB, the National Trust and the Eastern Moors Partnership within their communication materials (including publications, interpretation, press and web) and may appear within saleable RSPB, National Trust and Eastern Moors Partnership products to raise funds for these charities, and may be made available but not sold to third party partnerships. By signing the permission form you will be accepting that you no longer own the copyright of the photograph(s).

5. LICENCE

5.1 By entering this competition, you hereby grant to the Eastern Moors Partnership a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive, transferrable licence to use, edit, publish, translate, modify, adapt, make available and distribute your image, in any media now known or hereafter invented for any purpose. You undertake to complete any necessary documentation to formalise the licence upon the partnership’s request.

6. DATA and PRIVACY

6.1 The personal data provided by you may be held and used by the Eastern Moors Partnership (NT/RSPB) and third party suppliers for the purposes of administering the competition only. By entering this competition and submitting personal data, you hereby consent to your personal data being stored and or processed for the aforesaid purposes.

7. DISCLAIMER

7.1 The Eastern Moors Partnership cannot accept responsibility for any damage or loss to any image submitted for the competition.

7.2 The Eastern Moors Partnership reserves the right not to produce an Eastern Moors & Longshaw calendar 2018, or to use images from other sources if entries do not satisfy requirements enabling the production of a saleable product.

7.3 Owing to exceptional circumstances outside its reasonable control and only where circumstances make this unavoidable, the Eastern Moors Partnership reserves the right to cancel or amend the competition or these terms & conditions at any stage but will always endeavour to minimise the effect to you in order to avoid undue disappointment.

Red Deer Quiz Answers

For those of you who came along to our totally mad Bolving Competition this weekend, please find below the answers to the Red Deer Quiz. Hope you all enjoyed yourselves and we'll see you again next year. 12 months to work on those bolves!

1.     Which species of deer are native to the UK? Red Deer and Roe Deer

Bolving

The second year of the Eastern Moors Bolving Competition was once again a great success. Photos from the evening will follow in due course or can be seen now on our Facebook page if you click the link on the right.
In the meantime here is The Bolving 'Anthem', a tribute to our competitors

A sunny summer volunteering on the Eastern Moors - Jake Hagyard, student placement

As my fourth and final year of university approaches and it’s time to knuckle down with the paper work, I’m taking the opportunity to reflect on my experiences of an interesting summer volunteering.

More about our Bee Orchids

We are lucky on Eastern Moors to have at least one patch of bee orchids. These plants prefer an alkaline soil, and there is not much of that at the surface on our moors. The bee orchid's name comes from the flower's attempt to mimic a bee in order to attract real bees. They arrive with the intention of mating with the mimic and finish up covered in pollen to transfer to another flower.

The Windhover

A few weeks ago, we had a call from our friends at the BMC after a climber had reported a kestrel nesting on Curbar Edge.

I headed down to have a look, and was tiptoeing towards the nest site when a female kestrel swooped low with a vole to the base of the crag. She disappeared from view before flying off, minus the vole, several seconds later. A chorus of screeching struck up, the unmistakable sound of hungry young birds of prey. I crept closer, and was surprised to see a bundle of feathers perched contentedly on a boulder beside the footpath, chugging down the remains of the unfortunate vole, freshly flown in just moments earlier. 

"What are you looking at?"

I suspected that this chick had fallen from the nest. It was a good sign that it was still being fed, but it was very exposed, and I wondered if it would make it through the night's perils and predators. Up in the crack, two more bundles of fluff looked down at me keenly, before shuffling back comically into a sheltered crevice.

When I returned the next day the young fallen chick was no-where to be found and I began to fear the worst.

Curlew monitoring - a final update

I am very pleased to report that the curlew breeding season this year has been very successful, with all the nests that we have monitored hatching chicks. The eggs in the forth nest began hatching on Monday, when I went to change the batteries on the camera I could just see tiny cracks beginning to appear in the eggs.

I returned to the nest on Wednesday to find the nest camera knocked over, the nest was right next to an obvious track through the vegetation so the camera could quite easily have been knocked over by an animal passing through.

Welcome to the world little ones

Some great news from curlew cam this week, we have three chicks, hatched over the last couple of days. The chicks are from the third nest found, the nest was one of two nests located last week, making 4 nests, 12 eggs and 3 chicks.

Three chicks in the nest

So nest monitoring is now in full swing, each nest camera recording unit is checked every three days, this is how long the battery power and memory on the SD cards will last.

The Ring Ouzel

It's early on a bright May morning, and I'm standing in a holloway beneath a gritstone edge once known as "Wildmoorstones". Around me, the bracken is beginning to push through the peat and unfurl, and purple lanterns of bilberry flowers are blooming. The scent of peat is in the air, as is the distinctive sound of a ring ouzel in full song.It is a song that is at home here, in this landscape of rugged crags, blanket bog, windswept heather and running water. A wild sound that compliments the acoustic qualities of quarries past. A sound that ricochets off boulders and forgotten millstones, and is echoed down in the gurgle of Burbage Brook. It is a sound that flows from high places and floods to pool in the natural ampitheatre of the valley.

The gritstone edges of Derbyshire support a localised population of this rare and beautiful bird. Known to many as the “mountain blackbird”, the ring ouzel can be easily mistaken for it’s more common relative of the thrush family. But look closer, and you will see a telltale white crescent, or “gorget” adorning it’s breast. Silvery wingstreaks and a piping song as clear as mountain springwater distinguish it as the blackbird's secretive, upland cousin; a ring ouzel.

A male ring ouzel 

Bill

Just over a year ago, I met Bill Gordon, North Lees and Stanage ranger with the Peak District National Park.

Our curlew monitoring season has begun once again. This year we are supporting the RSPB national curlew management project that aims to understand the recent declines in population and aims to redress this.

Eurasian curlew, Numenius arquata   

The UK has an estimated 66,000 pairs of curlew, which are Amber listed in the UK due to recent decline. Globally the species is classified as near threatened by the IUCN red list due to the declining population trend.

Volunteering gets a helping hand on the Eastern Moors

Over the last couple of years the Eastern Moors Partnership has relied heavily on their dedicated but limited number of volunteers. With the help of a three year grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), volunteering on the Eastern Moors is about to get big! 

Existing volunteers for the Eastern Moors Partnership, a joint venture between the National Trust and the RSPB, have dedicated their time, sweat and skill delivering high level conservation, visitor experience, access, ecological and archaeological monitoring projects, but with limited resources.  Katherine Clarke, Visitor Experience Manager for the Eastern Moors Partnership said, ‘The HLF grant means we can now build our capacity to deliver projects by expanding the number of volunteers helping to look after this special part of the Peak District National Park. We can also provide volunteers with the kit and equipment they both need and deserve, when carrying out vital project work.”

First sightings and water vole

It seems that every day some old friends are returning to the Moors or coming out of hibernation.
First it was the adders and then this week I have seen skylarks, curlew, lapwings and snipe. Friends have reported seeing grass snakes and lizards as well as all 3 types of newt.

Frogs - Don't call me Common

The Common Frog - Rana Temporaria

I was getting a bit worried that the frogs had not reappeared in Ramsley.  Last year I saw them first on the 6th March, and 2 days ago there was still no sign whatsoever.  But… you wait for one frog and then 200 appear all at the same time! Another week or so and the toads will be putting in an appearance.

Clearing up a fallen giant

This week the wardens went to deal with the fallen oak tree in the last post:

Windblown trees like this can be dangerous to clear up as the root plates can move when you sever the main part of tree, and sometimes even stand back up in the hole, but due to the immense weight of the oak stem, this one was stable:

A snowy day

As a warden on the Eastern Moors you are never quite sure what the day will bring, you may have a plan but often unexpected things crop up. Today I was greeted by a beautiful sunrise and a small group of deer grazing by the snowy track over the moor to the office.

Since the snow fall my days have been taken up checking the car parks and the boundary walls for damage as well as walking the main routes to check for fallen trees. You may remember last year that a large number of trees were uprooted due to the strong winds. This time round it is the weight of the snow which has brought down limbs and trees.

So this morning I set off around the woods below Curbar edge to check the paths with Buddy, my trust companion. It wasn’t long before we were dragging fallen birch branches out of the snow and off the paths. Many of the larger birch branches had snapped with the weight of snow, while some of the smaller trees had been bent over with snow covering their tops which were now frozen to the ground, creating little archways. So braches were cleared and trees were freed while Buddy scampered around and sniffed at deer tracks in the snow.

Eventually were came across something that would be a bit more of a challenge, more than a warden, a dog, and a bowsaw could tackle. One of the lovely large oaks had decided it’s time was up, and lay uprooted on the pipe track. It was one of my favourite trees on the estate, a gnarly oak with character that only hundreds of years can produce. Dealing with this will take the whole warden team kitted out with a winch and chainsaws, lets hope the guys come back feeling fit after the Christmas break. But the story for this oak isn’t over, once moved out of the way, this fantastic big tree will take decades to break down, during which time it will provide valuable habitat for a whole range of wildlife. Whilst it decays, the space it has created in the canopy will allow light to reach the woodland floor, and a new generation of trees will take advantage of this opportunity to takes its place.

Happy new year everyone, Kim.

Eastern Moors logos

Just a few notes on the evolution of the EM logos.

I’m  a little more hesitant when going to Barbrook Cottage these days.  I always seem to come back with more than I went with, and I don’t just mean cow dung on my car tyres and boots!

Celia and I were up there last summer and someone, lets just call her KC, gave Celia a folder of children’s drawings with a request to check these over and see if there was anything which would sow the seed of a logo for Eastern Moors.  As a retired art teacher Celia would have knowledge of such things!

Although the art was good in itself, we were unable to use these as a basis for a logo.  Thus it was that ‘yours truly’ was sent out, with camera, to look for inspiration. Our brief was to reflect the moors, its history, its wildlife and its use by enthusiasts..

Here are a few of the first thoughts -

To fit all this into one logo would make it more complicated than the  Royal Coat of Arms and it was decided that a maximum of 4 individual logos would be the answer

So it was that the design process began.  Surprisingly the shapes for the ‘adder’ and ‘rock art’ sorted themselves and even the ‘red deer’ caused not too much heartache!  It was decided that a group of deer would be more family friendly than a dominant stag with massive antlers.

But the human activity! Where to start?  Walking, cycling, running, rock climbing, horse riding, photography, orienteering, bird watching, deer stalking….. The list goes on.

From a practical point of view we only had one colour to play with and this would be a silhouette overlaid on the colour of the shirt.  3D work was therefore out of the question as it is difficult without 3 colours!  So why the rock climber?

To start with this image enabled us to incorporate an Edge which is one of the main features of these moors. It also gives the sense of space and adventure. I am sure the powers that be would consider other sports or pastimes in the future but the climber for now ticks as many boxes as possible.

By placing 2 of the motifs against the setting sun we added to the sense of drama for these Moors and lightened up the whole image.

The original concept was for 4 individual designs and then allowing the choice of 4 tee-shirt colours - green, purple, grey and pink! 

By now our amateur work had been handed over to the professionals and it was becoming clear that there were far too many options.  With a degree of relief in some quarters, the pink was dropped and it was an inspired act to put all 4 designs together.

15 months later we now have the final product.  We hope you agree that the effort has all been worthwhile and that you will wear the shirt with pride when out and about!

 Roger November 2014

Totley scrub clearance

This week the wardens have been removing scrub from the mire habitat on Totley Moss.

Silver birch are wonderful trees and very characteristic of the Eastern Moors - we have lots of them! However we have been removing a small number of self seeded silver birch scrub from the south-west corner of Totley Moss, which is mire habitat. This is to allow species more typical of mire such as sphagnum mosses, cotton grass, cranberry and cross-leaved heath to increase and is part of other works such as ditch blocking to promote re-wetting of the area - i.e. getting it nice and boggy! The trees currently obstruct this by drying out the ground, and when they are removed the wetter conditions should stop them returning, but this will need to be monitored with potential follow up work to remove any young scrub that returns. There are also several stands of willow, but these will be left as they support a lot more birds and invertebrates and are less likely than birch to spread across the mire.

Shane surrounded by birch:

As you can see the terrain was pretty rough and boggy, so it was hard work traipsing across with chainsaws and all our kit. Some of the trees were densely packed but a lot were very widely spread which meant a long trek between each tree. To help us get around and thereby reduce the time spent on the job we had the help of this machine and Buddy, its expert driver:




















It's called an Argocat and is specially designed for traversing wet, boggy ground - it has very low ground pressure so doesn't get stuck or damage the terrain. Apparently you can drive it into a lake and it will float but none have us have dared to do that yet!

Kim at work:

Before:

After, you can see the patches of willow that remain:

We managed to get it all done in two days which was faster than we thought. Hopefully now the mire can start to develop into a soggy paradise.

More red deer news

At rutting time the deer spread themselves more thinly over these moors as stags try to keep their harem of hinds away from the dominant bruisers who want them all in their own collection!
Currently therefore you have a chance to see deer in unusual places.
Only yesterday I came across a young mature stag with 6 hinds at 2 slabs bridge. They were little more than 250 metres from both Sheffield Road and Clodhall Lane but seemed quite at ease. There was another stag in the distance on the slopes above Swine Sty and he also had a harem of 6 hinds.
Although it is not rare to see deer round Swine Sty, it certainly is uncommon at 2 Slabs Bridge.
It is surprising therefore that we have not yet really seen the deer spread out onto the other moors. Totley has had a small population for some time and the occasional group turn up near Sheffield Road at the northern end of Ramsley Moor but other than than virtually nothing.

Another group that keep well out of the way at this time are the none breeders.  Hinds with calves from last year or even the year before rarely mate again until the third year and the young stags and hinds usually don't breed until their fifth year. 
On the road up to Barbrook Cottage I came across a group of four yesterday.  A young mother with her calf and two 'spikers' A spiker is a young stag with a pair of unbranched antlers.  They were reluctant to leave the 'safety' of this area and were still about when I returned 30 minutes later.

Bolving - what's that all about?

There are not too many interesting things that have come out of Devon but one of them is bolving. 
Bolving is the art of reproducing the sound of the rutting deer stag in the hope of getting a response from the real animals out on the Moor.

Here is an example of exactly that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3OB_PBTjfw

The art of bolving has slowly been spreading north and now it has reached the Derbyshire Eastern Moors.  What we now need is a clear Derbyshire champion to set the standard by which all others in the area will be judged.

On Saturday 11th October, Eastern Moors will be hosting their first championship.  The idea is for everyone to go out onto the Barbrook dam facing out into the Moor.  One by one participants, drawn by random, will be able to make their call and try and get a response from our local stags.  Bolving will be judged on the volume, quality and reality of each call and the response received from the wild stags. The winner will not only receive a signed certificate but will also receive a voucher for 2 for a meal at the Grouse near Longshaw.  Have you ever had such an offer for an entertaining  early evening? 
We start at 5.30 and after 2 hours you still have time to do whatever you normally do on a Saturday night!

Here is a short video of the real thing.  Not all these red deer are on the Eastern Moors but they all sound roughly the same:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU2lGQRZrq0

In addition there will be a display about our red deer on Big Moor and a decorated antler competition.  Deer thrash the bracken, heather, grass and moss with their antlers at rutting time to show their frustration and some of it gets lodged on their antlers making them look particularly rediculous.  Can you or your family replicate this action?

We may have a tug of war so that instead of all the pushing and shoving associated with the rut we will be moving in the opposite direction. This depends as much as anything on the weather!

Hot soup will be provided at Barbrook Cottage and you will get chance to meet similar individuals with an interest and passion for our biggest wild mammal 

Red deer on Big Moor

The rutting season is now well and truly under way. Lots of noise but not too much action as yet.  
One short walk from the Owler Bar / Longshaw road revealed 7 stags all within a radius of about a mile.  Some have already got a harem but others are still on the prowl.  A few of them are still not quite old enough to challenge the big boys, but I reckon they just like to annoy their elders and keep them on their toes!

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