Minibeasts are everywhere, and there are millions of them! These little invertebrates can be found in every environment on the planet.
Woodlands are great places to look for minibeasts as they are home to a large number of specialist species. This is because a wood contains a diverse range of habitats including dead wood, open areas such as grassy glades, the tree canopy and understorey layers where the smaller woodland plants can be found, as well as leaf litter and rich soils.
If you fancy going on a hunt for some minibeasts yourself, here are a few things you could look for in different kinds of habitats.
Lesser Stag Beetle (Dorcus parallelipipedus)Lesser Stag Beetles, like their larger relatives the Greater Stag Beetles, are dependent on decaying wood. The larvae can take two or more years to develop in the old wood and the adult lives for about two years. They are mainly active at night but can sometimes be seen by day or tempted out in the early evening by a sweet treat such as maple syrup.
Beautiful butterflies such as the Speckled Wood, Brimstone and Hairstreaks can be found flitting around in woodland glades, visiting flowers and looking for mates.
Speckled Wood Butterfly (Pararge aegeria)Bumblebees are also frequent visitors. There are 24 species of bumblebee in the UK but there are only about eight that are commonly seen. When a bumblebee has visited a flower it leaves a chemical message to tell the other bumblebees that it has been there and not to bother investigating as the nectar has already been plundered.
There’s plenty more to discover too, from pseudoscorpions to the importance of aphids in the food chain of many ecosystems…
If you’d like to learn more then come along to Wytham Woods in Oxford at 10am on 22 July or 26 August and help us see what we can find in a 90-minute guided walk around the woods. The event is free, family friendly (ideal for children 7+) and an expert will be on hand to help with minibeast identification too. For more information and to book email ceri.watkins@oum.ox.ac.uk.
‘Museums and music’ has a nice ring to it, and that’s just what BBC Radio 2 will be offering this evening. This special broadcast of Friday Night is Music Night will feature a concert celebrating the six nominees for this year’s Museum of the Year.
Recorded last week at the Mermaid Theatre in London, the finalists each presented two objects they had chosen from their collection. The short talks were then brilliantly accompanied by The BBC Concert Orchestra, playing pieces inspired by these unique objects.
Radio 2 presenter Ken Bruce with the Tradescant Walrus
Walking on stage to the theme from Jurassic Park, our director, Professor Paul Smith, presented two real treasures: a Tsetse Fly sent back from the Zambesi by Dr Livingstone and an impressively-tusked walrus skull. The skull belonged to the Tradescants, so is part of the oldest collections in the Museum. It’s also believed to have inspired Lewis Carroll to write ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’.
The Friday Night event was a great opportunity to present to the broad Radio 2 listenership two of our most iconic specimens, which tell extraordinary stories.
The Walrus specimen links the foundation of the collection in the late 1590s to the Beatles in 1967, via Lewis Carroll and Walt Disney, whereas the Tsetse Fly collected by David Livingstone tells stories of the European exploration of Africa, but also of disease control in humans and farm livestock.
– Professor Paul Smith, Museum director
Other objects presented to the audience included one of the clay poppies from the Tower of Londons ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ and a tambourine signed by soldiers of the First World War who convalesced at the Georgian country house, Dunham Massey.
So get your radio tuned in this evening at 8 o’clock. Hear the stories behind these surprising objects and the music that will bring them to life.
Rachel Parle, Interpretation and Education Officer
Tomorrow is the official launch of the Dodo Roadshow. Our 8 day adventure from Land’s End to John O’Groats kicks off at the southern tip of the country, before zooming on to 4 other museums during the day. It’s certainly a busy one to get us going!
The ambitious itinerary on the back of Darren’s t shirt
Ellie Smith and Darren Mann, part of the first leg team have packed up the Museum van with the essentials. They’ll be joined by Julia Parker and will head down to Cornwall today. Next stop Land’s End!
Ellie and Darren lift the Dodo into the van
Rachel Parle, Interpretation and Education Officer
We are definitely more than just a Dodo, but sometimes we do like to celebrate our famous specimen. This month we’ll be doing that in two exciting ways: putting the real Dodo remains on display, and taking Dodo bits and pieces on an epic tour – the Dodo Roadshow.
The Oxford Dodo display in the centre court of the Museum tells the story of the famous specimen that’s been under the care of Oxford University since the 17th century. But it doesn’t contain the real head and foot remains of the original animal: this uniquely precious specimen has to be kept behind the scenes, so it’s rare to get even a glimpse… until now!
Gently placing the Oxford Dodo into the Presenting case
As you’ll probably know by now, we’ve been shortlisted for the Art Fund Prize Museum of the Year 2015. To mark this, we’re embarking on a unique and ambitious tour of the country. Beginning at Land’s End on 8 June, the Dodo Roadshow will travel the full length of Britain in the colourful Museum van. Staff will journey all the way to John O’Groats in just one week, visiting over 20 museums and galleries along the way.
Oh, and we’ll be taking a Dodo with us too. While the original head is on display in the Museum, we’ll get the striking Dodo model out on the road, and we’ll also take along real Dodo foot and limb bones, from the same original animal as the head. These will be used as part of a ‘show and tell’ with visitors at each stop.
The Dodo model (right) which will be joining us for the adventure
But it’s not just about the Dodo. In a bid to celebrate the rich diversity of museum collections in the UK, the Dodo will meet with star objects from every museum and gallery on the tour too. And in a small expression of cultural heritage exchange, the Dodo will ‘interview’ these star objects for a series of Q&A articles, which you’ll be able to read about right here on the blog.
We wanted to do something special to celebrate our nomination for the Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year 2015. Getting out on the road to visit museums and galleries far and wide seemed like a great way to talk about the huge breadth of collections that we have in the UK, both in natural history and well beyond.
The Dodo Roadshow is a chance for some people to meet the iconic Oxford Dodo, and for the Dodo – and us – to meet equally important objects in other museum collections.
As you may have seen, the Museum was recently shortlisted as a finalist in this year’s Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year – very exciting news for us. To add to the honour we hosted renowned Magnum Photos photographer Martin Parr, who spent a good few hours photographing the Museum, in the court and behind the scenes, as part of the Museum of the Year campaign.
The photograph above was captured by Martin during one of our primary school sessions on dinosaurs: the children have their mitts on a fossilised dinosaur egg – just one of the real specimens used during the session.
Martin Parr photographing some Darwin specimens in our collections
Having a Magnum photographer visit the Museum for a photoshoot isn’t something that happens every day, so it was a real privilege to take Martin Parr around the building and watch the types of things that caught his eye.
I am a keen photographer myself, with an interest in the history of photography as a technical process and as an art form, so it was especially exciting to not only meet Martin and watch him work, but also to photograph the process myself too. You can see a few of those shots here.
Martin Parr scrutinising our vertebrate spirit collections
Photo competition
Now it’s your chance. We’re inviting you to take photographs of the Museum and submit them to the Museum of the Year Photo Competition, with a chance to win a photography holiday in Berlin, photo gear and other prizes. Martin Parr will shortlist six photos, one for each of the six finalist museums, and the ultimate winner will be selected by a public vote.
So get snapping – with a posh camera or your phone; it doesn’t matter. Then either upload your pictures via the Art Fund website, or tweet or Instagram them using the #motyphoto hashtag and don’t forget to tag us in @morethanadodo.
Good luck!
Martin Parr photographing a primary school group for Art Fund Prize for Museum of the YearMartin Parr, an Iguanodon and young visitors
If you live in Oxford or have been reading our blog for a while you may remember a project we created called Goes to Town: twelve specimens escaped from the Museum, set themselves up in locations around Oxford city and provided a treasure-hunt style trail around town. They then returned in time for our reopening party in 2014.
It was a fun project with many elements so we are very pleased indeed to say that it picked up the winning trophy in last night’s Museum + Heritage Awards show, in the marketing campaign category. Here’s the first video we made to promote Goes to Town:
More Than A Dodo 