It’s that time of year again: time for our Zoology Live! festival. For Zoology Live! 2023 we are exploring the wildlife in our towns and cities. Zoology Live! Online Thursday 29th June 2023, 7pm-8pm Join us live on our YouTube channel as we take a deep dive into the wildlife of the city of Cambridge, jump across the world to find out about urban wildlife … Continue reading Zoology Live! Goes Urban
For Earth Day 2023, the Museum of Zoology worked with schools and families to create displays all about what nature does for us and what we can do for nature. Read on to see these wonderful creations, and for top tips on helping nature and letting nature help you. Helping Nature Help Us with The Grove Primary, Nelson Academy and Lionel Walden Primary School Beginning … Continue reading Helping Nature Help Us
In the Zoology Live! livestream on June 22 we explored how we monitor wildlife today, with Dr Julia Mackenzie from Anglia Ruskin University showing how she monitors the nesting birds in Cambridge University Botanic Garden, and Professor Ed Turner of the Museum of Zoology sharing his research into arthropod biodiversity in Southeast Asia: You too can get involved with monitoring wildlife. Get a taste at … Continue reading Zoology Live! 2022: Supporting Wildlife Today
In the Zoology Live! livestream on June 21 we explore museum collections, what they can tell us about animals of the past and how this helps us to understand animals today: The collections at the Museum are of vital importance to our understanding of biodiversity, but we would not go out and collect in the way naturalists did over 100 years ago. Making a collection … Continue reading Zoology Live! 2022 Making Collections
Join us at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden as we search for as many species as we can find in 24 hours. Starting at 5pm on Friday 24 June, we will be joined by a team of experts exploring the plants, animals and other wildlife living in the Botanic Garden. And you can get involved too. We have a whole load of wildlife walks, workshops … Continue reading BioBlitz Cambridge 2022
It is that time of year again – time for us to celebrate our Zoology Live! festival at the Museum of Zoology. We have an exciting line up of livestreams and activities, culminating in the BioBlitz at the Cambridge University Botanic Garden, where you can put what you have learnt about local wildlife to the test. Our Zoology Live! YouTube livestreams are taking place on … Continue reading Zoology Live! 2022
If you visit the Museum of Zoology Butterflies through Time exhibition (from 15 March – September 2022), you will be greeted by a magnificent collaborative artwork created by children from three Cambridgeshire Schools – The Grove Primary in Cambridge, Lantern Primary in Ely and Lionel Walden Primary in Doddington – led by artist Eleanor Chaney. Find out more about Eleanor and her project The Library … Continue reading A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies
It’s the summer, and so in the last of our posts celebrating National Marine Week we are having a go at our favourite beach holiday activity: rockpooling. Join Learning Officer Dr Roz Wade as she explores the animals living in the rockpools of the west coast of Scotland. Watch the feeding tentacles of sea anemones, the slow but steady movements of sea snails, darting fish, … Continue reading Pondwatch: Rockpools
July 17-25 is National Moth Week 2021. To celebrate, we are revisiting a moth trap from 2020, and finding out more about some of the British moths in our collections with Research Assistant Matt Hayes. Why not join us at the BioBlitz in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 July to find out more about moth surveying and see some … Continue reading National Moth Week 2021
We are working again with the Botanic Garden to try to count as many species as possible in 24 hours, and we would love you to join us. This year’s BioBlitz is taking place from 5pm on Friday 23 July to 5pm on Saturday 24 July. From hands-on wildlife surveying activities to natural history walks with experts at the top of their field, there is … Continue reading BioBlitz Cambridge 2021
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Go on safari in Cambridge’s green spaces to discover the plants and animals that live in these city centre wildlife havens. Follow the map and clues below to discover the wildlife of central Cambridge. Our Wildlife Safari Trail can be followed on a smartphone here, downloaded to your own device, or printed at home before your journey: Use the Cambridge Wildlife Safari map and the clues below to find … Continue reading Cambridge Wildlife Safari Trail
Sunday 2 May 2021 is International Dawn Chorus Day. To celebrate, we went out early one morning in late April to Coldham’s Common in Cambridge with ornithologist Dr Rob Pople to record the birds singing as the sun was rising. Here you can watch highlights of our dawn chorus walk, and listen to the main species singing with tips on how to recognise them. Why … Continue reading Dawn Chorus Day 2021
Museum Collections Manager Matt Lowe writes: The past 12 months has meant a lot more screen time, especially for a collections manager who has a never ending list of edits for a museum database that seems longer than, well…. a year under lockdown. Ordinarily, to give tired eyes a rest, we would look up from our screens to chat to colleagues, or go and double … Continue reading Five minutes in nature: Ringneck the blackbird
Museum Volunteer Ian Harvey writes: We’re all familiar with owls and for many people, they’re their favourite animal. And we know owls from literature; the owl and the pussycat, owl in Winnie the Pooh and the owls in the Harry Potter books. Owls are birds of prey or raptors meaning they feed on other animals. They have certain features making them great hunters; excellent eyesight … Continue reading Owl Pellets
Matt Lowe, Collections Manager at the Museum of Zoology, writes: A couple of months ago my wife and I were tidying up the pots of herbs we keep next to kitchen door when we heard a shuffling noise and what sounded awfully like snoring. That was when I realised I had succeeded in giving an overwintering hedgehog a home. In 2019, not long after we … Continue reading Herbie the Hedgehog’s winter hidey hole
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