Spring/Summer 2026 Prize Quiz: Winner and Answers

The source of the River Aire (the answer to clue 43 in the quiz)
Photo: Trevor Littlewood, www.geograph.org.uk

Very many thanks to everyone who entered our spring/summer quiz, which had the theme of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Your support is very much appreciated! 

As ever, thank you also for the money sent in entrance fees, and we are especially grateful for the additional donations we received.

We received a total of 137 entries, of which 40 were all correct. We had a random draw to select the winner, who is Liz Gibbins of Shipston-on-Stour. Congratulations Liz!

Here are the answers to the clues:

1. This hamlet sounds (a bit) like the higher badger’s den. (9). Appersett

2. This village has part of an orchard and part of a candle. (13). Appletreewick

3. In the beginnings, a red kite, exploring Northern glens and ravines, tried hunting down a large earthworm. (14). Arkengarthdale

4. Pose a question to actress Diana in this village. (7). Askrigg

5. Last flash, Gary – surprisingly a popular attraction. (8, 5). Aysgarth Falls

6. Village where you can cross a French bath? (10). Bainbridge

7. Fasten upon fly-fisher’s action, the Spanish go back to this building. (6, 6) Bolton Castle

8. Is this village a good place to hide away your dollars? (7). Buckden

9. Reduces everything to ashes. (8). Burnsall

10. Pouts acutely at this waterfall. (7, 5). Cautley Spout

11. But you won’t find a busy railway junction in this village… (7). Clapham

12. … nor will you find Chester or Balmoral on this waterway. (5, 3). River Dee

13. This valley could be over-laced. (9). Coverdale

14. Two illegal drugs, a damaged ceramic, or an eccentric. (8). Crackpot

15. Damaged metalwork. (4). Dent

16. Is this where Vulpes preaches to his Friends? (4, 6). Fox’s Pulpit

17. Pothole, place where something is missing, in children’s horse, unwell. (6, 4). Gaping Gill

18. Drags ale up this valley. (8). Garsdale

19. Building near 24 sounds like a windmill suited to very strong wind! (5, 4). Gayle Mill

20. God! Real cars wrecked in this popular beauty spot. (7, 4). Gordale Scar

21. Telling tales about little Anthony?  Not unknown in this village. (11). Grassington

22. Large one who gives a cold shoulder met his downfall on this mountain. (5, 7, 4). Great Shunner Fell

23. Unyielding uncooked strength of this waterfall. (7, 5). Hardraw Force

24. Lake District reservoir dried up? (5). Hawes

25. Bend he straightened for this village. (6). Hebden

26. The chairman of Dibley Parish Council finds himself in the valley of 42. (6, 2, 11). Horton in Ribblesdale

27. I often wonder how Gill solved the problem of concealing these hills. (8). Howgills

28. Town where they sell fireplaces? No, it’s a mountain! (12). Ingleborough

29. Ms Street-Porter’s initially formed one short sentence to describe this feature. (6, 4). Janet’s Foss

30. Want a cup of tea?  You’ll find the equipment in a deep hole in this village. (10). Kettlewell

31. At this popular climbing spot, noisy grackle was disturbed, without love. (7, 4). Kilnsey Crag

32. Death? All strong here where 44 flows. (14). Langstrothdale

33. Is this village an extension to the North End? (4, 7). Long Preston

34. River draining from a level, uneven plateau. (4). Lune

35. Badly cured pork in this village. (6). Malham

36. This village, in the United Kingdom European Referendum (UKER), produced results typical of rural areas in the North of England. (5). Muker

37. A penny wine will go far. (7, 3). Pennine Way

38. Welsh head of the Belgian city is on this mountain. (3-1-5). Pen-y-Ghent

39. Black bird’s colouration with variable lead in this village. (14). Ravenstonedale

40. Conflict reversal for those people by the river. (7). Rawthey

41. This village’s name suggests a tribute to the deceased. (5). Reeth

42. I had an accident near this river, leaving me with a broken rib, bleeding from my head, and concussion. (6). Ribble

43. Re Riviera: is this waterway Yorkshire’s version? (5, 4). River Aire

44. You might expect to find boats tied up by this waterway! (5, 6). River Wharfe

45. In the NW of the Park, the man in Lincoln green is serious. (5, 5, 5). Robin Hood’s Grave

46. Is this the edge brush I hear you lost in this town? (8). Sedbergh

47. Is this a good valley for tobogganing? (8). Sleddale

48. Wednesday, hell with no high definition, spent in this valley. (11). Wensleydale

49. That woman’s identity is hidden at the four compass points on this mountain. (9). Whernside

50. Savage male animal took a tumble on this mountain. (4, 4, 4).  Wild Boar Fell

Here are some notes of the ones that seemed to cause the most difficulty:

7.  BOLTON CASTLE – There was a bit of confusion here.  Bolton Castle is located in the village of Castle Bolton, but the clue requires a building.  Castle Bolton would not conform to alphabetical order either.  To add to the confusion, there is the village of Bolton Abbey and the building called Bolton Priory, which are also in the National Park.

12.  RIVER DEE – On page 1 it is stated that the clues, with one exception, are in alphabetical order of the answers.  This clue is that one exception.  This River Dee flows through Dentdale and joins the River Rawthey.

16.  FOX’S PULPIT – In 1652, George Fox preached here to about 1,000 people.  This was one of the meetings that brought about the Quaker (Society of Friends) movement.  It is located very close to the National Park Boundary, on Firbank Fell.

17.  GAPING GILL - This is one of the best-known limestone caves in the National Park.  It is on the southern slopes of Ingleborough.

19.  GAYLE MILL – This is a Grade II* listed cotton mill, in Gayle, a hamlet close to Hawes in Wensleydale.

23.  HARDRAW FORCE – We could not accept Hardraw Falls as it doesn’t account for the “strength” in the clue.

26.  HORTON IN RIBBLESDALE – Gary Waldhorn played the part of David Horton, chairman of the parish council in the BBC sitcom “The Vicar of Dibley”.

27.  HOWGILLS – Both the clue (“these hills”) and the letter count require the plural.

32.  LANGSTROTHDALE – Anagram “Death all strong”.  This is the valley where the upper stretch of the River Wharfe runs.

33.  LONG PRESTON – The North End gives you Preston, as the city’s football team is Preston North End.

35.  MALHAM – Several people gave Masham as the answer, but Masham is outside the National Park, although it is in Wensleydale.

36.  MUKER – This is a village in Swaledale.  Some people did not notice it, hidden in the clue: 

“… Referendum (UKER), produced …”.

39.  RAVENSTONEDALE – This village is near Kirkby Stephen on a tributary of the River Eden.  “Black bird’s (Ravens) colouration (tone) with variable lead (dale) …”.

40.  RAWTHEY – The River Rawthey is a tributary of the River Lune.  It runs through Sedbergh.

41.  REETH – Several people put Ripon here.  But Ripon is not in the National Park, and is a city, not a village.

45.  ROBIN HOOD’S GRAVE – Robin Hood’s Bay and Robin Hood’s Butts are both in the North York Moors National Park; Robin Hood’s Chair is in the Lake District National Park.  Robin Hood’s Stone is in 

46.  SEDBERGH – The unusual spelling of this name caught a lot of people out.  Nine people would have had full marks had they not written “Sedburgh” here.  The words “I heard you lost” in the clue were meant to prevent this error, by removing the U in the anagram.

47.  SLEDDALE – This dale runs south from Wensleydale.  It terminates when its beck joins the River Ure near Hawes.  Several people gave Sledmere as their answer, but this is a village in the Yorkshire Wolds, not the Dales.

Most of the other answers that were not accepted were typos or spelling mistakes.

Turn Your Wildlife Photos Into Citizen Science

iNaturalist is a Citizen Science platform to record sightings of flora and fauna - anything from an amoeba to a whale - to build a biodiversity database for use by the research community. For the past decade I have been photographing at New Ferry Butterfly Park and over the past five years I have been converting the images into wildlife observations. Initially I used the iRecord platform but now I almost exclusively use iNaturalist. I am not alone. There are currently over 2000 observations of nearly 500 species from the Butterfly Park on iNaturalist posted by 54 observers, which may be seen at:

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/new-ferry-butterfly-park-howell-road-new-ferry-bebington-wirral-uk

An increasing number of people are taking photographs of the wildlife at the butterfly park, and it would be great to see the resulting images developed into wildlife observations. To facilitate this, I’ll now describe how I convert my photographs into iNaturalist observations.

After a photo session, I download the image files from the camera onto a computer and go through them deleting anything substandard. The remainder, usually about a third, are processed using Photoshop. Conversion to observations requires logging into the iNaturalist website (https://www.inaturalist.org) which opens at the ‘Dashboard’ page.

The dashboard page on the iNaturalist website

Pressing the ‘Upload’ tab on the top right of the page opens the ‘Drag & drop some photos or sounds’ page onto which one or more image files for each observation may be copied. If there are multiple images for an observation they may be merged by dragging them onto the master image.

Drag & drop some photos or sounds

The next job is to populate the ‘Species Name’ and ‘Location’ fields for each observation, adding any plaintext you wish to the ‘Notes’ fields. Clicking in the ‘Species Name’ box offers a range of possible names using iNaturalist’s AI-based analysis of the image. If you see the correct name then select it. Otherwise, choose the suggestion at the top of the list (probably a genus) to provide a starting point. If your camera has GPS then the ‘Location’ field may have been automatically populated from the EXIF data. If not, click inside the box to open an interactive map window.

Select the location of your observation using the interactive map

I usually enter ‘New Ferry Butterfly Park’ into the ‘Search Location’ field which zooms the map into the area of interest. Click the map where you took your photo and make the resulting circle larger or smaller to set the spatial accuracy. By default, the Geoprivacy is set to ‘Open’. Please don’t change this or your observation will be useless to science. I also standardise the ‘Locality notes’ field to ‘New Ferry Butterfly Park’ to make it easier to discover observations from the reserve. Press ‘Update Observations’ when all the required information has been entered.

Once all the observations have had their names and locations populated the ‘Submit observations’ button is pressed to upload and publish them. This opens an ‘Edit Observations’ Page, which may be used to document the observations with annotations.

The Edit Observations Page on iNaturalist

Whilst this is optional it increases the scientific value of the records. For example, it provides a mechanism for researchers interested in butterflies from getting caterpillar observations. Clicking on an observation species name, such as ‘Common Crimson-and-gold Moth’, opens that observation in edit mode.

A view of the page for one of Roy's observations

I usually populate the ‘Alive or Dead’, ‘Life Stage’, and (if I know it) ‘Sex’ attributes. The ‘Life Stage’ attribute is particularly important for insects as it allows separation of larvae observations from adult observations. Once populated (there’s no save to be pressed) the next observation can be selected using the green circular arrow symbols or the ‘Dashboard’ can be reached using the circular button to the right of ‘Upload’.

A published observation will be viewed by many ‘iNatters’, some of whom join the community identification process by commenting on, changing or refining the ID field. This process usually works very well with prompt, constructive input from experienced identifiers significantly enhancing the observations. Sometimes, nothing happens because there are no experienced identifiers for the species observed and occasionally, things can go awry when people identify beyond their competence and get it wrong. In my experience other members of the community help when this happens. Once two members of the community have confirmed the identification the observation is elevated to ‘Research Grade’ and made available to researchers.

This blog post describes the way that I work and is intended to provide an initial pathway for camera - as opposed to phone - users who wish to start wildlife recording using iNaturalist. It is not intended to be a users’ manual. There are many features that I haven’t mentioned and no doubt many other ways to do what I do that others may prefer once they get to know the package. For phone camera users iNaturalist provides an App but I can’t help with this as I have never used it. The Cheshire Local Environmental Record Centre, Record LRC, run field days giving practical training using the App. These are usually in the weeks before the City Nature Challenge bioblitz in April or May and are advertised on the Record web site.

Roy Lowry

From Hong Kong to New Ferry Butterfly Park

Wirral Chinese Christian Church members on an outing to the Butterfly Park

On 24th July 2026, New Ferry Butterfly Park received a group of visitors with Chinese heritage background, 15 adults and 3 children, from Wirral Chinese Christian Church (WCCC). They came from Hong Kong about 4 or 5 years ago and have settled down and started their new life in Wirral and other parts of the country.

It was their first time visiting the Park. They were amazed with the history of this urban nature reserve, the wildlife it supports and the time many volunteers have invested in it. They were curious about butterflies in the UK. Each time they saw a butterfly, they would look at the butterfly identification chart and learn its name. One of the visitors also shared her photo of a beautiful moth from Hong Kong.

A gatekeeper spotted during the group's visit

The life in the UK can be different in many ways from that in urban Hong Kong where they had spent most of their adult life. They are adjusting to their new life well, thanks to the support from the WCCC and other local community groups. Still there are many things that they are trying to make sense of; what should I do with my garden, would my neighbour take me to court if I don’t mow the lawn regularly enough, do foxes attack people… and how come the toilet in the Park is not smelly, nor having flies without using water!

Speckled wood also made the sightings list

They were delighted to hear about Plantlife’s conservation campaign “No Mow May” and “Let It Bloom June” for supporting wildlife, as well as taking off the pressure of mowing! Being environmentally friendly in gardens was generally agreed, and the group was keen on learning how to make this happen.

Due to the gloomy weather, we only manged to see Gatekeepers, Speckled Woods, Green-veined White, and Holly Blues. Most importantly, the visit was enjoyed by all, and one individual instantly express her interest in becoming a volunteer to the Park!

A green-veined white, looking a bit worse for wear

Yan Wang, New Ferry Butterfly Park volunteer