I created a Facebook group for the project, it has been up for 3 weeks and has a total as of now of 43 members which I was not expecting. Because of privacy I am not going to say which members donated specifically what, but one of our members built a hedgehog box from scratch (I am incredibly impressed). Another member has been donating coconut suet feeders which the birds are devouring. We have also had reptile tiles donated for doing reptile and amphibian surveys and members giving interesting information of the history of people within the churchyard.

We have Elizabeth Alice Hunter who travelled in 1888 by ship from Liverpool to New York on her own (more rough than the Shetland ferry)

John Young who served as a stoker (shovelling coal into the furnace of the ship to keep the engine running) in the Royal Navy on the HMS Minotaur, he was a coal miner before he joined, he was presented a Victory medal and a British war medal for his service in world war one. He died of an illness.

We had our churchyard clean up session on the 2nd of March, I planted some more wild flowers like Fox gloves and Cowslips and ensured I mapped where we planted them on to GIS as we do not want the clean and green team to mow where we have planted the wild flowers, we also cut back some holly and removed a lot of fallen branches that must have came off in the storm a while ago.

We also had our bird survey on the 16th of March of which I have not compared the data yet but at the front, the churchyard certainly improved. We did have bird species that had not been seen before at the front and some at all such as the Dunnock and the Bullfinch. The weather was also surprisingly pleasant so much so I believe a few members did not want to head back inside after the thirty minutes was over.

Overall it has been a good few weeks, we are going to plan a flower survey in April as quite a few of our flowers have started sprouting and Durham wildlife trust has agreed to help us in setting it up, so far the main flower of highlight is that we have wild primroses and violets growing.