Welcome to Buxton Field Club
The Buxton environment group for nature lovers and naturalists
What's On
Autumn-Winter Talks Programme 2026-7
We have just finalised our programme as shown below, and it’s looking really good with an exciting variety of interesting subjects by good speakers. Any changes will be updated as necessary, here and on our Facebook page, and by email to members.
All talks take place at Buxton Methodist Church Hall, Chapel Street, Buxton SK17 6HX starting at 7.00pm
Non-members £3
Free for under 25s
Date of talk | Speaker | Subject |
Saturday 17th October 2026 | Prof Jamie Woodward | River pollution and impact on habitats |
Saturday 31st October 2026 | David Hughes | Hedges and ambitious hedgerow-planting in the Hope Valley |
Saturday 14th November 2026 | Sally Hodgson | Biodiversity on a Peak District Upland Farm |
Saturday 28th November 2026 | Jack Perks | Freshwater Fish and Pond & River Wildlife |
Saturday 16th January 2027 | Phil Mulligan CEO PDNPA | Biodiversity Challenges and Successes in the Peak District National Park |
Friday 29th January 2027 | Penny Anderson | Habitats of the Dark Peak |
Saturday 13th February 2027 | Helen Pilcher | Life Changing: How Humans are Altering Life on Earth |
Saturday 27th February 2026 | Charles Foster | Sea, Seal, Selkie: a tour through the year of grey and harbour seals |
Saturday 13th March 2027with DOS | Oliver Slessor | Birds, Birding and a Career in Ornithology |
Saturday 3rd April (plus AGM) | Paul Richards | Itsy-bitsy Teeny-Weeny or Smaller Than the Eye Can See: An Introduction to Invertebrate Macrophotography. |
Site Visits Programme for Summer 2026
Our Site Visits Programme for Summer 2026 has just completed. For details on the visits, go to our Wildlife Site Visits and Talks page.
What's New: Some new short videos
New videos
Click to our Video Gallery to see our new short videos:
A Hummingbird Hawkmoth feeding on a Melancholy Thistle in Cunningdale
A Hummingbird Hawkmoth and a Hoverfly feeding in a Buxton garden
Large Black Slug (Arion ater)
Striped Millipedes (Ommatoiulus sabulosus)
Recent observations
Click to our Cunningdale page to see some recent photos and a video of invertebrates taken there.
What's New: BFC Grants Scheme - Funding for Nature Projects
Do you have in mind, or do you know of a nature project in need of support and funding? If so, this could be what you’re looking for!
We have just set up a new Buxton Field Club grant scheme, putting to good use some of the money that, as a Club, we have accumulated, to fund small projects aimed at improving biodiversity.
This is a new scheme, and a pilot year, so we don’t want to be too prescriptive about what projects could cover, but they should help promote the aims of Buxton Field Club. So, they might help to:
- support the practical study of nature;
- protect the environment or increase biodiversity or
- help promote and make the case for biodiversity.
Details about the scheme and its simple application form, can be found here. (For a Word docx copy of the form and rules, please make a request through our Contact page.)
Applications must either be made by, or sponsored by, a Club member or members of at least a year’s standing. The minimum amount that can be applied for is £100, and the maximum is £1,000 and we’ve earmarked up to £3,000 for the scheme this year.
For this first round, please make applications by 30th June 2026.
Welcome!
If you’ve turned up on a chilly Buxton Saturday night, or perhaps heard on the grapevine about great talks on the bats of Derbyshire, landscape restoration in the Peak District, the wildlife of Crete, peregrine falcons, the killing of Scotland’s golden eagles or how ash dieback is being tackled in the Peak District, then hopefully you already know about Buxton Field Club (BFC). But if not, read on!
BFC, set up in 1946, has a proud and dynamic history of bringing together and welcoming everyone who has an interest in the natural world – whether that be wildflowers and grasses, birds, butterflies, moths, mammals, amphibians, dragon and damselflies, insects, lichens, mosses or geology and anything and everything that is part of our glorious natural world.
We run a fabulous, varied programme of autumn and winter talks in the heart of Buxton and, come the summer, we’re out and about around Buxton and the wider Peak District on nature and wildlife site visits, searching for, admiring, photographing, recording and sharing the simple pleasures of finding beautiful plants and creatures. (See our current and past programmes of wildlife site visits and talks here.) We also have regular volunteering sessions in the Serpentine Walks, where we are implementing the Biodiversity Plan that we developed jointly with Buxton Civic Association, and on The Slopes, where we have created a new wildflower and pollinator-friendly garden. BFC members also run the yearly butterfly surveys in the area and the recording and mapping of nature across the town.
We are a friendly, welcoming bunch of people, ranging from novices to experts, who have in common a love of the natural environment. If you would like to know more, then have many options. You can have a browse through this website, or contact us via our our Contact Form, or join our Facebook group (Buxton Field Club), or come along to one of our talks or visits, or come and volunteer with the Wildflower Volunteer group in the Serpentine and The Slopes, or help with our butterfly surveys and wildlife recording (no prior knowledge required). You can find more information on volunteering and our Wildflower Volunteer group here.
You may also enjoy taking a look at our Buxton Field Club YouTube channel, which has a growing variety of wildlife-related videos by our members and recordings of talks given during our 2020-22 seasons.
Membership costs just £20 a year for adults or individual talks and walks are £3. Everything is free for under 25s. Our annual membership subscription gives you access to all our activities free of charge, including to the video recordings of our talks. We also have homemade biscuits at our talks!
You can join either in person at a real meeting or by email, using our Contact Form.
How to become a BFC member
Are you interested in becoming a member? You can find out how to on our Joining Buxton Field Club page.
About this site
Our site is split into sections. Drill down from the Main Menu items above and the submenus you will find under them to find what you are looking for. Or you can explore it in other ways, such as by using the Search box at the head of the page or by following any of the many links we have built into it, for example, by clicking on the photos on this page to go to a section on that order of life. (For more information on the site structure and navigation go to our How to use this site page.)
We have designed the site as a growing network of links, where you can follow many different paths of your choice, from the more direct to the indirect, wandering and surprising. The model for this is a mix of formal gardens and less formal, wilder woodlands, with the links providing a ‘woodwide web’ of routes and pathways through a growing forest of information. The idea is to make it easy to either go directly to what you want, whether it is on these pages or in the pages of another relevant website (by using the menus and links provided or by using the ‘Search’ box at the head of the page); but also to make it interesting and enjoyable to wander and explore different pathways using the links, within the pages and to other relevant websites, knowing that you can easily find your way back to a point from which to start a fresh exploration.
The site is an ongoing work in progress, and is designed to be functional rather than fancy at this stage. The pages will be built up and expanded over time, and we will add extra features that prove to be useful and will enhance it. So there will always be more to explore and we hope you will find something new every time you visit. There are lots of gaps that we can fill and growth that we can achieve with your help.
Getting involved
There are many ways to join in, which we describe in our How to join in pages.
We are a very friendly and collaborative club. A popular, enjoyable and rewarding way to join in is through Volunteering, for example in one of our wildlife and wildflower gardening projects, or in sharing your knowledge through leading or helping to lead one of our site visits.
Another way you can join in is to help us to grow our website and YouTube channel content, by sending us (in electronic form) any written, pictorial or recorded material which is relevant to our interests and you have created and would like to share in suitable places on these channels. Please contact us here to discuss your ideas. These can be stories, essays, articles, poems, photos, videos, drawings, paintings, nature recordings, music or songs. They have to be relevant to the Club’s interests in nature and biodiversity, and to be yours to share (copyright will remain with you and full accreditation will be given).
We would love to hear from you. Send your material to our Website and YouTube Channel Developer through our Contact page and we will contact you to check out and confirm the details and any edits that may be needed. We will do the work uploading them to the appropriate place on the appropriate channel.
We are not alone. There is a dynamic and developing network of clubs and organisations locally and nationally who share our interests in nature and biodiversity. You can find a list of some of them with links on our page The Network.
Just a few of our members' nature photos
These are just a taster, showing some examples of the rich variety of wildlife that can be found in and around Buxton. There are lots more shown in The Photo Galleries and the host of pages under The Living World. Plus members’ videos of wildlife in The Video Galleries.
Take a look, have a browse and enjoy, and maybe think about sending us some of your own?
Campaigning for our environment and biodiversity
We are a non-party political organisation, but we do get involved in campaigns to protect our local and national environment and biodiversity. Visit our Facebook page and our Campaigns and Events page for news and updates on campaigns we have been and are involved in.
The Club is an ally, together with Transition Buxton, of the Plastic Free Community network, set up by Surfers Against Sewage to work together to free where we live from single-use plastic, one of our most widespread and serious environmental pollutants. The aim is to tackle and reduce avoidable, throwaway plastic from beaches, rivers, and green spaces all the way back to the brands and businesses who create it. Wherever on shore or inland, urban or rural, high-tide or high-rise, the network is uniting communities in the fight against single-use plastics. It’s not about removing all plastic from our lives. It’s about kicking our addiction to avoidable single-use plastic, and changing the system that produces it.
