May sightings…

Dawn Chorus

London Wildlife Trust's Honia Bor is a true early bird. Along with her boyfriend Steve, she was up with the larks to film this fantastic short film for the BBC's Video Nation series.  Nature is something Honia enjoyed and grew up around in Poland. Now she enjoys the oasis of greenery that is her office - Camley Street Natural Park.  Click on her picture to watch the film.

 

Archangels and bluebells

The early May bank holiday was the perfect opportunity to do some serious wildlife spotting! The weather was glorious and the wildflowers were dazzling in London’s woodland. One London Wildlife Trust member sent in these snaps of a towering yellow archangel and the bluebells that are currently blanketing Three Corner Grove. 

 

 

 

 

April sightings...

Bright white coot

London Wildlife Trust trustee Mathew Frith sent in this picture of a white female coot he spotted nesting on the River Wandle. Mathew says that he’s never seen a coot with an almost completely white plumage before, and at first thought it might be a gull. However he explains that this is in fact a leucistic form, where normal pigmentation is very weak (not albinism, which is a complete lack of melanin and results in a red eye).

Mathew watched the white coot sit on her nest, found on the river just west of Hackbridge, for about ten minutes as the male regularly brought her nesting material in the shape of twigs and leaves from the other side of the bank.

Beautiful butterflies

London Wildlife Trust's Anna Guzzo spotted some beautiful butterflies at our Camley Street reserve this month. She took these stunning snaps of a peacock butterfly and a holly blue, on a day when conservationists from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme warned that butterflies need a warm summer in order to help numbers recover after last year's damaging washout.

Find out how you can make your green space, be it a backyard, balcony or window box, attractive to butterflies with our mini guide to gardening for butterflies.

 

 

 

 

Stag beetle

www.wildlondon.org.uk user John Castle found this impressive stag beetle in his Surrey garden this week.

John told us "we watch out for the beetles every May so this one was a surprise. He's a big one too. Some years we have had outpourings from old oak stump and gatepost only to be picked off by birds. Subsequently we built a chicken wire tunnel down the drive which gave them a fighting chance. We always save ones we find and let them go at night.

"Another source for stag beetles in our garden are old laurel stumps quite deep in the ground. When digging our potato patch, sometimes we dig up a stag larva which we promptly put back! One year we were totally absorbed watching by torchlight and saw two large males fighting it out on a fallen poplar tree in our garden.

The female was there too and appeared indifferent to these strivings, as she just walked off. The males do literally pick each other bodily up, and in this case tried to throw each other over the edge of the fallen trunk.”

Concerned about the beetle emerging when we are still getting frosts, John asked our conservation team whether it was alright to release it. Emily Brennan, London Wildlife Trust's director of biodiversity conservation, advised “I would recommend letting the beetle go in the early evening - before it gets too frosty - near thick undergrowth, piles of leaves or a compost heap. The beetle should then be able to find suitable shelter from the cold weather."

Wood anemone

Local group member Ian Elliott sent in this picture of a wood anemone he spotted while walking in Gutteridge Wood this week. Ian reports that the bluebells are just starting to show their heads, and in a week or so the wood floor will be a carpet of dazzling blue.

 

 

 

Earlier this year...

Otter prints

London Wildlife Trust has found evidence that otters are using the River Wraysbury near Heathrow Airport. Our water vole team spotted an otter footprint in January in the clay bed of a mink raft in Harmondsworth Moor.

In February a second otter print was found in Denham Lock Woods, showing that otters are also using the River Colne.

GIGL (Greenspace Information for Greater London) records show only two other recent otter sightings in London: one at Redbridge in August 2002 and otter droppings in Enfield in July 2003. The footprint is GIGL’s first firm record of an otter in west London.

Otter populations began to decline in the 1950s, mainly because of pesticide use. The first national distribution survey in 1977 found no otters in London. In the last national distribution survey, carried out by the Environment Agency in 2000-2002, there were five positive records of otters in London but they were all in the far north of the capital.

Rye brome and fluellen

Our survey team is used to assessing all kinds of habitats, but it isn’t often that they have the opportunity to explore large tracts of farmland.  Recently, however, the Trust carried out the Open Space and Habitat Survey of Enfield for the GLA.

The north west of the borough, bounded by the M25, has one of London’s largest agricultural areas, criss-crossed by hedgerows, streams and footpaths. It is surprisingly varied, supporting cereal and livestock farming, stud farms and riding schools, and farm shops.

Many wild plants, historically associated with cereal crops, have declined with modern agricultural practices. Our surveyors were pleased to find examples, such as rye brome (Bromus secalinus), a scarce and striking grass. Another was sharp-leaved fluellen (Kickxia elatine), a small creeping plant that grows in cereal stubble and has tiny flowers on long stalks.

We’re not sure where the name fluellen comes from. Could it be connected to Fluellen, the scene-stealing Welshman who appears in Shakespeare’s Henry V?

What’s in my backyard?

GiGL’s website has a tool that helps you discover what species are living in your area. Visit their WIMBY pages to find out what’s in your backyard!