Nature notes: Street Trees! Sparrow Hawk on the Ladder! And ANOTHER HUGE Thank You to Haringey's Volunteer Litter Pickers!

I'm melting in this heat and the promised rain never arrived nevertheless, thanks to a borrowed doggie this week, I got up and out before the heat and visited parks and blue spaces. This time of year, the flowers are looking wonderful and there's plenty of insects especially dragon flies. Find out whither I wandered and what amazing visitor graced the Ladder with its presence this week...

Local Nature News

Paths at Lordship Wood

Big thanks this week to Friends of Lordship Rec volunteers for putting new wood chippings on the path through the beautiful woodland area. 

This was one of the Friend's earliest and most successful projects transforming an area, used previously mostly for anti social activities, into a beloved and enjoyable experience of nature. 

You can volunteer too to keep this area clean and safe by emailing: 47moonraker@gmail.com

Record the Signs of Changing Seasons 

The Woodland Trust’s Nature Calendar is a citizen science project that seeks to track specific species with the aim of understanding how weather and climate change affect wildlife

You only record events that occur in specific species and the list of species was selected using these criteria:

• Recorded extensively in the past
• Responds strongly to changes in seasonal temperatures
• Common across the UK
• Widely-recognised and well-loved
• Found in both rural and urban situations

Most early phenologists tended to focus on spring events, so recording autumn events is an area where future data collection will be especially important.

Why not record the first ripe berries and other autumn events in our neighbourhood? 

You can get involved here

Grass Fires

A quick glance at the incidents page at London Fire reveal that the prolonged heat and lack of rain is leading to ideal conditions for grass fires. At Wanstead, scene of terrible fires in the past a grass fire required four fire engines and around 25 firefighters to tackle grass alight and around one hectare of grass and shrub land was damaged by fire. 

A couple of years back in 2018, there was a small grass fire in Railway Fields, probably started by a smoker, and it spread incredibly quickly in the very dry conditions. 

If you see a grass fire don't attempt to put it out yourself as grass fires can travel very quickly and change direction without warning. Call 999 and let the Fire Brigade know where the fire is and please be careful when  you are out and about.

Grass fires can be started by glass magnifying the sun, so please clear your litter away safely.

Put the Sound of our Local Woodlands on the Map

An interesting project from Timber, the International Tree Festival to create a sound map of the forests of the world. Looking at the map, I noticed there are no recordings from this neck of woods so if you’re out and about in one of our local woods or green spaces and you fancy putting us on the map, click here

Weekly Rubbish Rant

I really wish I didn’t have to keep writing about this but seriously what has got into people?

Big love for the volunteers who cleaned up after the illegal parties going on in Finsbury Park on Saturday night who left the place looking heartbreakingly awful.  From reports by local residents, this is groups of people in their late twenties/ early thirties illegally gathering, driving to the park with boots full of booze, trashing the place and leaving it for others to clear up.

One picture I saw showed bottles of Moet on the grass so we’re talking money and the sort of privilege that sees them left to ruin the park without any sort of enforcement from police or council.

I’m 100 per cent behind the councils Bin It campaign but they’ve got to tackle the root causes and a few posters around the place simply aren’t getting the message across.

Chestnuts Park Wildflower Area

On a happier note, the wildflower area is buzzing right now. Wonderful work by the Friends of Chestnuts Park who are hoping to hold a September event to celebrate the meadow strips. In the meantime, go have a stroll and admire the diverse plants that they’ve encouraged into the park.

Nature Notes

What is Plant Blindness?

When you’re walking through a park or woodland chances are your eyes are drawn towards the squirrels, the birds maybe the bees or hover flies but do you tend to let the greenery wash over you?

If yes, you may be suffering along with most humans from plant blindness. The good news is that there’s a cure!

Does it matter? Well yes, probably. From conservation to research to important scientific breakthroughs our inability to see plants affects our attitudes to them and their disappearance. 

Find out more about why plant blindness matters and how to recover here

Water your street trees

Michael mentioned this on last week’s Nature Notes and I thought I’d follow up with a link to a guide on when and how to do it from Trees For Cities.

Why do young trees need water? Primarily it’s because they often have root balls that are tightly packed - these help them to fit into small bags for easy handling and transportation. We then take these baby trees and put them into rather challenging urban environments - trees didn’t evolve to live in cities, and so it takes young trees a while to adjust to the habitat. It takes roughly two years for their roots to grow deep enough for the trees to be able to sustain themselves and the more water they have in this period the better.

So, if you have a young tree outside your house, please show it some love

Government overhaul to planning rules are a threat to nature

The radical changes to planning rules in England proposed by the government will damage nature, increase air pollution and leave local people with no say on protecting urban wildlife corridors, according to environmental charities.

As the battle to save England’s devastating wildlife losses, including beloved creatures like the hedgehog which was recently classified as vulnerable to extinction, these changes will do nothing but make it even harder to arrest the decline.

Read more here

Finally 

A friend has sent me this picture of a sparrow hawk that landed in her Ladder Garden this morning. What a sight!

Photo copyright Cassandra Li, reproduced with permission

Have a good week and don’t forget to watch for storms