Susanna’s Wildlife Watch September

Firstly, St John's Garden Autumn bioblitz is going to be on Friday 25th Sept, 4pm to 5:15pm. Come and join in! We plan to spot birds, hunt for wild plants, fungus, mosses & lichens; dip the pond for insect larvae and other pond creatures; turn over logs and sift the ground for spiders, woodlice, snails, slugs, worms and centipedes, and of course watch for bees, moths, hoverflies, beetles and butterflies... In the Spring bioblitz we got a brilliant 20 observations, 17 species. We are trying to do bioblitzes seasonally, helping us understand biodiversity in our little park, and build a community of us who observe and record wildlife as part of caring for our neighbourhood. 

Breeding season is coming to an end for the birds. This year, we recorded three species that successfully bred in the park - Great Tits, Blackbirds and Blue Tits - and pairs of four other species were seen - Dunnock (very exciting!), Magpie, Robin and Crow - but we didn't get any evidence of them actually having families, eg feeding young.  Over the last three years, the breeding bird situation in St John's Garden seems more or less stable. In 2024, three species bred successfully (Robins, Great Tits and Blackbirds), with the Robins raising two or possibly three broods. Apart from that, Blue Tits made a nest but we never saw any young, and a male Wren built a nest, but sadly no female Wren came to join him. Last year we had four species nesting (Great Tit, Wren, Magpie, Blue Tit). The Great Tits raised two broods, the Wrens had a big noisy family, hurrah! And a Blue Tit pair bred in the box on the terrace at Bench, and one Magpie teenager hung around a long time nagging his parents for food. 

Dunnock hanging out on the stone wall

We keep a community diary of bird sightings on eBird here, noting what the birds are doing and trying to work out what is going on! When you spot a bird, record it on eBird! It takes a couple of minutes to create an eBird account. eBird is the sister app to Merlin, the fantastic bird ID app. Here are excerpts from our eBird breeding diary this year. It is a delight to watch what the birds are doing, working collectively to try and piece together the story of the wonderful wild things that live with us in our little corner of London.  

Blackbird foraging in the garden - Photo by Hilary Barton