Susanna's Wildlife Watch - June
So it is June! Breeding season for the birds is in full swing. This year, so far, I think four species have nested in or around the park. Last year, three species bred successfully: Robins, Great Tits and Blackbirds, possibly Blue Tits, plus a male Wren was seen building a nest in the old nest box at the back of the restaurant bed last year, but sadly no female Wren came to join him.
Roses in full bloom
This year, in mid-May, a Wren was seen going into the old nest box on the bottom tree again, carrying food. This was promising!! Male Wrens take food to females sitting on eggs, so it looked like the male Wren had found a wife. And indeed, on 31 May, a whole family of Wrens appeared. They are noisy neighbours! I heard them before I saw them. At least two - possibly three - Wren babies were tucked into the ivy on the wall above the green door by the top flower beds, nicely hidden (but giving themselves away by all the noise), and the little Wren parents were racing around, foraging for insects to feed to their little family, hunting under the leaves of the big wild cherry tree, and even zipping up and down the gorgeous new foxgloves, peeking into the flowers for insects. There is no cat around there at the moment, which is good for the Wrens, but the Wren parents had predators of other sorts to deal with - each time a Magpie came close, they mounted a massive attack to drive it away, the tiny birds blasting the huge Magpie with a stream of alarm calls.
A pair of Great Tits nested in the middle nest box in the restaurant bed, again. The chicks hatched in the box early May, and the parents flew backwards and forwards with food, greeted by wild cheeping from the chicks, which you could easily hear if you stood near the tree and listened. But then the adults disappeared, and the box went quiet. Last year, after the chicks fledged, we saw them being fed by their parents for a couple of weeks. It was lovely to watch the fluffy babies sitting on tree twigs or on dead hedges, cheeping away, waiting for the parents to stuff insects in their beaks. This year, I saw none of that activity. I wondered what might have happened, and googled a bit, and learned that when there is a cat around, fledglings move very fast to safer spaces. So maybe because of Violet and other cats in the park this year, the Great Tit family left St John’s Garden as soon as the youngsters could fly.
The Magpies also bred successfully, raising just one chick, I think. A pair of Magpies is often in the park, an adult and a youngster. The young Magpie, although big now and independent, still begs occasionally for food from the parent. They are frequently seen foraging along the roof gardens and balconies along Britton Street.
Last year, the Robins raised at least two, possibly three broods, in St John's Garden, using a nest box on a terrace of the flats on Benjamin Street. The fledgling Robins were frequently seen in the park on the ground begging for food. This year, I don’t think anyone has seen Robin babies in the park. It seems that the Robins nested on top of Sarah’s house instead, further up Britton Street! And no Blue Tits nested in the park this year, but a pair moved into the box at Bench, just opposite the park. I heard a mass of cheeping from the nest box on Bench terrace one evening at the end of May, and only had to wait half a minute before a Blue Tit parent shot across the road and into the box. Both parents were zooming backwards and forwards, fetching insects for their young from the sycamore tree at St John’s Garden gate.
Our super-rare Black Redstarts have been heard several times and seen on rooftops around Kurt Geiger and Turnmill Street. Black Redstarts are “red-listed species” of conservation concern, with only 100 pairs in the country. London is an important habitat for them - amazingly, the bomb-damaged buildings of post-war London mimicked the cliff environments in which Black Redstarts thrive. Around 10 pairs are in the City of London, and we think a pair perhaps nested somewhere in our neighbourhood.
We’re so grateful to people doing all different things to help the birds thrive in our little urban neighbourhood - keeping dogs on leads so that the birds have more time to forage in relative peace, providing suitable food such as fat balls and bird seed, and providing water.
An increasing number of people are watching birds now in and around the park, recording their sightings to help piece together what is happening on our little patch. A small city park like ours is actually a great place to start being interested in birds, because there are only a handful of possible bird species we see, really, so within a day or two, it’s easy to get to know them all. Download the Merlin app to become Dr Doolittle and learn bird language (well, not quite, but you find out what birds you’re hearing, with pictures too…) and use the eBird app to record and share what you identify. We have our own eBird Hotspot here, which collects all our sightings in one place. The data we collect flows into London’s database of wildlife information, GIGL, used by authorities for things like planning and decision-making.
Meanwhile, in the world of insects, the new and exciting Clerkenwell Pollinator Corridor project has kicked off, gathering scientific survey data about bees, wasps and hoverflies, etc from a dozen green spaces across our neighbourhood. In St John’s Garden, we are also doing “citizen science” recording of insect life again this year, carrying out “Flower Insect Timed Count” surveys for the national Pollinator Monitoring Scheme. To do a “FIT Count”, basically, you sit and watch a patch of flowers for 10 minutes, counting the number of insects that land on the flowers. Last year, we did 10 “FIT Counts”, and the average number of insects per count was 4.2. This year we had a rocketing start! with 8 insects on our first outing of the year. Now, after five counts, our average is 4.6 insects, slightly more than last year…. If you want to start counting yourself, head here to get started.
The pond coming to life!
And last but not least, the wildlife pond! The new pond is the most exciting new thing in the St John’s Garden - and we are learning how to care for it as we go along! We regularly monitor the health of the pond, using methodology developed by the Natural History Museum and Imperial University. We check the water clarity using an “opalometer” (basically a water bottle with a kind of dial), we test the pH level, and we dip the pond to see what different types of insects and other creatures we find. Our DoE volunteers have helped with this.
Up to now, water clarity is declining but still reasonable, and the acidity of the water is basically stable, which is good. Our first “pond dip” in November last year just yielded midge larvae, red wormy things wriggling away in the muddy debris at the bottom. In early May, our DoE volunteers picked up a new creature, mosquito larvae. These two types of larvae are at the bottom of the food chain. They feed on detritus and algae, and are themselves food for dragonfly larvae, water beetles, and other predators, as well as becoming insects that are then food for birds and other creatures. In late May, when we again dipped the pond, we also found drone fly larvae. Drone flies are a type of hoverfly, ie a pollinator, so this is great. We also found quite a few tiny, fast-swimming beetle creatures with little horns, which I couldn't identify. I uploaded images of these to iNaturalist, and a beetle expert from North Wales got in touch to say that they are mosquito pupae. This was a bit disappointing! I was hoping for some kind of beetle, because beetles would score us "pond health" points... So far, the creatures we have found can survive in any type of pond and in polluted water, etc, and score just “1” on the pond health scale, which means the pond “needs improvement”. To be counted “quite healthy”, a pond needs 6 points. Water boatmen and water beetles would each score 5. So we hope some of those might arrive and boost our score! If we find Dragonfly larvae or Damselfly larvae, those would each score us a whopping 10 points… A “very healthy” pond would total over 30 points. It is a sort of Monopoly game. It is still early days. To provide more shade, shelter, and to improve the water quality, we planted two new plants in the pond in May, Water Hawthorn and Fringed Water Lily, one spring-flowering and one summer-flowering. Both are shade-loving, to suit our cool, tree-canopied, leafy, shady space. If this is your kind of thing, drop us a line at stjohnsgarden.ec1@gmail.com to be added to the Britton St Birds Whatsapp group
Susanna