Sarah-Jayne Forster, Giving Nature a Home Glasgow Project Officer, fills us in on an exciting wildlife recording challenge you can be a part of 24-27 April.
Wildlife recording from home: get involved it City Nature Challenge 2020
What is City Nature Challenge?
City Nature Challenge is an international project to highlight nature in cities and encourage people to get involved in recording wildlife over a four-day period. Glasgow is one of over 200 cities worldwide, including nine other UK cities that take part annually. Our Giving Nature a Home Glasgow Project got involved last year to lead the city’s involvement – we’ve been organising a bioblitz in the city for while and thought it would be great to incorporate into this. We usually have a big all weekend event at Kelvingrove and have hundreds of people taking part. Of course, this year things are very different with such events not possible and so the challenge organisers have made some changes for 2020.
Credit: Ben Hall (rspb-images.com)
This year the challenge takes place on 24 – 27 April and now anyone anywhere can take part! While there will still be the Glasgow challenge, the challenge is no longer a competition. There is going to be a more collaborative approach across the UK meaning those outwith Greater Glasgow can also take part in a UK wide project. There won’t be any events taking place – instead it’s all done online from where you live. We want you to get involved recording wildlife at your home – either in your garden, on your balcony, looking at your flower boxes or out your window. This can be any wild creature or plant, so not a dog or cat or garden plants, but wild birds, insects, mammals and wildflowers.
Like many I have noticed as we spend more time at home with the current restrictions that nature is becoming increasingly important to people. Our friends and family are spending more time in gardens or noticing birds out the window they may have never seen before. The excitement of this has given many people comfort and distracted them, even for a moment, from the current situation. There is a lot of power in being connected to nature and it is proven to be beneficial for your health and wellbeing which is important now more than ever. We would love you to get involved in this event even if you have never been involved with surveying wildlife before.
Why is City Nature Challenge important?
It is so important to understand the environment around us, so we know how species and habitats are responding and how to help them. As the State of Nature report shows, over 40% of our native species have decreased in population since 1970. Garden birds such as house sparrows and starlings that were once common have declined, as have other wildlife such as bumblebees.
Log piles are a great place for nature
Cities are not owned by one person. They are a patchwork of tiny fragmented habitats that are all individually owned. It is therefore impossible to understand what’s going on in cities without the help of the people who live work and play there, that’s why we need your help!
To wildlife, however, they are one big habitat where they can go from park to garden to get what they need to survive. We need to ensure that we know what exists now in the city especially brownfield sites and also round the edges of the city in the suburbs and the surrounding countryside as these are some of the areas more vulnerable to development. If we know what is there, then it’s more likely to be protected. If we are able to gather information from cities across the world, we can get a better picture of urban wildlife, and see how different species are adapting and how urban design and planning has an effect on this.
How do you get involved?
Like all the other cities involved in the project in the UK and internationally, we are using the platform iNaturalist to record wildlife. iNaturalist is a handy app for your phone and a website that is used to gather ‘observations’ of wildlife; it asks you to upload a photograph, record what you saw, when you saw it and where you saw it. This information is then collated and stored centrally to give us a better idea of what wildlife is found in an area. It is really user-friendly especially if you are new to biological recording, however there are some handy hints for using it here.
The app will help you identify what you have seen, which is great if you don’t feel confident identifying animals and plants. If you have any wildlife books at home, you can use these to help you too. You might learn more about the animals and get ideas of how to make your garden, balcony or window boxes better suited to them. Also, remember to use the map feature to check if it’s a species we get in the UK.
Ways to involve children
Make a nature graph!
Children are fantastic at finding wildlife and it is great way to encourage learning in the home environment across the curriculum. Below are a few ideas but there are lots more as part of the RSPB Wild Challenge Awards.
Let us know what you find on RSPB Scotland Facebook and Twitter – happy recording!
Follow our partners: Glasgow City Council, Glasgow Natural History Society, Glasgow Museums, Scottish Natural Heritage, Seven Lochs Project and City Nature Challenge.