For the second winter in the last three, unusually high numbers of Waxwings are being seen in Britain. These spectacular pink starling-sized birds with a wacky crest arrived in their thousands from Scandinavia in the late autumn to escape a failure of the berry crop there. The first arrivals were mostly in the north of the country, but they rapidly spread south, and flocks of up to 1000 birds have been seen from Kent to Shetland. However, the berry crop here hasn’t been very good either, so the large flocks have now mostly split up, and groups of up to…
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The monthly Bird Barmy Army walk in Victoria Park on 5 January turned up a big surprise in the shape of a Tawny Owl. The owl was sitting at the entrance to a hole in a large tree on the island in East Lake (see the photo above by David Darrell-Lambert), and showed very well to walk leader David Darrell-Lambert of Bird Brain UK and the 23 participants. It is the first Tawny Owl reported from Victoria Park, or anywhere else in Tower Hamlets, for many years. If, as is hoped, it turns out to be one of a pair,…
The RSPB’s annual Big Garden Birdwatch is back on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 January 2013, giving people across the UK the chance to be part of the World’s biggest wildlife survey. Almost 600,000 people across the UK took part in Big Garden Birdwatch in 2012 and between them counted more than 9 million birds. To take part, people are asked to spend just one hour at any time over Big Garden Birdwatch weekend noting the highest number of each bird species seen in their gardens or local park at any one time. They then have three weeks to submit…
On Thursday 29 November, Kenneth Greenway of the Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park was invited to attend an award ceremony at Victoria Park, when Vicky Park was awarded the ‘The nation’s favourite park’ award, from the Green Flag Awards, which is a national bench mark for park quality. In this ceremony the Friends were also recognised and awarded an accolade. They were the winner of a Special Innovation Award in the category of Community Involvement. This was to recognise the hard work that the Friends have invested in developing their wild food walks. The project began as an experimental…
Thames21 is offering free training to volunteers who want to do more to look after their local waterway. Experience has shown that a large number of otherwise willing volunteers are put off from organising waterway activities like clean-ups due to the perceived level of difficulty and extra health and safety considerations that may be involved. This essential two-day course gives volunteers the tools and confidence they need to plan and lead safe, effective and enjoyable waterway enhancement activity. Sessions run every month, on weekdays and weekends, to give individuals the most opportunities to attend and the course involves classroom and…
On Sunday 18 November, about 40 people joined local expert Keir Mottram for a Fungus Foray in Victoria Park. A fine sunny morning added to the enjoyment, as Keir was able to show people a good range of colourful and weird-looking mushrooms, brackets and earth balls. These included fine displays of the Shaggy Scalycap (above) and Clouded Funnel (left), and colourful species such as the Redlead Roundhead and the beautiful purple Wood Blewitt (below). The latter is good to eat, but never eat any mushrooms you find growing wild unless you are absolutely certain of the identity of the mushroom,…
Local fungus expert Keir Mottram writes: Earthstars are an enigmatic, strangely-shaped group of fungi. None of them are very common in Britain and the most frequently seen one, Collared Earthstar (Geastrum triplex), is a regular star of the show at the annual fungus foray in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park. A group of them can look like an invasion of miniature alien spaceships (see this photo on Wikipaedia). Our borough is also host to a smaller, cuter cousin called Daisy Earthstar (G. floriforme) which looks just like a daisy with its round spore sac in the middle of 6-10 spreading rays…
Ash Dieback, a disease of Ash trees caused by the fungus Chalara fraxinea, was first discovered in Britain in 2012, and probably originated from infected plant material imported from the Netherlands. It has since been found in wild Ash trees in Suffolk, Kent and Essex. Symptoms include blackened leaves and brown lesions on Ash stems and branches (but don’t forget that Ash trees will be naturally losing their leaves at this time of year). At present the main area of the outbreak appears to be confined to East Anglia, but further spread seems inevitable. The disease is mainly spread by…
Unusually high numbers of Britain’s smallest bird, the Goldcrest, have been seen in Tower Hamlets this autumn. Goldcrests breed commonly in Britain, but numbers of resident birds are swelled every autumn by migrants escaping the cold winters in Scandinavia. These arrive, often in huge numbers, on the east coast, then disperse across the country. Some spend the winter in the UK, while others continue south to winter around the Mediterranean. In the breeding season, Goldcrests are found almost exclusively in conifers, but in autumn and winter they will happily feed in a wide range of habitats, gleaning insects from trees…
Tree planting charity, Trees for Cities, has received funding from the Tesco Charity Trust Community Award towards creating an exciting woodland playscape for the children of Lansbury Lawrence Primary school. The carefully designed scheme features both dead wood and living trees to encourage healthy eating, creative play and outdoor learning. Fruiting species such as apple, plums, mulberry and red currants (see photo left) will provide homegrown healthy snacks. Other berry-bearing trees and shrubs such as hawthorn, cherry plum and juneberry will provide excellent forage for local wildlife. Recycled logs and timber will be put to huge variety of uses such…