The kingfisher nesting bank beside the Regent’s Canal at Brunton Wharf has received an artistic makeover. The bank was built in February 2016 to encourage Kingfishers that overwinter in the Borough to stay on through the spring and summer to nest and raise their young. Though kingfishers would not be put off by the rather stark, plain concrete appearance of the bank, it was not exactly a thing of beauty, so a decision was made to brighten it up. It was painted in April 2018 by local artist Curtis Hylton, with support from Trapped in Zone One and the Lower…
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Three Avocets spent a few days at East India Dock Basin in March 2018, the first site record of this elegant wader. Found roosting on the island by Biodiversity Officer John Archer on a regular lunchtime visit on Monday 19th, the Avocets attracted a steady trickle of birdwatchers from around London over the next four days, being last seen in the evening of Thursday 22nd. The Avocet was extinct as a breeding bird in Briatin at the beginning of the 20th century, until a few pairs started breeding on the Suffolk coast in the 1940s. There has been a gradual…
The Council has planted an orchard of 20 fruit trees at the southern end of Millwall Park. Situated just east of the sculpture, at the end of the wooded strip, the orchard includes apple and plum trees. There are five each of two traditional English varieties – the Victoria plum and Cox’s Orange Pippin apple, both great favourites for their excellent flavour. The other ten trees are a less well-known apple, Jonagold, another excellent eating apple. Jonagold is an American cultivar of apple, developed in 1953 at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. It is a cross between…
The lists of spiders and beetles recorded in Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park have both passed significant milestones in the last couple of years, with the 150th spider and 400th beetle. These impressive totals are the result of years of regular surveys by local spider expert Edward Milner. Edward uses a variety of methods to capture spiders and beetles, including pitfall traps, sweep netting and visual searches. He has been conducting surveys regularly for the Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park since 2007, though some of his spider records pre-date this. The beetles are sent to beetle expert Norman Heal for identification.…
Paul Wilson, Community Engagement Manager for EastendHomes, writes: Snowdrops are in full flower along Cable Street, on the St George’s Estate. Planted last autumn by EastendHomes and corporate volunteers, the snowdrops have added to recent greening projects, including the planting of a hazel copse. The hazel catkins (photo below) are also looking lovely this year. There’s cherry blossom out too, on our estates on the Isle of Dogs (photo left). In addition to looking attractive and providing an early nectar source for bees, the snowdrops are also a nod towards local history. The snowdrop genus was formally named Galanthus by…
A Speckled Wood butterfly seen fluttering across Bow Creek on 25 January by Biodiversity Officer John Archer seems to be the first sighting in the United Kingdom this year. The Speckled Wood is common in Tower Hamlets in open spaces with plenty of trees, but is usually on the wing between April and October. Butterflies are often seen on mild, sunny days during the winter, but these are usually species which hibernate as adults, such as Peacock, Small Tortoiseshell, Comma, Red Admiral and Brimstone. The Speckled Wood usually overwinters as a caterpillar or chrysalis. The individual seen by John looked…
Another fantastic year of work for wildlife in Tower Hamlets! The Council and Tower Habitats, the Tower Hamlets biodiversity partnership, have published the third annual progress report on the Local Biodiversity Action Plan (LBAP). The report covers the year from October 2016 to September 2017 and can be downloaded here. The report illustrates the great work to enhance wildlife habitats that has been done in our parks, gardens, water spaces and the built environment. Our numerous partner organisations, including housing associations, charities, community groups and the Council, have completed loads of great projects to create and enhance priority habitats, and…
Dave Bedford and Molly Gadenz of the Lower Regents Coalition write: So another year draws to a close for the Lower Regents Coalition. At times we wondered how much we were getting done but looking back on our record, it shows we actually achieved a lot! With help from all our volunteers we: Ran 24 events, where you contributed roughly 1500 hours; Collected over 400 bags of general rubbish from in and around the canal; Planted 12 metres of reedbeds; Weeded and maintained our floating planters and coir rolls in the canal; Dug out and prepared two 150m2 wildflower meadows;…
Around half a million people from across the UK are set to take part in the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch by counting the birds in their gardens over the weekend of 27-29 January 2018. They’ll also make a record of the other wildlife they see throughout the year, providing a vital snapshot of UK nature. The largest wildlife survey in the world, the Big Garden Birdwatch has been running for over 30 years, and last year about 500,000 people took part and over 8 million birds were counted. The House Sparrow was the commonest bird in last year’s count for…
Rory Harding of Trees for Cities writes: Telecommunications company New World Payphones is working with charity Trees for Cities to plant a tree on or beside a local street for every new phone box they install. With 20 phones installed in Tower Hamlets during the year, Trees for Cities organised two planting days in October to plant 20 trees. The first event was at EastendHomes’ Glamis Estate, where staff from New World Payphones joined Trees for Cities staff to plant seven trees along the edge of the estate below Gordon House (see photos above and left). The second event, in…