Waterbirds and other wildlife in the Spirit Quay section of the Wapping Canal received a big boost in February with the installation of new floating wetlands, thanks to a grant from the Mayor of London’s Rewild London Fund and match funding from the Tower Hill Trust. Tower Hamlets Council, in partnership with Biomatrix Water and E1 Waterbird Welfare, installed 11 floating islands planted with a wide variety of native wetland plants. Local volunteers from the Wapping Wildlife WhatsApp group assisted with the assembly and planting of the islands. They were joined on one day by staff from the Council’s Sustainable…
Author: John Archer
Big Garden Birdwatch is fun, free and for everyone. And you don’t need a garden to take part! Counting birds from your balcony, or your local park will play a vital role in helping us understand how UK birds are doing. Sign up for your free guide and let’s look out for birds together on 26-28 January. The largest wildlife survey in the world, the Big Garden Birdwatch has been running for 45 years. Last year, over half a million people took part and over 9 million birds were counted. Despite its much-publicised decline in numbers, the House Sparrow was…
Council leaders presented prizes and certificates at the Tower Hamlets in Bloom Awards 2023, which took place on Wednesday 13 December 2023 at the Art Pavilion in Mile End Park. The annual competition, which is part of the national In Bloom scheme, encourages people to become more interested in horticulture and to develop a greater appreciation and respect for the natural environment. Stepney City Farm, Canary Wharf and Michael Howard received special recognition awards. Judges described Stepney City Farm as a shining example of what can be achieved when visitors are encouraged to appreciate nature, animals, and the environment that…
Ken Greenway of the Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park writes: The Viper’s Bugloss Mason Bee (Hoplitis adunca) was found in the Cemetery Park by local bee expert Mark Patterson on 17 June. Excitingly, this is only the fourth known record for this species in the whole UK, all of them in London. The first UK record was in Greenwich Ecology Park in 2016, and it is now well established on that site. Its common name of Viper’s Bugloss Mason Bee comes from the fact that its preferred flower is Viper’s Bugloss (Echium vulgare), which can be found in abundance…
Ken Greenway of the Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park writes: On 28 May we discovered we had Green Hairstreak butterflies (Callophrys rubi) at the Cemetery Park, in Scrapyard Meadow. Having been alerted by a possible sighting on 24 May, we found and photographed two different female butterflies, one on Sanfoin (pictured above), the other on Lucerne. The Green Hairstreak forms definite colonies. The nearest we’re aware of is at Wanstead Flats, over 5 kilometres to the north-east. Our colony must have been present at least since last spring. The butterfly is scarce, but spreading, in the London area. The…
Hetty Fruer-Denham of Trees for Cities writes: Trees for Cities worked in partnership with Tower Hamlets Council to plant 58 new young trees in Bethnal Green Gardens and Weavers Fields. Across two weeks of events and workshops in February and March, we hosted over 240 local residents, nursery and school children, university students, and greening groups, to plant a beautiful range of trees in the two parks. The trees planted included three black poplars in Weavers Fields. This is Britain’s rarest native timber tree, and has a long association with Tower Hamlets, giving Poplar district its name. We also planted…
Sam Facey of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) writes: Please help us find sources of pollution in the lower Lea by joining an Outfall Safari. Pollution can find its way into urban rivers via surface water outfalls (drains) as a result of misconnected plumbing. ZSL, in partnership with Thames Water, runs Outfall Safaris across London to assess the scale and extent of pollution entering the rivers from misconnected surface water outfalls. These consist of bankside surveys conducted by trained volunteers to walk sections of rivers (in their own time) to record any signs of pollution. This year we are…
Big Garden Birdwatch is fun, free and for everyone. And you don’t need a garden to take part! Counting birds from your balcony, or your local park will play a vital role in helping us understand how UK birds are doing. Sign up for your free guide and let’s look out for birds together on 27-29 January. The largest wildlife survey in the world, the Big Garden Birdwatch has been running for over 30 years. Last year, nearly 700,000 people took part and over 11 million birds were counted. Despite its much-publicised decline in numbers, the House Sparrow was the…
Dave Bedford of the Lower Regents Coalition writes: Another year is ending so I wanted to thank all of you who joined in and helped during 2022. There were 780 volunteer engagements, totalling 3000 hours. We collected 980 bags of rubbish that will be recycled and won’t end up in the rivers or oceans, well done, fantastic work by all our volunteers! With the help of our volunteers we were awarded another Green Flag for our stretch of canal, installed another Biomatrix floating ecosystem (photo left), and helped prepare the ground for another 250 square metres of wildflower meadows. These…
Local entomologist Gino Brignoli of Ecology Field Notes writes: Back in May this year I found a Phoenix Fly (Dorycera graminum) at Weavers Fields. One of the picture-winged flies, this species favours rough grassland with lots of Cow Parsley and other umbellifers, but not much is known about its biology. I found it in amongst the longer grasses that had been left around one of the clumps of birch trees at the northern end of the park. This is a widespread but generally scarce species which is graded as Near Threatened, is listed as a Priority Species for conservation in…