From diving beetles to jumping spiders, James Heal from the Wren Wildlife Group reports on the highlights of this year’s Wanstead Wildlife Weekend, which revealed the diversity of life thriving on our doorstep
We have been organising the Wanstead Wildlife Weekend or something like it for almost a decade now. The original intention was as a slightly more formalised bioblitz where we counted every species – a mass citizen science natural history survey of sorts. The purpose has since morphed into more of an opportunity to showcase the amazing biodiversity we have locally through family-friendly activities. And there were some great highlights from this year’s event at the end of June.
Almost 50 people came out on the Friday evening and were rewarded with some very active bats, mainly Pipistrelles. Tim, who led the bat walk, was also back in Wanstead Park a few hours later for the annual moth trap reveal near the Temple. This is always one of my favourite activities, and lots of moths gently emerged from the egg boxes in the light trap, including crowd pleasers such as Buff-tip (Phalera bucephala), which looks exactly like a hewn-off section of Birch twig or small branch.
Bob led a walk along the transect (technical term for specific surveyed area) which a small team has been regularly surveying for butterflies. Some of the regular summer species were on show, including Essex Skipper, Small Copper, Meadow Brown, three of our ‘White’ species and a bonus from a well-showing Purple Hairstreak. This latter butterfly is often hard to spot as it is small, quite nondescript on the oft-seen underside of the wings, and likes spending time in the canopy, but one or two came down to ground level.
Another highlight was the rather overwhelmingly well-attended pond dipping at Shoulder of Mutton on the Sunday, where Louis and Gosia shared their knowledge and infectious enthusiasm, with young people wading out and finding Great Diving Beetles, water snails and dragonfly nymphs.
Despite the numbers at the pond dipping, there were still plenty of people who joined local bee and wasp expert Tony Madgwick, who helped an engaged crowd observe the drama of life and death unfold around nest holes of both bees and wasps on the dry and dusty pathways near Heronry Pond.
Amongst other activities – those which looked very closely at some wildlife many might miss – were the spider walk on Wanstead Flats and the lichen walk in Wanstead Park. Species highlights included a minuscule jumping spider found on tree trunks that looks like our common Zebra Jumping Spider (Salticus scenicus), but is much smaller and scarcer (S. zebraneus), and a Cladonia type of lichen (lichens are not a single species!) found not on bark or stone, but on soil.
If you would like to take part in Wren activities or if you have enough knowledge to lead a future walk, please do get in touch.
For more information on the Wren Wildlife Group, visit wnstd.com/wren
