Autumn Approaches

Hello everyone,
Sorry for the delay in updating everyone but I have been away on holiday in beautiful Scotland. Of course, we have our fair share of species here on Owlthorpe Fields as well, and we have now identified 465 species. I have downloaded all the reported sightings for August and myself and Phil are in the process of uploading them on to the Nature Counts (Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust) database for uploading to the National Biodiversity Network’s database, the NBN Atlas.

We are now well in to September and in the coming months and weeks the weather is going to become less inviting for going out there and observing species but there will be nice days amongst the grey damp autumnal ones. Use these nice days to blow the cobwebs out of your hair ("if only I had some" I hear my other half shout). Autumn may bring the opportunity to see different species, winter visiting birds, autumn moths or maybe plants/insects that you cannot see when the grass is so tall in the fields. Make the most of the pleasant autumn days!

Very soon we will be receiving professional guidance from Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust (SRWT) on what and how we should be monitoring species on and around the Fields. This is part of their Data for Nature project and helps both ourselves and SRWT to better understand the biodiversity changes over a longer timeframe in Owlthorpe and wider Sheffield. We will be receiving training to guide us in how to do this. However, given the Covid-19 situation this is likely to be online over the winter, at least for the time being.

Please carry on submitting your observations. It doesn't matter if they have been recorded before as nature doesn't stand still and we need to record species population changes as well as just what is there.

Posted on September 13, 2020 10:09 AM by vetch10