Wildlife update

26 May Wildlife update

There are several wildlife/nature-related activities happening on the common which you may be interested in:

First, members of the London Amphibian & Reptile Group have carried out a survey of the Gladsmuir Pond and the woodland pond on Camlet Way.  They searched the main pond by torchlight last week and put a small number of box traps in both ponds, making sure not to cross contaminate invasive plant species between them.  They then returned early on the following morning to collect the traps.  We don’t have any results as yet, but will publish them when we do.  An ecological survey in 2020 identified that the larger pond was home to Great Crested Newts, however a survey carried out as part of the Affinity water works found no more recent evidence.  But who knows what there might be now …

In other news, we are about to start an Ecological survey of the wider Common, so again will bring you some results once we have them.  The results of the previous survey in 2020 can be found here.

And finally, you may or may not be aware of the non-profit website (and app) iNaturalist.org (A Community for Naturalists · iNaturalist), which is set up to allow members of the public and both amateur and professional naturalists to record and share their observations.  Local contact Paul Doyle has provided us with valuable links to the information gathered in relation to Monken Hadley Common.  These shows a lot of detail of the flora and fauna discovered on the Common.  Happy spotting!

Things spotted on Monken Hadley Common:

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=51.66396011078412&nelng=-0.1757336893154693&subview=map&swlat=51.65801032678193&swlng=-0.19328606510892632

and a spotters list

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?nelat=51.66396011078412&nelng=-0.1757336893154693&subview=map&swlat=51.65801032678193&swlng=-0.19328606510892632&view=species