What you’ve all been waiting for – the Results of the global Wildlife recording Competition that took place on the last weekend of April….
Manchester entered for the first time this year and managed to register over 5,000 records (observations) across the region, covering 800+ species!
Manchester came 6th in Europe and were respectably mid-table globally. We almost matched London (in their 2nd year) and beat Leicester & North-east England amongst many others. However Merseyside beat us on the key metrics, with 12,000 observations and 1,000+ species (we did manage more ‘observers’ though), while top European entry Bristol/Bath (also in their 2nd year) submitted over 15,000 observations.
Stuart Fraser, the Environmental Records Officer at Greater Manchester Local Records Centre (GMLRC), who coordinated Manchester’s entries, is very grateful to all of you who contributed and he paid tribute to RFNS amongst others on the facebook page:
“There were great contributions from many GMLRC recorders (c1000 records) and Rochdale Field Naturalists (c600)*, fun events arranged by Manchester Museum, Lancs Wildlife Trust, The RSPB, City of Trees, Woodland Trust, Manchester & Salford council and many Friends groups, and a herculean botanical effort by David & Joyce Earl (1,200 records to the west of Bolton)!”
For anyone interested in looking in more detail, here are links to the Manchester ‘Project’ (showing a breakdown of the recorders, species and a bit further down location of records on a map) and the overall global results:
www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2019-greater-manchester – GM
www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2019 – Global results
RFNS RECORDS: Although it was a poor weekend weather-wise and several of you were away that weekend RFNS members really pulled out the stops:
You contributed 884 records, 384 from Gardens. (*Unfortunately some of these records could not be uploaded to the competition as they missed the entry date)
24 members took part, including some who had not done any wildlife recording before.
21 gardens were surveyed and records also came in from your favourite patches, parks etc around the area e.g. Balderstone, Wardle, Watergrove, Hollingworth Lake & Clegg Hall, Hopton, Healey Dell, Piethorne, Mandale Park and the Roch Valley from Rochdale right down to the Bury border.
The most frequent records were of Birds (552) followed by Vascular Plants (207). The weather was too poor for Moth trapping but we still had several Butterflies and Moths recorded and one member managed to use her Bat Detector on the last evening of the weekend. The full list can be seen by clicking here.
FINAL City Nature Challenge 2019 all species recorded by RFNS (1)
So I hope you are looking forward to the return bout next year? I’ve asked Stuart to give us more notice of the date – and give us time to learn how to identify all the bees, slugs, flies, flowers which were too vague to be included this time!!
Thank you again from Karen, Pamela and Sheila