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We finished our final fieldwork season in September this year and despite the cold spring it was a successful season. In April we started to re-sample the urban habitats we sampled throughout 2012 and re-visited allotments, gardens, cemeteries, parks, road verges, local nature reserves, school playing fields and car parks in Bristol, Reading, Leeds and Edinburgh to look for pollinators visiting flowers.
Many pollinators, especially bumblebees, seemed to have been delayed by the cold spring weather and came out later than usual. The near-absence of worker bumblebees in May and early June was especially worrying. Solitary bees seemed to cope better with the unfavourable weather. In Reading we saw more solitary bees this spring than in the first two field seasons in 2011 and 2012. The hot and dry July and less hot but still quite dry August and September provided ideal conditions for butterflies and many other pollinators. Numbers of bumblebees quickly recovered and butterflies were abundant throughout summer.
Read more about our first two field seasons here.
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| Sampling a garden in Edinburgh |
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| Laura caught a pollinator in a garden in Bristol |
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| Mark on the hunt for pollinators in a garden in Leeds |
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| Teamwork in a garden in Bristol |
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| This weedy garden in Reading was teeming with pollinators |
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| A cat takes a liking to our data sheets |
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| Peter from the Reading team is sampling in a nice bluebell woodland |
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| The Leeds team is "sampling" a playground |
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| All in yellow to sample a car park |
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| A bumblebee visiting Purple toadflax on a cemetery |
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| The first warm sunshine on a cemetery in Reading |
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| Sometimes sampling pollinators was quite exhausting |
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| Peter has found a pollinator on a pavement in Reading |
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| Lots of buttercups this year in Reading |
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| Peter and Ellen from the Reading team sampling a park |
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| Lots of flowers left uncut in a park in Reading |
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| An artichoke full of pollinators on an allotment |
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| Lynne sampling an allotment site in Bristol |
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| Nadine has "caught" a cat (not on a flower) in Reading |
As the success of our fieldwork depended on the goodwill of garden owners and other land owners and managers we would like to thank all garden owners in Bristol, Reading, Leeds and Edinburgh who volunteered their gardens and all land owners and managers for giving us access to many of the sites we sampled.
From early June onwards we also started to sample
project flower meadows sown in parks, on school playing fields, road verges and one site in a cemetery in Reading. The perennial meadows were established in early 2012 and flowered for the first time this year. The annual meadows were sown in April this year and started flowering at the end of June in southern sites and early July further North.
Our meadows not only attracted countless pollinators such as solitary bees, bumblebees, butterflies and hoverflies but also provided food and shelter for other wildlife such as beetles, bugs, damselflies, spiders and birds.
Here is how the
Reading flower meadows looked like in July and the
Leeds flower meadows in August. Also have a look at the best of the
Bristol flower meadows.
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| Sampling an annual flower meadow in Leeds |
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| Counting flowers in Edinburgh |
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| A welcome rest |
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| Lynne enjoys the sunshine in Bristol |
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| Peter has caught a pollinator |
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| Ellen and Peter from the Reading team |
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| Ryan and Lynne during fieldwork in Bristol |
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| The Leeds team at a blackberry tasting |
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| Preparing the meadow signs in Edinburgh |
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| Counting flowers in Bristol |
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| A pretty project wildflower meadow in Edinburgh |
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| Helen looks for pollinators in Bristol |
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| The Bristol team during fieldwork |
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| The Edinburgh team counting the flowers in a perennial meadow |
Our winter tasks are to finish the data entry for all of the fieldwork this year, input insect identifications from the taxonomists at the National Museums of Wales in Cardiff, analyse the data and publish our findings. Please have a look at our
website, Twitter accounts (
Reading,
Bristol,
Leeds,
Edinburgh) and visit our
blog for updates and news from our project and for more information about pollinators in general.
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| Preparing the insects for identification by specialists |
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We finished our final fieldwork season in September this year and despite the cold spring it was a successful season. In April we started to re-sample the urban habitats we sampled throughout 2012 and re-visited allotments, gardens, cemeteries, parks, road verges, local nature reserves, school playing fields and car parks in Bristol, Reading, Leeds and Edinburgh to look for pollinators visiting flowers.
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From early June onwards we also started to sample project flower meadows sown in parks, on school playing fields, road verges and one site in a cemetery in Reading. The perennial meadows were established in early 2012 and flowered for the first time this year. The annual meadows were sown in April this year and started flowering at the end of June in southern sites and early July further North.
