As the days are feeling longer this week and the evening light is drawing out, there are welcome changes and arrivals in London’s flora and fauna, heralding the new season ahead.
We are now officially in Spring and as the weather warms up over this season and into summer, many people within London’s voluntary and professional recording community are at their busiest, monitoring the species present in their local area of interest or conducting surveys to evaluate the ecological sensitivity of sites.
Signs of spring for GiGL are the arrival of records of spring favourites including frogs, bees and butterflies, and then a little later the emergence of stag beetles.
Every record in the GiGL species database includes a date, one of the core pieces of data required for a valid record. In fact, we store a double date field. This allows a single day, or a date range to be entered as appropriate.
This means we can tell that the earliest butterfly record within the database for last year was observed on the 22nd of February (a Red Admiral). This was earlier than the usual first observations around April.
What’s your favourite sign of spring? Let us know what you spot in your local patch.
March 2015
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