Picture a perfect winter’s day. What does it look like to you? It’s a common misconception that winters are only suitable for hibernating indoors and that much of London’s flora and fauna are hiding away from the cold too. This isn’t the case. London is blessed with many winter visitors who migrate from colder climes …
Katharine is GiGL’s community officer. She delivers work for members of the public and community groups, as well as carrying out work with students that wish to use GiGL data for research projects. At times she focuses on internal database work and core projects.
The importance of wildlife recording first dawned on me in my late teens. During the early 1980s, I volunteered, at a Shropshire site called Stoneyhill, to look for three species of clubmoss ferns. Remarkably, they included alpine clubmoss – a species not recorded in the county since 1726. Being exceptional county rarities, their discovery …
The Living Wandle Landscape Partnership Scheme has been monitoring Canada goose populations in the Wandle Valley to gain a greater understanding of their numbers and possible effects. With help from volunteers, the partnership have been conducting annual goose counts. For the last two years …
Approximately 18% of planning applications in London are for sites that are home to, or that potentially affect protected species or habitats. Only 1.2% of planning applicants actually request a GiGL data search to find out if protected species have been recorded within their area of influence. Previous observation …
2017 marks the 10th anniversary of the close, ongoing partnership between GiGL and The Royal Parks. The first GiGL Royal Parks Officer, Ian Woodward, appointed in 2007, set up the Royal Parks biological records system to GiGL standards. Since then, the role has …
For many years, we have talked internally about “GiGL treasure” referring to interesting nuggets of information we come across in our daily work, or the more unusual uses of GiGL-held data. GiGL treasure comes in all shapes and sizes. The stag beetle dataset is one of the longer running …
Most people don’t look to the sky over London for migrating birds. I never used to. Until, way back in the early 1990s, I was waiting at a bus stop on Tottenham High Road. I looked up and noticed a smoky, long line of wood pigeons. I counted over four hundred before …
Are you enthralled by Ephemeroptera? Can you tell a Baetis rhodani from a Cloeon dipterum? Do you find fungi fascinating or think slime mould is sensational? If so, then you may be just the person we are looking for.
A new report values London’s public green spaces in excess of £91 billion and shows that every £1 spent on public green space has a 27-fold return in value. The Mayor of London, in partnership with the National Trust and Heritage Lottery Fund, has produced the report …
Richard Jefferies’ 1885 novel, After London, opens with a wonderful description of nature recovering after an unspecified disaster has befallen London and created a large lake in the middle of England. Jefferies is probably better known for his …