“So far, I have been meeting lots of people and exploring nature across NGP with bio-blitzes, bat walks and hedgehog evenings.
A particular highlight was the bat walk organised as part of the Big Bat Bioblitz – 17 of us assembled outside the Community Centre at dusk, armed with our bat detectors! We walked along the wagonways to the Ouseburn, after about 45 minutes of thinking there were no bats that evening, we heard the unmistakable clicking sound of the echolocating picked up by the detectors. Then we saw te flittering, darting silhouettes of bats feeding on midgies around us. Three species were recorded on the night – common pipistrelle, soprano pipistrelle and noctule.
It’s been wonderful getting to know the people of NGP, hear about what they notice in nature in their local area and how it’s changed. Inspired by this we needed to know more about the hedgehog population and launched our hedgehog campaign. We hosted an initial evening with a talk from Hedgehog Officer, Grace Johnson, and from this we formed a ‘hedgehog gang’ who will be monitoring their gardens using footprint tunnels in July. We will then use this data to build hedgehog highways and homes.”
Next up is a walk with botanist James Common on Friday 10thJuly – Details to follow.