This weekend is the City Nature Challenge – a global competition where over the course of three days, local naturalists search for and record their urban wildlife. Cities from across the globe compete to see who can get the most observations, spot the most species and get the most participants involved.
Sadly, Carlisle is not registered to take part this year, but after seeing the materials put out by Wild Intrigue I was totally inspired to have a go anyway. The yard of my shared house is pretty much devoid of wildlife, so I ventured out into the alleyway behind the house and into the patch of wildflowers just beyond – which is currently a riot of vibrant colours.
The first flower I was drawn to was, of course, the dandelion. How could I not? It’s bright yellow flowers, and delicate seed clocks, have brought me a lot of joy over the years. I snapped a picture with the iNaturalist app (a great tool for any budding naturalist) and recorded my sighting.
I worked along the border for a while before deciding that I actually wanted to change the lens on my camera so I headed back indoors. On my way through the gate, I noticed a clutch of beautiful purple flowers that I hadn't given much heed to before. I came back with the correct lens and studied this plant in much closer detail. It was a gorgeous little thing, with delicate violet, indigo and yellow colouring that I wouldn't have noticed had I not stopped to get down on its level. A quick consultation with iNaturalist revealed it to be an Ivy-leaved toadflax – a species I had never heard of before. Safe to say, it’s one of my new favourites!
After that, I returned to the rest of the wildflower patch. I recorded cow parsley, thistles, some members of the Alliaria genus and the expected faces of stinging nettles and goose grass (or catchweed bedstraw, to give it it’s proper name).
We’ve got quite a bit of rubble out the back – not sure why, but it’s clearly been there for a long time. But nature has taken quite a liking to it, and the whole area is popular with a number of wildflower species, including a beautiful yellow poppy and Senecioninae. I was also very pleasantly surprised to find some bluebells in this patch (Spanish ones, but still very nice to see). It’s amazing how wildlife adapts so easily to urban areas.
A flutter of movement then caught my eye. A small tortoiseshell butterfly! I waited patiently for it to land on the ground and I grabbed a couple of snaps of it with its wings closed. I had hoped that it might open its wings again in the bright sunshine but alas, it was not meant to be.
By this time, one of my housemates had decided to join me and enjoy the glorious sunshine. I was sat in a patch of grass trying to capture a picture of some speedwell when she called to tell me that she was watching some kind of bee. I ditched the speedwell, reasoning that it wouldn’t run off on me, and headed over to take a look.
I’m not very up-to-date with my bees, despite having listened to a great talk about them just this morning. Nevertheless, it was great fun to watch this particular individual fly from flower to flower absolutely covered in nectar (or as my sister would say, totally lost in the sauce). The bee sat down on a particular dandelion for quite a while, so I thought to myself – wouldn’t it be good if I could get a picture of it taking off? I reset my camera, got into position and waited. Snap! Snap! Snap! I held my breath and looked down at the screen. I’d got it! A good effort for a first attempt, wouldn’t you agree?
After that, I returned to my speedwell, and had a bit of fun with my little magnifying glass. As well as the flowers and invertebrates, I did stop to have a look at the local bird life which included house sparrows, jackdaws and woodpigeons.
All in all, I was very happy with my results which probably took me about an hour to gather. I was seriously impressed at the sheer number of species in just a small area, and the power of the iNaturalist app that was able to help me identify a number of the plants that I would have had no chance at ID’ing myself. It’s given me some things to think about in terms of rewilding our yard.
But the biggest question I was considering was whether there was enough interest across the city to actually enter Carlisle into the City Nature Challenge for 2021. People of Carlisle, what do you think? Would this be something you would want to get involved in? Drop me a message if you would like that to happen!
Comments