New Way to Report Wildlife in our Parish!

Added on 25 September 2017

Sutton Cheney Parish Council now has its own feature pages on the Leicestershire and Rutland NatureSpot website. If you haven’t visited the NatureSpot website yet, you are missing out on what has rapidly become the most popular resource for identifying local wildlife. NatureSpot provides a photographic guide to over 5,500 species – all found in Leicestershire and Rutland. In addition, the website invites the public to submit sightings of all wildlife seen – helping to build a picture of what lives where in the two counties.

The website is feature-packed, including pages that highlight the wildlife of parishes. Parish is one of these featured parishes. Here you can see a list of all the recent wildlife sightings plus images submitted with these records.

Anyone can submit a wildlife record and the website makes this really easy. Common species are just as important to record as rare species in order to monitor changes in population and distribution over time. Gardens are one of the best places to start your wildlife recording, as well as local parks and open spaces. What visits your bird feeders? Do you see butterflies in the garden? Do you have a pond with frogs? Register with the website and start to record straight away. The form even has a map that you simply click to fill in the grid reference. You can attach a photo to your record if you have one, but this isn’t a requirement. Photos are however a great way to provide evidence of your sightings and can also be emailed to NatureSpot for identification help if you are not sure.

Occasionally species turn up that have not been recorded on NatureSpot before and these are then added to the library and given a new species page. Indeed there have been a significant number of new species seen that are completely new to Leicestershire. So how many more species are there to be found? The truth is that no-one knows and in any case the picture changes all the time with some species expanding their range and others declining. Some of the most commonly recorded species are Little Egrets, Red Kites and Harlequin Ladybirds that would have been very rare sightings just 10 years ago.

If you have an interest in wildlife you will enjoy NatureSpot – and why not make your own contribution to science and conservation by submitting records of your own wildlife sightings?

www.naturespot.org.uk/parish/sutton-cheney