This month’s talk was entitled ‘Wild Spaces - making space for nature’, given by Simon Saville of Butterfly Conservation also a London National Park City Ranger. He explained what many organisations are trying to do to encourage people to plant for wildlife by leaving parts of their gardens less manicured but more floriferous and therefore more attractive to pollinators. Not paving over gardens is also helpful in preserving habitat and preventing water runoff, flooding and pollution. Gardens and window boxes can make a huge contribution to making space for nature.

On the Common, our volunteers are helping Enable with two citizen science projects: one to monitor the Common’s bat population and another to identify any hedgehog activity.

Our birders have noticed several new species on the Common. This is the time of year when spring migrants start to arrive, and some very uncommon visitors have been recorded, including Cetti’s warbler and the wheatear. The month ended with another of our regular bird walks, recording almost 40 species , including sparrowhawk.

The tree planting season has come to an end with 51 new trees on the Common, five of them funded by the Friends. Attention will now turn to watering them.