Wildlife of Glasgow's Journal

If you live in Glasgow, you couldn’t help but notice the huge influx of Painted Lady butterflies in the past week. They are all over the place, particularly loving the Buddleia plants that grow wild in all the nooks and crannies of the city. And it’s beautiful! Walking back from work with handfuls of butterflies flitting around as you walk past is a great experience - an example of the way nature can throw wonders at us when we’re least expecting it.

I came across an interesting article on BBC News today, which I thought could be good to share with those of us who are interested in Glaswegian nature! Apparently the last time I bumper year for painted Ladies occurred was back in 2009, and we may get another influx of them in late summer! Here’s the article: Painted lady butterflies emerge in once-a-decade phenomenon https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-49210010

I recently stumbled upon this post on the iNaturalist forum which showed how you can add a tag into the URL of an iNaturalist page to show only the taxa you haven't seen. This means any page can act like a 'To Spot' list, and show you the creatures you have left to observe!

Below is the URL for the 'Wildife of Glasgow' project (just replace 'jonathancampbell' with your own userid), but if you want to view only unobserved taxa on any other page then add the tag &unobserved_by_user_id=yourusername. You can also ensure only species are shown by adding the tags &view=species&hrank=species&lrank=species. Happy spotting!

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?project_id=15547&place_id=any&verifiable=any&captive=any&unobserved_by_user_id=jonathancampbell&view=species&hrank=species&lrank=species

According to BBC News, a flock of Ring-necked Parakeets have recently made their home in Glasgow's Victoria Park:

'Most northerly' parakeets cause flap in Glasgow park

Ring-necked Parakeets (or Rose-ringed Parakeets) are famously resilient birds, with established populations in many Northern European cities. According to Wikipedia the subspecies that usually forms feral populations is P. k. manillensis, the Indian rose-ringed parakeet. This animal can withstand the colder winters of Northern Europe as it has adapted to live in the Himalayan foothills, and in recent years has flourished.

According to the BBC article, the response seems mixed, with locals enjoying the new visitors but conservationists at Scottish National Heritage concerned at the detremental effect they could have on local species. As such, there is discussions about them being rehomed.

What do you guys think? This post on the Glasgow University Post Graduate Research blog also mentions a population on the Vetinary campus at Garscube. Have any of you spotted them in the wild?

It’s been great over the past year to see this map of biodiversity in Glasgow begin to take shape, and with a beautiful Brimstone Moth we’ve passed 100 species. Thanks to everyone who’s got involved, and keep up the good work!

Stumbled across this useful guide on wildlife around Glasgow, and thought it might be useful for folk keen on seeing animals in the city! A peregrine falcon is definitely up there on my bucket-list...

https://ww2.rspb.org.uk/about-the-rspb/at-home-and-abroad/scotland/giving-nature-a-home-in-glasgow/glasgows-wildlife

Enjoy!

I was recently in New York City, and I was inspired by the sheer number of city-wide projects that they had on iNaturalist. Glasgow, though, hasn't got any! Now Pollok Park may not quite be Central Park, but there's still a wealth of animals living amongst us in Glasgow, and I reckon it would be fun to make a record of them. Please help out if you can!