City Nature Challenge 2023: West of England (Bristol and Bath)'s Journal

CNC 2024 will be happening in 2024, from Friday 26th April – Monday 29th April.

We would love for you to join us again, as we collect even more records of biodiversity across our region, at the same time as 450+ other city regions across the globe!

The new project page for 2024 can be found here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2024-west-of-england-bristol-and-bath

Please “join” it to receive updates and to see what records are being made across the region during this year’s event. Joining the project also lets us know that you’re taking part, and we’ll be able to easily see and celebrate the records that you’re making, too.

Fancy running your own local BioBlitz event, or organising a guided nature walk for your community as part of City Nature Challenge 2024? If within the West of England project area, your records will automatically count towards the West of England CNC total. Check out our free resources on our UK City Nature Challenge resources page, and additional resources on the National BioBlitz Network page for guides to help you run an event. If you message us to let us know about your event, we will share and promote it across our social media channels for you.

We look forward to seeing what you all find this spring - can we make it a record year for new, rare and unusual records? It will be up to you!

Thank you to EVERYONE who took part in City Nature Challenge this year across the West of England!
It’s been an incredibly busy year for us, but we wanted to share what a great weekend we had back at the beginning of May.

Across the West of England project area, 374 of you took part in making wildlife records – and collectively made 7,500 observations of 1297 species on iNaturalist! This is the second highest number of species ever recorded during a City Nature Challenge event in our region – what a result!

In comparison with the rest of the UK, the West of England CNC region came:
• 2nd highest in the UK for number of participants who made observations
• 3rd highest in UK for numbers of species recorded
• 4th highest in the UK for numbers of observations made

Thank you to everyone who came along to one of the many recording events. We ran 11 events across the weekend, which included 7 pop-up activity hubs. We know of at least 7 additional CNC events that were ran by a range of other organisations across the region too – absolutely great work by all.

197 people came along to our 16 nature walks – thanks for all of your fantastic feedback, we’re really glad you enjoyed them.

There were lots of really interesting records, but one of our highlights has to be a confirmed record of a Variable Nomad Bee Nomada zonata, which was was photographed at Troopers Hill by iNaturalist user @guttulata - A regional first record for this species (confirmed by renown bee expert Steven Falk), it was reported on widely in the local news, such as ITV Westcountry!

CNC Global total
Across the world, 66,394 people were taking part in City Nature Challenge – thank you for helping CNC reach its highest ever global count for numbers of observations (1.8 million!!) and number of species recorded (57,222+)!

Where do the records go?
A key part of iNaturalist is that scientists are able to access and use iNaturalist data in their research - a list of 3700+ publications that cite iNaturalist records can be found HERE .

During 2023, open-licence records made during CNC in our region will also be processed by BRERC, our Local Records Centre, to maximise use of records by local organisations. You can find out how to make sure your records have an open licence setting HERE

Did you take part in this year's City Nature Challenge for the West of England region? (Bristol, Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire)

We'd love you to share your feedback with us on the experience! 📝

At the end of the survey, participants will be given the opportunity to enter a competition to win one of two exciting prizes! A bat detector or a pair of Festival of Nature guest list tickets! 🏆🦇

Your thoughts and ideas about events like City Nature Challenge help us at The Natural History Consortium develop even better wildlife and public engagement programmes in the future - please tell us what you thought!

Survey: https://bnhc.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/city-nature-challenge-2023

It’s DAY ONE of this year's global nature event and we can’t wait to get stuck into wildlife recording all the local species we can find. This year’s event takes place Friday 28 April – Monday 1 May and has over 485 cities taking part across 46 countries.

From trees and flowers, to butterflies and birds, every sighting counts! We need everyone across the region recording their wildlife sightings and uploading them to iNaturalist during this bank holiday weekend.


Nature activities in the West of England
Anyone can go out and record wildlife sightings during this weekend’s challenge, but if you’d like to get involved with some free family-friendly nature activities and expert-led outdoor sessions, there are over 40 nature walks in over 17 locations taking place!

Check out the programme of events across the West of England region 28 April – 1 May and sign up to some free walks!

Wildlife Spotter Sheets
This year, we really want you to search for and record pollinators and trees!

What is a pollinator? Pollinators carry pollen with them as they move from flower to flower, helping fertilise the plants. They include bumble bees, butterflies, moths, hoverflies, wasps, flies, and beetles.
Why look for them? Insect pollinator species are in decline as biodiversity loss around the planet accelerates. It’s important that researchers and conservation organisations know where pollinators are, to help increase their numbers.

We’ve made these handy Pollinator Spotter Sheets to help you search for, identify and record pollinators in the region.

Why record trees? Trees are crucial for humans and the natural environment to thrive. Recording your local trees helps researchers and conservation organisations monitor losses or gains to tree numbers, which can offer information about biodiversity, wildlife habitats and air quality levels.

Find our Trees in Spring Spotter Sheets here, to help you search for, identify and record trees in the region.

What happens to my City Nature Challenge data?
During this year’s West of England Region City Nature Challenge, wildlife recordings submitted to iNaturalist will be collected, processed and used by the Bristol Regional Environmental Records Centre (BRERC).

The Festival of Nature team visited BRERC to find out more about environmental data – and why it’s so important to submit it! Click here to watch the video to find out how your findings from City Nature Challenge can be used by BRERC.

If you've got Questions about challenge, please check out this year's FAQ guide!

Show us your sightings!
We'd love to see what you get up to this weekend and any exciting finds, so don't forget to tag @festofnature on twitter and instgram so we can re-share your post.

The West of England region is going to be packed with activities to do over the City Nature Challenge weekend (28th April - 1st of May). Although we’d love for you to join us at one of the many activity hubs (click here to find details of over 40 free nature walks in 18 locations!) , did you know you can also take part by recording wildlife in your local park or garden?

We’ve created a range of “Spotter Sheets” which can be used by all ages all across the region. We challenge you to find as many species as you can on each sheet! You can download them from our website for free HERE! .

You’ll find spotter activities for our wonderful pollinators, our terrific trees, and our lovely freshwater species, covering a range of habitats including gardens, grasslands, woodlands, and lakes, so you can take part wherever you are throughout the weekend.

The plants and animals on the spotter sheets range from “Easy” to find, to those that will be rather tricky to find (“Challenge” & “Expert”)! Many of the species listed are under-recorded in our region. In some cases, this is due to them being rare – so by recording them, you will be helping with efforts to better understand them and their distribution, which can lead to better conservation of the species.
Some of the species on here might be well-camouflaged and hard to find! Good luck - and do let us know if you find all 9 on any spotter sheet via @festofnature social media, we’ll be most impressed!

The Natural History Consortium’s 2023 Pollinator Spotter Sheets were created with support from the West of England Combined Authority Pollinator Fund.
The Natural History Consortium’s 2023 Trees in Spring Spotter Sheet was created with support from the Woodland Trust’s Emergency Tree Fund.

We're excited to announce a fantastic range of wildlife recording events, walks, and activities happening across the West of England region that are all FREE for you to join during the City Nature Challenge!

Check out the full programme HERE

There will be over 40 expert-led nature walks in 18 confirmed locations, from the 28th of April to the 1st of May 2023. Join us at one of the City Nature Challenge activity hubs we have popping up across the region to take part in BioBlitz activities and help record our wildlife across the West of England. The activity hub locations include:

Grow Wilder
Westonbirt Arboretum
Tyntesfield Gardens
Frampton Cotterell
Stoke Park
Wild Place Project
Haydon's Batch, Somer Valley
Manor Woods Valley
Badock's Wood
Old Sneed Park
...and a range of wildlife walks across a variety of locations in Bath and Bristol city centres!!

Some of the walks, led by wildlife experts such as Ed Drewitt, require a sign-up via Eventbrite to reserve your place. You will find the details for this on our website

A massive thank you to all the organisations who are hosting events over City Nature Challenge this year including, Avon Wildlife Trust, Forestry England, National Trust, South Gloucestershire Council, Bristol City Council, Bristol Zoological Society, Bath and North East Somerset Council, RSPB's Bristol Group, Manor Woods Valley Group, Friends of Badock's Wood, and Action for Conservation.

We can't wait for you to join us and make this our biggest City Nature Challenge year yet!!

We like to think that our wildlife records can be used by ecologists, planners, conservationists and other organisations, but this isn’t always automatically the case. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to make sure your iNaturalist Records have an even bigger impact; and it’s as simple as changing a setting to make sure your wildlife records can be shared with those who need it.

The default licencing setting for your data on iNaturalist is “CC-BY-NC”. This means your record can be shared with researchers, but excludes access and use by many commercial organisations. This setting can prevent records being used by some wildlife recording schemes and local environmental records centres too. So, we highly recommend changing your iNaturalist settings to to an open licence such as “CC0” or “CC-BY”, which will enable your records to be used as widely as possible.


How to check which licence is attached to your observations
On Andriod phones: Open the iNaturalist App: Settings > Default Licenses
For iPhone users: Go to the desktop website for iNaturalistUK and log in: Account Settings > Content and Display > Licensing
For website users: Log onto iNaturalistUK: Account Settings > Content and Display > Licensing


What do the different licences mean?
There are 8 licencing options available when you open the "licencing" option on your settings. The top 2 (CC0 and CC-BY) are of most use outside of iNaturalist:

CC0 = No Copyright - This means you're happy for anyone to use these observations/photos/sounds for any purpose, and they can use them without crediting you as the owner. Other people can also create new material based on your work.

CC-BY = Attribution - This means anyone can use your observations/photos/sounds as long as they credit you as the owner. Others can create new material based on your work.

CC-BY-NC (default when signing up to iNaturalist) = Attribution, Non Commercial - This means anyone can use your observations/photos/sounds as long as they credit you as the owner. They cannot use your observations/photos/sounds in a commerical way (i.e. to make profit). This setting can prevent records being used by some wildlife recording schemes and local environmental records centres.


You can also can set your photo, sound and observations to have different licences. For example, if you're a professional photographer and you're happy for anyone to use your observation record but you want to protect your photos from being used commerically, you can set your Observation to CC-BY, and your Photos to CC-BY-NC.


It takes only a few seconds to make this change. You can find out more about what the various licencing options mean on this page: https://uk.inaturalist.org/blog/58298-licensed-to-share or find out more about what happens to biodiversity data here

Thank you for making your records of wildlife go even further and have even more positive impact!

With 5 weeks to go to the start of City Nature Challenge, we wanted to reach out to you as we need your help with recording wildlife in the Bristol and Bath area from 28th April – 1st of May 2023.

We – the West Of England region – will be entering into an annual global challenge where 450+ cities across the world will be trying to record as much wildlife as possible over four days at the end of April 2023.

Across the region, we want to record even more wildlife than we did during the challenge last year (8,005 observations and 1,270 species - lets beat this!), and make a massive contribution to the world total (last year nearly 1.7million records were made globally over the whole weekend).


How to get involved

It’s easy – simply make records of any local wildlife in the Bristol and Bath region, between the 28th of April and the 1st of May. You could be in Bristol, Bath, Weston-Super-Mare, or anywhere in-between throughout Northeast Somerset, South Gloucestershire, and North Somerset. You can see our project map at the bottom of our main project page.
You can also click “join project” to get updates of future journal posts, where we will be sharing information about regional activity hubs that will be running throughout the challenge weekend, and challenges we will be setting to find rare or under-recorded species. You’ll also be able to see our other journal posts, find out more about City Nature challenge, and see our achievements from the bank holiday weekend.


If have taken part in City Nature Challenge in previous years – thank you for your contribution. Join us in recording wildlife during City Nature Challenge 2023!


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With just 10 weeks to go until City Nature Challenge 2023 we wanted to celebrate the records of some of the most unique and interesting finds from last year! There were lots of regional ‘firsts’ to celebrate, but here are a selection of 10 from our list of favourites from City Nature Challenge 2022.

Black-headed Cardinal Beetle Pyrochroa coccinea - This was the 1st record of this species recorded on iNaturalist during any city nature challenge in this region. Recorded on Bristol Zoological Society’s Wild Place Project site by iNaturalist user @emmanuelct

During 2022, there was 1 observation of the Metallic Horned Dung Beetle Onthophagus coenobita. This is only 1 of 3 ever recorded during CNC in the region. All 3 observations have been made by @catbaker!

Ruby Tiger Moth Phragmatobia fuliginosa - Record by @davidhanks. Only 1 recorded last year in the region – and the second recorded during a CNC in the region since the challenge began in 2018. As an adult, this moth cannot feed as it has no mouthparts!

Sea Campion Silene uniflora – 5th record of this species during any CNC in the region. The only record during CNC 2022 was by iNaturalist user @robsid. This coastal plant was spotted at the National Trust’s Sand Point near Weston super mare.

Adder Vipera berus - Spotted by @cjjones84. This is the first record of an adder on iNaturalist during a CNC in this region! If you are lucky enough to see one, be sure not to disturb it; they are a UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) Priority Species and protected by law.

Common Reed Warbler Acrocephalus scirpaceus - Thanks for the record by @ruth468, this reed warbler could be identified with a sound record as well as a clear photo – and was the only reed warbler recorded during the region’s CNC in 2022.

White-throated Dipper Cinclus cinclus - During CNC each year, we’ve had only 1 single record of this aquatic songbird each year across the west of England area. The records from 2022, 2021, 2019 and 2018 have all been along the same stretch of river- we wonder if it could be the same bird being recorded! 2022’s record was made by @drnismith.

Black Goby Gobius niger – Only 2 records of this species were made across the whole of the UK during city nature challenge last year - both in Portishead by iNaturalist user @richie_howard!

Brickwork Woodlouse Porcellio spinicornis - 1 recorded by @mikebath in 2022. This is the first ever record of this species for the region during a City Nature Challenge event!

Brown Soil Slug Arion distinctus - this is a first record on iNaturalist for this species in this region. The record was made by iNaturalist user @zeplyr. This slug has only been recorded 11 times in the UK on iNaturalist EVER, despite being thought of as a common garden species!

There were lots more records we’d love to celebrate - You can explore more of the species that were found by going to the 2022 project page where you can explore a map of the sightings, and even use the filter to see specific species or groups.

A massive thank you to everyone who’s records made this list. We can’t wait to see the records that will be made across the West of England during City Nature Challenge 2023!

Best wishes
Loz Emerson, Actions for Nature Officer at the Natural History Consortium

Welcome to 2023! We’re excited to announce that City Nature Challenge will be running across the Bristol & Bath region again this year, under the new project name ‘City Nature Challenge 2023: West of England’. We hope that you will join us from the 28th of April to the 1st of May 2023, where we will be recording the wildlife across Bristol, Bath, Weston-Super-Mare, and everywhere in-between, covering the counties of Northeast Somerset, South Gloucestershire, and North Somerset.

With just 100 days to go, we wanted to kick off with our first journal post and celebrate some of the amazing achievements from last year!

With your help during City Nature Challenge 2022 we recorded a whopping 8,005 observations of 1,270 species over 4 days. We couldn’t have done it without the help of 405 of you who took the time to go out and record your local wildlife. Thank you! An additional thank you to the 501 identifiers who helped to verify the records during the event too; getting records correctly identified to “research grade” means that the records can be shared with other datasets, such as the Local Records Centres and the NBN Atlas. These records can be used by many people, from scientists to planners, so this data is key to protecting our wildlife. Great work everyone!

We wanted to give some special shout outs to @scro11ing, @frampton_cotterell_nature, and @mikebath; you came 1st, 2nd and 3rd place for most biodiversity recorded, with @scro11ing coming 1st place with 278 different species recorded across the 4 days. Incredible efforts!

Time to thank our top identifiers (drumroll please….). Our top identifier of the region was @foxandcubs, with 1,200 identifications (wow!!), followed by @mikebath (1,014 identifications - great work with the invertebrates) and momatt72 (298 – thank you!). Your time and expertise is invaluable and we hope you’ll be identifying this year too.

We also wanted to thank our top 100 recording champions; we hope you join us again this year to record even more biodiversity in the region. We’re chuffed that we had more supporters take part than any other UK City Nature Challenge city in 2022 (not that we’re competitive!) and every single one of you who took part helped to make a difference for nature. A massive thank you to @scro11ing, @frampton_cotterell_nature, @mikebath, @bobhelson, @major_bombylius, @foxandcubs, @fungimonster, @hanslynam, @josie12, @catbaker81, @zeplyr, @scanters, @georgecuckoo, @alisoncook183, @ellieandmaddie, @friendsofdrpep, @stupayton1, @caroline225, @momatt72, @ren9922, @davidhanks, @greenwanderer, @doogstar, @tabernus, @mary287, @torie289, @carolynbrina, @flutterbug45, @isabellepulletz, @eugenielovenature, @naturenstuff, @lana_prest, @emily2668, @tingmj13, @chaffinch242, @geminplainsight, @allison714, @concannonjm, @tizerb, @fobwsecretary, @roz_stewart-hall, @juliak7, @lozemers, @mustard, @hamslicephotos, @danielleedwards, @gabymeier, @andyfrazer, @ruth468, @samantha1329, @cedaniel81, @muffintin, @mol98, @roundways, @phazelwood, @chris2327, @dnschmidt, @penruss, @lukeromaine, @samrspb, @amycboyle, @b_thorney, @jimmygrigg, @teazles, @elmanelman, @kate_sparey, @rachel4848, @andyroo42, @bibiana_krauskova, @almajar, @claire268, @jkbcs, @jamierk, @ginijamesclose, @stephencjg, @liz869, @kinzaleah, @cluelesswanderer, @lindsayvinesmyth, @ripplenessy, @squarial, @ginastahl, @francie_brown, @brockletoast, @alejandra661, @joshua_richards, @nicolabs3, @katetate25, @amberav, @ed_shaw, @lucy_newnham, @eiffelover, @ralph134, @claire919, @kshelduck, @loxliegh, @barrygorman66, @spt123, @piestuff, and @ktslash

In our next journal we will be celebrating the records of some of the most unique and interesting finds of 2022, check back in mid-February to see if your records made it to our list of favourites! Don’t forget to “join” the project page to get updates on future journal posts or follow updates on the West of England City Nature Challenge via @festofnature on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Best wishes,
Loz, Actions for Nature Officer at the Natural History Consortium.