What is it?

A BioBlitz is a concerted effort to discover as many species as possible in a set amount of time. We’ll be looking for plants, animals, butterflies, moths, insects, fungi, reptiles – everything!

There will be specialists present to help with identification, as well as pursuing their own search activities. We’re hoping these will include overnight use of moth and small mammal traps.

When is it?

Sunday 2nd June 2024, 10:00 to 16:00, although our specialists will be doing things outside these hours.

How to find us

Use the entrance to the wood near the Crematorium.  Turn right, and our base camp will be nearby on the right-hand side of the main path. You can park in the main Crematorium car park, although as this is all about nature we would encourage you to use as “green” a means of attending as possible.

Base camp

The base camp is the centre of activity. Come and introduce yourself, and find out what’s happening and when, and what’s been found.

What to do

Everyone is welcome. There will be nature walks led by members of Warwickshire Wildlife Trust and other specialists.  If you like, you can just “do your own thing” and go and search. We can suggest what to look for and where in the wood to look. If you have specialist knowledge yourself, then you’re particularly welcome to participate in whatever way you can.

This is our plan of activities for the day (possibly subject to change at short notice!):

• 10:00 Examination of moth trap
• 10:30 Fungi walk
• 11:00 Nature walk
• 11:30 Pond dipping
• 12:00 Tree/shrub walk
• (time for lunch)
• 14:00 Fungi walk
• 14:30 Tree/shrub walk
• 15:00 Pond dipping
• 15:30 Nature walk

If we can set small mammal traps (weather-dependent), these will be inspected every hour.

There will be activities suited to families with small children, such as searching for species that should be relatively easy to find.

How to contribute

Bring your observations to the base camp for verification and recording. Whilst we will be primarily using paper recording on the day, ultimately the data will be transferred to iNaturalist. If you have the app installed on your phone then you can use it yourself directly. It’s also a great app to aid identification. If you just have photos we will attempt to capture these from your phone.

Facilities

• Toilets – available at the Crematorium.
• Sorry – there will be no refreshments, so bring your own.
• No power, so make sure your phones are fully charged.

Identification apps

There are phone apps available to help with identification of birds, plants, fungi etc. You could try these:

• iNaturalist – general identification and recording
• Seek – from the same stable as iNaturalist but without the recording features
• Merlin – bird identification
• PlantNet – plants

and there are many others which we haven’t tried.

Other useful apps

• Organic Maps – online and offline map based on OSM data (the same as we use for our maps)
• OS Locate – tells you your current OS co-ordinates