We worked with Murray and Chris throughout February to collect data for this map. We began by dividing their back garden into square sections called quadrats. Bird counts for each section were then used within an R program to create this heat map. It clearly shows that most birds were counted in the north-west section of the garden, corresponding to the location of trees with berries, and bird feeders. Overall, the map shows that Murray and Chris's commitment to wildlife-friendly gardening has been rewarded with abundant bird counts, although further work should be considered in the south-east of the garden. Overall, this map makes sense of the spatial patterning of the bird-count data.
We wanted to discover if robins appear evenly across the local area. We therefore sent out small groups of (socially distanced) team members to ten randomly selected locations in the Felixstowe area to count the robins they saw. We then recorded the average number of sightings per day on our map. The results show an uneven distribution of robins, suggesting that we can do more to support these beautiful little birds to attract more of them to our gardens and allotments. .
Social distancing due to COVID-19 has made team working, and therefore citizen science, a challenge. We have therefore encouraged our members to stay safe and to contribute sightings of swifts to the online map managed by the Suffolk Biodiversity Information Service. Using our data alongside that of others, it is clear that swifts appear to prefer a corridor in Felixstowe from Brook Lane in the north east to Wolsey Gardens in the south west. We therefore encourage home owners living outside that corridor to install swift nesting boxes to broaden the area of Felixstowe favoured by swifts.
We created this map using the Leaflet JavaScript Library ie we did not use any apps in this work. We used the ten randomly chosen locations as the basis for birding observations for our October 2019 Autumn bird count - see the Data Analysis tab. We intend to use Leaflet in future work too.
Following on from our previous heat map (see below) we simply wanted to repeat the process in a completely different type of garden to show that heat mapping is viable in any kind of environment. The clear benefit of this map is to show the garden owners where they may wish to do more work in attracting more birds (ie in the south west section of their garden). The map also shows the great success of their work in attracting birds in the northern part of their garden, particularly the north east.
We divided the back garden of one of our members into rectangular sections. Bird counts for each section were then used within an R program to create this heat map. It clearly shows that most birds were counted in the north section of the garden corresponding to the location of trees with berries. Overall, the map shows that this individual's commitment to wildlife-friendly gardening has been rewarded with abundant bird counts. However, this map makes sense of the spatial patterning of that data.
In April 2018, we contacted our members, and asked them to spend the first week in May 2018 counting their local hedgehogs. They then submitted their sightings. The result of all that collaboration is our first map shown below. Each turquoise dot represents a reported hedgehog sighting. To learn more, please double click on our map.
We are pleased to share the completed map of our Hedgehog Count for May 2018. The map shows the location of the 58 reported sightings we received of hedgehogs in the Felixstowe area up to, and including Kirton. We hope to repeat this collaborative mapping exercise next year to see how the situation changes.