The LHNS hold field events on most weekends and occasionally mid-week. Some are half-days, some are full-days. They are an excellent place in which you can try out, develop and hone your identification skills. There is no fee payable to the LNHS. But some sites may require non-members to pay an entrance fee. The large majority of the field meetings are held at sites which can be reached fairly easily using public transport. Beginners are very welcome.
The field events cover a wide range of natural history topics and the
LNHS programme should be viewed for more details.
Some of the field events are published in the quarterly LNHS newsletter. A few extracts from these published trip reports have been provided below to provide a flavour of what is to be expected. All of the extracts below are from the winter quarter to reinforce the point that London and its environs are surprisingly good for biodiversity all year round.
Covid-19 Update
Council is pleased to announce that the Society intends to recommence field meetings in September 2021.
Please be aware that all LNHS outdoor events will be conducted within the parameters of the relevant Government guidelines that apply on the date the event takes place.
Please also note that, given the evolving COVID-19 situation, and the possibility that walk leaders may potentially have to pull out of events unexpectedly, events may be cancelled at short notice. We recommend checking the LNHS website on the morning of any event you wish to attend in case of last-minute changes which will be posted on the website where possible.
While the LNHS will follow Government and Charity Commission guidelines regarding the conduct of our outdoor events, we ask that all attendees consider those around them in group situations and exercise reasonable and sensible personal responsibility. We encourage people to either avoid sharing equipment or use disinfectant wipes, or similar, to clean equipment between uses, if sharing. Wearing a mask if gathering in close proximity to observe specimens in the field is also recommended. While this by no means covers all scenarios, we ask that all event attendees remain mindful of others and exercise appropriate caution in light of the fact that everyone's needs are different.
Excerpts from reports of previous field meetings
Botany, September, London Bridge
‘…….. After we had lunch seating on benches surrounding a dry pool in Little Dorrit Park (a location that added only a lonely Tomato Solanum lycopersicum to the list) we made our way to Wellar Street and Bittern Street. Here there were some large containers planted with vegetables. While we were examining the weeds growing between the sweet potatoes, the courgettes and the spinach, we were approached by the person who had planted them, Auntie Doris. She was surprised to be told that the weed she had disposed of, Common Chickweed Stellaria media, was itself an edible plant. Indeed in Japan Chickweed (Hakobe, in Japanese) is one of the seven herbs of spring that are traditionally eaten on 7th January in the Nanakusa no sekku (the Seven herbs Festival). We had quite a long conversation with Auntie Doris because we were momentarily abandoned by our leader Nick who had realised that he had left his mobile on the bench where we had lunch and had to frantically retrace his steps to recover that essential modern life device. On leaving Auntie Doris we had to queue up because she wanted to hug all of us one by one.
With our leader happily re-joined with his mobile, we moved along Great Suffolk street, noticing at a garden’s edge a seedling of Golden Rain tree Koelreuteria paniculata. The parent tree was nearby, with its distinctive three-parted inflated bladder-like fruits. We sped through some more housing estate green areas, stopping only to pay our respects to an old friend of our leader, a straggling seedling of Black Mulberry Morus nigra. Apparently Nick has known this individual seedling for a decade but, because it is regularly hacked by over-enthusiastic gardeners, it is still hardly a metre tall. We entered St. George’s churchyard gardens, where we found the sharply keeled leaves of Three-cornered Leek Allium triquetrum, the supposedly more-strongly stinging Annual Nettle Urtica urens and finally Vervain Verbena officinalis with its tiny flowers. This last plant was highly thought of in older times, as it was believed that it possessed medicinal and even magical powers. In Latin ‘officinalis’ means ‘of the apothecary’s shop’……’
London Bird Club, October, Two Trees Island
The tide was coming in quickly as we ate lunch at the pillbox at the east end of the island, bringing Brent Geese, Grey Plover, Curlew and around 50 Little Egrets closer to us. We stopped at the hide by the reedy lake and appropriately saw at least three Reed Buntings. The tide was such that there was no mud at the slipway and we did not linger there but carried on to the hide overlooking the lagoon at the west end of the island.
There was already a good gathering of waders but they were almost immediately disturbed by a Short-eared Owl flying over. Our first view was perhaps the best but during our hour or so in the hide it appeared three or four more times over the sea wall on the mainland side of the creek. The most numerous waders this year were Dunlin and Ringed Plover with Knot only flying in later. There were also good numbers of Grey Plover and Lapwing. Perhaps because of the owl the waders seemed quite jumpy though the 10 or so Snipe adopted the alternative tactic of hiding in the vegetation.
The regular rearrangements gave us a good chance of finding all the species present. Most of the Avocets stayed in a group of around 50 at the far end of the lagoon but a few more active ones were scattered around. There were at least 12 Greenshank, a single Bar-tailed and several Black-tailed Godwits. A few Golden Plover looked particularly handsome in the low afternoon sun.
Ecology and Entomology, October, Spider Foray in Gunnersbury Triangle
‘…….Some blue webs of Amaurobius sp. and the ‘spokes of a wheel’ web of Segestria senoculata were immediately pointed out on the hut itself. The group walked down the path into the reserve and soon found some large well-marked Garden Spiders (Araneus diadematus) on their orb webs, as well as some smaller Metellina segmentata web-spinners; both sexes of the latter were found sharing a web, as is often the case. There was some discussion of the difference between the sexes in spiders, and some members of the group were horrified to have it confirmed that after sex some female spiders kill and eat their mates, but were quietly amused to learn that in other species the low nutritive value of the males mean that she doesn’t bother……’
