Birds, bats and butterflies – how a Churches Count on Nature event revealed hidden gems at St Mary’s…

7th March 2023

We spoke to Rev’d Susan Blagden from St Mary’s, Caerhun, Conwy, Wales about their experience of joining in with the week.

Hello Susan, please tell us a little about yourself.

I am a Self Supporting Minister in Bro Celynnin, North Wales, which includes Conwy town and part of the valley.  I am a Spiritual Director, photographer, Life Coach and committed citizen scientist: all of which involve a commitment to raising awareness of the ecological crisis in which we find ourselves and working towards more enhanced biodiversity.

Thank you for organising and running a Churches Count on Nature event as part of Love your Burial Ground Week. How did the Saturday morning event go?

It was really encouraging as more than 30 people came to this small, rural churchyard to help us discover what it contained.  Our youngest participant was 9 months old (finding bugs in the wall), to our eldest participant who was 90 and a retired Professor of Botany.  

What wildlife did you record and how did you find using the iNaturalist app?

Using the iNaturalist app gave confidence to volunteers who were finding the ID of flowers.  Using the app gives instant rewards and helps gain knowledge because the ID is given in the moment.  It created a sense of excitement – What will we find next? And made participants look more closely for small flowers that might have been hidden in some of the long grass.   It was a bonus that it made my job easier of collating the results too as it was possible to extract the data from iNaturalist!  Of course, it can also be useful for identifying more than flowers!

In our small space we were amazed to find this number of species:

Bats x 2 Ferns x 2 Insects x 10

Birds x 8 Flowers x 73 Trees x 4

Butterfly x 1 Grasses x 6 Moths x 38 

furry moth perched on a human hand
Photo by Rev’d Susan Blagden
moth perched on a human hand
Photo by Rev’d Susan Blagden
people standing around a moth trap
Photo by Rev’d Susan Blagden
Did you bring in expert help and how did you do this?

We were well supported by volunteers from the local Wildlife Trust as well as the local branch of Butterfly Conservation who set up a number of moth traps the night before, and brought their Bat specialist too.  

Your church is not in a village, in fact it is in the middle of fields and the churchyard is very small – were you surprised at how many people turned up and how did you advertise?

Yes, I was very surprised at how many people turned up and most got so excited that they stayed for the whole two hours!  We had advertised it in two local Facebook groups and through Bro Celynnin’s weekly email.

Do you feel the success will encourage other churches locally to be involved?

I certainly hope so! It was a great way of meeting people who care about green spaces but may not necessarily be interested in attending church services.  It was great to have some experts available to help with some of the trickier ID.  It was also positive that the church could showcase something positive for the environment.  So other churches in our Ministry Area will be involved this coming year.  It was inspirational for others too because they heard about our scything day and how we seek to manage the churchyard to support and enhance the biodiversity.  It was a joy to discover that we had wild Welsh daffodils in our churchyard – something to celebrate indeed!  Already another local church has asked to be involved this year and is linking it with the village’s ‘Open Gardens’ event.

Thank you Susan for joining in with such enthusiasm and for sharing your event with us!

Churches Count on Nature is a joint initiative promoted by the Church in Wales, Caring for God’s Acre, the Church of England, and Arocha UK. During Love your Burial Ground week in June, it brings local people together to discover the wildlife in their local church yard, recording the species they find, combining their results with others which will be collated on the Beautiful Burial Ground portal within the National Biodiversity Network (NBN), a nationwide database of wildlife in the UK.

We would love to know what wildlife you see the rest of the year – pop here to see how to easily submit your records https://www.caringforgodsacre.org.uk/about-recording

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