…a blog written by Ruth Quigley, Buglife Scotland’s Aberdeen B-Lines Conservation Officer, originally published by Scottish Pollinators in September 2024
As a Buglife Conservation Officer delivering the Aberdeen B-Lines project, I have the pleasure of participating in numerous, engaging, pollinator-focused activities with the local community. In partnership with Aberdeen City Council, the Aberdeen B-Lines project aims to create wildflower-rich grasslands at twelve sites throughout the city, which is located in the North East of Scotland.
B-Lines are Buglife’s innovative solution to addressing one of the major challenges faced by our pollinators: habitat loss. Through restoration efforts, B-Lines projects help to reconnect habitats, enabling pollinators and other invertebrates to move more freely, whilst providing food, shelter and nesting areas. These projects also involve the community, spreading awareness about the crucial role of pollinators and enriching environments for enjoyment and wellbeing.
Buglife is an official partner of the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme (POMS), through which many of our team deliver citizen science workshops on how to survey pollinators. These surveys are called Flower Insect Timed (FIT) Counts, and on Friday 2 August I was delighted to deliver training at Westfield Park on a beautiful sunny day.
FIT counts are an excellent and accessible way of surveying pollinators which involve recording the different pollinator groups that visit a pre-determined patch of flowers within a 10 minute period. The great thing about FIT counts is that participants need no prior knowledge of botany or entomology to take part; however, to provide context I do start my sessions with an introductory talk about the importance of pollinators, as well as the key groups of interest to the FIT counts.
After my presentation, which the guests seemed to enjoy (hopefully!) and was accompanied by hot drinks and snacks, we headed to the park to catch and identify some pollinators before moving on to our FIT counts. We found some lovely Buff-tailed Bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) and a Large White butterfly (Pieris brassicae) before we got started.
PoM Scheme Flower-Insect Timed (FIT) counts at Westfield Park, Aberdeen ©️ Ruth Quiqley
The Friends of Westfield Park group, who attended the session, had planted a wildflower patch in the park featuring a range of the POMS target flower species such as Knapweed, Clover, and Ragwort. To perform a FIT count, you can either use the form provided by POMS or download the FIT Count App. In an effort to save paper we all opted for the app, which guides you through some preliminary questions before starting your 10-minute timer and observing your chosen flower patch within a 50 x 50 cm quadrat. The questions cover details like weather conditions, the target flower and its coverage, and the habitat type (e.g. park, garden, woodland etc.).
Participants appeared to be pleasantly surprised at how easy performing a FIT count was, especially using the app. Learning about different pollinator groups via a presentation isn’t always the best way to develop new skills – but seeing these animals in real life visiting flowers puts that learning into perspective and really helps to solidify the learning. For example, we saw lots of hoverfly bee mimics and some of our attendees admitted they would usually overlook them as bees – I guess Batesian mimicry works on humans too! We also saw a number of solitary bees and wasps which opened up interesting conversations about the diversity of pollinators, with many people not realising solitary species existed.
For me, this is the most rewarding part of running FIT Count training. I love to see the excitement on people’s faces when they see a parasitic wasp for the first time or discover that a sawfly exists (and it’s not a wasp!). Invertebrates, and insects in particular, are often overlooked and taken for granted because of their size and ubiquity, so being able to get people engaged and excited in them through citizen science is a real pleasure. That being said, activities such as FIT counts are also a great way for those with a good foundational knowledge to help contribute to a UK wide data collection scheme given they are so quick and accessible – a quick count can be done in your garden at lunch time and you just might see something really exciting!
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Find out more:
Why not visit B-Lines – Buglife to see if you are near one of our B-Lines? Perhaps you could create or restore an area for pollinators and add this to our map? It could be a mini-meadow in your garden, or village green, part of an allotment, a church yard or a larger project. Resources and guidance can be found on our website Pollinator Guidance – Buglife. These areas can then be surveyed for pollinators using FIT counts with this simple app: FIT Count app | PoMS (ukpoms.org.uk).
Main Image Credit: PoM Scheme Flower-Insect Timed (FIT) counts at Westfield Park, Aberdeen ©️ Ruth Quigley
