This Sunday morning task at Cuckoo Park was the last of this May's Wildlife Surveys in Ealing Tiny Forests. Steph and Kash introduced Andrew and his girlfriend Debbie to the nitty-gritty of scouring the area for insects, and then everyone launched into... deep focus.

🦋 Debbie, not discouraged by the stories of previous butterfly surveys' findings, spent 15 minutes with her eyes peeled for the colourful wings, yet the final butterfly count this year remained zero!
🐜 Steph taught Andrew the ways of the underworld - in other words: the world of ground dwellers. The duo spotted plenty of ants and larvae under the biodiversity tiles. Interestingly, two of the tiles seemed to be misplaced. Foxes?
🐝 Kash found a small patch of flowers at the edge of the Tiny Forest and observed it closely - as a result, she recorded two bumblebees and a fly in her pollinator survey.
🚮 Steph, always ready for a spontaneous litter pick, at the sight of rubbish at the Tiny Forest, pulled out his foldable picker and a rubbish bag, then did a litter blitz around the site. It looks like the wooden benches in the "classroom" area attract not only the lovers of nature but the fans of Coors beer as well!

The community mission concluded the Wildlife Survey this season. We will return to Cuckoo Park in the future to see how the biodiversity develops over time. In the meantime, we'll surely pop in with measuring tapes to help scientists calculate Tiny Forest's trees' capacity to store carbon.

Last week's rainfall, followed by flooding of the Cuckoo Park planting site, forced us to postpone the Tiny Forest session until today. But what a glorious day it was! The sunshine finally arrived, and with it, a large crowd of GoodGymers! Half of today's team were new joiners, and for most of them, like Tia, tree planting was a new experience.

"It was a perfect first session!", said another first-timer, Rebekah.

Why wouldn't it be with the fantastic weather and a fun task, accompanied by samosas, pakora and fruit provided by Earthwatch? Well, for our new joiners, it was about something more.

"Very welcoming atmosphere. It was nice chatting to everyone." - Eliz.

For Eliz, it was the second session, and, although she was a new GoodGymer herself, she already recruited her dad, Mehmet. Mehmet didn't shy away from planting the rather spiky trees (he was particularly fond of hollies) or pulling and tipping the heavy bags with woodchip.

Both Michelle and Beata returned to a GoodGym session after a recovery break, and couldn't have come to a better place. Great to have you both back, and we are hoping to see you more often!

Planting trees was certainly not new to the GoodGym veteran Chris who cycled from GoodGym Richmond. Chris loves a good planting session and has covered many miles all over the capital to put more trees on the map of London! Among others, we planted oaks, birches, hazels, hawthorn, bird cherries, Guelder roses, whitebeams, purging buckthorn and hornbeam, so hopefully, Chris can add some new species to his tree portfolio!

As a part of today's midday planting, Hannah from Earthwatch asked us to do some quality checks of the trees planted by children from local schools in the morning. A few saplings indeed needed a little bit of correction, but generally, the kids had done a marvellous job! So did the GoodGymers and other volunteers. We secured all the whips by spreading mulch all over the Tiny Forest. The woodchip will keep the trees nourished and keep the weeds at bay.

Probably, the most unusual part of today's task was the fact that throughout the sessions we were painted by a local artist, Annabelle, who complimented our red t-shirts as being the perfect complementary colour to the green palette on her watercolour. The meaning of "are you ok with us taking pictures of you?" was just elevated to the next level!

Planting another Tiny Forest was a lovely way to spend a Friday afternoon. After volunteering together a few of us ventured to GoodGym's favourite coffee shop in Hanwell for a cup of coffee and good chat.