Tiny tour Frigate! Carbon and measurements captured in Walsall.

It’s always fun to find your Tiny Forest for the first time, where is it, what is it going to be like? Frigate bird Lane was hidden away behind some houses, lonely and unattended. It was evident that many of the trees were lost within the weeds, but after a few minutes, I realise that many were still alive and maybe starting to emerge. It’s fascinating to think how the trees, compete and effectively evolve within their own ecosystem and hierarchy. With over 200 Tiny Forest in the UK, being studied in great detail by the tree keepers and Earthwatch scientist, we should have a really good data set, to understand how are native trees develop. So I started to work on measuring the trees. This meant clearing some of the weeds to gain access to the tags. Then I measured the girth and height of the tree and input this data online. It was engaging and fun, and the four hours I spent passed quickly. I also spent some of my lunch time doing a butterfly survey again, uploading this information to the website. I can really recommend spending a little time doing this. Make sure you have a tape measure, a good pair of gardening gloves and don’t wear shorts!