PoMS reaches an important milestone this week, with the publication of the first Official Statistic in Development on pollinating insect trends. This presents trends for pollinating insect groups, based on the PoMS data for Great Britain during the period 2017 to 2024.
News
Our latest updates and volunteer e-newsletters are posted here - read on for other news items and blog posts from PoMS and our partners (click on the headings to read the full information).
A new two-page guide to FIT Counts is now available. The guide that summarises how to do a FIT Count and gives pointers on how to recognise the different insect groups. Available to download from the FIT Count page, or via the direct link to the PDF:
Our more detailed guides and recording forms are also still available on the FIT Count page.
The new FIT Count season has arrived! From 1 April onwards, when weather is good, you can contribute Flower-Insect Timed Counts to the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme. Enjoy spending 10 minutes counting the insects that visit flowers - wherever you can find flowers, and as often as you wish from now until 30 September.
We're really looking forward to seeing the first counts come in, and don't want to dampen your enthusiasm! But please do wait for the right weather conditions - warm and dry, with temperature of at least 13°C if it is sunny, or at least 15°C if it is cloudy.
If you have contributed one or more FIT Counts during this year or last year you may have received one of the new "PoMS Insights" emails from us. These are intended to provide some additional feedback on how your results compare to the rest of the FIT Counts that are sent in, and to thank you for your participation - and hopefully encourage you to keep adding new counts!
The Biological Recording Company hosted a pollinator-focused webinar on 1 April, presented by two experts that have links with PoMS: Dr Miranda Bane is a pollinator ecologist specialising in the interactions between plants, pollinators, and people, and also a member of the PoMS staff team in Scotland, as well as running pollinator projects and presented an overview of the FIT Count survey and how to take part.
