The Big City Bug Hunt: get spotting!

We all know London’s urban food-growing spaces don’t just nourish people, they provide vital homes for birds, bats, butterflies, beetles, bees, and so many other species.

In partnership with Greenspace Information for Greater London (GiGL) and iNaturalist, we’re launching The Big City Bug Hunt, a London-wide effort to showcase and record these insects in food-growing spaces across the city.

We invite you to get involved in the world of citizen science and discover the biodiversity living in your growing spaces. By signing up, you’ll take part in a fun, accessible citizen science project, build evidence of the positive impact your growing space has on nature and contribute valuable data to help map biodiversity across London.

How to get involved:

How do I sign up?

Joining the project is simple you only need to do two things:

1. Register your garden here

2. Sign up to iNaturalist and create an account by downloading the app or visiting www.iNaturalist.org (we recommend using your real name as your records will be verified more easily)

Then we’ll create your garden site as a collection project on iNaturalist and email you the details.

What happens next?

1. Get our into the garden and start looking for bugs! See something cool? Take pictures as you go about your gardening.

2. Submit your data by adding a photo onto and your findings to iNaturalist - its super easy! (All records within your site boundary will be added to your garden collection project, which will feed into the Capital Growth London-wide umbrella project)

3. Want to involve your growing community? Get a group together and do a pond dip or a bug survey. It’s a fun educational activity that will surprise and delight all ages, and could get new volunteers involved too. 

How does all the data get collected?

When you register your garden with us, we set it up as its own recording project. This means you can see all the different species that people record specifically within your garden.

All records made in the garden, regardless of whether they have joined the project will pop up. How neat is that?!

All of these records also feed into our wider Capital Growth project, which brings together data from every community garden registered with us. There, you can explore species information across all sites and see how different gardens compare. 

There’s even a leaderboard showing the gardens with the most recordings, so if you’re feeling competitive, start recording now!

Big City Bug Count weeks!

We want people to record bugs regularly and hope it becomes part of ongoing volunteering days. Alongside this, we’ll also be supporting gardens to run special Big City Bug Counts during key weeks of the year, in April, June, and September, to help us gather lots of data. Make sure you stay tuned for updates!

This April, we’ll be syncing our Good to Grow London–wide food growing festival with the Big City Bug Hunt, so be sure to sign up and get involved in the festival.

If you have any questions about the project or help getting set up, contact lula.wattam@sustainweb.org. For more information about GIGL you can visit their website here and for any FAQ's about iNaturalist click here.