Wildlife Records
An important aspect of the Wren Group's activities has been the collection of records of the wildlife of the area covered by the Group, i.e. Southern Epping Forest.
In the early days of the Group, these records were collected by a number of people, particularly Colin Plant, Mike Dent, Paul Ferris and Richard Baker. As more of the recorders moved on from the Group, less people were available to collect the records.
However, in the late 1970s a proposal was made to survey the plants of Wanstead Park for one year, and to follow this up after ten years to see what changes had occurred. It soon became clear that just surveying the plants in one year was a big task with the limited number of people available to do it. An attempt was made, and this led to a report being written by Paul Ferris which was published in the London Naturalist in 1980 as The Flora of Southern Epping Forest. Part 1: Wanstead Park. (Lond. Nat. 59 : 8-21).
Paul continued to collect plant records from the other parts of the study area and these were subsequently published as follows:
Part 2; "Wanstead Flats and Bush Wood" (Lond. Nat . 60: 6-19 in 1981)
Part 3 : Leyton Flats and Bush Wood North (Lond. Nat 61: 16-29.)
Part 4 : Gilbert's Slade. (Lond. Nat 62: 11-25).
The original intent of "just" surveying the wildlife of Wanstead Park in itself was found to be a difficult task due to the recorders and expertise available, but records were kept by the Group's Recorder on a card record index. Later these records were put onto a computer. At about this time, the Group's "headquarters", a downstairs room in the Temple at Wanstead Park kindly offered for use by the Conservators of Epping Forest, was taken away from us. This meant that the Group's tools, card index and other belongings had no central home.
The outcome was that the card index is now long gone - the computer with its somewhat primitive database has long since expired, and the Group's records really consist of those collated or collected personally by Paul Ferris of Forest Gate.
In the past, the late Richard Baker of Manor Park and Ted Godden of Aldersbrook, as well as Jim Brown of Leytonstone, were important contributors but for many years few people seem to have collected records, or at least passed them on to Paul. Among those who did were Jennifer Charter of Aldersbrook and Pete Saunders of Leytonstone. These records are still kept on Paul's home computer, and some of those records - and hence the remnants of the Wren Group's - are available on the Wanstead Wildlife website.
In more recent years - since about 2009 - a number of people with wildlife interests have moved into the area and new people have become interested in wildlife. This has particularly resulted in a massive upsurge in particularly bird records becoming available and these have been presented on this website in the form of occasional articles and annual bird reports by Tim Harris. The 2010 report is available here