Review of 2025

2025 was another good year for Binfield Environment Group and a positive year for Binfield’s nature.  BEG broke more records, helped set-up and run Binfield’s first ever Eco Week, contributed to a number of new surveys and won an award.  Binfield’s nature continued to surprise us with some special species turning up in our surveys.

We broke our record for the most people on a work-party and for the most hours worked in our November work-party at Popes Meadow.  We continue to attract new members including through  Bracknell Forest Council’s Green & Active Heroes scheme - https://involve.community/green-active/.

We worked with the Eco Church team to put on a week of activities in August including an Eco Fair at St Mark’s Church.  We will be running a Nature Fair at St Mark’s on Monday 4^th May 2026.

In addition to our regular green-space survey, see below, we also undertook additional surveys of breeding birds, heathland birds, churchyard butterflies and wild service trees.  In 2026, we’d like to add one or two more green-spaces to our monthly surveys and get more people using iNaturalist.  Please contact us if you would like to help.

In March we were honoured with a Special Award by  Binfield Parish Council “… in recognition of their long-standing contribution, enthusiasm and expertise in maintaining and improving Binfield’s environment and biodiversity.”

Thanks to our dedicated surveyors, we have recorded 66 bird species (compared with 61 in 2024) and 20 butterfly species (compared with 19 in 2024) across the seven green-spaces that they visit each month.  We have started to record bumblebees at some sites and dragonflies at one site.

We recorded 51 bird species at Piglittle Meadow (compared with 52 in 2024), 41 at Blue Mountain (compared with 47 in 2024), 39 at Keephatch Meadow (compared with 44 in 2024), 38 in Farley Copse (compared with 38 in 2024), 38 species at Popes Meadow (compared with 36 in 2024), 32 species at Wicks Green (compared with 28 in 2024) and 26 species at Foxley Fields (compared with 19 in 2024).  Our 2025 bird highlights included a dartford warbler and clouded yellow butterfly at Piglittle Meadow, and probable breeding pairs of reed bunting, little grebe and firecrests at Blue Mountain, Popes Meadow and Farley Copse respectively.  Kingfishers were seen in several places around the parish including at Popes Meadow.  We are beginning to have enough data to look at trends and contribute to national studies, for example related to collared doves and blackbirds.

2025 was a better year for butterflies than 2024, but still only an average year compared with the last decade or so.  We recorded more marbled whites and gatekeepers than in 2024.  However, skipper numbers were still very low compared with a few years ago.  The butterfly highlights were seeing clouded yellow and painted ladies, both migratory species.

For more information on any of the green-spaces please use the pull-down menu to visit the appropriate 2025 survey summary.

Looking forward to 2026, we will be looking to align our work more with the Bracknell Forest Biodiversity Action Plan and the newly published Berkshire Local Nature Recovery Strategy.

If you want to look back, our review of 2024 is here - https://binfieldeg.wixsite.com/binfieldeg/post/binfield-environment-group-review-of-2024