Caring for God's Acre

We all know that in many towns and villages, churches are an important refuge for wildlife, including Swifts. Swifts often breed under the eaves of churches or in other parts of the fabric and we also know that many of the 30,000 churches in the country provide a great opportunity for nest boxes in the belfry. Now the charity Caring for God's Acre would like people to send in records of what you see in a churchyard.

The charity Caring for God's Acre is working with several partners including the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) and both the Church of England and Church in Wales to improve biological recording within burial grounds of all types, sizes and denominations. Burial grounds can be absolute gems for ancient trees, historic walls, monuments, lichens, fungi and flowery grassland, all of which in turn support invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians, mammals and of course BIRDS! As well as feeding into the NBN Atlas and local recording systems, we will use these records to put information onto the Church Heritage Record; the system used when planning building or repair work within churches and churchyards. In this way, we hope to influence thinking and avoid uninformed decisions.

We would love to receive any records of birds in burial grounds, in particular Spotted Flycatcher and nesting Swifts. Records can be sent directly to us as a list, submitted via iRecord or the local record centre or put onto our iRecord system which is found via the Caring for God's Acre website.

Provided it is clear that the record is within a churchyard or cemetery it will reach us.