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Wildlife

In addition to our plant collections, a large number and variety of animals can be found in Chelsea Physic Garden, which is a Grade I Site of Borough Importance (see the The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's Unitary Development Plan (pdf) for further details).

To these creatures the garden is a natural habitat, with all the concerns that being part of a food web brings – from searching for food to avoiding being someone else’s food, finding shelter and reproducing. Chelsea Physic Garden is one of many urban refuges for plants, animals, fungi, bacteria and single-celled organisms.

NB: In the lists of common names below, where plurals are used, it means that more than one species of this type of animal are likely to be found in the garden, and as yet, the individual species haven’t been identified. Latin names will be added in due course. These listings are by no means complete.

Birds

The Garden's proximity to the River Thames, the practice of leaving seed heads to develop, the provision of bird boxes and feeders and the minimal use of chemicals actively encourage bird life here.

• Definitely breeding here: Dunnock, wren, robin, blackbird, song thrush, long-tailed tit, coal tit, great tit, blue tit.
• Common visitors: Grey heron, mallard duck, wood pigeon, great spotted woodpecker, jay, magpie, carrion crow, starling, greenfinch.
• Rare migrant visitors: Kingfisher, grey wagtail, blackcap, whitethroat, chiffchaff, goldcrest, willow warbler, spotted flycatcher.
• Those seen flying over the garden: Cormorant, sparrowhawk, herring gull, lesser black backed gull.

Wood pigeon	Blue/great tit box
Great tit	Bird box webcast showing nesting blue tits (Courtesy of the BBC)

Mammals

Fox, common rat, wood mouse, grey squirrel, pipistrelle bat, domestic cat.

Fox tracks in the snow

Terrestrial life

In a teaspoon of 'average soil' there are approximately 10 billion micro-organisms– more than there are (currently) humans on the planet.

Larger soil fauna at Chelsea Physic Garden include the following: Ground beetles, Stag beetles, earwigs, ants, harvestman, red spider mite, spiders, springtails, landhopper, garden snail, slugs, millipedes, centipedes, earthworms.

Female stag beetle	Spider on Sarracenia
Earthworm cast with leaf plug	Earthworms

Flying insects

Many of these are essential as pollinators without whom, seeds would not be produced: Solitary bees, bumble bees, honey bee (in hives), hoverflies, flies, wasps, aphids, ladybirds, shield bugs, moths, butterflies (including large/cabbage white, holly blue, orange tip, comma, red admiral, brimstone).

House fly	Hoverfly

Honey bee Find out more about honey bees (PDF/79KB)	Orange ladybird	7-spotted ladybird

Pondlife

The two ponds in the garden provide ideal habitats for a number of species of invertebrate as well as some vertebrates to whom water bodies provide essential breeding grounds. Many flying insects start off their life underwater – as larvae (where the animal in its early stages of development does not resemble the adult, denoted by L in text), or nymphs (where there is a similarity in body parts between the early stages of development and the adult, denoted by N in text). The animals listed here are visible without the need for a microscope:

• Invertebrates: Dragonflies (N), damselflies (N), caddisflies (L), mayflies (N), phantom midges (L), mosquitoes (L), water beetles, pond skaters, water boatmen, water flea, water hog louse, water mites, Cyclops, ramshorn snail, great pond snail, flatworms, leeches, tubifex worm, meniscus midge (L), lake limpet.
• Vertebrates: Three-spined stickleback, common frog, common toad, common newt.

Frog tadpoles	Ramshorn snail

Frogs mating amongst spawn	Dragonfly nymph	Adult dragonfly
Common frog - adult	Daphinia, part of an online microscope gallery (Courtesy of the BBC)