Together with Oakington & Westwick Environment Action Group (EAG), we are starting to work on a village Nature Recovery Project. Our goals are to record the wildlife in Oakington & Westwick and take action to improve habitats and increase nature.

The APollOW survey – help count and record pollinators!

For 15 locations around the village, and any others you choose including gardens, we aim to record weekly counts of pollinators over the months April – September. Each count only takes 15 minutes and you can record the results on a phone app or a printed form.

Volunteer to do a weekly count, or just as and when you can manage. You don’t need to know a lot about insects (or flowers) to take part – if you can tell a bee from a butterfly you’re almost there!

• How to do an APollOW count (and where to download the FIT count app)
• Why we’re doing it
• Upcoming training sessions (optional but may be helpful!)
• Read more on the APollOW page
• Results from of 2025

We welcome children as well as adults. If you would like to take part, contact the project via SOW at SustainableOW@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from you.

Garden Birdwatch and iRecord

As well as the APollOW survey, this year we are also encouraging people to participate in the Garden Bird Survey and to continue to use iRecord to record interesting wildlife (plants, animals, …) that you’ve seen around Oakington & Westwick (and beyond!)

Here are some of the latest sightings.

Nature Recovery

The abundance of UK wildlife has plummeted since 1970. This is the dismal result of intensive agriculture, climate change, pollution and the thoughtless destruction of habitats for building etc. Cambridgeshire has one of the poorest records of all UK counties for biodiversity.

But Natural Cambridgeshire has a plan to ‘double nature’ in the next ten years and we are part of a Nature Recovery Project based around the city of Cambridge. Oakington and Westwick are in an opportunity area focusing on traditional orchards, ditches and droves.

Improving habitats

Encourage wildlife in your garden – here are some tips – and some specifically for encouraging pollinators.

We are looking for volunteers who could lead on managing the verges of Longstanton Road for wildlife. Expert advice is available! If you’d be interest please get in touch.

Stay in the loop

If you’d like to be kept updated about the Nature Recovery Project, please email SOW to be added to the Nature Recovery email list.