From scorpions to peacocks: the species thriving in London’s hidden microclimates | London

LOndon is the only place in the UK where you can find scorpions, snakes, turtles, seals, peacocks and hawks in one town – not London Zoo. Step outside and you’ll encounter a patchwork of urban microclimates twisting, buzzing and seething.

Sam Davenport, director of nature recovery at the London Wildlife Trust, highlights the wide variation in habitats found across British cities, creating a stunning ‘mosaic’ of wildlife.

“If you think about going to the countryside where you have arable fields, it’s really seamless. But if you walk a mile in each direction of a city, you’re going to find allotments, railway lines, patches of old-growth forest.”

Animals also thrive in cities because urban winters are milder than in the countryside. “It’s not uncommon in cities to see queen bumblebees feeding at Christmas,” Davenport said. “When it’s cold, the city is warmer. We have a microclimate that invertebrates can take advantage of.”

Beyond bees, species such as otters and herons benefit from waterways that are less likely to freeze, keeping food supplies more stable during the winter months.

Many species also adapt their behavior to urban life, changing where and how they hunt, the habitats they use, or the way they move across the landscape. “Cities are showing that nature is really good at adapting and finding a niche,” Davenport said.

Here are some of the species that have found a way to thrive in the big smoke:

Land

It turns out that the “London Underground mosquito” (Culex pipiens f. molestus) does not live up to its name. The insects became famous during World War II, when they preyed on Londoners seeking shelter from bombing in tube tunnels. But contrary to popular belief, they did not evolve underground. Their origins lie in the Middle East several thousand years ago, but they have since adapted happily to the temperate climate of the capital’s transport network.

Mosquitoes are not the only emigrants to have found refuge in the British urban jungle. More than 10,000 yellow-tailed scorpions (Tetratrichobothrius flavicaudis) are said to live in the crevices of the walls of the shipyard at Sheerness, Kent, and to have spawned a second colony in the docks of east London. They arrived in the UK in the 1800s, nestled in shipments of Italian masonry.

Meanwhile, Regent’s Park provides perfect forest conditions for the UK’s main population of Aesculapian snakes (Zamenis longissimus). One of the largest snake species in Europe, these olive-colored constrictors are believed to be escapees from a former research center, surviving in the wild by preying on rodents and birds.

Waterways

In 1957, the Natural History Museum declared the River Thames biologically dead. Since then, improvements to sewage systems and industrial waste disposal have transformed the river into a habitable ecosystem. The wildlife now found in the River Thames and its network of waterways is a striking environmental success story.

Otters, once endangered, can be seen playing in the water near the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Downstream in the Thames Estuary, hundreds of harbor seals sometimes wander inland to hunt returning fish in cleaner urban rivers.

London’s waterways have also attracted more unexpected residents. These include demon shrimp (Dikerogammarus hemobaphes)a disturbing species of aggressive omnivores from the Black Sea, and short-snouted seahorses (Seahorse seahorse)which would have drifted on the Gulf Stream – perhaps a more promising sign of the biological recovery of the Thames.

Two aquatic creatures compete for the Thames’ strangest origin story. First there are the red-eared turtles (Trachemys scripta elegans)imported to the United Kingdom from Mississippi and Mexico during the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle craze of the 1980s. Bought as pets and then abandoned, they have since thrived in urban ponds and canals. Some of the turtles seen today are likely the same pets from the 1980s, but significantly older.

Then there is the European eel (Anguilla anguilla), which has one of the strangest life cycles of all animals. After spawning in the Sargasso Sea near the Bahamas, eels drift on Atlantic currents to rivers like the Thames, where they can live for decades before making the long journey back to the Bahamas to die.

Sky

Peregrine Falcons (Falco peregrinus) are the fastest animals in the world – and they thrive in central London. Some of the town’s 40 or so breeding pairs roost on the towers of the Barbican, where locals report watching adults giving flying lessons to their young.

From the Barbican, falcons often spend the day at the Tate Modern, just across the river. Although they generally do not hunt at night, they have adapted to urban life, preying on nocturnal migratory birds attracted by the glow of streetlights.

Bats also live comfortably alongside humans. They are commonly found along canals, disused industrial buildings, in homes – and even on Regent Street. Wildlife experts believe they move much like human commuters, using linear railway embankments as guides through the city.

Other birds are a legacy of Britain’s aristocratic past. Peacocks, for example, are known to strut around the Kyoto Garden in Holland Park, wild descendants of birds once kept by the nobility.

Meanwhile, the ancestors of the pelicans who live in St James’s Park were gifted to King Charles II by the Russian ambassador in 1664.