Dr Judith Webb

Judy was interviewed as part of a video filmed by Oxford City Council on volunteering - available here
(If there's no sound, check below video that sound is turned on.)

The Autumn 2019 edition, No. 88, of the Bulletin of the Dipterists Forum includes Judy's updated article 'Flowers for Flies' (2019). Did you know that many flowers that are useful to pollinators such as bees and moths are of little use to flies? Most weak-armed, delicate-bodied, flies can't open up flowers like strong bees and a few largeish hoverflies can - see 'Time for a Change' on p. 8 of the article.

Marsh lousewort, Pedicularis palustris
Photo by Judy Webb

An article by Judy, '“The use of Marsh Lousewort as an ecosystem engineer in fen restoration” (June 2020), has been posted on The Freshwater Habitats Trust website.

It is referred to in her June 2020 Tweets about the plant.
(11 pm 16 June - omission of slide with 2nd and 3rd tweets now corrected)

Judy at Long Mead Local Wildlife Site, 20 May 2020 - photo by Catriona Bass

20 May 2020 - more photos here
Judy visited Long Mead Local Wildlife Site at the invitation of the owner, Catriona Bass. The LWS is adjacent to the Thames near Eynsham and the Swinford toll road. Judy described it as being at the 'sheets of flowering buttercups' stage:
'We walked through Catriona's meadow and some neighbouring floodplain meadows to discuss her Meadow Restoration Project* to work with landowners to diversify nearby floodplain meadows using green hay from Long Mead. I first walked through Long Mead and recorded the vegetation in summer 1978 in my very first paid job as a meadows surveyor for NCC.** Of course, I cannot remember her individual meadow but Catriona has my data. It still has most of the species I found but seems to have lost the devil’s bit scabious, which is a pity'.

* During 20 years of farming Long Mead, Catriona had noticed a dramatic decline in wildlife species, which was the motivation for launching two nature recovery initiatives – The Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project and Long Mead Biodiversity Research Project. For more information see her report of 16 Sept 2019 on Creating a Nature Recovery Network in Eynsham, which gives her contact details at the end. NOTE: due to COVID-19 restrictions, the June 'Back Garden Wildflower Workshops' referred to have had to be postponed.

** The Nature Conservancy Council (NCC) was replaced by English Nature (EN) in 1991. English Nature was merged with the Countryside Agency and Rural Development Service in 2006 to form Natural England (NE), the Government’s adviser for the natural environment in England.

18 April 2020:
Another find during daily walk - Judy reported:
'I discovered a dandelion species (microspecies) new to the county at the end of my road in Kidlington. Bertha’s dandelion, Taraxacum berthae. Also way out of normal range. May have come in on soil. Benefits of lockdown botany!' See Tweets and photos

9 April 2020:
While taking her daily exercise walk Judy found some bulbous meadow grass, Poa bulbosa. As she tweeted, there is 'only one previous County record, according to BSBI Maps and County Recorder'. See her Tweets and photo

18 February 2020:
Judy was at Barracks Lane Meadow SLINC (to the NW of Cowley Marsh Park) with volunteers tackling the overgrowth of blackthorn - see Cowley Marsh Park page.

Judy at Aston Rowant on 27 January 2020
examining what had dropped out on beating the canopies of junipers to see which invertebrates are using them in winter. The old junipers had a good number of juniper shield bugs.

Photos taken by Judy of the bugs and of other volunteers working at Aston Rowant that day, as well as mosses and lichens she found there on 29 January 2020, can be seen here

Members of the FHT's Oxfordshire Fens Project committee visiting one of the SSSI fen sites. An old artesian well can be seen in the foreground.
Four other privately-owned SSSI fens are included in the project, all currently partly classified as in ‘Unfavourable’ condition. At the request of the owners their location has not been divulged. Work on these four SSSIs is being funded by an EU Water Environment Grant* secured by the Freshwater Habitats Trust. *New page added by FHT to their website.

Photo from p. 3 of the FHT's River Ock Catchment Partnership Winter 2019 Newsletter (the first edition of this newsletter), posted here by kind permission of the Freshwater Habitats Trust. Click on photo to see it full size.
From left to right: Ellie Mayhew, Regional Project Officer for the FHT, Jeremy Biggs, the Trust's Director, David Morris, BSBI/Vice-County 23 Recorder, Rod d'Ayala, an ecologist skilled in wetland hydrology, Judy Webb and Steve Gregory, a freelance ecologist, skilled in entomology.

The Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust's Wild Oxford Project

Judy has been involved in BBOWT's Wild Oxford project since it began in 2014. She is the ecology advisor and was contracted to prepare yearly surveys and reports for each of the first four sites involved - Lye Valley, Cherwell Valley, Rivermead Nature Park and Raleigh Park - until 2019. Now that the fundamental work to improve those sites has been completed, BBOWT will take over the monitoring, but Judy will be providing yearly advice on management plans. In addition, she joins in the volunteering work on each of those sites.

Judy appears in a short video filmed in Rivermead Nature Park by BBOWT about their Wild Oxford Project in August 2019/ first seen with white hat, busy with orange-rimmed net and later explaining her involvement in the project. Andy Gunn, BBOWT’s Community Wildlife Manager (Oxfordshire) and Wild Oxford Project Officer, as well as Carl Whitehead, Parks Ranger and Coordinator of Volunteers for Oxford City Council, whom Judy works with volunteering on Wild Oxford sites and other parks and wildlife sites in Oxford, are among others who feature in it.

In the video Judy explains the two different aspects of her work for the Wild Oxford Project: contracted work to give ecological advice and provide yearly reports on the sites and the species they support, and secondly, doing voluntary work with various groups on the sites.The photo, taken from from the the second part of that video, which automatically plays after the first, shows Judy (white hat) talking to other volunteers at Rivermead Nature Park.

Twitter @judyweb32049878

5 July 2020: Lye Valley
Oxford Conservation Volunteers' work over two Sundays.

ASTON ROWANT is under the 'MORE' menu tab.

Photos of Dunstan Park
16 April 2020

Judy's 2019 report on Creeping marshwort - click here

Following time spent as a teacher of Biology, Judy was involved for 9 years in forensic environmental trace evidence surveys. The founder member of the New Marston Wildlife Group (now Friends of Milham Ford Nature Park), she is now an enthusiastic Oxford freelance ecologist and species recorder with a special interest in rare wetland plants (Sium latifolium is one of her ‘Flora Guardian’ species within the Oxfordshire Flora Group of the ANHSO), as well as flies and bees, although her interests also extend to other insects and fungi.

More about Judy

BBOWT WILD OXFORD PROJECT
Reports prepared by Judy on
Wild Oxford Project sites can be found under the heading 'Read the Wild Oxford project reports' near the bottom of this BBOWT website page.
Judy's reports for 2018-2019 have been submitted but not yet posted on the BBOWT website.

BBOWT event held at the University of Oxford's Museum of Natural History on 26 Sept 2018 to show progress over the last five years: click here

Dipterists Forum - see FLIES

Bacterium threat to UK plants and trees: national appeal for help to spot 'cuckoo spit', caused by nymphs of froghoppers - see information here

Submissions by Judy to Oxford City Council in relation to Consultations and Planning Applications

See separate page for Northern Gateway Area Action Plan