Wildlife at Highgate Cemetery

Those of you who visit this most magical corner of North London may be fortunate enough to enjoy the many aspects of wildlife that Highgate Cemetery has to offer as you walk round. Wild flowers, ferns and mosses can be seen everywhere at most times of the year, and over forty species of birdlife frequent the cemetery – many of those nesting here year after year. You may also be lucky enough to see or hear green or greater-spotted woodpeckers and even the occasional tawny owl hooting.  You may also spot one of our resident foxes or a hedgehog and, on a dark evening, maybe a bat flying overhead in anticipation of twilight.

We are proud to have some twenty species of butterfly throughout the spring and summer, the most recent visitors (summer 2009) including a Clouded Yellow which has followed an invasion of Painted Ladies. It has been a good year for butterflies generally, although because it has also been a good year for wasps, our special Highgate butterfly - the Holly Blue - has suffered as the wasps play havoc with their larvae. The Holly Blue at Highgate is shortly to be featured in the BBC Bristol documentary on British butterflies, to be shown around October/ November next year (2010).

Martin Ellwood