Juanita Browne: Do you have 10 minutes to carry out an easy pollinator survey?

If you’ve been planting pollinator-friendly flowers or reducing pesticide use or grass-cutting, doing regular FIT counts will allow you to measure the impact of those actions

Doing a FIT count is easy and fun. Picture: Peter Cutler

It is well known that the numbers of pollinating insects, such as bees and flies, are declining. We know this through monitoring insect abundance over time, and it’s vitally important to always continue to track changes. 

One way that anyone can help with this vital data collection is by spending just 10 minutes doing a Flower-Insect-Timed Count, or FIT count. Simply by counting the numbers of insects that land on a small patch of flowers, you can help researchers at the National Biodiversity Data Centre to understand changes in the abundance of flower-visiting insects.