Good morning.Today I'd like to present the findings of our Year 2 project on wildlife found in gardens throughout our city.
早上好。今天我想就我们大二关于城市花园中发现的野生动物的项目发表调查结果。
I'll start by saying something about the background to the project,
我先介绍一下项目的背景，
then talk a little bit about our research techniques, and then indicate some of our interim findings.
然后介绍我们的研究方法，最后介绍一些我们临时的调查结果。
First of all,how did we choose our topic?
首先，我们如何选择主题？
Well,there are four of us in the group and one day while we were discussing a possible focus,
在小组里有我们4个人，一天当我们讨论可选的主题时，
two of the group mentioned that they had seen yet more sparrow-hawks-one of Britain's most interesting birdsof prey
其中两个人提到他们看到许多雀鹰，英国最有趣的猛禽之一
in their own city centre gardens and wondered why they were turning up in these gardens in great numbers.
在城市中心的花园里，大家好奇为什么它们会大量的出现在这些花园里。
We were all very engaged by the idea of why wild animals would choose to inhabit a city garden.
我们都迫切想知道为什么这些野生动物会选择在一个城市花园栖息。
Why is it so popular with wildlife when the countryside itself is becoming less so?
为什么这里这么受野生动物的欢迎，而乡村的吸引力却变小了？
The first thing we did was to establish what proportion of the urban land is taken up by private gardens.
我们做的第一件事是调查有多少私人花园占据了城市用地。
We estimated that it was about one fifth,
我们估计大约是五分之一，
and this was endorsed by looking at large-scale usage maps in the town land survey office - 24% to be precise.
而这点通过查看城市土地测量局的大范围地图得以证实，确切的说是24%。
Our own informal discussions with neighbours and friends led us to believe
在与邻居和朋友的闲谈中，我们发现
that many garden owners had interesting experiences to relate regarding wild animal sightings
很多花园的主人在观看野生动物方面有一些有趣的经历，
so we decided to survey garden owners from different areas of the city.
所以我们决定调查城市不同地区的花园主人。
Just over 100 of them completed a survey once every two weeks for twelve months.
他们中只有100多人完成了调查，在一年中每两周做一次。
ticking off species they had seen from a pro forma list - and adding the names of any rarer ones.
在列表上标出他们看到的物种，并加上稀有物种的名字。
Meanwhile, we were doing our own observations in selected gardens throughout the city.
同时，我们也在城市选定的花园里做一些自己的观测。
We deliberately chose smaller ones because they were by far the most typical in the city.
我们特意选择一些小型公园，因为它们是城市中最为典型的。
The whole point of the projuct was to look at the norm not the exception.
这个项目的重点是调查常规，而非例外。
Alongside this primary research on urban gardens,
在城市花园做这些初步测试的同时，
we were studying a lot of books about the decline of wild animals in the countryside and thinking of possible causes for this.
我们还研究许多关于乡村野生动物减少的书籍，思考产生这种情况的原因。
So what did we find?
那么我们发现了什么？
Well,so much that I just won't have time to tell you about here.
我们发现了很多，但是我没有时间在这里告诉你们。
If you're interested in reading our more comprehensive findings, we've produced detailed graphic representations on the college web-site
如果你想读到更多全面的调查结果，
and of course any of the group would be happy to talk to you about them. Just email us.
我们的网站上有详细的图示，而且任何一组人都乐意为你介绍它们。发电邮给我们就行。
What we've decided to present today is information about just three species
今天我们打算介绍三种物种的信息，
because we felt these gave a good indication of the processes at work in rural and urban settings as a whole.
因为我们觉得这些很好地反映了在乡村和城市的工作过程。