Hedgehog (Photo By Gibe, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29948)

Well, Readers, the results are in – you might remember that back in July, the Bank of England announced that it would feature native British animals on its next bank notes, and asked us all to vote on what we fancied. Well, the hedgehog (259k votes) came out on top in the mammals, narrowly beating the red fox(245k votes) – I’m not displeased as goodness knows hedgehogs could do with a bit of help.

In birds, the barn owl won (270k votes), beating the kingfisher (211k votes) into second place.

Barn owl in flight (Photo By Dannymoore1973, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=104101425)

In the amphibians, insects and fish section, the buff-tailed bumblebee absolutely ran away with the vote, with 360k votes compared to their closest rival, the emperor dragonfly with only 144k votes. And very well deserved too. As you all know, I have a soft spot for our native bees, and bumblebees are amongst my favourites.

Buff-tailed bumblebee on winter honeysuckle

But wait! A fourth animal has been chosen for the bank notes – the Atlantic puffin, chosen as the most popular marine animal (with 183k votes). I suspect some designer out there just wants a shot at that colourful puffin beak.

Atlantic Puffin (Photo By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=106949397)

You can read the full results here.

Work will now begin on designing the notes, which will need to incorporate new security features as well to keep ahead of the forgers. It would be nice if the notes also incorporated some of our native flora, as suggested by Plantlife. I’ll keep you posted!