Nature – Enviro-Mentalist

Mad dogs and wildlife surveyors

With temperatures soaring, you would have to be a fool to go out in the midday sun. Unless you had a wildlife survey to do. This weekend, like a fool, I went out twice. On Saturday I did my monthly BeeWalk (now in the fourth year), and on Sunday I went to survey a square for the Wider Countryside Butterfly Survey.

The Bee Walk can vary in difficulty, depending on the time of year. Early in the year there are only queens to worry about, as the season goes on there are workers, males and cuckoos thrown into the mix. I am not the most confident bee identifier, so I really should get some practice in before hand, especially when the lavender is in full flower and the bees are buzzing all over the place. Much easier to be confident identifying the different species in the field than to try and take photos, do diagrams and count at the same time.

I did take a little diversion on the way home to try and see my second favourite butterfly (Marbled White) and also to check that the Brown Argus are still where I expect them to be (although not for much longer as the site is going to be built on). Both were ticks – my first for the year for both species. Brown Argus are a bit tricky to ID, unless you are prepared – they look very much like a female Common Blue – except that they have two dots that are close together on the underside of their hindwing making it look like a figure of 8. The Blues don’t have this, but they do have an extra spot of the underside of the forewing. Fortunately the Argus does like to pose with its wings closed so you can be sure of the ID.

On Sunday I had a cunning plan – get out early to look for butterflies and get home before the heat really ramps up. Unfortunately the old adage of fail to plan, plan to fail, held true for me. I was picking up a route that had already been done by a previous surveyor a couple of years ago. But, I thought I knew where I was going and, armed with my print off of the map I set off in high spirits having just seen a Red Kite overhead. I took this as a good omen as it is my favourite bird of prey. In hindsight, maybe it was looking for the carrion from previous unprepared surveyors. The survey involves walking two roughly parallel 1km paths, and should take about one to two hours. (Although the last square I had was in the land where butterflies feared to fly and it took about 30 minutes because I only had to count 5 on the entire route). I was happily following the field margins along the path, counting large whites, small whites, meadow browns and gatekeepers. I even managed to spot my favourite butterfly, the small copper – which was an unexpected bonus – things were going well.

Then, I thought I had reached the end of the first 5 parts (of 10) of my walk. I emerged onto a road – and found I was back where I had parked my car – not halfway along my walk, but actually at the end. I had to start all over again! I hadn’t realised that the path I was supposed to take went through the middle of the field, but instead I had followed a path that wasn’t marked on my map! So I walked down the road, and tried to find out where I should have gone – sorted. I did the last three bits of that part and went to go and find the route back – and got lost again. Instead of going through a field, I was in a housing estate and found myself on a completely different road – it took me nearly 30 minutes to get back to where I should have been!

On the plus side I did see a nice dragonfly, survived the field with cows in it and still managed to find a Small Copper (actually two of them) on my proper route. But, instead of being out for about an hour or so, I spent two and a half hours in the sun – good job I had factor 25 and insect repellent on as well as a stout hat.

So, for anyone thinking of going out and surveying, please do but be more prepared than I was – visit the area first so you know the route, and make sure you have an idea about the species you are likely to see. I was told earlier this week that lots of people send in records of the rarer butterflies such as Purple Emperor and Wood Whites, but there are not many records of the generalists – people will just report lots of whites, or plenty of gatekeepers – which is not really very helpful to determine the state of the butterfly (delete and add in appropriate wildlife) population.

Sorry, rant coming up

There has been quite a lot in the press recently about our disappearing wildlife – the Guardian and Independent ran just two examples in the last few months.

The State of Nature Report in 2016 gave two main reasons for the decline in UK wildlife – climate change and agricultural practices. One of the best things to do to reduce climate change is to stop flying. Simple. It has more impact than going vegetarian as far as climate change is concerned – halving meat intake for a year would only have the same impact as not going on one return flight to New York. But, of course, there are other environmental impacts related to farming beyond climate change such as pesticide use, monocultures and pollution.

So, in order to help wildlife we should stop flying, reduce our travel in general, eat less meat and be more aware of where our food comes from (and associated food miles) and how it is produced.

Why then, do wildlife NGOs not try and positively influence the behaviour of their members. The BTO has a long standing partnership with Syngenta which manufactures the neonics that have recently been banned for flowering crops in the UK due to their harmful impact on pollinators. As many farmland birds rely on insects for food one can only assume that the use of the neonics is not a positive thing for them either. I cancelled my membership of the BTO when I discovered this. The RSPB magazine (when I was a member) was littered with adverts for foreign holidays round the world. Indeed they even have a section on their website about Eco Tourism which admittedly does push the benefits of staying in the UK or travelling by train. But, it states on the page that 45% of members surveyed had been on three holidays in the last 12 months. I cancelled my RSPB membership because of their constant push of foreign holidays and foreign birding articles. Even my beloved Butterfly Conservation is not immune – they had 5 adverts for foreign holidays in the latest edition of Butterfly, two less than last time I suppose. At least two out of three of the Woodland Trust’s holiday adverts are for train journeys into Europe.

So, I implore those at the conservation charities, and anyone who is worried about the decline in UK wildlife to think about their travel and their food choices, otherwise you are directly contributing to the decline of the wildlife that you purport to conserve.

All about bees

Wild bees are pretty amazing creatures. I already knew that – I have the books sitting on my bookshelf and in my wishlist to prove it. But I attended a talk this week that gave me even more reasons to love bees and, hopefully the inspiration to go out and study them in the local area (as there are not that many records for this part of the country).

Most bees are excavators, although some nest in holes in walls (or bee hotels) and some make their nest in empty snail shells (they hide these under sticks they collect – how cool is that?). They provision a cell with pollen, lay an egg and seal it up, then leave more pollen and an egg and onwards until they reach the front. Girl bees will be at the back with more pollen (because they are bigger larvae and bees) and boy bees at the front so they emerge first and are ready when the girls emerge.

One species of furrow bee is sometimes a solitary bee and sometimes a social bee – in the north they are solitary and in the south they are more likely to be social – the queen producing workers to forage whilst she guards the nest.

One solitary bee , Ceratina cyanea, (which unfortunately doesn’t seem to live in Northamptonshire) is fairly unique in a) living in bramble stems and b) surviving the winter as an adult.

Bees also have their parasites and cuckoos – in fact 27% of bee species in this country are brood parasites – that means they take over the host’s nest rather than killing and eating the larvae (although the queen often gets killed). Fortunately, the parasites are rarer than their hosts – otherwise they would soon wipe themselves out. One set of brood parasites are the Nomada bees (that look a lot like wasps) – these wasp-like bees are about the same size as their hosts and find them by smelling their nests. I took these pictures of the Ashy Mining bee and its associated Nomada parasite at work.

Nomada Bee – Parasite of Ashy Mining Bee

There are lots more amazing facts that make solitary and bumble bees worth studying, but I don’t want to reveal all their secrets.

130 species have been recorded in Northamptonshire, but only 80 have been recorded since 2000. Some may have been lost, mainly due to land use change, but some may still be here just waiting to be found. Now where’s my guide book and sweep net?

Some firsts for me.

In the last week I have been out and about a bit more getting some time in the great outdoors. This has been aided by some new insect repellant that seems to be working so far.

In the past week I have completed another bumble bee survey – better than last month but only half the number seen last year, spent a happy couple of hours just looking and photographing around Daventry, to be completed on Saturday with a WildSide recording sessions with the fab and enthusiastic Ryan Clark.

I’ve uploaded all of my sightings (or at least those that I can identify or have a semi-decent photo for) either onto iRecord or the local Biodiversity Records Centre, as well as entering my BeeWalk data so I am keeping last week’s resolution.

One of the joys of recording nature is that you are constantly discovering new things. During the BeeWalk this month we found a long-horned beetle that I’d not seen before, last month was my first Mother Shipton moth.

On Monday I was quite excited to discover that there were quite a lot of bee orchids flowering in Daventry (for once the mowers hadn’t done for them) and, quite unexpectedly I found a pyramidal orchid next to them. I am reliably informed that this might be the first record for this in the Daventry area.

Then, during the recording session at Mill Park Nature Reserve in Long Buckby, I found a small magpie moth. Completely new for me, and although quite common in the county, still something to get excited about I think.

And, the more you look, the more you learn and then the more closely you look. A virtuous naturing circle.

My next task is to start making a full list of the species I have seen and then keep it up to date!

New Resolutions

Despite my best intentions, for a nature lover and local organiser of a survey for Butterfly Conservation I am not very good when it comes to recording and submitting my own sightings – whether it is birds or bees, or anything in between. It’s not as if there is a shortage of ways to submit and record data.

When I do record my data I tend to use either the appropriate survey scheme site (i.e. the Butterfly Conservation site, BTO BirdTrack site, or the Bumblebee Conservation Trust BeeWalk site) or the iRecord site but there are many other recording schemes and apps out there that will automatically plot your position and give a more accurate location.

But, the very first recording I did was with the Woodland Trust’s Nature’s Calendar. This has been going for twenty years now and, with a database of 2.7 million records, has shown the effect of a changing climate on the various events that happen each year in the Natural World. Whether it is the first or last sighting of swifts, your first orange-tip butterfly or when blackberries ripen, there are a host of events to choose. I haven’t logged into Nature’s Calendar for many years, but having just read an article in the British Wildlife Magazine highlighting some recorders with over 2000 records clearly showing the shifts with changing temperatures I am shamed into digging out my password, logging on and making a list of the things I can easily record in expected chronological order – something to do on my day off tomorrow! Perhaps this will encourage me to keep better records – I can feel a new notebook coming on…

Bring on the butterflies

After a day dedicated to bees last week, this weekend it was time for the butterflies to entice me into the sunshine. It started when I noticed a painted lady fluttering around the bottom of the garden. These migrants are certainly some of the most flamboyant of butterflies – as beautiful on the underside as the upper side of their wings. They were enjoying the buddleia which they were sharing with several red admirals a couple of peacocks and a small tortoiseshell.

So after a quick detour via the front garden where a small skipper was enjoying the verbena bonariensis I went for a wander to a field that I’d seen my first brown argus in last year. In fact it was apparently the first time in many years that it had been recorded in Daventry.

The field is much more overgrown than last year with fewer plants, but it was alive with the sound of grasshoppers and crickets. I only walked a short way in when I saw arguably one of our most beautiful butterfly, the small copper. I have only ever seen it in this field and at the country park in Daventry. It may be small, but it is dazzling. My pictures today really don’t do it justice, but it was constantly hiding behind grasses when it had its wings open.

small copper_2

I wasn’t really expecting to see a brown argus again, but luck was on my side and I got really good views. It is an inconspicuous looking butterfly, and often confused with a female common blue, but the brown spots on its forewing and the lack of blue even near the body convinced me I had found my quarry.

brown argus_2

Speaking of common blues – there were quite a few of them about – some of them having a bit of a quarrel and some not. The males are a beautiful blue whereas the females have varying amounts of blue on them, all the way through to almost completely brown.

common blue common blues

Sadly all of these butterflies were in a field that they are planning to put old people housing on. So, this could be the last time I see brown argus and small coppers in Daventry.

Bee Festival

Thanks to social media I discovered that Coventry University (their Centre for Agriculture, Water and Resilience) were running a two day bee festival just down the road at Ryton Gardens with the fantastic Steven Falk author of the THE bee ID book – and it was free.

I sat through three brilliant talks in the morning with three interesting and very enthusiastic presenters. First there was the aforementioned Mr Falk. How he crammed in so much information in less than an hour I don’t know. He spoke about his book, discovering new species including the use of DNA to prove an 18th century naturalist right and the different families of bee – I don’t think any of us there will forget the Pantaloon Bee! Next up was Andrew Salisbury from the RHS talking about the trials that they’d carried out at Wisley to find out if native, near-native (i.e. Northern Hemisphere) or exotic (Southern Hemisphere) plants were better for pollinators. The answer – depends on the pollinator. It was very interesting to see how they carried out the trial, such a lot of meticulous hard work. I was also interested to hear that they only saw 80 butterflies over the multi-year survey – I am not sure that butterflies visit gardens in great numbers unless you have a buddleia.

Finally we had Brigit Strawbridge talking about plants and pollination. She almost contained her enthusiasm for bees! Fact of the day that I learnt was that you won’t spot honey bees on lavender unless it is warm as it takes hot weather for the nectaries to fill up enough for the short tongued bees like honey bees to be able to feed. But brambles keep on providing nectar for days – that explains why the bees love my silver stemmed Rubus and shun the lavender for it!

In the afternoon Steven Falk entertained a large crowd on a search for bees around Ryton Organic Gardens – he was hoping for 20, but we were all satisfied with the 17 that we did see – including this Osmia leaiana showing its orange pollen collecting scopa on the underside.

Osmia leaiana-osmia leaiana

The whole festival was put on by BloomsForBees a new initiative promoting Citizen Science and plants for pollinators with a new App and website to help log the bees and the plants they are enjoying.

I had a fantastic day, made some new friends and renewed my love of bees. A recent workshop about solitary bees that suggested that there was no point trying to ID solitary bees unless you were willing to learn latin and kill the bees for subsequent dissection dampened my enthusiasm quite a lot. Steven Falk loves giving bees English names that make them more memorable and showed how much there was to discover without the aid of a killing jar and microscope. And, as for his knowledge of flowers… All I can say is if you get the chance to go on a Bee Walk or Workshop with Steven – grab it and his book which has been sitting unused on my shelf for too long.

Metamorphosis – March Book Review

Metamorphosis – Astonishing Insect Transformations – the subtitle definitely describes the content of this book by Rupert Soskin.

Insects – often overlooked, thought of as bugs or pests, possibly with the exception of butterflies (although the cabbage white butterfly springs to mind) but with around one million species known and named. Untold numbers are still to be found. Contrast that with birds – ten thousand; mammals – five thousand; even reptiles and amphibians only manage fifteen thousand between them. It is no surprise then that there are many things that even the most fervent entomologist can still learn about this diverse class of creatures.

In Metamorphosis the author beautifully illustrates an area that I haven’t yet seen covered in another book – the transformation that insects must undergo to get from an egg (in the majority of cases) to the adults of the species that we are usually most familiar with. This lack of familiarity is despite the fact that the adult stage is usually the shortest with many living days or weeks but spending years as a larva or nymph.

The book is essentially in two parts – those insects that go through several instars (stages); looking to some degree like miniature versions of the adults, and those that undergo a complete transformation from what is essentially a tube of innards to something completely different (the most obvious example being the change from a caterpillar to a butterfly).

I started off wondering so much of the book was devoted to the first class of insects; the hemimetabolous insects (the young of which are called nymphs) when the changes they go through are nowhere near as marked as those of the holometabolous examples. But, as the author explains, the only way that an insect can grow is to shed its skin – and, in some cases (such as some of the shield bugs) I don’t think many people would match juvenile with adult.

What makes this book a joy to read are of course the photographs. Where many books show the adults in all their glory, Rupert Soskin shows the different stages in the life of the insect, from egg to larva / nymph, to chrysalis and adult.

The photographs are beautiful and I can only begin to wonder at the patience of the author as he waited to get the shots. Within the different chapters there are of course notes about the insects and their lives – after all, the photos only tell half of the story. In some cases he has even shown the scale of the insects – a very helpful device.

I was a little disappointed at first when I saw how many of the insects are from outside the UK and therefore something I am never likely to see (no matter how much the climate changes). But, they were fascinating – I was completely won over by the stick insects and the Peruvian Horsehead Grasshoppers.

All the main orders are included from grasshoppers to mantids, dragonflies to beetles, butterflies, moths, flies bees, wasps to hemiptera. I began to wonder how he decided what to include and also what didn’t make the final cut.

I thought that the sections on the butterflies and moths were interesting choices, showing the changes in size and coloration of the caterpillars and the resulting adult. But, my favourite photo of all (other than the horsehead grasshoppers, mantids and stick insects) had to be the female wasp removing water from her nest after the rain – just fantastic, one of the best insect shots I have seen and behaviour I hadn’t heard about. Just one of the many interesting aspects of insect life that Mr Soskin managed to capture and share.

I have only two real complaints about the book; I would love to have known more about how he took the photos – he has a small section about this but it was very short on actual details and I would have liked it to have been twice the size with more fantastic insects and beautiful photos (this is of course selfish as the book is 250 pages long).

This is a beautiful coffee table book that I could look at again and again, and a starter for anyone interested in insects showcasing some of the less well known stages of their lives. Whilst it is only a starter, it does include some further reading suggestions that will be making an appearance on my birthday wish list. Many thanks Mr Soskin for creating such a wonderful book (and to Northampton Library for stocking it so I didn’t have to wait until my birthday to read it).

Such an understated duck

In the last few months I have been spending some time watching the ducks at Daventry Country Park. There don’t tend to be any unusual ducks there (at least not when I’m looking) but there are usually lots of them in the winter and several of the usual species.

One duck that I usually find there all year round is the gadwall. At first glance it is just a brown duck – the drakes and ducks are both brown. But, when you look more closely (unfortunately something my photo is not good enough to allow), there is an awful lot of detail – grey stripes and speckles – which makes them look very dapper indeed. The female looks very much like a mallard female, the picture above is a drake. Both sexes have the white flash on the wing bar, but the drake has that black patch at the rear end along with a black bill (the female’s is black on top and orange at the bottom) and beautiful chestnut feathers on the wings above the white bar.

Although the gadwall is here all year round, the numbers are boosted in the south east and midlands with birds from eastern Europe.

I don’t remember seeing gadwall when I was growing up (even on visits to Martin Mere). This might be because I just didn’t notice them or because back in the 1970s and 80s there weren’t many in the UK, especially not outside the south east. Numbers have increased about 5 per cent a year for the last 25 years. The release of captive birds, including a large number in Leicestershire, is a possible reason for their increased range and numbers.

So, next time you decide not to notice a grey-brown bird with a white wing patch – have a change of heart and a closer look – they really are a lovely dabbling duck.

New Year Plant Hunt

Flushed with the success of actually completing a nature survey last year (Bumble Bee Conservation’s Bee Walk) I decided to start the New Year off with more naturing and decided to look for flowering plants to submit to BSBI ‘s New Year Plant Hunt. I’d had a bit of a look round Daventry last week and saw quite a few plants in flower including daisies and clover so I was hopeful it wouldn’t be a complete dud.

I should mention, that I am at least as bad at recognising plants as I am bees, but I took my camera with me to get some shots so I stood a slight chance of finding out what they were at some point. Unfortunately, a lot of the shots were not very good, but I still managed an ID of all the plants. Final count was 15! Not bad for an hour of looking around housing estates in Daventry really. (I also found a couple of mushrooms as well that I am hoping I have ID’d).

These are two of the shots I’m not ashamed of, first Blackthorn flowering over two months earlier than I would have expected and then a plant I have seen quite often but never recognised; green alakanet. I had thought it was a member of the speedwell family, but it isn’t. I am not surprised to discover it is a member of the Borage family – I thought those leaves looked familiar!

The full list of flowers that I found is as follows:

Common Daisy
Common Dandelion
White Dead Nettle
Red Dead Nettle
Common Groundsel
Common Ragwort
Common Whitlow Grass
Common Field Speedwell
Green Alkanet
Creeping Buttercup
Common Mouse Ear
Common Bittercress
Shepherd’s Purse
Blackthorn
Smooth Sow Thistle.

The word common means that these should not be a surprise, but I have learned the names of 5 new flowers already and it is only the second of January!