Enviro-Mentalist – Page 5 – An Ordinary Person's Views on Living With Minimal Environmental Impact

The importance of urban green spaces

There has been a lot of debate about green belt land and building on brown field sites, but the importance of urban spaces is often overlooked. A recently published paper by M.H. Surohi e al looked at the populations of bees (solitary and eusocial, the latter being where a non-reproductive individuals care for the young of a single female as is the case with bumblebees) in an urban centre – in this case Northampton, the town where I work.

They surveyed several sites over the flight periods of the bees (March to October) within 500 metres of the geographical centre of the town (aka All Saints Church) and also some sites slightly further out that were local nature reserves or orchards. Their results were somewhat surprising (especially if you know how built up the middle of Northampton is) and found 48 species of bees within the town, representing 22% of the known species of bee (there are just over 250 in the UK) including one that is nationally rare. They also found that the urban sites were more diverse and abundant in bees than the meadows and nature reserves on the edge of town. The areas surveyed in the town consisted of roadside verges and roundabouts, gardens and churchyards.

Most of the bees were seen in the period from March to June, and the most dominant genus was that of the mining bees, Andrena which shows the importance of having non-tarmaced areas! Less surprising was the fact that hte most abundant species was Osmia Bicornis, the mason bee which nests in walls – it would find plenty of those in the middle of Northampton.

All this makes me even more determined to try and determine the insects sharing the hospital site in Northampton – I have already seen the ashy mining bee there along with its nomada parasite. Time to get my camera out…

Ashy mining bee, Andrena cineraria, not at the hospital

The Tern Report – 2015

This year I saw my first common terns back at the country park on 19th April – this is about the same time as last year, give or take a day or two and is one of the many signs of summer. Even better news is that there are now two shiny (figuratively speaking) new tern rafts with a much better view of the nesting level. Thank you Daventry Country Park!

I’ve been over a couple of times since they returned and will try and get there more regularly going forward (weather and work permitting). The first time was about a week after they had arrived. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, but very little fish catching in evidence. I only saw them dipping towards the surface, perhaps finding very small crustaceans or just taking insects.

None of the terns seemed particularly settled on any tern raft, so I don’t think they had particularly paired up. However, I did see what might have been courtship / pairing as described in the Tern book that I recently read. I saw two birds circling in the air, slowly gliding downwards passing past each other – called high flight in the book. I missed the ascent, but the book describes it as ‘a gliding descent in which the birds sway from side to side so that their paths repeatedly cross’. That’s pretty much what I saw.

Other things I noted that day was a grey heron’s nest above the water, three sandpipers and an absence of Black Headed Gulls – I guess these have gone off to breed, and a sedge warbler singing.

So, fast forward almost a week and I was back at the country park to check on my terns. This time there seemed to be even more terns making more noise – they are difficult to count, but there must be around a couple of dozen now. Quite a few were sitting on the tern rafts, both old and new – although the ducks seem to quite like them as well. I did see some fish being brought in, but not how they were caught. I think one was trying to impress a female, but had it stolen just as he was about to hand it over – kleptoparasitism is apparently relative common in these terns and some get the majority of their food this way! The female flew off unimpressed. However, the majority of the terns still seem to be skimming the surface.

I did see some battles above the old tern rafts but also a lot of posturing with wings lowered and heads in the air which I believe is a sign of non-agression. Showing the black caps to another tern is an out and out sign of aggression. I did see a pair that were quite settled on one of the new rafts (the lighter green one for future reference) and I did see them mating so there should hopefully be some chicks in just over three weeks – I will have to put a note in my calendar to go and have a look on or after 26th May! At least they were on one of the raised platforms so I only have to worry about the gulls, not flooding!

The Dragonfly Diaries – a review

I promised this year that I would learn more about bees and butterflies and not buy any books. Then I found a copy of Ruary Mackenzie Dodds’ book at a reduced price and all my good intentions went out of the window (this was a book that was already on my to read list).

This is not a book about dragonflies though. It is a book about the author pursuing a dream and establishing a dragonfly sanctuary and, later, a dragonfly museum and, bizarrely, a museum of old farm and estate equipment. Don’t get me wrong, the dragonflies get many mentions, and there is some information about them, about their requirements and they really are the author’s raison d’être but if you want to learn about dragonflies then this is not the book for you. After saying what it isn’t, then it is only fair to say that what it is is very engaging nature writing and story telling.

Ruary Mackenzie Dodds had what many would call an epiphany when out taking photographs near a canal in London during a lunch break when a dragonfly landed on his shirt. Before that moment, he’d never even noticed them. Over the next few years, after discovering that dragonflies were under threat, he came up with a plan to create a dragonfly sanctuary. It helped that his girlfriend was the niece of Dame Miriam Rothschild who happened, along with her son, to own the large estate that once belonged to Charles Rothschild who created what has now become the Wildlife Trusts. In addition, being an incredibly well known entomologist, Miriam Rothschild also knew anyone who knew anything about dragonflies.

Whilst this was probably the main reason that the venture got off the ground, it required an awful lot of hard work, vision, cajoling and recruitment of volunteers to get the sanctuary off the ground and this is the story of how he went about it. By the end of the book, twenty three years later an awful lot had been achieved including the creation of a charity, the restoration of vast amounts of farm machinery, not to mention one of the first sets of electricity generating equipment circa 1900, and a lot of education of the public about dragonflies. Most remarkable is the ability to attract funding and volunteers from all walks of life, and to keep them volunteering (although it appears there was more than a bit of luck preventing quite a few accidents).

All in all this is inspiring stuff, and whilst most of us cannot create anything on the scale of the author’s achievements, it did make me wonder just what I could achieve. Hmmm, time will tell. In the meantime, the wonderful writing style has at least motivated me to get blogging again and to dust off my Field Guide to the Dragonflies of Britain and Ireland.

A good afternoon’s birding or, how I was proved wrong yet again (twice)!

OK, not an afternoon of birding, but a couple of hours at Daventry Country Park on a grey, chilly and blustery Saturday afternoon. It was the one afternoon when rain wasn’t forecast though, so I thought I would go and check on my terns (more on those in another blog post). I also hoped to hear the sedge warbler that I heard last weekend (the first time I have heard one at the Country Park).

After the excitement of Brandon Marsh, I was prepared for a quiet couple of hours watching the terns go by. And, by and large that’s what I got. Most of the black-headed gulls have gone (taking the Little Gulls that I missed last week with them) but there is a flotilla of Lesser Black Backed and Herring gulls at the far end of the water. Most of the ducks have gone too (although I did see some teal last week) and the cormorants are much reduced in number (down to just five or six from ten times that number in the winter).

I spent most of my time watching the terns, but having house martins and swallows zooming by, and twittering up high. I got some really good views again through my scope. Following my last blog when I mentioned that Brandon Marsh was the only place that I saw sand martins, I now have to make a retraction, because I saw at least one in the groups dashing about above the water. It definitely didn’t have the white rump, was smaller than the swallows and was a lovely warm brown when it turned to flash the upper side of its wings into the sunlight – noticeable different to the smart midnight blue of the house martins and swallows. A new for me on my local patch.

It was whilst I was watching these that I happened to notice a very yellow looking bird flapping about along the dam. It looked like a wagtail, but it moved to fast for me to find it in my bins. Then I saw three yellow birds on the path – they were so yellow that I thought at first they were yellowhammers – but they were scared away by some children pedalling towards them before I could get a good look. They looked and sounded like wagtails though – probably grey wagtails as I’d seen these on quite a few occasions at the Country Park.

I also fancied I heard a skylark in the distance so I thought I would have a look around the fields on the south side of the water (and also see if I could see the wagtails along the dam). No joy on the wagtails, but I did hear something singing in the distance that could be a skylark – I hope so. I heard another call coming from the fields that was unfamiliar – then I saw a yellow bird fly upwards and back down into the crops – yellowhammer? I stood watching for a while, then the yellow bird flew up out of the field. I was in luck – it landed at the top of a tree near the path and didn’t fly off when I came close. I got a good look, definitely a wagtail – long tail, but very yellow underneath, long black legs, olive-green on top and with an olive eye stripe. I was hopeful that this might be a yellow wagtail. I checked the RSPB website when I got home, which also has a recording of its call which I listened to for quite a while when stood under the tree. It was definitely a yellow wagtail – a lifetime first for me and in my local patch as well! How cool is that.

On my way back home I bumped into a lady who asked me if I had seen anything interesting. We chatted about the tern rafts and I mentioned that the swifts would be back soon – I usually see the first ones about the 5th or 6th May. WRONG! I was wandering out of the Country Park and looked up to see 22 swifts coming over the trees (yes, I did count them). I am hopeful this means that warm weather is on its way!

The folly of making assumptions

On my recent trip to Brandon Marsh I happened along what I thought was a caterpillar crawling along the path. I took a picture, and couldn’t find any butterfly caterpillars that looked anything like it.

I assumed therefore that it was a moth caterpillar – it even moved along like a caterpillar (see my very poor attempt at video below) so I put a request for an ID out on twitter.

Anyway, I was mainly ignored except by a friend who correctly ID’d it from his insect guide book. It is in fact the larva of a glow worm, Lampyris noctiluca. Neither of us had ever seen one before but I had assumed that they weren’t found round here (in fact I blogged about them 6 years ago) so it never would have occurred to me that this could have been a glow worm in the making. My level of excitement about this discovery would be considered by some to be a little bit sad or over the top perhaps.

So, obviously, more research was needed and I came across an excellent website all about glow worms and discovered that the larvae are just as interesting as the adults (all the information I have included here along with so much more is included on this site – please take the time to visit and learn more). For a start, glow worms spend only about two weeks as an adult, but an average of 15 months as a larva. Adults never eat, they have no mouthparts, so they have to get sufficient food reserves before they pupate. They do this by eating snails and slugs so they tend to hang about in the same place as small snails and slugs (surprising they are not in my garden then!) and prefer damp conditions in the dark (their eyesight is very poor). They find their food via their very sensitive antennae and the palps on the front of their mouth that they wave about almost constantly.

When the larva finds the snail (or slug) it bites it and delivers a toxin that starts to digest the victim from the inside. Larger snails require several bites and apparently the larva often rides on the snail’s shell whilst waiting for it to die. The larva has to be careful not to get stuck to the snail as its defence mechanism is to cover itself with sticky mucus. Once the snail has died the larva sucks up the molluscian broth, and even has little hairs in its mouth to filter out any bits that are too large and pointy blades on its mandibles to cut them into smaller pieces. These larvae are so cool!

As previously mentioned, slugs and snails are pretty sticky, so after polishing off its dinner the glow worm larva has to clean itself up – it has a special attachment on its tail end with lots of hooks for this purpose and scours itself clean. This is also handy for hanging from plants if necessary.

All this eating snails means that the larvae get too big for their skin, and therefore, like some other invertebrates, they shed their skins several times before they make the transition to full adulthood, a process which takes a couple of weeks and for which the larvae tend to group together. The glow worms now have two weeks to find a mate or die trying.

Oh, and one further cool fact, even the larvae can glow a little, although as yet, no one seems to know why they do – there being several reasons put forward, some more plausible than others. I just like to think that it’s so they can find each other.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, never make assumptions when trying to ID something new.

Brandon Marsh Blog part two

So, the reason why I often find myself disappointed with Brandon Marsh is because on my first visit there I was spoilt with fantastic views of kingfishers and a hobby from the Carlton Hide. I haven’t seen a hobby there since and it’s a while since I spotted a kingfisher there (I have in fact seen both of these at Daventry Country Park). The Carlton hide should offer fantastic views of waders and water birds. But it doesn’t. Last time I went the bird count was similar to that at the Teal Pool Hide – aka nothing. So I was set for disappointment when I opened the shutters (there was no one else there). But, today, my view was filled with house martins and swallows darting about in front of the hide, chasing insects over the reed beds, twittering to each other and performing aerial acrobatics.

View from the Carlton Hide

I saw another whitethroat at close range and saw my first black cap of the year – a male (I’d heard plenty, but not seen any so far). There were reed or sedge warblers about – I think sedge and I got a good view of a female reed bunting darting about in the reeds – as they do I suppose. There was a cuckoo up here too, although I still couldn’t see it and it sounded some distance away.

In the last few years they have extended the reserve, the latest addition being some screens up at Newlands, overlooking more of the reed bed. Or at least that was what was there last time, now they have a new hide!

The Ted Jury Hide

These are the views left and right through the screens:

But when I went in and opened up the shutters, oh my, what a view, it nearly took my breath away:

There was a constant burble from the house martins hunting in the reed beds in even larger numbers, but there wasn’t a lot else that I could see. Still, it is early days and these things tend to take some time to settle down. I waited a while in case an osprey turned up – after all they’d kindly erected a platform for him to land on, but not surprisingly, he didn’t show. Still there were plenty of house martins and sand martins to keep me mesmerised. I realised that the sand martins were much easier to differentiate than I thought, even at speed (theirs, not mine). They don’t have the white rump that their cousins the house martins have and they also make a very different sound, more squawky than the tweeting of the house martins. I hate to say it, but a hobby would have had good hunting round there today.

I worried about getting back before they closed the gates, but couldn’t resist going towards one of the hides and out towards a different part of the reed bed in the hope that I might find a Cettis warbler as I’ve heard them round that side most years. However, on this occasion they disappointed and I didn’t hear anything. I wandered further along and met a couple of gentlemen who were going the opposite way and told me that there was always a grasshopper warbler singing in the nearby marshy areas if I just stopped and listened. A grasshopper warbler – that would be a lifetime first for me. Although, going by my sedge / reed warbler dilemma the chances of me actually recognising it were close to zero. Still I stood and listened. And, I heard a sedge warbler or was it a reed warbler. I waited and then I heard it, very faint, but definitely, something that really did sound like a stridulating grasshopper. Amazing – what a day.

I didn’t hear it again, although I wandered along the path by the reed bed. I did hear other warblers and, some sounded less scratchy than the sedge warblers I’d been listening to and they didn’t seem to stop to start again. Hearing them side by side I am pretty sure that I did hear a reed warbler, so, although I still haven’t seen one, I have now heard one. After all, the whole point of warblers is their song.

Today was all about the birds

I have had a love-hate relationship with Brandon Marsh for many years, but whenever I am feeling at a loose end or a bit grumpy then I plan an afternoon over at the reserve. Today was one of those days as I paid a traditional holiday visit to what is really a giant reed bed with some other watery bits.

I was greeted by three swallows flitting across the entrance way, shards of summer against an leaden and cloudy sky – perhaps these were a positive portent for the afternoon. I started with a traditional stop at the Badger Tea room – no badgers and not really much cake either, so just a hot chocolate for me. The tea room was noisy but all conversations blended into a general hubbub. There were two large tables of people, I don’t think they were connected, one populated by older, mainly male visitors to the site, the other younger and with more than one token woman.

There were no birds to be seen on the feeders outside, but as only the nut feeder had any contents this was not really a surprise. I downed my hot chocolate with more speed than the £2.20 cost deserved but I was eager to go out birding. It was a bit cold and breezy, although the sun did come out at times (as did a bit of rain) so today was all about the birds and I had no expectation of seeing any insects.

At the start of my walk, the sound of the cement works pretty much drowned out everything, even the most vociferous of chiffchaffs. I was briefly distracted by what I thought was a Volcuella Bombylans (or bee mimicking hoverfly) sitting on the dragonfly ID board and doing a not very good impression of a bee, but it stayed no time at all, so I am not one hundred per cent convinced. A little further on greylag geese honked in numbers to drown out the cement works and then I heard the whisper and rustle of the wind in the just opening leaves of the tall poplars.

I headed to the main set of hides and suddenly came across a carpet of violets which was a bit of a surprise; round the corner there was a bank of primroses still in full flower. I bent down to take a photograph of a cuckoo flower and heard, just twice, cuckoo, cuckoo off in the distance. How appropriate!

Cuckoo Flower

There are still long tailed tits contact calling, a really comforting sound from what is probably my favourite bird (although on another day I might have to admit that a red kite is in fact my actual favourite).

Whilst I was looking at what were probably the holes made by some species of mining bee, it was too cold for them to venture out, I happened to look up briefly and got a cracking view of a whitethroat in the tree in front – my first for the year. It then darted off into some nearby scrub, but started singing at me. I also heard a sedge warbler.

Mining Bee Holes?

The first proper stop that I made was at the Teal Pool Hide. I usually wander in just in case there’s something interesting on the pool outside the windows, and every time I usually find that there are actually no birds at all, not even dull ones. Today there was a family of mallard; mum and ten or eleven chicks. I should have been able to count them, but they kept zooming and careening about.

View from the Teal Pool Hide – note the lack of teal or other birds

I often describe Brandon Marsh as an all or nothing place – today it had almost all. There were some ringed plovers patrolling the edge of the water. One of them looked a little different to the others, it had more black on it and, on closer inspection (using the magnificent zoom capabilities of my telescope) I discovered that it had a black tip on the end of the orange bills. Likewise, the zoom also showed a distinctive eye ring on the other birds – so that would be one Ringed Plover and several Little Ringed Plovers. They were quite active and flew about the different islands. They also looked quite tiny compared with the redshanks that were wandering around in the slightly deeper water as well as along the shore (I love the whistling of the redshanks). Whereas the ringed plovers spent their time looking along the shoreline, the redshanks stuck their head in the water up to their eyeline. The sandpipers (common or green, no idea which) wandered along the mud, bobbing away, but not getting in too deep. There were also lapwing and oystercatchers on the islands, possibly nesting. A sleeping oystercatcher kept one eye on proceedings and a white butterfly wandered past – the sun must have come out.

Sand martins were there in abundance, zooming about and checking out the two sets of nests that have been provided for them – this is the only place I’ve seen sand martins – I hope they do well. There were a couple of terns near the tern raft – but the raft was occupied by two sleeping greylags – apparently they hand’t read the tenancy agreement.

There was a reed warbler singing outside the hide making his presence known. It would make brief flights upwards into the air, chest puffed out, wings back, then plummet down into the reeds and slowly climb up one of the stems and sit warbling away for ages. I can’t tell the difference between reed and sedge warblers and thought it sounded like a sedge warbler – shows how much I know. Someone recently told me that reed warblers just don’t stop singing. I always think of sedge warblers as being more scratchy and reed warblers being more rounded in their song. There was a man in the hide with an expensive camera lens who got some great shots who said it was a reed warbler. Later on he admitted he couldn’t remember whether it was the sedge or reed warbler that had the eye stripe – it is the sedge warbler and this had an eye stripe – I still have never seen a reed warbler! But at least I was right about the song – it was scratchy and he did sometimes pause for breath.

Wild Violet – so very pretty

Three bees are better than two bees

I decided to do this month’s bee walk on Saturday even though it was a bit breezy and not very warm. I checked the weather forecast and saw cold and potentially rain for the next week or so and figured that the sunshine and a warmer week running up to Saturday might have been enough to tempt the bees out. Unfortunately I was wrong.

During the bee survey (which lasted over an hour) we saw a grand total of three bumblebees (one unidentified, one carder bee and one red-tailed). There was plenty out there for them to eat and we saw plenty of hoverflies and solitary bees, but virtually no bumbles. After we had finished the survey and were walking home we found another two bees, but still five was a bit unexpected.

However, I don’t think the colder weather was to blame, after all, bumbles are furry little creatures and can manage the cold better than a lot of other insects. I think this was a matter of timing. Early in the year bumble queens, the only bumbles to overwinter, emerge from their winter quarters looking for food and somewhere to nest for the year. Once they have enough nutrition they lay create a wax cup that they fill with nectar and create a pollen ball in which they lay their eggs. After a few days these hatch into larvae which then remain in the nest for a few weeks until they metamorphose into a bee. During this time the queen has to brood the eggs and larvae to keep them warm (hence the nectar) and she can only go out foraging for short periods of time. Hence, I think most of the queens were in their nests and the first lot of workers have probably not emerged yet so there is a paucity of bumblebees at the moment.

Unmistakeable

I think that spring has finally arrived when the chiffchaffs are calling, but this can be misleading. However, once the butterflies are out, and, in particular, the ones that didn’t overwinter as adults, then I know spring is here.

There are a few butterflies that are due out in the first weeks of April. One of the most distinctive (well, the males, anyway), is the orange tip.

These butterflies are found along many lanes, and are particularly fond of garlic mustard (as shown above) and cuckoo flower which are amongst the food plants of the caterpillar. The female orange tip looks like the male, but without the orange tips, so could be confused with some of the other whites. But once the wings are folded it is again unmistakeable with green mottling on the underside. Although they are usually seen in May, if the weather is warm they might be out in April. However, blink and you will miss them – they will be more or less gone by the middle of June.

Today’s new discovery

Today seemed like a good day to go insect hunting. The sun was out, the sky was blue and, for a change, it was warm. As the back garden seemed mainly to have flies in it and little else (other than a rather lovely toad) of interest, I put my boots on and we went for a walk along some of our bee transect.

However, we hadn’t even got as far as the old railway track before the butterflies were out showing themselves. And, to be fair, the front garden had a couple of bees (red-tailed and tree bee) as well as a basking small tortoiseshell.

We walked for a mile or two, and saw butterflies in many of the sections we went along, although, noticeably, not in the newer housing sections – good job as they probably would have starved. There are four, possibly five, butterflies that overwinter as adults – the jury is out on the red admiral which normal migrates over. The definite four are Brimstone, Comma, Small Tortoiseshell and Peacock and all of these were out in abundance, sometimes a couple on the same flower. Dandelions seemed to be the flower of choice for the small torts, peacocks were a bit more interested in the willows and flowering cherries whilst the commas were mainly on viburnum tinus. As for the brimstones, they were just dashing about like mad things.

So, I took lots of photos, had a big smile on my face, saw some bees and discovered that in contrast to the rest of them, commas have white legs.

On the upper side of their wings commas are a beautiful bright orange, but underneath they look like an old dried up leaf – move along birdies, nothing to eat here, type of leaf – a dull, brown, raggedy old leaf. This is in fact the only butterfly with such jaggedy wings, although they are perfectly symmetrical in shape. However, they are named for the small, white, comma shaped mark on the underside of the wing. I suppose it is better than being called a dried up old leaf butterfly.

As usual, I only saw single specimens of these, as they are one of the few spring butterflies that isn’t often seen in any groups with others of its kind.