Category Archives: Nature Reserves

Conservation, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Vole Patrol 10: Gutteridge Wood Voles!

Huma happy with first Field Vole in hand
Huma happy with first Field Vole in hand

Yes, luck was with the Vole Patrol today. We caught two species of Vole as well as the inevitable Woodmice.

The Field Vole is, as you can see, grey-brown above, and is softly countershaded  a la Abbott Thayer (who thought all animals were camouflaged in this way, even flamingoes, but I digress) from top to bottom with no sudden dividing line between dark and light. It’s diurnal and (therefore) has small eyes. And it has a notably short tail, 30% of its head/body length.

Huma very happy after Field Vole
Huma very happy after Field Vole

Huma, despite days with almost no sleep, looked and sounded delighted we’d caught this species.

We had turned up in the still-sleeping suburb of Hillingdon before 6am. The journey in was strangely easy on the empty roads, a fox running across in front of me in Acton with a jaunty air.

Vole Patrol arriving Gutteridge Wood 6am
Vole Patrol arriving Gutteridge Wood 6am

 

 

It was at once obvious on arriving that Gutteridge Wood, made a nature reserve by the Greater London Council in its closing days, was something different — an ancient woodland with fine Oaks as “standards” in between coppice stools of Hazel (cut on a regular cycle, so many shoots come up as useful poles from each stump), with Yew and Holly here and there, and English Bluebells and Woodrush as ground cover.

Gutteridge Wood Bank Vole
Gutteridge Wood Bank Vole

The team found a Bank Vole in one of the Meadow traps. It is a nocturnal mammal, unlike the Field Vole, and accordingly has big eyes (for seeing in the dark). It has a longer tail, 50% of its head/body length (try measuring it!), is appreciably redder than the Field Vole, and is more sharply white below.

While people were out picking up traps in the wood, a Woodcock flew right overhead, just above the bare treetops. Its enormously long beak and plump gamebird body were unmistakable, which was just as well because I haven’t seen one flying for many years now: a fine sight. Greater Spotted Woodpeckers drummed loudly; a Green Woodpecker gave its cheerful loud call. I guess you could easily guess what habitat I was in just from the names of those three species!

Gutteridge Wood Huma picking up trap by pond
Huma picking up a trap by the pond

The meadow and pond area was once a sewage works; if you peer closely at the pond in the photograph here, you’ll see behind the Reed Mace a circular brick structure left over from those days. It looks very much part of the waterscape today.

The Vole Patrol puts traps beside water, as here, along meadow edges (as above, for the voles), in a grid in the woods, and a few feet off the ground in the trees, to sample the small mammals in the different habitats on each reserve. Unsurprisingly, but very pleasingly, the ancient woodland of Gutteridge has given us good numbers of Woodmice, Shrews and Voles. It will be a pleasure to come back and listen to the Warblers in April or May, and to enjoy the Bluebell woods in the sunshine.

Vole Patrol 9: Perivale Wood (Selborne Society)

Natural History, Nature Reserves

Spring in the Air! Volunteering and Prototyping at Gunnersbury Triangle

First Comma of the year!
First Comma of the year!

Well, it only takes one still, warm sunny day and suddenly it’s SPRING! Sure enough, the frogs had gone crazy down the mangrove swamp, there was a great heap of spawn in the shallow water, and some excited children (and mothers). A pair of Comma butterflies wheeled and scurried about the sky in a long, intense dogfight, their whirling wings making it clear these were rival males of an orange species, if nothing else!

Hairy-Footed Flower Bee (Anthophora plumipes) male
Hairy-Footed Flower Bee (Anthophora plumipes) male

Mike expertly identified the Hairy-Footed Flower Bees around the Alkanets: they came out to warm up in the sun in some numbers. They have never been recorded before here, though we have surely had plenty of them, unrecognized.

Frogspawn in Mangrove Swamp
Frogspawn in Mangrove Swamp
Spring! Broom in bloom
Spring! Broom in bloom

The brilliant yellow of the Broom, and the foamy white of the Blackthorn flowers, announced that spring had sprung in a Botanical way, too.

Blackthorn in Bloom
Blackthorn in Bloom
The completed Hedgehog House prototype
The completed Hedgehog House prototype

The team spent the afternoon designing and making a prototype Hedgehog house out of Correx sheets left over from the Vole Patrol. We worked out a way to make a house from just two sheets, 54 x 120 cm each: basically one big tube folded 4 times to give 4 sides and an overlap flap, and two half as wide, one for the entrance tube, one for the two ends (joined along the ceiling with flaps on each end of the floor). We fixed it together with just 5 cable ties ingeniously stitched through bradawl holes. A challenge was to get the last stitch in, as the box was then fully closed! The trick was to take out the entrance tube and put a hand inside: the cable tie had to be poked out through a hole that of course we could only see from the outside! The result looks enormous and luxurious, so being Londoners of course we made a lot of jokes about Hammersmith Hedgehog Penthouses and luxury granite kitchens, etc etc. Anyway, we hope the hedgehogs will like them.

Conservation, Natural History, Natural Patterns, Nature Reserves

Wraysbury in the Mist, and Leafy Lichens

Willow Reflections in the Mist
Willow Reflections in the Mist

Well, after 7 Vole Patrol postings, and some very cold, wet and early mornings, I felt like enjoying a nature walk in the sunshine, away from Woodmice. But as I left town I found myself in fog, not too thick to be sure, but fog nonetheless.

I was rewarded, however, with the lovely sight of the willows along the lake seeming to float, isolated in the smooth sea of soft gray.

As the mist slowly lifted, a pair of Goosanders and a pair of Goldeneye (the male displaying, the female in tow a yard behind) could be seen through the mirk.

I couldn’t get away from the mammals, either. I was pleased to see not just the usual Muntjac prints along the path, but Roe Deer too.  A little way further, and there was a Wood Mouse hopping in a relaxed way across the path, before diving down its hole.

Woodmouse hole
It went thattaway: Wood Mouse hole

Among the birds calling were Green Woodpecker (finely), Great Tit, Song Thrush, Cetti’s Warbler. A Heron and a Parakeet flew overhead. Wood Pigeons and Carrion Crows watched warily.

The damp air had another good effect: the lichens looked wonderful, and even the bristly Ramalina were soft.

Parmelia caperata
Parmelia caperata
Ramalina colony
Ramalina colony, generally hard, and the same both sides
Evernia prunastri colony, always soft, and white below
Evernia prunastri colony, always soft, and different below

It was nice to see the lichens flourishing so close to London (and Heathrow): these little fungus/alga plants are very sensitive to pollution, and when I was a boy they were almost impossible to find anywhere near a city, so conservation stories can be happy.

Nature Reserves, Wildlife

Storms, Fieldfare, Gadwall, Wigeon: Winter is Here

Goldfinches
Goldfinches

A twittering, constantly moving flock of a dozen Goldfinches greeted my arrival at Wraysbury. The wind was already keen and I was glad of my thick fleece and waterproof jacket. A few Wood Pigeons and a Crow or two blew down the wind, hardly needing to flap. Even a Heron, doing its best to flap downwind as usual, rocketed past in the swift airstream. A solitary Fieldfare chattered to me from a bare thorn tree, its chack-chack unmistakable.

Broken Willow
Broken Willow

The stormy winds of the weekend had broken several large willows including the big one just North of the bridge: two branches had fallen, cracking off what are now revealed to be fragments of the hollow shell of the trunk. Willows and poplars are dangerous as the trunks are short-lived and often rotten inside: and the fast-growing branches can be very thick and heavy.

Spectacularly rotten hollow willow
Spectacularly rotten hollow willow

This tree by the lake snapped its seemingly solid, reassuringly mossy trunk and fell into the water. It was quite hollow, filled with soft brown beetle frass with finger-thick borings. Notice, however, the bracket fungus near the base.

Lake covered in winter wildfowl
Lake covered in winter wildfowl – Swans, Geese, Gadwall, Wigeon

The lake was covered in winter wildfowl, as the Channel at dawn on D-Day was covered with ships. I gave up trying to count the hundreds of Gadwall; there were dozens of Wigeon and Tufted Ducks, and plenty of Mute Swans, Canada Geese and Coots too. A few Cormorants, some with very white bellies, and a Great Crested Grebe or two made up the numbers. As I raised my binoculars, a Kingfisher darted from the near bank and raced right across the lake, perching on the far side.

Conservation, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Late Autumn: Fungi, Coppicing, Weaving a Fence

Raisa finishing woven fence with birch brash
Raisa finishing woven fence with birch brash
Brown Birch Bolete, Leccinum scabrum "Edible but worthless"
Brown Birch Bolete, Leccinum scabrum “Edible but worthless”
A delicate Ink Cap, Coprinus sp.
Marasmius sp
Marasmius sp
Candlesnuff or Stagshorn, Xylaria hypoxylon
Candlesnuff or Stagshorn, Xylaria hypoxylon
The Deceiver, Laccaria laccata
The Deceiver, Laccaria laccata
Fly Agaric Amanita muscaria (13 November)
Fly Agaric Amanita muscaria (13 November)

More Fungi at Gunnersbury Triangle (25 October 2015)  including Collared Earthstars

Conservation, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Wasp Spider arrives in Gunnersbury Triangle

Wasp Spider, the first we've seen in Gunnersbury Triangle
Wasp Spider, the first we’ve seen in Gunnersbury Triangle

Right in front of Mike the new conservation officer was a Wasp Spider. Of course, arriving late after working on scenarios for the new hut, I noticed it – her – before he did. The species only arrived in Britain about 15 years ago, and it’s certainly spreading.

Dark ants in anthill meadow
Dark ants in anthill meadow

Anthill ants are supposed to be minute, yellow, and never appear above ground. If so, these weren’t them. While we were digging brambles out of the anthill meadow, as gently as possible because the anthills are said to be one of the best features of the reserve, we couldn’t help disturbing some nesting ants a little. They seem to be black with grey abdomens; and as you can see, they quickly picked up their white cocoons and carried them off to safety. They certainly look as if they’re the owners of the anthills, but since the anthills are supposed to have been made by little yellow ants, perhaps the black-and-grey ones are just enjoying the resulting environment.

Grasshopper
Grasshopper

Several inch-long grasshoppers took a look at us.

Conservation, Environment, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Creag Meagaidh NNR

Regenerating Birch forest at Craig Meagaidh NNR
Regenerating Birch forest at Creag Meagaidh NNR

After a morning sheltering inside from the pouring rain, it cleared and I drove down to Creag Meagaidh, the enormous national nature reserve that fills a watershed from Loch Laggan up to the named mountain. The sun shone nearly all the time despite billows of cloud to the south. The hills were blue, setting off the shining grey-green of the birches, the russet of the heather – the Ling just coming into bloom now – and the bright yellow-green of the mossy grass.

Trailing Beards of Lichen, mostly Usnea with some Ramalina
Trailing Beards of Lichen, mostly Usnea with some Ramalina; the flatter leafy lichens are species of Parmelia

The Downy Birch is a stockier tree than the Silver Birch, tough enough to survive mountain winters, and home to a rich variety of lichens including Usnea beard lichens, bristly Ramalina, dark stringy Alectoria jubata (now renamed Bryoria fremontii), and various leafy Parmelia species that yield orange dyes used in Harris Tweed.

Caterpillar of Fox Moth Macrothylacia rubi
Caterpillar of Northern Eggar Moth

Large handsome caterpillars of the Northern Eggar Moth, the Scottish form of the Oak Eggar (Lasiocampa quercus), up to 3 inches (75 mm) long and nothing to do with oak trees, wriggled across the path, their rufous hairs warning off predators. They feed on Heather and Bilberry.

Scotch Argus
Scotch Argus

In every patch of damp grassland, Scotch Argus butterflies skittered, looking very dark in flight. They are hard to approach as they constantly chase each other off from their territories, but eventually I found one that stayed settled long enough to creep up to. Close up, the upper side is a rich brown, with red patches around the wing edges dotted with black circles that have white centres.

Scabious
Devilsbit Scabious

A few bumblebees, some of unfamiliar species, visited the Devilsbit Scabious (Scabiosa succisa) briefly. Large Syrphid hoverflies basked on the paths.

Glittering Downy Birches
Glittering Downy Birches

Further up the valley, a fine group of birches actually glittered in the bright sunlight, the water of the stream shining silver behind them.

Birch Bracket Polypore
Birch Bracket Polypore

A dead birch, stark against the sky, supported stout Birch Bracket polypores, handsomely whitish-grey above, yellow ochre below.

Bog Asphodel Bell Heather Marsh Orchid
Bog Asphodel Bell Heather Marsh Orchid

In the boggier patches, Bog Asphodel and Marsh Orchid flowered among the Bell Heather.

Rock Bog Heather Birch Mountain Tundra
Rock Bog Heather Birch Mountain Tundra

I turned the corner of the valley to see snow still lying in the deep, north-facing gullies on Creag Meagaidh, and the striking notch of the col that gives access to the mountain ridge.