Tag Archives: Greater Spotted Woodpecker

Conservation, Love of Nature, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Roe Deer at Fray’s Farm Meadows SSSI

Frays River
Frays River

Well, it isn’t every day one visits 3 nature reserves, but today I had a look at Hillingdon NHS’s Harefield Place LNR, London Wildlife Trust’s Frays Farm Meadows SSSI, and Denham Lock Wood to boot.

These are by London standards remarkably secluded and inaccessible, which is to say you need to know where to park and which way to walk, as there’s basically no indication on the ground until you arrive, and even the LWT website is misleading.

Whatever the reason, it’s a delight on a fine spring day to find woods alive with Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps, a pair of Greater Spotted Woodpeckers calling and chittering with excitement directly overhead (and visible  in the still nearly-leafless trees), the Blackthorn in delicate white clouds of new blossom, and a Roe Deer skipping away across the meadow, stotting slightly and flashing its “I’ve seen you, I’m running away, and I’m faster than you so don’t bother” white rump-patch. It’s what zoologists call an honest signal, something that benefits both predator and prey. The predator is saved a wasted chase, and the prey gets away without hassle to live another day.

Canada Geese overhead
Canada Geese overhead

I walked in on the Golf Course path, a pleasant trek down the hill, past the lakes and along the muddy track through the willow woods. There are only our resident wildfowl at this time of year – Canada Geese, Egyptian Geese, Coot, Moorhen, Mallard, Tufted Duck, Mute Swan, Great Crested Grebe: presumably all breeding right here.

The track was studded with deer slots, and it was nice to have my “Roe Deer” slot identification confirmed with a broad-daylight sighting. Out of the woods, it grew hot, and I discarded coat and pullover.

An early Peacock butterfly
An early Peacock butterfly

A few butterflies flitted about – Brimstone near the brambles, a Meadow Brown or two, several Peacock.

and a Vole Patrol poster
and a Vole Patrol poster

I met another LWT volunteer, Daniel, who it turned out was not only checking the local boardwalks, but had got up at 5:30 am to do the Vole Patrol on his local patch here! I said I volunteered at Gunnersbury Triangle, and he said he knew who I was, he read my blog (Hi Daniel!). We talked of Kingfishers and conservation and being bitten by small mammals. He asked me which group I particularly liked, birds, butterflies? I said dragonflies, but it was a bit early for them. Sure enough, a minute later, a damselfly flew past! I got my binoculars on to it but had no chance to identify it to species (Large Red is our earliest, but I saw no colour). Still, a distinct surprise so early in the year. Perhaps they are hatching earlier with the warmer climate.

On the way out, I passed a Vole Patrol poster. Huma, the small mammal expert in charge of the project, really can’t be getting a lot of sleep travelling all over West London like this and trapping every day.

I walked across to Denham Lock, an attractively rustic spot with a line of narrowboats, traditional wooden lock gates and a delightful lock-keeper’s cottage complete with teashop.

Denham Lock
Denham Lock

A pair of Grey Wagtails flew about as if they owned the place, landing in the trees beside the canal, a few steps from where I took the photo. They must be breeding here too.

 

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

Vole Patrol 9: Perivale Wood

Vole Patrol, Perivale Wood, dawn
Vole Patrol, Perivale Wood, dawn

The first cycle of trapping at Gunnersbury Triangle has been completed, and the action has moved on to Perivale Wood. This beautiful reserve is owned by the Selborne Society, the oldest nature conservation society in the world, founded in 1885 and thus a few years older than the RSPB.

Despite its name, Perivale Wood includes pasture (for horses), damp scrub, secondary wood on disturbed land, some hedges (we saw one newly “laid”, the trunks almost cut through and fastened at an angle with beautifully-woven withies), three ponds and two streams.

This, of course, enables London Wildlife Trust‘s Vole Patrol, by agreement with the Selborne Society, to search for small mammals in woodland, by water, and in meadow.

Walking in, we heard a Song Thrush, and much calling and drumming of Greater Spotted Woodpecker and Green Woodpecker. From the bare Oak trees of the photo above, I briefly heard an early burst of song from a Chiffchaff, my first of the year.

Lindsey scribing the data
Lindsey scribing the data

We met some new Vole Patrollers, including Lindsey, seen here acting as “scribe” for the all-important data, and Nicola, seen here weighing a Wood Mouse.

Nicola weighing a woodmouse
Nicola weighing a Wood Mouse

The team quickly sorted itself out, everyone sharing the necessary roles – fetching traps, opening them, weighing, measuring, sexing and coding the mice, recording the data, returning the mice to their exact locations, baiting the traps, and returning them to their locations. It’s not really complicated, but there is enough to do, and with over 30 traps in the different habitats around the reserve, each task has to be done many times.

Vole Patrol in Perivale Wood
Vole Patrol in Perivale Wood. In the distance, team members are fetching traps. In the centre, a trap is being opened inside the large bag,for the catch to be weighed and measured. In the foreground, a mammal is being coded before release. And behind the camera, a team member is recording events!
Environment, Love of Nature, Natural History

Unquestionably Globally Warmer

“We have a clear signal that our climate is changing, and when you look at the evidence it’s because of human activities. The evidence is so strong I don’t know why we are arguing any more”.

So said Don Wuebbles of the University of Illinois. He pointed out that the world has just had the hottest year for 1,700 years, very probably for 5,000 years.

NOAA 1880-2014 global average temperature anomaly
NOAA 1880-2014 global average temperature anomaly: recent decades, and especially the most recent twenty years, have been the warmest since records began. Global warming is under way

Thirteen of the fifteen warmest years ever recorded in Britain have been since 2000: the others were just before then. 2014 had the hottest summer for 350 years (when local records began). There is no doubt that we are experiencing climate change in these islands.

Around the world, the pattern is as clear as crystal: rapid, global warming, especially strong in the furthest northern climes, as in Alaska. There, the warming is drastic. Permafrost, which stores enormous reserves of carbon locked away in frozen peat, is melting: and the fossilized plant material, exposed to the air for the first time in millennia, is starting to oxidize. There is nothing to stop all the rest of it melting away.

Actually, the story up in the far north is more frightening than that. The warmer it becomes, the more three different positive feedback cycles collaborate to speed up global warming even more.

  • First, as mentioned, the permafrost is melting. That releases carbon to the air, as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, which accelerates the warming and melting.
  • Second, as the ice vanishes, the albedo (reflectivity) of the once-frozen north goes down dramatically, from icy white (reflecting most of the sunlight that hits it) to muddy brown or black (hardly reflecting anything). The ground absorbs more sunlight, so it becomes warmer, accelerating the melting and oxidation of carbon; and it directly contributes to having a warmer planet.
  • Thirdly, as the lakes and pools lose their ice cover, enormous amounts of methane hydrates, chilly masses of carbon-rich material in the icy mud, collapse and release streams of bubbles of methane gas, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. If it were to be burnt, carbon dioxide would be released; unburnt, it accelerates global warming still more rapidly.

Back in Britain, everyone noticed that the weather in late 2014 was exceptionally warm. October and November in my childhood were leafless windy months with what seemed to be incessant grey skies and driving rain that churned football pitches into cold greasy mud. This time around, it was possible to work outside in shirtsleeves to the end of November. The change? Out of all recognition. It was a wholly new climate.

But the weather is not the climate. Britain is now in winter’s grip. Scotland shivers down to -15 Celsius. Here, under clear blue skies, the Birch trees glitter in the nearly horizontal sunlight. A greater spotted woodpecker, calling “Chik!” loudly, flies into the canopy of a Birch, clings to the elegant white trunk, the few remaining triangular leaves shining a rich yellow. The woodpecker bounds off, its wings whirring in short bursts.

The cold weather, like the increasingly violent storms that brought down two trees in the reserve last week, is part of the warming pattern too. The atmosphere has more energy than before: warmer air masses meet cold ones with a higher difference in temperature, releasing more powerful storms than we ever used to see. Winters can be colder, wetter, and windier as a result: more trees fall; more valleys flood. It may not feel warmer, but this is a direct consequence of climate change. Feel like denying it? Look at the evidence. It’s all around you.