The Awol EcoGeek

From the viewing figures, it seems that EcoGeek had a small but regular readership, for which I thank you if you are still around, and apologise for my absence. This blog was always a sideline thing to keep me occupied, but recently I’v had several things to do. Before recommencing the Avian Alphabet (J’s entry is written and illustrated), here’s an EcoGeek special of what I’ve been up to.

It’s a messy job, but I’m the one to do it.

The first thing to keep me occupied was a surprise invitation back to University in July, for a special assignment. Somewhere in a remote patch of forest, the landowner introduced sharp-clawed predators that did not belong, in the hopes of providing entertainment to draw in paying customers. But what will happen when they escape? How many will they kill?

No, this isn’t Jurassic Park, but the story of a bird that is so familiar we forget its foreign Asian origins, the humble Pheasant Phasianus colchicus. Non-native species are a hot topic in conservation, and specifically we were trying to assess the impacts of  pheasants on reptile populations.

Pheasants are omnivores and will eat just about anything they can swallow. This includes small vertebrates such as reptiles, amphibians, small rodents and even the young of ground-nesting birds. There is even photographic evidence of them eating snakes and pecking the eyes and heads of adult adders Vipera berus!  So the issue we investigated was not whether pheasants are eating reptiles, but whether they are having a significant impact on their populations.
All UK reptiles are priority species for conservation and with as many as 40 million pheasants introduced into the countryside each year, and 35% surviving the shooting season to range farther afield  there is possible cause for concern. Our study area was a site of Special Scientific Interest next to a shooting estate, a situation with potential problems.

 

I was invited to join this study as a reptile geek, but soon found myself knee-deep in ‘Proper science’. Since we couldn’t kill the pheasants and pick through their stomach contents, I had to analyse their poo for DNA instead!  It’s been done before with other birds, so it seemed to be a go-to method. Though as an ecologist, I felt a little out of my depth in the labs.

It was a long process. Not only did we have to find the droppings amongst the undergrowth, which wasn’t easy unless we came across a pheasant rest-spot, I also had to prepare them -a process which took hours- before they could be analysed for the DNA of each reptile species present, wolf spiders (identified as a likely common prey source so good for checking if it was possible to find prey DNA in the faeces), and pheasant itself (to check if the DNA analysis was working at all). Even after the analyses, there were several tweaks to refine the process which sometimes involved starting over, such is the nature of molecular biology.

And the results? Unfortunately, no prey DNA was found at all, but we did find pheasant DNA.  As usual with science, more research is needed and even the failed study provided a grounding for this. Possibly pheasants have a more efficient digestive system which degrades the DNA more than in other birds,possibly they weren’t eating so many reptiles at this time of year before the bitesize reptile hatchlings have been born.  Despite this setback, the study itself  peaked interest with ‘Amphibian and Reptile Conservation’ and the ‘Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust’ and it was reported in two local newspapers.  I was given a radio interview for BBC Hereford and Worcester, and have been invited to present a talk at the annual Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust  Scientific Meeting!  It was an exciting thing to be involved in, and I gained valuable experience of applying DNA technologies, which are increasingly used in modern ecology.

Camp Life

From the Worcester labs, it was almost straight off to the sunny Devonshire countryside. This is something I’ve done regularly, a working holiday with friends to set up a youth camp. Not only is it a great excuse to reunite with great friends, it’s also a great location. The camp is on a quintessentially English cattle farm with rolling hills, a sea view, and plenty of wildlife to distract me. 

Like a lot of the West Country, the farm is refreshingly traditional with hedgerows and fallow grasslands and the grazing land does not need spraying with nasty pesticides. Here, traditional farmland birds are still common, like Linnets Cardeulis cannabina (smartly grey and brown finches) flying in bouncing twittering flocks, the gorgeous Yellowhammers Emberiza citrinella belting their distinctive tune from some prominent perch, and Skylarks shouting their random eclectic song on the wing. All of these so called ‘farmland birds’ are rare and /or declining across our countryside at the hands of modern agriculture since they rely on traditional farming practices, so it was good to see them here.

These were joined by swallows swooping and darting low over the ground, rooks , crows and jackdaws scattered across the fields probing for grubs (much more nervous than their town cousins, probably since the farmers know their tastes for insect pests are outweighed by their hunger for grain grown for the cattle), and of course, gulls gliding everywhere along the coast, though they were more interested in scrounging from tourists on the nearby beach.

I also enjoyed using one of the best moth traps available, lighted camp toilets.  Like birds, they do pretty well in the diverse hedgerows and grasslands and I found a variety of species, some of which are illustrated below. I feel that moths are severely under-appreciated. Not all of them are dull and brown, and even the ones that are have patterns rivalling a Persian carpet. Not to mention they’re fluffy!

We also caught horseflies before they caught us, and fed them to the many false widow spiders which made their webs on the outbuildings, some of which were enormous with abdomens the size of blueberries! Whilst they look creepy, are related to black widows and can give a painful bite, false widows in the UK are largely harmless unless you have an allergy to stings and venom. At one point I caused an exciting battle between two females on the same web. They tried to sling web over each other and the larger female retreated first.

Other findings were a cute juvenile Common toad Bufo bufo and a young Great green bush cricket Tettigonia viridissima, the UK’s largest insect species. I later found an adult in the Lizard, Cornwall.

Oh and I painted a door. Quite impressive considering my colour palette started with just black, white, green and mustard.

Celebrating Slow Worms

About three weeks ago, back home, the Hertfordshire Amphibian and Reptile group (HARG) had a ‘Slow Worm SpeciaI’ meeting. If you didn’t know, the Slow worm Anguis fragilis, is one of the UK’s most misnamed animals, as it is actually a legless lizard, and is not especially slow (though it is usually more sedate than other lizards).
As part of the entertainments, I presented my dissertation on the importance of allotments as conservation habitat. Essentially, yes they are important.  As slow worms are also suffering from modern agriculture in our countryside, urban refuges provide a lifeline. Whilst allotments are not as good as some of the best nature reserves, they support viable populations, are themselves protected from developments, and can be improved.e.g. by cutting grassy areas later in the season when slow worms are less active, and by using organic ferrous slug pellets, which do not poison slug predators.

Afterwards, I was involved in translocating 16 out of over 160 individuals from a stretch of disused railway in Watford to the University of Hertfordshire’s field site at Bayfordbury , to make way for reinstatement of the route. Each slow worm had to be photographed for identification, weighed and measured. Soon we had a little inspection line going and I had the pleasure of holding one of this year’s babies and having a very large earthworm thrown up into my hand!  We then released our charges into a meadow and laid out refuges (carpet tiles for them to bask under) so they could be monitored by the University staff, students and the HARG team.

Whatever else?

In my hops across the country, I stayed in Cornwall (My parents have a retirement cottage there) and visited the Eden project which I do often. The place has a wonderful ethos, with beautiful outdoor gardens and fantastic  naturalistic indoor biomes. This time I met  the treefrogs and an exquisitely adorable family of roul roul, or crested partridges Rollulus rouloul in the tropical biome , which form part of the introduced ecosystem there as pest control.  The new butterflies and chrysalis hut provided extra fascination .

Out on the local beach, I saw a flock of Sanderlings  Calidris alba  for the first time( a small wader similar to the Dunlin), running a relay from the surf line to the strand line as fast as their little legs would carry them, only stopping to feed frantically at each goal post. Less lively was a shag  Phalacrocorax aristotelis I found buried in the sand. It turned out to be ringed by ornithologists from the Jersey Museum. We reported it, and found out when it was ringed from the nest, when it died-unfortunately prematurely at a mere 2 years, 1 month old, before it had reached adulthood-and other details. It is always worth investigating dead birds to see if they’re ringed and return the data to the hard-working researchers.

From Cornwall I went to Northamptonshire to friend’s, where I met Hector, the cheese-eating heron Ardea cinerea, and witnessed the speed of a red kite’s Milvus milvus strike , both of which she feeds from her garage roof. Not forgetting the peacock butterfly chrysalis which hatched overnight in a jar whilst we were there, named Chris (Surname Alice). We also  visited the immense lake of Rutland water and saw an Egyptian Goose  Alopechen aegyptica for the first time, a rather attractive, non-native shelduck  living in localised areas in the SouthEast.

Chris, the newly emerged peacock

                                       Hector the Cheese-eating Heron.

 Back home, I had a long overdue visit to Butterfly World in St Albans. Although it has a great tropical butterfly house it is so much more, with a large chalk wildflower grassland teeming with native species and several small, artistic wildlife gardens. It also houses the UK’s largest leafcutter ant colony, which were absolutely fascinating to watch (These are simply incredible and I can’t do justice to them here). In the tropical house we saw the World’s largest moths, the Atlas moth, and I had a hitchhiking owl butterfly on my jeans.

We also visited the RSPB headquarters at  Sandy. It’s a good day out, with woodland and heath nature reserves alongside the lodge itself and formal gardens. I particularly liked the pond, which had a central koi section with marsh garden islands and fenced off wildlife areas either end. Sadly, it was a bit devoid of birds this time of year, the highlights being large mixed tit flocks including Nuthatches Sitta europea and a Marsh tit Poecile palustris or Willow tit P.montanus (The two are near impossible to distinguish by sight).

I visited London with a friend to watch the harrowing film Blackfish, between visiting the scenic Kensington Gardens and the fascinating Cambridge physic garden, where every plant has it’s medicinal, cosmetic or cultural usage. I’m pretty sure we saw more alien than native birds there including better views of  more Egyptian geese, London’s famous Rose-ringed parakeets Psittacula krameri , a family of Mandarin ducks Aix galericulata and some hybrid Canada Branta Canadensis x Greylag Anser anser geese.

London: Proud to be multicultural.

One of the Canada xGreylag hybrids

Shortly afterwards, I was kindly aloud to stay in and explore the Beautiful county of Suffolk, where I wondered around various estuaries, including the Jewel in the birdwatching crown RSPB Minsmere. I saw a few species for the first time, including the very rare and special Yellow wagtail Motacilla flava, and amazingly saw two Ospreys Pandion haliaetous in as many days purely by chance! Even though they are exclusively fish eaters, it was the mass panic they caused amongst waders, gulls and other birds that gave them away.

As well as the birds at minsmere, I was delighted to find a sandy bank frequented by digger wasps, and got this photo of a bee-killer wasp Sphecius speciosus carrying a paralysed honeybee Apis melifera to her nest chamber, where she will lay an egg on it as food for her larva. Then she plugged the hole again and flew off to hunt another.


So is that a good enough excuse for you?  I hope you enjoyed that nattering about my holiday.  Letter J up next...