A Grey Squirrel thats a night owl?

 I am writing this blog post on a very wet Sunday afternoon. I have been lacking inspiration to post for a while now. No special creature has appeared no profound thought of ecological theory has struck. I have very much been struck in the rut of the change of seasons, the summer visitors have gone, and the winter ones seem not to be bothering to come at all this year. Last week the temperature did take somewhat of a dive, and this resulted in the return of the Marsh Tits to my patch, a small flock of Teal, a nice view of some Goosander, and a very fleeting view of an accidentally flushed Woodcock.

This past week the cold has evaporated to be replaced by rain, torrential downpours. Facebook happily reminded me that 6 years ago today we were under 6 inches of snow what a difference. I did see my first Redwings of the year, just three not the hundreds one would expect. From this introduction, you may assume that I am going to wax lyrical about climate change and the shifting of the season, but I feel I have done a lot of that already and I would imagine that most of my readers are not climate deniers. Instead, what piqued my interest were a few still shots from my main camera trap.

This particular camera trap has been situated in the same hedgerow recording 24/7 since 2015. This is my magnum opus, my long-term contribution to wildlife, and in particular mammal recording. My usual focus is on the Badgers, the local clan is seen less and less (I am very worried about them at present), but more recently the Roe Deer family and Otters have drawn my focus more. What has intrigued me most this week however is the ubiquitous Grey Squirrel.

Laying aside the obvious debate concerning its status as an invasive species, the demonic species that has devastated the native Red Squirrel, even though it is just doing its thing…survival, what drew my attention was some interesting behaviour.

It is easy to watch wildlife and become focused on the individual, websites, and books are filled with portraitures of birds and animals, and whilst delightful, I think I find the behaviour to be extra interesting. We are now into December and like I said we have had a cold snap now followed by rain. On the trail camera, I caught a few stills of a Grey Squirrel collecting leaves, it was noteworthy enough to add it… well to the notes section of my records.

Consistently for approximately an hour on the 28^th of November in the early afternoon, a squirrel could be seen collecting beech leaves and taking them up the tree. This continued across the 7^th, 8^th and 9^th of December despite the rain. This is obviously evidence that the individual is either building or remodelling its drey.

Squirrels live in dreys, collections of leaves and twigs sometimes lined with grass and moss. They are not a species that hibernate, and, in the winter, it provides, a warm refuge to retreat to between foraging expeditions. Dreys are built in the crook or v of branches in trees 2-20 metres off the ground, they appear roundish and nest-like, in fact, they can be confused with magpie nests although magpies are much messier.

Photo care of Rosser1954 on Wikimedia Commons CC-3.0 Grey Squirrel Drey.jpg

What interested me however was the timing of this event. I understand building it now, the weather has turned and the squirrel needs to shore up its existing drey or repair its old one if conditions are likely to worsen but this squirrel seems to be in quite a hurry often working in the night!

Squirrels are pretty much diurnal perhaps more active at dawn and dusk. Previous analysis of activity has indicated a rather broad daytime activity pattern on my patch. An aggregated count from 2015-2019 indicates activity occurring between 7 am and just past 5 pm so it surprised me to record the squirrel actively collecting leaves at 2.18 am, 5.40 am, 9.40 pm and 10.29 pm.

2.19 am and still collecting leaves!

A quick internet search suggests that squirrels are not nocturnal however I am one who on the whole eschews the internet as the font of all knowledge and so have fallen back on my books. My go-to bible in these situations is Harris and Yalden’s Mammals of the British Isles: Handbook, 4^th Edition.

The Grey Squirrel account is written by J. Gurnell, R.E. Kenward, H. Pepper and P.W.W. Lurz and only has a paragraph on activity in which it states that they are less arboreal than Red Squirrels. Of note is a section on communication and senses. Seeing the squirrel in the dark I was concerned for its safety. It is predated by stoats, buzzards, and foxes. I have seen a vixen carrying a squirrel back to its litter, given that its usual life strategy is based on daytime activity just how vulnerable was this squirrel? The answer it appears is very, the book details the structure of the eye drawing the conclusion that the species can see in up to dim-light so fully nocturnal activity is very risky. Admittedly they have excellent hearing but their agility on the ground and up trees is based very much on vision.

I then considered the effect of the moon; a full moon could give enough light for the squirrel however from the 7^th-9^th of December the moon was a waning crescent with only 24% illumination on the 7^th falling to just 10% on the 9^th.

I will not get a definitive answer to this conundrum, nature does what nature does and most certainly does not follow the rules of the textbook. I considered that the individual could be pregnant and was forced to build/improve the drey for that, and births have been recorded right up until the end of November. Perhaps the mild spell allowed for a late pregnancy, but this is very much on the edge.

Animal behaviour is very much a cost/benefit game, and this squirrel obviously felt the need to put itself at risk and it would not do this if not for gain, unless this is one of those individuals that shape evolution, either making a mistake that inevitably leads to its predation and the end of its gene line or the pioneer that stakes out a new niche for all its kind.

It are these puzzles that make ecology such a fascinating topic to study.

 

September Vlog

 This week I experimented with doing a vlog of my patch. A look at what is about and what is happening at this time of year.

Rewilding and Conservation

 

I am a little late to the debate stirred up by Alan Titchmarsh’s comments on rewilding. This is in part because I wasn’t fully aware of what he said and secondly, I needed time to collect my thoughts.

I first really encountered rewilding as a conservation technique or at least a progressive form of land management back in 2013 when I read George Monbiot’s book – ‘Feral’. I had been aware of the principle and had heard of interesting results in Yellowstone regarding wolves, but this was the first time I really began to delve deeply.

I am going to assume you know the principles of rewilding in this article as that will make things a little smoother, but to set the stage, rewilding is, in essence, letting ‘mother nature’ assert herself over previously man-controlled habitats.

Now it’s true that in most of the world and indeed Britain there is very little which has not been affected or changed by man. Even in the remote wilds, powerlines and litter can be spotted or planes flying above. Man of course is a part of nature like any other species, that however is a whole other philosophical debate. The question then becomes what are we rewilding to? The consensus is restoring habitats to a prehuman state say Ice Age. For Britain, that means a lot of woodland and previously extinct mammals such as the beaver, aurochs, lynx, wolves, and bears.

Let’s take a pause and look at what the argument was. Alan Titchmarsh was lambasted for stating to a House of Lords committee that rewilding is “catastrophic” for biodiversity and an “ill-considered trend”. What cheek! Alan has long graced our screens and has supported wildlife gardening in many cases. His worst crime however came from his ‘Ground force’ days which paved the way, pun intended, for gardens that did away with lawns and encouraged everyday gardeners to hard landscape.

The issue at hand here is scale, Alan was talking about the idea of rewilding gardens. Letting the grass grow long, leaving some nettles putting in a pond rather than a water feature. These elements are not rewilding they are wildlife gardening. The two have become conflated. Rewilding, natural rewilding in which land is left to regenerate itself needs space and lots of it. Only with a vast amount of space can ecosystems develop into a natural mosaic. For example, allow a meadow full of wildflowers to regenerate and it will first become scrub and then woodland. During this time its biodiversity will change, probably dropping before rising again. The grassland specialists will be replaced by woodland ones. If the area is large enough and there are enough ecosystem engineers then the grassland will regenerate in a new location, perhaps becoming ephemeral. This is the principle of succession, the way in which habitats evolve from bare rock to rainforests.

So, scale is important, gardens are just not big enough to make rewilding possible. I am not saying gardens are beacons of biodiversity. Non-native planting may be pretty, but they are not suitable for our pollinators or insects, but they are better than a concrete wasteland. A bit of wildlife gardening in each garden is a huge wealth of nature.

Part of the problem of rewilding is this concept of scale, there are very few places in the UK where projects of suitable scale are viable, the real problem of nature conservation is the limitations of reserves. I m not saying nature reserves are bad per se just that over the years they have become a limiting factor. We now have a series of isolated reserves across the country that exemplify and protect particular habitats. By their very necessity, they are managed. They are kept at what is termed in successional terms a plagioclimax a stable state of equilibrium that reflects the particular habitat or species that is desired.  This is the antithesis of rewilding; mother nature is put in halters. We have had to do this to protect rare habitats and species, but how is that working out? Reserves are sacrosanct but reflect only a tiny portion of the outdoor space and this reflection is limited. What about the less interesting habitats or less interesting species? Take, for instance, the House Sparrow or Starling, once common and now in severe decline. We are lucky in Warwick with strong numbers of both (though much fewer than in my youth) but where are their reserves and protected spaces?

This is an extreme example, but I think you catch my drift. Scattered reserves are fragile and vulnerable, cursory examination of Ilka Hanski’s metapopulation and habitat fragmentation theories catalogue this. Recent actions have been to connect reserves and work at the landscape scale, but this brings conservation into even more conflict with landowners and planners. Good work is being done by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust with the Princethorpe Woods Project and the networks in the Tame Valley, but we need more. More protection and sympathetic management across the countryside. Even the lowliest patch of scrub or nettle bed holds a level of local importance and by focusing on the special we risk dragging the common down to the lower level rather than raising them up. Rewilding plays a part in this, as with these larger networks and landscape-level approaches there is more opportunity to allow habitats to shift naturally to its successional apex.

In many respects, many reserves are examples of controlled rewilding. Over one-third of the reserves managed by Warwickshire Wildlife Trust are reclaimed industrial land. Mostly quarries, gravel pits, and railway cuttings. These sites are ripe for development and allow a habitat to be chosen and cultivated. They are flagships for renovating old sites and have worked considerably well but often tend to be wetland sites, good for visitors and waterfowl, however what of our farmland birds? Should more farmland not be bought and managed? The trust manages many excellent ancient and semi-natural woodlands and these are great but are part of the landscape, we need to secure the sections in between not just the connecting hedges.

This has turned into somewhat of a ramble but at the root of it is that nature conservation has to evolve. Reserves are a useful start; rewilding is a great tool but neither is good in isolation. Pundits like Alan Titchmarsh are not ecologists, and they have a vested interest in a particular narrative, we can’t blame a gardener for advocating for neat cut lawns and flowery beds, but we need to take direction from those that know not who say they know.

With climate change and the biodiversity crisis, I feel that we are at a crossroads. There is a need, as biodiversity offsetting takes hold and the pressures of house building increases, to start to focus on the strategic and landscape scale to protect all habitats not just the rare ones.

The Canary, the Butterfly and the Licence Plate - The decline of insects

 I have spent just under half my life visiting and recording wildlife on my patch, that’s quite a chunk of my time, about 20 years to be truthful. I am someone who likes routine, but this is more than that. This is a piece of land that I love and am in sync with. I have seen enough now to be in tune with some of nature’s cycles and realise when something is off. Some people may get bored with visiting just one spot, in fact, many birders or twitchers chase the dream birds, would I do that if I enjoyed traveling… I think not. There is something special about becoming part of an ecosystem and understanding its ebbs and flows.  Besides the site continues to amaze and surprise me.

Marbled White

Just today I was out for my normal Sunday morning visit having lamented the previous week’s lack of butterflies. Last year the farmer cut the meadow and I had predicted to myself that the loss of many of the nettle beds and more grass would result in fewer tortoiseshells but more ringlets, meadow browns, skippers, and gatekeepers. So far, this vision had not been borne out. I was beginning to think about the national insect decline. This is a national crisis affecting all of Britain. Invertebrates are an essential pillar in our habitats. They provide the bulk of the food for our nesting birds and breeding fish which in turn provide for our predators. How can we expect our declining Swifts to survive if not only are we robbing them of their nesting spaces but their very food?

To highlight this problem, I had a mini epiphany this week. It is early July and Wimbledon is in full swing. When I was a child in the late 1980s my sister and I would watch some of the matches but more often we had more fun playing our own Wimbledon in the back garden. Mum would string some wool across the garden to act as a net and we would come out on to centre court with our plastic blue rackets and our bright yellow or red sponge balls to play a few games, complete with MacEnroe-style debates regarding what was in or out and who was serious.

One of the key features of these games were the clouds of midges that seemed to hang in the air at the bottom of the garden. These were not the Scottish midges that would eat you alive but more the tiny non-descript tiny flies that as a species seemed to serve no purpose except to annoy. We would take great delight in swiping our rackets at them, imagining we were decimating their numbers like mighty warriors when in fact I doubt we ever struck one, so large were the holes in our rackets and the air pressure created. The point is that when I look at the bottom of the garden now, I find it hard to see a single simple fly. We have insects, bees, wasps other flies but in much smaller numbers. We have never used insecticides and our garden is wildlife-friendly with overgrown patches and an adequate pond so it’s not a change in the very local habitat but something wider, something national, something global.

Buglife has been assessing this problem and has just (June) released its 2023 Bugsplat survey. This innovative survey assesses the number of insects that get squashed on a number plate across a certain distance driven. This is of course a citizen science project and as such have inherent flaws in the distribution of responses. Scientifically comparing long-term trends, I wonder whether there is an effect on the change in car design and aerodynamics that might affect the data, but that’s just my analytical scientific brain working overtime. The survey now, digitized via an app, aren’t they all these days, demonstrates that the number of insects sampled on a licence plate between 2004 and 2022 is down 64%. This value backs up the more anecdotal evidence and something that for me is an observation.

Luckily my patch continues to surprise me. With most of July and August still to go it is hard for me to assess if butterfly numbers are down on my patch, but today’s survey was encouraging. The survey was done this morning following a night of rain with increasing sunshine and a light breeze, within the hour I had seen 6 Ringlets, 3 Meadow Browns, 2 Red Admirals, 3 Commas, 1 Large Skipper, 31 Large Whites, and 1 Marbled White. The Marbled White is particularly exciting. This has never been recorded at the Saxon Mill before, in fact, I have only seen this species out towards Charlecote and Stratford way in the past until this year, when I recorded one last week at Warwick Racecourse.

So what is the moral of the story, two things, I do not think I will ever get bored of my patch, it continually surprises and after 20 years I am still discovering new species, secondly, insects are suffering and insects are not the only canary in the coal mine that has become choked on the gases produced in the past few years.

The Blink of an Eye

 The lifespan of a human is perhaps 80-90 years and increasing with every generation. That's a lot of living for an organism. It's easy to forget that for most species life is much shorter and much harder. There is a rough rule of thumb that the larger the organism the longer the lifespan the graphic below illustrates this quite neatly.

There are complex ecological reasons for this involving life history strategies and energy flow but in essence, species generally exhibit one of two life strategies. Complex large animals have longer lives than smaller less complex ones. These strategies reflect two extreme modes of reproduction and survivability and can explain why and how different species behave the way that they do.

The two strategies are r and K. r/K selection was developed in the 1960s as part of MacArthur and Wilson's famous theories on Island Biogeography. The theory dictates that species have either an r or a K reproductive strategy. r-strategists are related to the rate of production of a species and so these species produce large numbers of offspring, have short lifespans, and have a low probability of survival. 

K-strategists are dictated by the carrying capacity of an ecosystem, these species have fewer young and live longer. Offspring develop slower and they tend to have higher greater parental care and therefore greater chance of survival.

All this information is pertinent at this time of year as the country erupts in a reproductive fever. Everywhere organisms are mating and having young and it is in this month that one of the organisms that typifies r-selection is abundant.

May is the time in which Mayflies emerge from our rivers in great clouds of dancing pixies. On some rivers, this display of flying mayflies is awe-inspiring but on my patch, it is somewhat subdued. It is still fascinating and this year has been particularly good. There are in fact 51 species of mayfly in the UK and they play an important role in the ecology of a river. They provide food for fish of many species as well as birds given the huge mouthfuls I saw the local Great Spotted Woodpecker taking into its nest.

On my stretch, I managed to identify two species, the Common, or Green Drake Mayfly (Ephemera danica) pictured below and Drake Mackerel Mayfly (Ephemera vulgata). These mayflies have hindwings and three tails. These species may be simple but they are an ancient species, mayflies were around before the dinosaurs, and they are a very successful species.

Most mayflies live but a few hours some as much as a day. I say mayflies, what I actually mean are the adult forms. They emerge from the water in mid-may as dull-winged insects, they then fly into undergrowth and moult again into a much brighter mating form.

The males dance above the water with females darting into the cloud to select a mate where they mate on the wing before the female descends to the water below. She will lay her eggs in the water and then exhausted collapse.

We tend to pity the mayfly's short lifespan but that is only the adult form. The eggs hatch into larvae which will spend up to two years developing on the river bed feeding on algae and vegetation. So feel a little less sorry for the mayfly, yes their appearance to us is fleeting but they in fact have a reasonable life out of sight. The paternal sacrifice of the adults feeds the bellies of fish and birds in a complexly balanced ecosystem. 

And to be philosophical for a moment a two-year lifespan may seem like a blink of an eye to us but this species has lived on earth for perhaps 300 million years whilst Homo sapiens has existed a mere 300,000 years, now who lives in a blink of an eye.

Harmony in nature?

 My long-term camera trapping project whilst giving me fascinating glimpses into animals' private lives also highlights interesting species interactions.

It is surprisingly uncommon for more than one species to appear on camera at the same time. Birds are much more tolerant of each other and so different species can be seen together but mammals are much more wary and when two species do meet it is interesting to see what happens.

For the last few weeks, I thought I had identified two different foxes using the site based on ear patterns. I had 'Speckles' who had orangey specks to the backs of their ears and 'Black-Ears' an individual with completely black ears. It turns out this wasn't as good an identifier as I thought. Two foxes were sighted this week, both with black ears. The interaction between the two was interesting, the last interaction was a post-aggression bout of gekkering but these two individuals seemed much more comfortable with each other.

What was more interesting was the presence of a male muntjac. This youngish male is missing one antler and is present whilst these two foxes are. It seems unconcerned by them but was still wary, you can see it keeps an eye on where they are but is relaxed enough to settle into some grooming. 

This may seem like unusual behaviour for predator and prey but in actual fact, it is unlikely that any fox would actively hunt an adult muntjac. The risk of injury would be too great for a fox to risk, one wrong move and its ability to hunt later could be impaired. Unlike wolves, foxes are not pack animals. They can exist in extended family groups and it's common for two vixens to work together to raise young but this never extends to cooperative hunting. A pair of foxes would have more chance of bringing down a deer but this has never been a hunting strategy. Foxes fill a niche in which they scavenge and prey on rodents and birds, pigeons and pheasants being a favourite.

This clip shows three individuals sharing the same space and time, it's a rare illustration of a certain harmony in nature, a knowledge of eaches position in the ecosystem, and an awareness of the nature of the other.  It is sometimes too easy when wildlife watching to focus on the individual but a better understanding is gained when you consider the individual or the species in the context of the interconnectedness of the habitat. Nature is wonderful and much of that wonder comes from the complexity, thousands of species in an ecosystem reliant on one another woven into an intricate pattern of inter-reactions.                                                   

Habituation

Most animals and people in fact learn via habituation or perhaps more accurately are trained by habituation. Scientifically habituation is the diminishing of an innate response to a frequently repeated stimulus. Think of it a little like the saying 'familiarity breeds contempt' or rather in this case familiarity makes the response more comfortable. In human psychology habituation is fundamental to cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT), something I am accustomed, habituated to you might say. When tackling my anxiety over travel my CBT had me taking weekly train journeys in incrementally larger distances until travel by train was normal.

 Habituation has been used throughout human history to domesticate animals and it is something I have used send times over the years in my wildlife watching. When I first started regular patchwork back in 2001 my local swans were ZNY and VGY, over the space of many years I got to know this pair very well, and importantly they me. I saw them every week and each week I would have some bread or seed to feed them. Out of habit, I would make a whistle when I fed them and they soon associated that sound with me and food, pretty soon I did not need to whistle and they would come over as soon as they saw me. 

The habituation slowly developed into something more than cold psychology, we gained mutual trust and respect. In the end, before ZNY died and VGY moved off with a new mate, they were comfortable enough with me to allow me to sit alongside them and would even bring their cygnets over to within arms reach and be quite relaxed. I learned how to read their moods and behaviours and likewise, they learned my hand signals that denoted a warning for when I would move or stand or my splayed-out fingers to demonstrate I either had no food. This was a very special bond that I have never managed to replicate with the other swans in the area. 

I talk about habituation today because I think that the roe deer are beginning to habituate to me. The two young does have been on my patch their entire lives and just as the local foxes, badgers, and muntjacs are a normal sight, so I believe I have become to them. I am getting pretty good at guessing where on my patch they will be on any given day, nevertheless, they are always one step ahead of me. Their senses are keen and their camouflage nearly perfect.

 This week on my survey I decided not to be too stealthy, they knew I would be there long before I saw them and I wondered if acting stealthy might make me seem more predatory. I have found this trick useful in the past. I try to appear docile and part of the wildlife, I make my movements hesitant and wary I don't make eye contact, something that instantly screams predator. I even try to respond to alarm calls. If a blackbird or great tit alarms I will freeze and look and scared. I try everything I can to seem like one of them. This worked quite well. I spotted the roe deer lurking in the undergrowth they loped away but I didn't follow. Instead, I sat for a bit and then went on. When next I saw them they were standing in the undergrowth watching me, I avoided eye contact and moved further away. Keeping my moments slow I took a few photos. As they moved off again I followed slowly keeping a distance and again taking a seat on a gate feigning disinterest in them. They quickly settled down and whilst they were still wary of me their body language was more relaxed and as they moved they did so in a less panicked state. Although they weren't comfortable enough to stay in my presence they left at a slow pace and not due to any action of mine.

This was the most natural connection I have had with a roe deer and it stemmed from them becoming used to me - habituated and me becoming used to them - habituated. The danger of habituation is that they become too familiar with people, its why many rescue centres try to handle animals as little as possible and will use release pens.

The application of Apps in Wildlife Watching

 I am of the generation that saw the common use of mobile phones during my late teens. Back then they were simple brick-like affairs with just call and test functions, far removed from the pocket computers we have today. I am by no means a Luddite I am drafting this blog on a Remarkable (TM) tablet but wildlife watching has always been a getaway from technology. I use tech of course, what birder doesn't? , my binoculars, my camera, my Garmin GPS device for plotting trees, and my digital thermometer/anemometer but I had always avoided the application of apps.

This month however I have discovered two apps that I have found easy to work into my survey routine. 

First off is the Mammal Mapper by the Mammal Society. I must admit I have been using this app for a little while to log mammal sightings but I haven't been using it to its full potential. My increased use of the app came from my desire to submit more of my sightings to the Mammal Society national database. In the past, I had used its individual sighting mode which is simple to use and very intuitive. This month I have used it in survey mode and it was amazing.  

I used it on my own patch of course, where else would I test it? The app allows you to continuously track your movements on a map as you walk about. Whenever you spot a mammal you log a sighting by pressing the record button. The record button allows you to add photographs and record notes. You can also record mammals based on their tracks and signs and dead individuals. At the end of your walk, you press submit and this generates a map of where you walked highlighting each sighting. It also states the time taken and the distance traveled. 

The app is so easy to use and creates a great record of all your mammal sightings and the distance and length of your visits. Its greatest benefit is the fact that the information is logged directly with the Mammal Society. Of course, there is an inherent bias in this system, small rodents are likely to be under-reported, and most species are nocturnal and hard to spot but the facility to record mammal signs and record individual sightings makes this a powerful tool for the society to monitor mammal populations.

The second app I have started to use is the Merlin Bird App from Cornell University. I am normally a traditional birder and make field notes of birds whose identities I am unsure of rather than carry a bird book with me. I always do my checks at home late with my good bird books. I used to carry a book as a teenager but I was once told that a good birder never takes one with him, an element of birding snobbery that has stuck with me. So was not the visual ID tools that I was most interested in. 

The power of this app is instead its bird song and call identification. I am not the greatest at identifying birds from their song, I have learned the basics and I know most of the birds on my patch but I am still getting the hang of some, the warbler for instance. I have tried to improve and used  CD's and cassettes in the past but it never really stuck, for me, I think I need to associate the sound with actually seeing the bird a kind of visual tag to attach to the audio. 

Merlin isn't the only app out there for this I have used a few other apps before this one and find most to be lacking in one key area, accurate identification. The Merlin App bowled me over the first time I used it on my iPhone. Cornell is an American university and so I had to download the Britain and Ireland datasets but this was very easy and took up very little space, my other option was to download the birds of the Western Palearctic, but as I don't travel I think the local set will work fine. 

I have only used the bird song function and it is great. You click on the record button and the app will display a sonogram in real-time very much like some bat detectors. Beneath the sonogram, it will generate its estimation of the species and create a list of all being heard and highlights each one as they call.

 I have used it for several hours and not once did it misidentify a bird, an accuracy rate second to none. It helped me locate species on the survey I had missed. At one point a background call, which I would normally have ignored as too obscure, revealed itself to be a Goldcrest, honing in on the sound I was able to see it and confirm its presence.  

This isn't an app that I will use on every visit nor will I record a full survey, although this is eminently possible, all be it risking using up all my memory storage. I will use it to help train myself and on unknown or suspect birds. It will help tighten me up on my neverending battle to accurately identify Marsh Tits and all Willow Tits and will give me a better handle on Willow Warblers in the summer. 

Like all good apps these are tools to help, not take over your visits. It would be able to record a whole visit and not look up and around at all and still have a fairly good species list at the end, all be it lacking in the less vocal residents. 

Technology should augment our enjoyment and not steal the fun from it and these two apps certainly do that. On my Mammal Mapper survey, I was hyper-focused on mammal signs checking every footprint and examing every burrow whilst the Merlin app opened up the world of sound to me and encouraged me to be a better birder.

Displaced Nesting

 This week, heavy rain has resulted in a good deal of flooding, this time I did not lose any of my cameras to the rising floodwater. One effect of the raging torrent was that the efforts of the Swans to nest on the sandbank in the middle of the mill pond came to nothing.

Last years successful nest on the sandbank

 The old experienced pair VGY and ZNY used to nest in a secluded part of the river bank, since their demise and the inheritance of their territory by young swans they have each year attempted to nest on the sandbank. On the face of it, this sounds like good sense. Swan clutches can be as high as 7 or 8 individuals with the norm around here being 6, however, mortality is high with up to 50% of cygnets lost in the first few weeks. The island protects from the predation of Foxes which are common down the mill. The flaw is the water level. Flooding is a regular occurrence and often occurs during April when the nest is in full use and results in the nest being washed away eggs and all. Since 2006 when ZNY and VGY left Swans have nested on the site 9 times of which 6 times the nest was washed away and only 1 was successful.

The drive to make a nest is innate, it is hardwired into swans and you will often observe individuals start dragging out reeds and twigs to build a nest. Sometimes the urge is so strong that they will start to build in the most unfeasible sites. I have observed swans build a couple of nests abandoning each before deciding on another.

Over the last week, the pair of swans that are now resident on the site have been beginning to pull together a nest on the sandbank. Their progress was washed away on Friday in the rising waters. Today I watched the pair swim up into the backwater where the water was calmer. Here whilst the male fed the female couldn't help but try and build a nest.

What she was experiencing was displaced behaviour. In this case, although the location was unsuitable, it wasn't even on solid ground the urge to build was so strong that she was trying. More sadly I have seen the same occur late in the season by lone Swans, swans who have failed to find a mate or lost them prior to mating still building a nest, an exercise in futility courtesy of the hard-wired biological imperative to reproduce.

Good Value Birds

Nature is wild and varied, it ranges from the small or insignificant to the large or magnificent, but within this variety, it could be said that some are better value for money than others. These species give you rewarding views and behaviour for very little effort. No need for expensive gear or exotic locations they give you the very best bang for your buck.  Garden birds such as Robins, Blackbirds, and Blue Tits are obvious candidates and they do offer a lot, but for me, I think the best value bird is the Grey Heron.

A bird in its prime

 Herons are not especially rare but not seen often enough to make any sighting a special event Herons benefit from a combination of factors that make them ideal species to watch and understand most aspects of life.

 

One of the things that I feel makes herons so fascinating is their positively prehistoric appearance, you could throw a heron back in time to the Mesozoic and it would fit in fine. They. They evoke the primitive simplicity and subtle predatory instinct of a dinosaur. Herons alongside cormorants show a great though line in the evolution of dinosaurs into birds.

 

Although unwieldy and seemingly clumsy in flight there is something endearing in the way its broad wings flap lugubriously, the way the legs stick out backward, jutting out behind it, and the way it pulls its neck in tight to the body short, is nearly comical.

In Flight

As a species, they tend to be fairly comfortable around humans. Get too close and they will definitely take flight but keep a safe distance and they are more than happy to just ignore you and carry on with their day. Give them such a chance and they will show you its complete repertoire.

 

Despite what wildlife programs might make you think predation observing a successful kill is incredibly rare. The amazing and dramatic shots of a lion taking down a gazelle represent days and days of field time and patience camera work. Herons are a voracious species and will take a range of fish amphibians and small mammals with great relish. Watching a heron hunt is like viewing a masterclass. Its slow, stealthy deliberate steps are counterbalanced by its ability to stop stock still. A practiced watcher will soon pick up on the heron’s subtle skills. The way it cocks its head to enable it to see through the reflection of the water, the positioning of the dagger-like beak poised ready to strike.

Catching a vole

Just by watching the heron’s posture, you can tell at an instant the point it spots its prey. It becomes stiff and stock still, statuesque. If it does move to reposition it does so carefully slowly and with purpose.   Finally, its head may move side to side as it focuses and accounts for the refraction in the water and then it strikes with lightning speed.

Caught

Swallowing

Swallowed

Unlike other predators which often move to a new location to eat their prey, the heron will usually swallow it there and then or pad onto the backside. I had the fortune to spot a heron take a fish, a very large fish, one that it could barely carry. I was convinced that it had "Bitten off more than it could chew", a case of eyes bigger than its stomach. But to my amazement, it managed it, and with a great gulp, it swallowed it down headfirst. You will find most swallowing animals will swallow their prey headfirst.  It makes it easier to slide down, any spines and the fins of fish all point backward, and of course fish are streamlined. The heron in question managed its mammoth feat and looked very full, I could see the bulk of the fish moving down the gullet, what must that feel like? I think a subtle companion would be a human trying to swallow a cat!

You can find this consummate predator locally on ponds, rivers, and lakes and only watching for a short period of time will give you a great deal of delight and interest. Grey Herons are a top bird.

The Next Generation

 This may seem to be coming from left field but bear with me, I am going somewhere with this. Last week saw the start of the new season of Star Trek Picard. I grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation and this season all of the original cast are reappearing. The first episode was fittingly entitled 'The Next Generation'. As I reach 45, like the stars at Star Trek The Next Generation I have realised that I am no longer 'the next generation'. 

I have blogged before about how I can recall as a child and young adult even in university that myself and my peers were the next generation of environmentalists and conservation pioneers. I never fulfilled my potential as an ecologist. Since leaving uni I have not earned a penny in that field. That is not to say that I have abandoned it. Regular readers of this blog will know how much time I invest in wildlife watching and conservation, it's just that I have made my career about science education and now Health and Safety. 

Working in a school is very rewarding and I have the opportunity there to make a difference.  I may not have had a huge impact on the ecological world, published any new theories, or discovered or saved a species but I can instill that passion in others or at least nurture that spark in others. 

At school after all the difficulties of Covid and getting used to my new role, I have finally been able to restart Eco-schools. I ran the school club for many years prior to Covid and we worked hard on achieving Green Flag status twice. We did gardening, wildlife watching, and many other events. Alongside this I have taken classes in the primary school, teaching Reception about Bees and Year 4 how to dissect owl pellets.

With the relaunch, we started with a tree-planting project. Unsure how many would turn up I was pleased to find eight 7's and a sixth former join me to plant about 60 bare root trees on the school site. Trees are definitely par of the course at the moment as over this half term I have planted 180 whips on my patch To do this I had some help from my parents, sister, and nieces. Three generations working together putting in trees that will hopefully last for generations of their own. 

In both these activities, I was able to educate them and add value to what we were doing. For the school I was able to explain the difference in species of tree and why they were being put where they were.  On my patch I showed my nieces the local tracks and signs, deer beds, footprints, offer spraints, and badger setts.

I may no longer be the next bright thing but I can ensure that there is a whole new army of bright eager young things following in my stead. Some may say this is vicarious living but we each have to make use of the skills and opportunities we have.

This new gang of year 7's have turned up two weeks in a row and seem eager when I talk of gardening beds and digging a wildlife pond, the future is promising in more ways than one.

Marsh Tit or Willow Tit, Willow Tit or Marsh Tit - The Hazards of ID

 Bird identification in the UK is, on the whole, pretty simple. Many of the species can be identified readily enough by sight or sound, behavior, and location. One species however has always plagued me. Marsh Tits and Willow Tits. These two species are morphologically indistinguishable at distance and up close still very difficult. Their songs are diagnostic but I have found my ear is not very well attuned at identifying bird songs. 

In the records of my patch, I have a record of a Willow Tit recorded in 2003 and 2004. Back then I was less experienced and although I make a vow of accepting my early sightings I suspect that my diagnostic feature for this species was the fact that it was seen in Willow and Alder Carr rather than any morphological details.

In 2007, 2011, and 2012 I have records of a Marsh Tit, but this time I had photographs because it regularly visited a feeding station.

In these pictures, I identified the Tit as a Marsh Tut based on the glossy cap. But let's break this down a little. The bib is fairly large and neat, and the cap seems glossy, the tail seems flat, not rounded and there is evidence of a pale spot on the upper mandible but this could just be the light reflecting.

So now we come to this week's birds, several of these tits have been seen recently and so I set up a camera on a feeding station and got the following shot, which is a still from a video clip.

From the grainy image we can again see a square tail and what appears to be a white spot on the upper mandible of the beak... Marsh Tit? Maybe but then I heard one calling and felt it was reminiscent of a Willow Tit.

So, after much research including The Helm Guide to Bird Identification and the very interesting Bird ID from Nord University website, I went back down the mill to try and get a better photo and hear it call. Both happened. Below are close-ups of the bird I recorded today.

These images show a flat-ended tail, a large white cheek, and a cap that is sort of glossy, there is also a very small suggestion of a white mark on the upper mandible. The black mark beneath the right is an individual trait not indicative of the species. It actually proves that there is a pair as the video camera bird lacked this mark.

This individual however flitted away from the feeder and sat in a hazel tree and called. I was unable to record it on my phone but noted in my field notes that it sounded like : zuuu Chee Chee.

The song is supposed to be diagnostic in these species and so I used the excellent xeno-canto website to see what it was. Marsh Tits can be heard at and Willow Tits at. From this, it sounded definitely like a Willow Tit.

So let's look at all the criteria in summary:

Call - Sounds more like Willow Tit than Marsh

Cap - Seems glossy in some shots Marsh Tit), could be either. But stretches down the nape more like a Willow Tit

Neck -  fat neck diagnostic of Willow Tit

Cheeks - Pure white cheeks with clean break into greys more like a Willow Tit

Bib - Neat bib like a Marsh Tit but broader like a Willow Tit

Tail - Flat ended with no degree of rounding like Marsh Tit

Back/Wings - Greyer than brown like the Willow Tit

Habitat - Willow/Alder Carr preferred by Willow Tit although both species overlap.

Given that there are many overlaps in the morphology and habitat the call is perhaps the most important and so I have to conclude that the individual I saw today and was on my trail cam was a Willow Tit.

But what about the ones I saw in 2011/2012, should I revise my identification? Without the call, there is no definitive answer. Morphologically it has a flat tail and a glossy head suggesting a Marsh Tit but my gut says they will be Willow Tit given the latest information. For now, I will respect past me's ID but in any research report I will probably list them as Poecile sp. to indicate that I cannot reliably differentiate the two species. 

HIK Micro Lynx LC06 Review - Wildlife Watching

 My latest experiment in wildlife watching is the use of thermal imaging. I have been toying with the idea for a little over a year, exploring different technologies and options. Initially, I looked at plug-ins for the iPhone somewhat like the bat detector Touch 2 echo meter, but this seemed expensive and energy intensive. A lot of options on the internet were all for commercial use used by home insulators and electricians. By shifting my search parameters to the hunting sites, I started to get a few more options. Flicking through Birdwatching I saw an advert for a couple of scopes and focused my research.  I came up with a couple of main companies Flir, HikMicro, and Pulsar.

I got some money for Christmas and so decided to take the plunge. My largest concern was finding out the distance and sensor quality. Despite a lot of reading, I couldn’t really make heads or tails of the values and figures. The only way was to get my hands on one and try it out. Most models seemed to be around the £1000 mark but there were some for less than £500.

I opted in the end for the HIKMicro Lynx LC06 Thermal telescope. It is made by a Chinese company and the build quality seems good.

The scope has up to x4 zoom, the ability to take JPEG stills, and four colour modes. The modes are White Hot, Black Hot, Red Hot, and Fusion. The controls are well placed, and the eyecup cuts out any extraneous light. It is light and fits well in the palm of the hand. But how good is such a cheap imager.

My goal was to be able to pick up the Roe Deer in the long grass or small rodents in the undergrowth. I took the imager out into the garden and down my patch to field test. First off the modes. Each mode has its pluses and minuses, I have come to like the black hot setting for detecting birds and animals although the fusion is very useful for picking up heat signatures but does little to pick up the surrounding features like the others.

White Hotspot

Black Hotspot

Red Hotspot

Fusion - Yellow/White Hot

Distance was always my biggest concern and with this model it still is. The test stills of the pigeon on the roof were taken about 2 metres away and show the body shape and hot spots of the individual. Out in the field, anything over 10 metres was difficult but not impossible to identify. The following image shows a pony perhaps 100 metres away. The shape is a little indistinct but it’s clear there is something there.

Fusion image of a pony at 100m with x4 zoom

I think some of the issues I am having are partially due to the weather, it’s been quite warm this past week and so the temperature differential isn’t very wide. I suspect at night and in really cold weather it will have better quality. It’s also true that a higher-end model would have better image quality. Lastly, I found it operated best when panning to try and avoid getting too much sky in the viewfinder as this helped keep a reasonable temperature differential.

Robin perched between trail camera and tree feeder 4m away. Black Hotspot

As one may expect the Roe Deer still ‘outfoxed’ me when I tested it this week appearing and bolting before I had even got the scope out of my bag, so I have yet to test it as a technique for spotting the deer first, it’s deer 1 Scope 0 at the moment.

There is still much to try out, especially on more night explorations and in colder weather. A more nuanced review will be added once I am more familiar with the device but for now, I can say that for the price, this device operates as expected. I had hoped for better but was not overly disappointed. I can see plenty of applications that I have yet to explore and will have fun trying them out.