The curious case of the headless mole

The victim, image blurred to remove the gore

 It is with a heavy heart that I have to report that a heinous crime has been committed on my patch. At approximately 10:32 am this morning, 1st September 2024, I discovered the body of a velvet clad gentleman.

The individual, of undetermined gender or age was lying on top of some cut grass beside a nettle bed next to the river, with the top of its head missing. The cause of death was immediately obvious, the skull above the lower jaw was completely absent. There was very little blood an no other marks or wounds were on the body. The body was fresh with no decomposition, time of death is estimated to have been within the last 12-24 hours.

To try and understand what happened I have assembled a list of possible suspects who may have committed this murder:

1. A predator

Moles are eaten by a wide variety of animals. They spend most of their time underground and so are rarely predated but given a chance Foxes, Owls, Stoats, Weasels and Buzzards will all take one. There are, however, several problems. Foxes on catching a mole would eat it in a couple of bites. An owl, usually a Tawny Owl would caught the mole first in its talons leaving wounds on the body. It would then likely fly off and swallow the mole from a perch. Likewise the buzzard would catch the mole with its talon and then tear it into small pieces for consumption. Stoats and Weasels are aggressive hunters with surgical accuracy and could account for the targeted strike to the head. The brain is one of the richest parts of the body, full of essential fats and it makes sense that this might be eaten first.

Why though was the body left intact and unmarked? It is most probable that the would be murderer was disturbed in the act and fled the scene.

2. Another mole

Any eyewitness (me) reported that there was some unusual activity in the area prior to the bodies discovery. Whilst sat on the river bank they heard some squeaking and rustling in the leaves beside a tree trunk. He noted that there was a flash of black fur in the undergrowth. The individual was not identified but it could have been another mole. Moles are very territorial and males will fight to the death. Such struggles usually occur underground and involve biting and scratching.

It is unlikely a fellow mole however angry would be able to deliver such wounds and would not do so where both would be vulnerable on the surface.

3. Farmer Giles

At this time of the year mole dispersal takes place. Moles essentially remain underground for most of their lives. In the spring they may venture up to find mates or to feed if the ground is dry. In the autumn the juveniles, now nearly fully grown, leave the home burrows to set up their own system. It is also at this time of year that fields are harvested, tilled and ploughed. The coincidence of wandering moles and the movement of large machinery with metal blades indicates that a terrible accident could occur whereby a mortal blow to the head could quite easily delivered by accident. The meadow was indeed cut short sometime in the past few days and the body was found at the edge of this cut area.

4. Worm retribution

The nature of the wound could indicate some perverse revenge killing was employed by one or more worms or an agent of theirs. The primary diet of moles is earthworms, they eat 50 grams a day. Their tunnels act as traps into which the worms drop. The mole patrols its tunnels and gobbles them up. Moles are sensible fellows and will stash worms in special larders for eating later. To stop the worms escaping they bite the heads off before storing them. Their saliva also has a paralytic agent in to that subdues the worm.

Is the way the mole was left missing its head some grim statement made in a revenge killing?

Of these four suspects I think only really one is viable although I cannot in good faith claim to know for certain. There will be no Agatha Christie moment where I assemble the suspects in the library for a lengthy summation. Instead I think I will just say that a farming accident is most likely. Such things occur with regularity and harvest time can be a dangerous time for small mammals as the threshing, harvesting and cutting machines destroy their homes and drive them away. It is common to see Buzzards, Kestrels, Gulls and Crows following such machines to catch the mammals as they flee.

Sadly this is my third or fourth dead mole I have found in my life and I yet to have seen a mole in real life, alive and well despite the sketchy view I had earlier. For such a common mammal in the UK it really is very rare to see one, dead or alive.

Coming soon did the sparrow really kill Cock Robin? New evidence comes to light.

The Doldrums

 The seasons create an ebb and flow of life. In late august we are currently in the midst of what I term the doldrums. Robins haven't quite begun to sing their autumn song but things are heading that way. The berries are starting to ripen and the number of bird species are falling.

It is during this time that the summer visitors leave Britain for warmer climates. For my patch the Whitethroats and Sedge Warblers have gone and the number of singing Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps have dropped to the odd one or two. Whereas in spring and during summer an hours visit to my patch would return a bird species list of between 25 and 30 I am now struggling to see more than 15. Those birds that do remain are starting to flock together. The fields have been harvested, tilled and ploughed which has attracted groups of up to 60 Jackdaws. Elsewhere the family of Long-tailed Tits have picked up some friends as juvenile Great Tits and Blue Tits have joined them. These mixed species flocks will grow throughout autumn and stay together as a loose group over winter.

At the same time the number of butterflies and dragonflies is starting to drop off and one might get quite dejected at the lack of things to watch but that is the beauty of nature and indeed of patchwork. There is always something to focus on. Out on my walk today I looked out for other invertebrates. The grasshoppers and crickets are still in abundance although today disappointingly I could only find Roesel's Bush Crickets. These are smart chunky crickets with a consistent churring call but seem to have come to dominate my patch. They are an indicator of climate change their colonisation of the UK from the continent is steadily moving northwards.

Other than the orthoptera I looked for other insects to try and improve my species list. A small bug caught my eye. I took a snap and looked forward to identifying it later. My first guess was a Dock Bug, but cursory examinations of my books made me think twice. The antennae had two pale marks and the abdomen lacked the distinctive wind edges. So off to the net I went and after some research I found out that it was in fact a Dock Bug in its last instar. Instars are larval stages. The Dock bug 4 instars prior to its adult form. Like most insects they grow by shedding their skin periodically revealing a new form, this process is called ecdysis.  The dock bug is not a rare species and I have probably seen it before on my patch but now I have recorded it and have a photo. What could have been a dull uninspiring day turned out to be an interesting one.

The ID Handbook of European Birds - A Book Review

I am an absolute sucker for a beautiful hardback book with amazing images and the two-volume edition of The ID Handbook of European Birds just released as an English translation by Princeton University Press certainly meets that criteria.

The books are written by renowned Dutch ornithologist Nils van Duivendijk with images supplied by Marc Guyt and Agami (images) and are exactly as described, a handbook, a detailed guide to the identification of the birds of Europe. The extensive and impressive work has necessarily been split in to two volumes as is becoming traditional for detailed reference material regarding the birds of the Western Palearctic. The first volume covers non-passerines and the second the passerines.

There is a tradition dating back to the earliest days of ornithology and in fact all aspects of zoology and botany that identification plates and images were the work of talented artists. These highly skilled observers of physiology were able to accurately portray the subtle nuances of a species identifying features. Skilled artists were able to draw together different plumages and stages of life cycle into a series of line drawings  or illustrations. Such images were works of art in and of themselves.

With the advent of digital photography and its exponential increase in the quality of images produced means that photographic images now  provide a more realistic view of the subject in question.

Van Duivendijk has gathered together an incredible range of 5,500 images of 733 European species of bird. All the images are of exceptional quality  both of colour and clarity with perfect lighting and contrast. The accompanying text teases out the key morphological features and details differences between seasonal plumages.

Rather than focus on a single image of the bird the handbook presents a series of images from different angles to highlight the key points. Each bird is cut out to remove the clutter of the background and allows the reader to focus on the salient features. Care is taken to explore easy to confuse species although there are better books out there for this purpose such as The Helm Guide to Bird Identification.

 

The handbook focuses entirely on identification leaving texts like the Birds of the Western Palearctic to cover the information on species distribution, population size, ecology and behaviour. The books know their place and fulfil their role admirably.

The books themselves are well bound with a sturdy spine and solid hard back. Good quality paper helps do the images justice with the page backgrounds contrasting with the birds well. I do feel however the 2 volume set would have benefitted from a slip case but this is not a deal breaker and would have pushed the reasonable price higher.

The Collins Bird Guide will always be my go to identification guide but this handbook will most definitely augment it and it is a book I will lovingly go through looking at every page and will flick through with regularity. 

The ID Handbook of European Birds is available from all good bookstores.

An exploration of Roe Deer on my patch.

 Roe Deer have become one of the regular mammals on my patch and one of the most endearing. The data thus far collected illustrate a pattern that reflects the general  national increase in deer numbers over the past 10 years.

My patch has been consistently monitored since 2008 and has been under Trail Camera observation since 2014 it is with some confidence then that there were little to no Roe Deer using the site up until their first appearance in 2017.

The Saxon Mill region is good Roe Deer habitat with a mixture of farmland, rough grassland and ephemeral shrub and wet woodland. Quiet stretches of habitat run along the riverbank from Rock Mill northwards and intersects with a railway line that offers excellent connectivity throughout the area. The railway in particular is of great value to dispersing deer and was the primary route for a Roe Deer doe being spotted in Warwick Town Centre in Priory Park in 2023.

Roe Deer Abundance

The index shown above shows how numbers have increased steadily over the years with the greatest increase in abundance occurring  between 2020 and 2022. Otter Cam, a second trail cam set up in 2021 whilst designed to monitor Otter populations actually covered a well liked rest spot for Roe Deer.

This increase in abundance from 2020 reflects an increase in productivity.

Roe Deer Productivity

Relative abundance increased as a direct result of consistent breeding from 2021 which included a set of twins born in both 2022 and 2023. 

Year	Number of kids born	Date Kid first seen (Week Number)	Relative Abundance Index
			Main Cam	Otter Cam	Visual
2018	0	-	0.0001	-	0.11
2019	1	1st April (Week 14)	0.0000	-	0.05
2020	0	-	0.0004	-	0.00
2021	1	24th May (Week 21)	0.0001	0.93	0.14
2022	2	17th July (Week 28)	0.0004	1.71	0.47
2023	2	3rd July (Week 27)	0.0015	2.07	0.76
2024	1	10th June (Week 26)	-	1.71*	-

* to date

This years doe with fawn

Originally sightings were of a lone female doe or buck moving through the site. Numbers increased from 2019 when they became a breeding pair. 

The best observations were made during 2022 and 2023 when the resident doe and her young became quite acclimatised to my presence and allowed some useful behavioural observations to be made.

Identifying individuals can be quite hard to do from year to year however this year one can identify a number of individuals.

Breeding Doe - This years breeding doe seems smaller than the one seen in 2022 and 2023, it is possible she is one of the four daughters she had in that time or a new individual.

Dominant Buck - Impressive Buck with large antlers this year with 3 tines., one of which is more spatulate. Often seen following the Doe

3 tines Buck

Sub-Dominant Buck - Smaller in stature and size, more flighty and less assured as the Dominant. Has antlers with just 2 smaller tines.

Young Buck - This individual is seen less often, always solitary. Has just a single short tine to his antlers.

An afternoon beside a pool.

 We are lucky in Warwick to have a number of fantastic open spaces that contain a variety of different habitats and wildlife. Priory Park is parkland and woodland, the Racecourse is flat grassland with patches of wet patches and St Nicholas Park, although a municipal park aside from the large playing field it has a river, fishing lake and dipping pool.

Alongside Kingfisher pool is a small pond that was recently dredged and cleared. King Henry pool has now recovered and is a flourishing ecosystem with abundant emergent vegetation. At this time of the year it is a magnet for dragonflies and damselflies, they zip around hunting over the water and gently lay their eggs in the vegetation.

Focusing on just the small pool I was lucky enough to see several species. The most obvious were the ubiquitous Banded Demoiselles whose numbers are just starting to ebb. Of the larger species there were a couple of Emperor dragonflies. A male patrolled up and down in a set predictable pattern hawking for insects it would take and devour on the wing whilst a female flitted from area to area ovipositing. She dips the tip of her abdomen in to the water and injects the eggs on to a reed.

Female Emperor ovipositing

Several blue Black-tailed Skimmers were present and a single Four-spotted Chaser.

Four-spotted Chaser

The most abundant however of all the species were the small damselflies, hunting and mating. I only identified two species, Blue-tailed Damselflies and Azure Damselflies. Both are most active at this time of year.

Male and Female Azure Damselfly mating

In a small open patch of water were a mass of Whirligig beetles. These energetic water beetles were whizzing around on the surface like nobodies business. These amazing beetles spin around on the surface. It has a latin name that reflects its nature, Gyrinus substriatus, from the root of gyrate, which these beetles really do.

As if this wasn't enough i was lucky enough to spot a small pike. It couldn't have been more than 10-15cms long. It moved with effortless grace and came incredibly close. I was able to watch it as it stalked various tiny fish. Normally when I watch the large pike on my patch they tend to sit on the bottom and then pounce up. This young jack however patrolled at the surface and struck horizontally.

Young Pike

Of course there were also the birds, Swifts dipped down to feed across the lake and Chiffchaffs sung from the willows, there was also a Jay. 

It just goes to show how much life can exist in such a small space. Of all the species present during my hours visit I barely scratched the surface, a life time could be spent catalogue everything there and I already have that task to accomplish on my patch.

The General Election - A time for real change for the environment?

 

I was first able to vote in a general election in 1997, it was my first year of university and I was quite naively optimistic about exercising my democratic vote, things can only get better, right. I remember then that my vote was for the Conservatives, mainly because having grown up in the 80’s they were all I had ever known, and I came from a conservative leaning household. I think most of my friends see me as a Conservative, but my political affiliations change and are focused on the issues, the parties I vote for in general elections are often very different to those in local elections. As I have grown and matured, I have learned to examine the issues and weigh the pros and cons. As such since 1997 in the various votes that have been held, I have voted Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, Green Party, Plaid Cymru and Independent. I give this piece of personal background as a prelude to the rest of the post to try and illustrate that I try to be impartial in most matters.

In the past 5 or 6 general election campaigns I have attempted to place the environment on the agenda for consideration. I am probably one of the few who actually read the manifesto and weigh the pros and cons of the various policies. This analysis has in some years been very detailed and I have looked at tangential policies that may affect the environment but this time in a wave of apathy I do not think I have the strength to do the same. In previous elections I have written to the local candidates and asked them to extol their environmental policies and publicize them in the local press.

I have been involved in green politics for many years and I am now incredibly disillusioned. Politicians make the right sounds but rarely follow through when elected. I understand the difficulties of running the country and the competing time and interests but time after time the position of climate change and nature conservation are treated with very little respect.

This apathy had led me not to bother to comment on this election thus far which looks like the end point for Prime Minister Sunak and the appointment of Keir Starmer. The talking points about the election seem to be focused mainly on the economy and immigration, and then I remembered that I still had to vote and thought I at least had to make the effort to address the field and its runners and riders. So here we are, more of an essay than an analysis of the main parties’ environmental policies, I have only chosen to look at the three main parties as it is obvious that the Green Party has the best policies and Reform has very few.

The saddest part of the manifesto trawl was that the two main parties did not have specific sections of the environment instead drawing the issues into the ones surrounding energy and climate change. The Conservatives have sections on “affordable and pragmatic transition to net zero” and “supporting our rural way of life and enhance our environment”, whilst Labour’s “Make Britain and clean superpower” has sections including nature, clean water and animal welfare. The Liberal Democrats have sections on climate change and energy, and the natural environment.

On energy and climate change, Labour and the Conservatives have similar approaches, both push the development of nuclear power with new small modular reactors, a drive to invest in carbon capture and an expansion of renewable energies. The Conservatives wish to build new gas power stations whilst Labour wish to stop issuing any new licences for any oil, gas and coal exploration. The Liberals are more specific with very detailed ideas on committing to net zero by 2045 and investing in renewables so that they make up 90% of provision by 2030.

Given the recent travesty of the pollution of our rivers all three parties express a desire to act upon the water companies. The Conservatives wish to increase fines on the water companies and use those fines to pay for river restoration. Labour and the Liberals suggest new water authorities, regulatory bodies and greater legislative powers.

Specifically on biodiversity and the wider environment the Conservatives had very little more to add with a commitment to more tree planting and peat land protection, cutting red tape for tree planting and the designation of an 11^th National Park with improvement to the existing ones.

Labour plans to ban fracking, eradicate TB to end the badger cull (although they do not state how), ban trail hunting and ban hunting trophies. The Liberal Democrats go the furthest desiring to double the size of protected areas by 2050, plant 60 million trees a year, increase funding for the Environment Agency and Natural England (and by extension I guess CCCW and SNH), ensure new developments result in significant net gain for biodiversity and the protection of peatlands and temperate rainforests and a real network of marine protection areas.

So, where does this leave us. I think it is fair to say that on the balance of things that the effort made to combat the issues of Biodiversity in the UK is pretty dismal, I think it accurate to say that the environment will not be addressed in the press , husting or any TV debates. The manifestos spend very little time on the issue at all. The Liberal Democrats have the most detailed plan and cover a much wider range of the core environmental issues. The two big hitters have just rolled the whole cause of conservation into climate change and the energy crisis.

Now this may all seem very demoralizing, and a general election is about policies wider than just the environment, global security and the economy are very important, but I hope that every voter at least takes the time to consider it. I would urge every reader not to take my word on matters and that they themselves take the time to browse through the manifestos and reach their own judgement and make their decision on the 4^th July from a position of understanding and knowledge. Who will I vote for? I leave that to the sanctity of the voting booth. I have always voted with my head, perhaps its time I listen to my heart.

Observing Raptor nests - Buzzard

 There isn't much more exciting for a birder than discovering a nest and none more so than a bird of preys.

This year on my patch I have identified a Buzzard nest. A pair of Buzzards have nested annually on my patch for the last 20 years at least, but identifying the exact location has always been an issue. Buzzards are cunning birds and between late January and early May will build a series of nests across their territory. I have recorded them building such structures over the years but the trick is that they only lay in one of them and until this year it was never in one I had found.

Chick - about 10 days old (struggling to hold head above nest rim)

Early this season as the leaves were still starting to burst I noticed a large nest in the cleft of a tall willow tree. I marked it as promising but was unsure whether it was a sparrowhawks. Over the weeks I kept an eye on it and slowly I noticed that there was often a lone Buzzard nearby, either in the tree itself or in a tree beside it. I began to suspect it was the Buzzards. This was confirmed on the 2nd June when I was able to spot a chick in the nest. Since then there has always one of the parents sat on a nearby tree and this week I got a better look at the chick.

Chick about 20 days old. Chick able to hold itself upright

Watching nests comes with a lot of responsibility. All nests are protected law (Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981) and it is illegal to disturb them or take eggs. The baseline rule is that nothing that you do should risk the chicks in the nest or run the risk of disturbing the parents such that they abandon the nest. The BTO as part of their Nest Record Scheme (NRS) have an excellent Code of Conduct but I would suggest that  unless you are taking part in the NRS or some other sanctioned survey that you avoid getting close to any nest especially  when so many of our breeding birds are in trouble.

To safeguard my buzzards I have made sure that if I am checking the nest that I do not get any closer than 70m and if I can see nothing I move on. Although I use social media I have not revealed the nest location in anyway such information will only be shared with the NRS.

One of the Adults standing watch in a nearby tree

At present I have only ever seen a single chick in the nest. The average clutch size is 2-4 eggs but mortality can be high. Clutch size and survivability for my buzzards is probably most likely relate to food availability. Buzzards success has been linked to rabbit abundance and my patch has very few warrens in the area. Sheep pasture is also a favourite hunting ground of which there is 21 ha close by. It is my suspicion that these buzzards are taking mostly birds and could account for the distinct lack of breeding Great Spotted or Green Woodpeckers or even sightings of these birds for the past month.

Looking at the chicks rough size in the first picture I took I would estimate  the on the 2nd June the chick was 10 days. From this we can broadly extrapolate the following:

1st Eggs laid                     = 15th-17th April

Estimated Hatch Date      = 23rd May

Fledging Date                  = 2nd-28th July

Dispersal from Territory   = 21st August

These dates line up with the average dates listed in studies conducted by the Scottish Raptor Monitoring Scheme and in the text, The Birds of the Western Palearctic.

I will continue to monitor the nest carefully and hopefully see what prey is being brought in. Hopefully once it fledges and moves away from the nest I will be able to go closer and try and find any pellets under the nest to analyse contents.