A marginally better view

Whilst I haven't posted much of late I have still been undertaking my usual round of birdwatching and camera trapping. Nothing terribly exciting has occurred lately although I have got a little footage of a pair of Grey Squirrels tussling and some of a badger foraging.

I have set my newer camera up on the same tree as the main camera and have it pointing down at right angles to the view of the other, this is to look at how many move away from the path and to catch and behaviour.

Obviously, at this time of the year, the entirety of the clips are of Grey Squirrels, although this week I did get a Badgers rear end and a Muntjac. More excitingly is the grainy few of the behind of a bird species I have only ever seen very briefly as I flush it from the undergrowth, a Woodcock. The footage isn't great, it's short and it never turns enough to show its longer beak, there is also over exposure from the IR bulbs, but you can see diagnostic black patches on the rear of the head and neck as well as patternation on the wings.

To end with we have the squabbling squirrels

Why Ecology?

It’s been awhile since I have posted and that is due to how incredibly busy I have become over the last few weeks. I decided last year to top up my skills and take a second Masters course. After some searching, I found an interesting course run by Ulster University in Environmental Management with GIS. This course started in September and coincided with two other short courses I was taking via Coursera – Capstone projects in GIS and Biodiversity (Theories, Measures and Data Sampling measures).

I find all this studying, which some might find laborious endlessly fascinating. In fact, I would say that studying is my second favourite thing after being outside in nature. It got me thinking about why I love the subject of ecology so much.

I have always been interested in natural history from a very early age. My parents would take me and my sister for walks in the country and my Aunt got me into birdwatching. The more I saw the more I wanted to see and the more I wanted to know. The amazing thing about ecology is its complexity. Every piece of behaviour and distribution of a species is a result of hundreds of variables, climate, altitude, shelter, food, and predation and so on.

  

Last week Attenborough’s sequel to Planet Earth started. I have seen thousands of hours of wildlife footage and read reams on animal behaviour and yet every time the BBC finds something new to enthral me. In particular, I became transfixed by the baby Marine Iguanas and the Racing Snakes of the Galapagos. The footage was incredible and the story riveting but as I watched I could feel the ecologist stirring in me, questions began to form. The snakes seemed to by laying traps, was this collaborative behaviour with reasoned thoughts or was their positioning purely luck as a result of failed chases.

Like all of science, ecology offers more questions to every solution and that is perhaps this depth that attracts me. 

Identification Caution

Following on from the last post I made regarding the identification of the new species of mammal down the mill I have an update.

Originally I believed the organism found to be a Water Shrew, I based this on the size and rough colouration of the pelt. Unsure I put out a plea for assistance on the Mammal Society Facebook page. Over the week the consensus came in that the image was in fact of a Common Shrew (Sorex sp.)

At the same time this was going on a paper was published in Nature called 'Species identification by experts and non-experts:comparing images from field guides' by researchers from the University of Kent. This research looked at how accurately experts and non-experts could identify images of UK Bumblebees.

They discovered that between experts and non-experts overall accuracy was 56%. This is a remarkably low figure especially given the increase in citizen science used in research these days, many of which I take part in myself such as Snapshot Serengeti. The study adds to other research conducted over the years looking at the efficacy of identification,

Obviously, experts have a higher strike rate but the fact is that much of community-sourced data uses a user base of with a wide range of skills from the novice to the professional. There are also an amazing array of very high-quality field guides that can help everyone improve their skills.
Nevertheless these types of papers ensure that we do not always take information at face value and that at some point each of us as wildlife enthusiasts must take responsibility for our own identifications.

As a younger birder I was convinced I had seen a flock of Twite and even included it in my notes, when questioned by the County Recorder it became apparent to me that I did not have the evidence to support my claim. It was a moment that made me think long and hard about what I record and with what confidence.

It is the responsibility of every wildlifer to  take care in their identifications and today with a plethora or guides, message boards, and forums it is much easier to crowdsource an ID. It is also the responsibility of the scientists to balance the error rate with the information they are collecting.
What is needed is balance in this field, citizen science allows the collection of far greater datasets than would ever be achieved with the use of experts alone something we cannot ignore and I don't think anyone can deny the value such projects bring to the field of ecology.

Use such studies as a warning to over interpretation and use each new identification as a learning point. I now know to check the teeth of shrews, the hairs on the hindfoot and the covering of the underside of the tail.

A new species for the mill?

Today on my usual survey I came across a body. A body of a shrew. It is not uncommon to find dead shrews, they live fast and short lives. They have to eat almost constantly to maintain their high metabolism. Shrews also taste horrible. They actually have poisonous teeth and many predators find the taste of the flesh nasty and so many that get caught are just left.

This particular shrew caught my eye though, it was considerably larger than any other shrew I had seen and was differently coloured. Rather than the gentle gradation of brown to white the body seemed to be dark, almost black above and white below.

The image below shows the corpse. What out, the body is a little mangled.

The 50p coin shows that the shrew was approximately 70-80mm long.

I did a little research using an excellent site - Wildlife Kates blog to confirm that this could be a Water Shrew Neomys fodiens.

This is the first record I have made of this species at the Saxon Mill. I have seen Common Shrews with some regularity and even had one run into my shoe but this was the first evidence of this water specialist.

This takes the mammal count for the Saxon Mill up to 14.

Badger
Fox
Muntjac
Stoat
Weasel
Polecat
Rabbit
Grey Squirrel
Bank Vole
Field Vole
Wood Mouse
Mink
Brown Rat
Common Shrew
Water Shrew

Badger Behaviour

One of the best things of about collecting camera trap data is gathering some of the pieces of behaviour and inter-species interactions. This week saw an interestingly high activity of Badgers. This peaked  on Tuesday with up to three individuals moving up and down the hedge line through the night.

Just after 9 pm, the camera detected a Fox. He seems in good condition and still with black paws and ear tips. I like to (very unscientifically) think it is the cub born near the site two years ago. Something is making the Fox wary but he relaxed.

Two minutes later a large badger comes ambling past and encounters the fox, just out of shot.

Having chased the Fox off the Badger returns to its foraging.

Foxes and Badgers are not natural enemies, their diets do overlap and I have seen them coexist as well although in all cases it is the badger that instigates any aggressive behaviour.

Environment Secretary Response.

As you may recall I wrote a letter to our new Environment Secretary  well after some weeks I have got a reply.

I do not fault them for taking time because it was the summer and parliament was suspended but the response didn't exactly fill me with confidence. As you can see from the picture below, it is polite and encouraging but does not very inspiring, given the current extension of the Badger culling against scientific advice and without publicising last year's results.

Anyone for Cricket?

August is the month of the Grasshopper and Cricket. I first started to hear the orthoptrerans in the last week of July and today they were in full song. I decided to go to the racecourse where there is a large expanse of grassland.

I spent 20 minutes pacing about searching them out and had some success identifying at least 2 species, 1 Bush-Cricket and 1 Grasshopper as well as a couple of other invertebrate species.

Roesel's Bush Cricket (Metrioptera roeslli)

This is a 'relatively' new species to the area and is an indicator of a changing climate. It was originally only found on the south coast but increasing temperatures have led to the species moving steadily north. Its strident call and large size help to make it easy to see and appears now to be the dominant species in many grassland habitats in Warwick.

The species is a handsome one with a very distinctive yellow saddle on its pronotum.

The individual I was able to photograph was a female judging by its long curved ovipositor that only crickets possess. Interestingly this female was spotted just after mating, The white gel like mass is a spermatophore. Basically a packet of sperm that he deposits to the underside of the abdomen, enzymes then dissolve the skin and the sperm is released into the female to meet with the eggs. Once fertilised she will use the ovipositor to pierce grass and rush stems to lay the ovoid eggs.

Lesser Marsh Grasshopper (Chorthippus albomarginatus)

Elsewhere I found a tiny grasshopper, barely the length of my thumb nail. It had short thick antennae and a pinkish hue to it, This like the cricket is a female. It is a highly varied species with different colour morphs ranging from green to pinky purple.

An adult individual was recorded a short distance away.

Hoverfly (Chyrsotoxum verralis)

This species of hoverfly is a mimic of a wasp and it is only on close inspection is it clear that it is a fly and not a wasp. The key identification feature in this case is the fly like eyes that are very different to those of a wasp.

Here is a a common wasp (Vespa vulgaris) taken on a different day to compare

Spined Mason Bee (Osmia spinulosa)

This is a species I have never recorded before, Its a handsome little bee with a distinctive fringe of yellow hairs around an otherwise black body. They have a fascinating life cycle, choosing to nest in empty snail shells.