Keyhaven Seabirds, Seaweed & Seashells & Toad Watch Update....

Cold and bright here today. We spent the morning at Keyhaven, a coastal nature reserve not far from here, and had a walk and talk with the site manager who was a mine of information. A Ruff was spotted there yesterday, and a Dartford Warbler, and also a Spoonbill. We saw the latter. Has the photo worked any better than those I took at Farlington a few weeks back?

Umm, not sure. Can you see the spoon-shaped bill?

Oh well. He was some distance away.

Little Egrets, Redshank, Lapwing and Black-Tailed Godwit were closer......

 

The Black-Tailed Godwit were On Form with some Particularly Obliging Stances....

Daffs, Gorse & Pussy Willow are now blooming along the banks and hedgerows...

 

The sea was glittering magically in the light.....

I managed to find Evidence Of Moths :o) This fluffy stuff is (I think) the web of one of the Processionary Moths and inside it will be hundreds of tiny toxic black and ginger caterpillars who'll soon be out.....

I have renewed my long-term fascination with texture and form and the shape of things since reading Jennifer's excellent blog on stone carving here. These thoughts were very much in my mind when I went for a wander along the shoreline and found these amazing shells lying in their hundreds just beneath the surface of the water. The tide was coming in so I committed them to the camera's memory. The small, pointy shells are Small Winkles and the more rounded ones Periwinkles of some description....
   

Here are a clutch of Small Winkles alive and well on their rock. They reminded me forcibly of that lovely story poem by Julia Donaldson, called The snail and the whale. Do you know it? It's the tale of a tiny snail who is bored sitting on her rock and (much to the horror of her fellow snails) wants to go adventuring so she hops on the back of a whale who takes her round the world. At one point, the whale gets beached and nearly dies, but his friend the snail saves him by using her slime to write a message on a board in a local school. When they get back to her rock all the other snails decide to hop on too and they go adventuring with the whale. It is delightful, one of my all time favourite stories.

I've always loved the sea. Maybe it is being born and living on an island, but the mystery, power and magic of it resonates with me. I'm especially drawn to the shore, to that magical realm that is neither land nor sea but suspended somewhere between both, a place whose inhabitants can breath in air and water alike....

So, a magic day and I have topped up my sea levels, which is Good :o)

Tomorrow, a talk to the first years on butterflies and then after that things should start to slow down a little and normal life will resume (as much as it ever does!).

In the mean time, we are on Toad Watch every night. I've been asked by Froglife to record all sightings, which means live toads, dead toads and all the toads we carry across to safety. Seeing so many dead on the road breaks my heart a bit every night, but I am trying to focus on the live ones and keep telling myself they would be dead too if we weren't helping. I hope our homemade signs are also saving a few. I think most people care enough about wildlife to go the other way if they can and so avoid the toads.

I've also just taken delivery of my new pupa box, and have installed the two pupae I am looking after in it. I hope they will survive because I really want to know what they are. I have a sneaky suspicion the big one is a Large Yellow Underwing, but I don't have a scoobies what the other one is....
Neat little house, no?

That's all for now. Hope everyone is well and I wish you all a peaceful evening.

CT :o)

Of Bumblebees, Yellowhammers, Hawfinches, Kestrels And Moths

Hello All.

How are we all today? Here, it is gloomy, overcast and spitting. I have walked the dogs, finished all the outstanding college assignments, polished a talk I'm giving the first years at college on butterflies (have managed to sneak in some moths!), washed sheets and towels, cleaned the kitchen, done a small muck out of L's room, caught up with other general household stuff and nattered to ma on the phone about General Sewing Matters. I am not feeling smug however because I've been stuck indoors since ten and now I have cabin fever and am longing to go for a run around outside. The food shop is due so I can't :o(

Instead, I'm giving you the promised Moth Post from last night's trap. It isn't hugely inspiring, but there were two new species in there: a Common Quaker and the very pretty Oak Beauty, whose arrival I have been anticipating for the last couple of weeks. My Oak Beauty is a boy, because Mrs Oak Beauties are another species of female moth that don't have wings. The boy OBs are perfectly adapted to hide against Oak Trees which is where the girl OBs tend to hang out. Note his rather splendid feathery antennae too :o)

Oak Beauty

Oak Beauty

Common Quaker

For those of you who've recently joined and may not have seen the Moth Box before, here it is In Action. The lamp is mercury vapour and lights up the surrounding countryside considerably once darkness falls. The moths are attracted to the light and funnel down inside the box where they fall asleep on egg boxes and that's where I find them in the morning. The moths are then photographed, noted down and left to sleep until night when they wake up and fly off to resume their mothy business.

In light of the rather Poor Showing from the moths, I'm adding in some photos taken on Saturday when the weather was glorious. Unfortunately, I had to spend several hours locked in a darkened room with lots of naturalists talking about slugs (among other things), staring at the sun outside and feeling rather grumpy and resentful. Never mind, the bees were still out when I got home and a run soon drove the stale sensation away (and a gin put paid to the grumps :o))

We've had an influx of Tree Bees here over the weekend- I counted three on Sat. One was not well and I don't know whether she survived or not, but the other two were in fine fettle....

The orange fluff is diagnostic. Tree bees are a success story. They are recent colonists to the UK and in only a few years have successfully spread across the country. They don't appear to upset the native bees and instead exploit empty niches, which is all Good News at a time when so many bees are in trouble.

Bumbles are incredibly gentle creatures and will go to great lengths NOT to sting you. They have several warning signs they employ to persuade you that they are really fierce and Mean Business. First they raise a foreleg at you, then they turn onto their backs, and finally they show you their bottoms. After that? Well, to be honest not much happens. By that point they've pretty much exhausted all their warnings and as they really don't want to sting you, as long as you're careful and gentle you can pick them up- assuming they're in need of help like the one in the pics above. This usually means they've run out of energy and need some sugar water or nectar.

This is bringing back memories of last Spring (do you remember?) and various Bee Rescues that went on :o)

As well as Tree Bees, we've also had Early Bumbles and Buff-Tailed making a bee-line (sorry) for the Daphne. Great Stuff.

Buff-Tailed Queen

This 7 Spot Ladybird was also in evidence and sat patiently while I faffed about with the camera...

The Vole Proofing of the Broad Beans has done its job I'd say :o)

Bulbs are shooting up...

Drone flies were out (so-called because they sound like honeybees buzzing)

  
As were one of my favourite Hoverflies- the Marmalade :o)

We've clumps of pretty and cheerful primroses everywhere at the moment....
 

And I suspect the birds will be nesting before long, if they aren't already. We're off to get some more nest boxes to put up round the garden at the weekend and have also been planning the new wildflower area, which is exciting :o)

Blue Tit

Mrs Sparrow

Mr Sparrow

The doggies and I have had some lovely walks recently, seeing all kinds of wonderful birds. I tried to get pictures of the yellowhammers who are singing about little bits of bread and cheese in the hedgerows like mad right now  (I'm assuming you all know the thing about a yellowhammer's song sounding like 'a little bit of bread and some cheeeeese' otherwise you will think I've gone cuckoo). But so far have only managed perfectly in focus branches and perfectly out of focus yellowhammers sitting in front of them....

Our best sighting earlier last week was a pair of Hawfinches. I've never seen them before and my two are the first record for the estate in six years of searching so that has gone done very well indeed :o) Hawfinches are notoriously secretive birds so I did well to get close enough to watch them, especially given the zooming about proximity of Small Girl and Ted.

We found this lovely lichen deep in the woods near where a whole bunch of new trees have been planted...

 
And then, on the way home, were treated to this still-as-anything female kestrel whose entire attention was focused on some small prey she'd spied on the ground. Aren't they lovely birds? She is one of a pair who nest on the estate and I've been watching them play and listening to them since January.

 
I'll leave you with some pics of the Hounds, who tell me they feel they've been somewhat under-represented on the blog in recent days and unless I do something to redress the balance sharpish they will invoke their union....

 

Happy Dog Days :o)

Hope all are well? Wishing you all a pleasant and peaceful evening. I've made the Toad signs and will be out with the torch again once it gets proper dark.

CT :o) 

Breaking News.....The Annual Toad Migration Has Begun And We've Been Out On Toad Watch Tonight

Every year from February onwards I keep my ears pinned back for the sound of our Toads singing. I often wake in the night and listen to them. They don't go 'ribbit' as people think, they make a soft cooing sound which is so gentle to listen to it often acts as a lullaby and sends me softly back to sleep. Its a sort-of 'Coooo' or 'Boooo'.

If I don't hear them singing first, the first sign that the migration is on is sadly dead toads on our lane, run over by cars in the night. We make signs and put them at either end of the lane warning drivers that they're there and asking them to slow down and every night for as long as the migration lasts we go out on Toad Watch, patrolling the lane with head torches on and escorting our amphibian friends safely across the lane and into the stream.

I love them. I can't bear seeing them hurt. Tonight is the second night of the migration and we found some very badly injured but not dead on the lane, which was utterly heart-breaking. M, who was brought up on a farm, is much better at dealing with sick animals than me. He takes no pleasure in it but he will dispatch them quickly. I wish I were better at it- I consider it a failing on my part.

Fortunately, there were plenty alive to carry across the lane and put gently on the bank or in the stream. There were frogs too- just two of them, having a lovely mate (as L used to call it when he was little enough to still want to come on Toad Watch). I felt rather intrusive picking them up while they were otherwise engaged and putting them in some shallow water, but needs must and at least I know they are safe. One of the Toads even sang to me when I put him down in a safe place- that's never happened before and it was rather magical. Others clung on to me and didn't want to get off even when the water of the stream was slipping over my fingers.

Before you all ask me in the comments, there is a school of thought that says Toad skin can be irritated by the salt in human skin, and ordinarily I wear gloves when I handle them, just in case, but I forgot tonight and they weren't in my hands for long and I figure better safe in the water than dead on the road.

Tomorrow, I will register our migration with Froglife, who run an annual campaign to raise awareness of the Toad Migration- you can find details here. Hopefully, we might get some proper signs from the council on the strength of that to warn drivers.

Toads are very strongly migrational and return to the pond they were born in. They have a strong ancentral pull and this instinct means toad migration routes can be hundreds, or indeed thousands, of years old. They have usually existed long before lanes and houses came along to disrupt the route and this is why so many are killed on the road each year, You find them all over the UK but their numbers are declining. They migrate in large groups. Toads spend the winter burrowed down in deep mud, compost heaps or wood piles. They don't hibernate and will pop out on a mild day to forage for food. They crawl rather than hop (as per frogs) and have characteristic warty skin without the 'Adam and the Ants' black stripe behind the eyes that froggy people have. They are nocturnal.

If you have any water near you now is the time to pop out and check your local vicinity for them. Stand still and quiet and listen for the soft cooing- that's often the first sign that you have toads nearby. If you do find some, please log your sighting with Froglife- these little chap and chapesses need our help :o)

I'll be back tomorrow with Moth Updates as the lamp is lit and the moth box is beaming away in the garden as I type.

Hope everyone is well, and don't forget to check for toads!

CT :o)

ps- If you're reading this outside the UK, please check first about your local toads as some can be poisonous. The Common Toad here in the UK isn't, although as Ted will tell you if you are foolish enough to lick them they can make you feel sick and froth at the mouth :o)

On Rivers & Woods

Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring  in the 1960s. It was about the impact of pesticides on the natural world. She was the first person to question them and to say she was vilified by the agro-chemical industry and scientists of the time is an understatement. Fifty years later and her work is heralded as ground-breaking. I have found my thoughts turning to her tonight after a day spent working in the woods.


I feel at home in woods. The trees call to something ancient in the soul. Today, the sun shone brightly and the sky was blue, chased across with white powder puff clouds that raced high up in the air pretending to be harbingers of summer. A pair of Red Kites twisted and sliced above us, acrobatic adept dancers of the sky, while below Kingfishers called from the depths of the wood, secretively hidden among ditches filled with water. But despite the brave show the air remained cold, suggesting that Winter hasn't done with us yet.

Trees were felled today. They came down as part of an attempt to create clearings in the wood and I'm not sure why. I don't understand what the benefit of a clearing in a wood is. Woodland rides, yes, I get those. They can be corridors for wildlife, they can be helpful for butterflies and bees and other inverts and they allow light in that helps ancient woodland indicator plants blossom. But woodland clearings? A hole in the middle of a wood? I am struggling with that.

In younger, less considered days I felt a thrill at the sound of a chainsaw welling up throatily from the silence of a wood, but not any more. Now I shudder at the intrusiveness and instinctively mourn the passing of the tree whose life is being ended. The splitting sound of a trunk breaking, the tearing of fibres and sinews reverberates through me and makes me wince and feel sad. I don't like the finality of a tree falling to earth, of that deep contact with its roots being permanently severed.

Once, many years ago, I cared for a young racehorse. She was four, and she had won more or less every race she had entered. She was destined for greatness and I had her for one summer when I was twenty one before she went back into training. 

It was a dry, rainless summer that year and by August the earth was hard packed and unforgiving. I turned her out one afternoon after riding her, putting her in the paddock with her friends and they all took off as young horses will, racing each other across the parched earth, joyful in the fluidity of their youth and the freedom of their speed and movement. As they reached the bottom of the paddock she turned sharply with the herd and I saw her slip and fall. 
I heard the crack of her shoulder as she hit the ground, and even as I was running as hard as I could down the field to reach her I knew that she wouldn't survive it.

One of the worst things I have ever had to do in my life was force that mare, under the urgings of the head groom, to limp back up that field to the stables. She groaned at every step, an uncomfortably close to human pain sound, she shook, she dripped with sweat and her shoulder stood out inches from where it should have been with the inflammation. The vet, when he came, dithered for far too long, because the mare was a worth a fortune and she wasn't insured. Her shoulder was smashed in eight places and when they eventually decided to put her to sleep the head groom sent me away, down the field, but even so the crack of the shot when it came went straight through me. Sometimes you block out the recollection of difficult things, but I have a very clear memory of standing in the middle of that field when the gun went off with tears pouring down my face. I didn't want to not remember, because she mattered to me.

Seeing trees fall reminds me of that - all that nobility and grace felled in one, swift, permanent moment. Big things shouldn't fall down and not get up again.

It isn't just the tree I feel for: I am also indignant on behalf of all the small things that call it home and find themselves cast out as a result. I feel the same way, increasingly, about being asked to cut back vegetation, especially at this time of the year when inverts have almost made it through the winter and their shelter is suddenly, arbitrarily and brutally removed, leaving them stranded and vulnerable. At home we make a deliberate choice not to cut back dead plants until April has more or less ended, when most of the inverts who have been sheltering in the stalks will have woken up/ e-closed and come alive again.

It's not a popular view in ecology circles, leaving cutting back till April. Traditionally, the months between October and March are prime time to cut hedges/ trees/ vegetation. But what I am thinking tonight is that established wisdom only works for as long as no one challenges it or proves that it is wrong. Rachel Carson demonstrated that. Science, like any other discipline, moves and evolves over time according to the thoughts and experiences of the people working within it. Sometimes you have to question established wisdom if only to check that it is still right. 

 

Amazing Photo- Have You Seen This Weasel On The Back Of A Woodpecker?

One of my college friends showed me this, he says it hasn't been faked. Apparently, the weasel was attacking the woodpecker at the time and the woodpecker took off with it on its back. It looks unbelievable, but weasels are tenacious predators, so who knows?

CT x
 

Oh Dear, Poppy....

Digging for Voles this morning.

Which is Naughty Enough without it involving dangerously close proximity to my flower beds, including the World's Most Expensive Buddleia (which you may remember from last year was supposed to be white for the moths, cost fifteen quid mail order and then turned out to be purple and the size of a five pence piece. True, it has grown- you can just see it behind the Naughty Small - but I am Quite Certain it won't be best pleased to be on the receiving end of the determined and none-too-delicate attentions of a hell-bent-on-excavating-voles JRl!)

Do you think the black beard suits her? She's been modelling it all day, until this evening when it has finally dropped off, mostly on the new carpet in the sitting room :o)
 
One assignment down now, one to go, and my finger has benefited from a weekend of little or no computer use :o)

Hope all are well? It's 2 degrees here, cold and clear. The moon is filling up and the stars are all shining. L has just spent half a millisecond on the (extended) homework that he's had two weeks to do and which is due in this week, M is out at Running Club and I am trying to ignore the washing up...:o)

I'll leave you with the Tawny Wol who has taken to sitting on the Owl Tree outside my kitchen window at dusk. Only tonight he'd turned into a squirrel.... :o)

Have a pleasant evening all,

CT :o)