July roving records - Land East of the Railway Line

It was the last day for Royal Holloway student Mark on his work experience placement, so we had packed out the schedule with surveys. First thing in the morning was a reptile refugia check, over in Goat Meadow...

Young Grass Snake - Natrix natrix (video by Mark)

Its always nice to see such a young specimen, as it confirms that they are probably breeding successfully in this area. (Plus they are super cute!)
   Into Upper Picketts Wood, the Nuthatches were all calling noisily (a family had recently fledged from our large bat hibernation box, now due a good clean out I reckon!)

Lovely things.
  Next job on the list was a Dormouse box check. These have been mostly occupied by nesting Great Tits and Blue Tits...

After closely checking one particular box, we were surprised to find a tiny mammal hiding amongst a clutch of Blue Tit eggs...

Pygmy Shrew - Sorex minutus

(Photo by Mark. Other brands of freezer bag also available)

Pygmy Shrews are smaller than Common Shrews in body size, but with proportionately longer tails.This one was probably only occupying this nest which was long abandoned by the parent birds.
   Back to the office to catch up on entering data into iRecord, a really handy online database for the general recording work. It was then back out to the ponds in the afternoon for another habitat assessment, recording butterflies as we went...

Ringlet Butterfly -Aphantopus hyperantus 

Comma Butterfly - Polygonia c-album

We carefully scanned the tree canopies for Purple Hairstreak Butterflies, Favonius quercus. The clue is in the second part of the scientific name, as their life cycle centres around mature Oak trees...

...a hint of fluttering wings?

After a while spent craning our necks and feeling strain on jaw muscles, we finally glimpsed some pale fluttering forms up high in the canopy. This is what they look like close up:

 Purple Hairstreak Butterfly - Favonius quercus

I found this female a couple of years ago at the base of an Oak in Horleyland Wood, she had possibly come down from the trees to seek out water on a very hot day.

  Over on the Powerline Ride, we noticed a bumblebee nest had been roughly dug out, most likely by a hungry Badger looking for some tasty bumblebee larvae...

A few worker bees were still coming and going, plus a couple of large queens were hanging about which are more easily identifiable...

Buff-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), queen

I've seen similar situations with wasp nests which have been dug out. Impressive stuff; Badgers must either have some immunity to stings or just very thick skin!

   On almost every piece of Hogweed (not the evil giant kind the tabloids have you worrying about...) there were Common Red Soldier Beetles in abundance. Its other name, the Hogweed Bonking Beetle is pretty apt....

Common Red Solider Beetle (Rhagonycha fulva) on Hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium)

Apparently these are taken as a sign that we are past the best of the beetle surveying season! I imagine a bunch of gloomy entomologists gathering in a pub to drown their sorrows once the first of the year is spotted.

  As we made our way over to the fish pond to carry out a habitat assessment, Blackcaps were singing all around. I like to think of their song as a nonesensical, whistling warble...

(Plus the sounds of a random jogger in the background)

We arrived at Pond 2 to carry out our habitat assessment, and Mark counted 3 Brown Hawker Dragonflies (Aeshna grandis) engrossed in their violent aerial battles.

Pond 2 - the fish pond

Here's an up-close pic of one which I found cold and sluggish in the grass a couple of years back...

Brown Hawker Dragonfly - Aeshna grandis

While we were watching, a big blue dragonfly crashed onto the scene and began vigorously chasing them... The typical hungry behaviour of the Emperor Dragonfly (Anax imperator) caused the Browns to make a hasty retreat! 

  Despite the pond being heavily populated by Mirror Carp, plenty of dragonflies and damselflies breed here successfully, probably due to the large variety of pond vegetation providing underwater cover...

Blue-tailed Damselfly (Ischnura elegans)

Close-up: Blue-tailed Damselfly (Photo by Mark Melvin)

Azure Blue Damselfly (Coenagrion puella) with diagnostic bow-tie marking on 1st abdominal segment

Banded Demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens) male

But no Large Red Damselflies to be seen whatsoever!! It feels rather odd as these are normally in abundance here.

   We were also being watched over by some kind of Emerald Dragonfly, shooting past us on his territorial run, but with no chance of a good view, I'm still not sure whether this was a Brilliant Emerald or Downy Emerald.

Finally, a rather stunning lepidopteran of the moth-kind, hanging around the pond...

Herald Moth (Scoliopterix libatrix) Photo by Mark Melvin

Thanks to Mark for all of your help and enthusiasm these past few weeks. We hope to see you again sometime if you get a moment in your packed-out summer!

Environmentally friendly

Last week, Gatwick's Environment, Health and Safety team got their (gloved) hands dirty, helping us put up 50 new dormouse boxes.

We were working within fragments of ancient woodland, over in the Land East of the Railway Line. Despite having previously detected signs of Dormice here, we are yet to find that definitive evidence of one curled up sleepily in a box.

A sludgy woodland trek

The team did an excellent job of getting the boxes up onto trees, seemingly enjoying themselves despite the now habitual rain and rivulets of mud. The boxes were put up in rows of consecutive numbers (no thanks to my lacking mathematics, leading to much confusion and switching boxes about...) which will make surveying all the easier in the seasons to come.

.

 

Tom S. of Gatwick Greenspace, 'papping' the team

So about an hour later than it should have been, we finally stopped for a well deserved tea and biscuit break. Before leaving the site, while looking around for signs of mammal tracks, I spotted this entire badger skull...

Badger skull found in Lower Picketts Wood. 

I like how the sagittal crest has a funky green mossy toupée

Badger skulls are pretty solid things, with the skull plate sutures well-fused and the bottom jaw often still connected to the base. They also have a large ridge towards the back called a sagittal crest, to which the strong jaw muscles would be attached. 

After a good clean up, the crest is slightly more obvious. It seems fairly small and I thought this might indicate it was a young badger. However, the teeth are also rather worn and an upper-rear molar looks badly infected (this now being the least of its problems.) There also seemed to be signs of recent badger activity very close by; some further investigation could be required by Gatwick Greenspace Partnership's Youth and Wildlife Rangers!

Tom's new friend, named in the honour of Environmental Secretary Owen Paterson

(O-Patz for short)

After lunch, it was back into the woodlands for some glade creation - we coppiced an area of the unmanaged hazel understory and several birch trees. All of the wood is kept on site, stacked into neat-ish habitat piles, maximising the space on the ground for woodland flora.

Of all the team, I'm not sure that Frank takes Environment, Health and Safety the most seriously.

Hand saws and tree loppers, along with grit and determination means we can achieve a lot in a short amount of time; we are now starting to feel on top of our winter habitat management targets. Around the place are signs that spring is just around the corner, meaning that time to complete last year's data entry is also running out...

Tops of bluebells

Wild daffodils

The 'dormouse boxing' team

A massive thank you again to all who came out to help and to Karen for organising. We hope to see you lot again on a drier day in summer!

January Summary

JS Agriculture carrying out birch thinning in Horleyland Wood, Land East of the Railway Line

Things have been relentlessly damp here as that niggling hole in my hiking boots can attest to. The mud and standing water makes accessing sites with heavy duty equipment much harder work.

Coppicing on the south bank at Pond 3, Land East of the Railway Line 

Somewhere here, the pond stops and the path begins

JSA with Gatwick Greenspace, coppicing and habitat piling on the grassy slope, North West Zone

Creating bare earth patches on the grassy slope, North West Zone. Areas like this can be beneficial to certain invertebrate groups such as burrowing bees and carabid beetles

I quite like writing these summaries - searching through my photos from the the past month causes an 'oooh yeah, I forgot about that' moment.

A rare frosty day in January 2014. Wet scrubland west of Brockley Wood

I have continued with the odd wildlife survey and as the season progresses, our visiting thrushes seem to have changed their activity. They have been spending more time foraging at ground level while they search in the leaf litter. I am still seeing high numbers of Redwing, but much fewer Fieldfare then last month. The winter RiverSearch surveys have have been challenging, as the river features I am supposed to be mapping are mostly under the muddy water.

River Mole at Povey Cross. Today it was in-channel and mostly behaving

Also, we have carried out a dormouse box maintenance and winter clean-out job in Horleyland Wood. There has finally been some definite mammal activity in them, with plenty of Yellow-necked mice moving in. It is a similar story at the woodlands in nearby Crawley, where we even found a new nest of Yellow-necked mouse pinkies (babies). Despite the strange season, they will probably be doing quite well in this mild weather.

George turfing the old nesting material out of the dormouse boxes

Yellow-necked Mouse (Apodemus flavicollis), 

reluctantly waiting for us to finish the cleaning so she can move back in.

Making good use of our nesting boxes over winter, is the local spider community. I found around 6 different species on this day...

Your friendly neighbourhood Walnut Orb-weaver (Nuctenea umbratica),

 trying its best to look inconspicuous

Labulla thoracica, which belongs to the same family as the Money Spiders (Linyphiidae)

A small False Widow (Steatoda nobilis). And no, it did not go straight for my jugular

Thanks a bunch to Katie, George and my mum Sue for helping me out on these most recent surveys.
   I am amassing a collection of invertebrate pictures as I sort through the malaise trap invertebrate samples. One of the coolest things I've found so far is this awesome Sawfly: I think the genus is Cladius. It's feathered antennae look like massive antlers... I'll have to dedicate a separate post at some point to my desktop invertebrate finds.

Underside of a Sawfly (x10 magnification)

   I am still catching up on my species data entry for the past year. The final American Signal Crayfish count was 482, fished out of a 200m stretch of the River Mole. It will be interesting to see how many I get out of the same stretch next summer.

This was a single haul of the invasive crayfish species Pacifastacus leniusculus,
at the peak of summer 2013

Roving Records - Land East of the Railway Line: 10/05/13

On Friday I carried out a check of our dormouse boxes in the LERL; sadly no further evidence of their nesting activity. However the boxes are certainly being put to good use by the Blue Tits and Great Tits...

At the moment over 1/3 of the boxes contain either Blue Tit or Great Tit nests

I was crouched down while making some notes and when I looked up I don't know who was more surprised, me or this male Roe Deer...

Hazel coppice understory, a dense Bluebell carpet and a curious Roe Deer in Horleyland Wood

It wandered in a large circle around me and casually sauntered off, another male not far behind it. I must have blended in pretty well; my clothing has definitely become more 'grungy' since I first started here (whether that's a good thing or not.) I'd like to think I'm becoming a better naturalist; most recently I have acquired some collecting pots, bought a utility-belt (i.e. a bumbag) and I've mostly stopped caring about getting my feet wet.

Common Frog tadpoles in the shallows of Pond 3 (I like our exciting pond names)

I was checking the final Dormouse box when I spied this well-hidden nest between the boles (thick stems) of an old coppiced hazel, proving it to be rather useful habitat. They are likely Blackbird chicks and might have a harsh appearance just now, but their eyes are beginning to open and in a few more days their feathers will be pushing through...

Blackbird chicks in a nest

 Comma Butterfly (Polygonia c-album) in Horleyland Wood. These guys are territorial; it flew laps around me and always landed back at this spot

  (The butterfly formally known as Cabbage White) a Large White Butterfly (Pieris brassicae), over in Goat Meadow

It was a good week for butterflies as well as other invertebrates; the first Large Red Damselflies have been taking to the wing over in the North West Zone, Orange Tip and Peacock Butterflies have been busy along the River Mole, Gatwick Stream and our woodland margins. I was chuffed to get a photograph today of one of these beasties out on the move, they rarely keep still long enough to snap...

A rather conspicuous stalker...

A few days previously Scotty Dodd, Surrey Wildlife Trust's expert entomologist, visited this site with me in preparation for summer invertebrate surveys. I netted one of these and took a picture before releasing it back out. Scotty identified it as a type of Cuckoo Bee, most likely the species Nomada leucophthalma.

Potted for a close-up of this cool little wasp-like bee

No pollen-collecting bags on her back legs... this tiny sneak travels light!

Although very wasp-like in appearance with its shiny hairless abdomen, this is actually a type of bee and a 'cleptoparasite' of other solitary bees... Basically Nomada has a rather sinister lifestyle which involves following other foraging bees back to their burrow, then sneaking in to lay their own eggs on the hard-earned food supply. There were a plenty of these tiny little lurkers about, which also indicates a good size host population...

I spotted many of these tiny burrows along the edge of the path in the woodland strip - likely to be Nomada's target host

The host solitary bee in question - Andrena clarkella, eyeing me suspiciously

This little lady is what the Nomada are busy hounding - an early ground-nesting bee with the lovely name of Andrena clarkella. They are an early season solitary bee and mainly collect the pollen of willow flowers. It was great to take a moment and watch the bustling activity of all these different invertebrates, deeply engrossed in their individual missions while the good weather held out.

Brown Tree Ants (Lasius brunneus). They nest in the old deadwood of trees, probably in one of our large veteran oaks of the woodland strip

Then a bonus end to the day is finding your only pencil where you carefully left it on the footpath.