November Nature Notes 2012 - Pete Lambert

The gloom of the public convenience was hardly inviting, very few public loos are such palaces that you rush inside to admire the fixtures and fittings, but at the end of a wet wander, necessity required a visit. The pale energy saving bulb flickered into life and revealed a denizen of this damp space, fully stretched out, halfway up the wall above the urinal, leopard striped and possibly hungry.  A slug! Yeuck!  Moments later I exited , I can wait I concluded and with care but speed headed home. 

That slug was very large and those mottles and stripes quite distinctive, quite unlike the ones that ravage our lettuce or rasp away at the paper in the shed. It turned out that out of over 29 species of native slug, from four families, that we had encountered the Limax maximus, one of the largest, keeled, lung breathing slugs in the world! It’s close relative Limax cinereoniger is the largest, also found in the UK. The slug is also known as the Leopard slug. Slugs can be identified using a range of features, their colour, the colour and consistency of their slime, whether the slime is from the body or foot, how they contract when threatened and if they possess an internal shell or an external shell. The Large Black slug, Arion ater, which is characteristically stout and rounded  when contracted, can also be a rich orange colour.  Some slugs have a distinctive lung opening on the right side behind the head called the pneumostome. The Leopard slug likes to feed on decaying plant material and is an aggressive predator of other slugs and snails. Not all slugs are garden pests, even the Large Black slug has a very limited impact on living plants. I had not expected the world of slugs to be quite so interesting, my I should panic less and I might learn more.

By the time I write the swallows have gone and the hues of autumn are in near full flush. Regular sightings have been made of our local aquatic bird life, whether the kingfishers of the canal and our little local river the Weir Brook, the cormorants of the Perry or the grey/yellow flit of the wagtails working the bankside. Sadly another member of the red-haired badger clan that lives near the by-pass has been felled by a passing vehicle. Elsewhere a hot debate has opened up again in regard to the relationship between bovine TB, cattle and badgers. A limited trial of vaccination of badgers is being run in the north of the County , a limited badger cull is in the offing and energy is being expended on measures such as biosecurity for farms. No easy answers in this deeply difficult problem.

Too far away to be certain but so distinctive .  A slim body, long tail, agile and moving rapidly with pouncing loops. Stoats and weasels are all members of the Mustelid family which includes Otter, Pine marten, Ferret and Mink. The family are all carnivores, characteristic long, sinuous bodies and short legs. Judging by size my mustelid was too small to be a polecat or ferret, though could have been a youngster, but not small enough to be a weasel, which grows up to 20cm[8in] maximum. I could not determine whether the tail was tipped with black or plain. Weasels have no tip colour. Possibly a stoat , if so this fierce predator does hunt by day or night using a very sensitive sense of smell to track it’s prey. It is the stoat that in northern parts will turn partially or fully white to then be called ermine.  Stoats can move up to 20 mph as they move through their hunting territory. A few years ago I had seen a weasel type mammal cross the road in front of me near Nesscliffe, I do hope one day it might slow and let me have a proper look!

I replenished the bird table at the weekend in readiness for the winter, I wonder who will fly in this year?

Happy Wildlife Spotting, Pete Lambert

Nature Notes - October 2012 - Pete Lambert

I must begin with an apology. I had only meant to jump out of the darkened stone walled chamber and with a roar make my fellow castle explorer jump a little. Instead he just groaned at the predictable and not unexpected attempt to surprise, but I had surprised something. The slumbering bat above us was stunned into grumpy wakefulness. Hanging upside down, his wings folded alongside his body, the bat wrinkled his mouth and nose in annoyance and what I took at first to be the angry V of furrowed eyebrows but were actually ears, twitched and signalled his tetchiness.  This Daubenton’s bat had chosen to spend its daytime roost in the gloom of one of Hopton  Castle’s remaining rooms.  Bats collect sound waves to help them navigate by a form of sonar, this aural sensitivity the result of an evolutionary road that lead to flight and a nocturnal lifestyle to avoid predators and establish a niche in a crowded natural world. It also made it vulnerable to the rowdy bellow of this clumsy visitor.

The night time world attracts its own distinctive fauna. Driving back via Mile End services on the A5 we were passed by a barn owl, this large light coloured bird had skirted over the roundabout and twisting past a road sign, headed off into the fields beyond. Later as we headed down the homeward lane I was able to swerve and avoid adding a hedgehog to the toll of road traffic victims. This reminded me that a few weeks earlier I had found a slow worm, minus tail, which had succumbed to injury on a quiet back lane near Llangollen.  Both the hedgehog and barn owl run great risks from vehicles, the owl specifically from high sided vehicles. The hedgehog is a danger to itself as its reaction to imminent threat is to curl up into a prickly ball!

The Hedgehog is Britain’s only spiny mammal, an unfussy eater of beetles, caterpillars and earthworms, a good swimmer and though vulnerable to man-made dangers a determined adult with its 5000 spines can deter most natural predators. They are usually nocturnal, though we recently stopped to allow an adult to pass us when on a trip to Montgomery. At this time of the year the young are busy foraging for those vital fat reserves to carry them through the winter hibernation. Late born hoglets tend not to survive the winter and may also be abandoned by the mother if the nest site is disturbed, though juveniles will be carried to safety. Hedgehogs are inquisitive, nosing out slugs and other morsels around the garden. Sadly many fall victim to accidental poisoning by the use of chemicals such as metaldehyde which is found in blue slug pellets. This chemical persists and will eventually find its way into our rivers and is a major pollutant. It is extremely difficult to remove during water treatment and compromises our wildlife and water supplies nationally.

It is not only our mammals that take refuge in the dark. In the matrix of ivy above the chicken coop the gang had noticed numerous small, feathery grey bundles. Going back out with a torch, a closer look revealed exactly where that flock of sparrows goes to after a busy day eating the scattered chicken feed, missed by the pecking egg-layers below. House sparrows are a gregarious species, hanging around in mixed groups of males and females, the many eyes of the flock alert for danger. The torch revealed that not all the birds were asleep at the same time, a few watchful eyes keeping their snoozing fellows safe till the dawn flight.

Night or day carries great danger for our wildlife as it adapts to dominate one cycle while hiding away in another. Even with such fine tuning in behaviour and habit close escapes can occur, like our garden toad who attracted by the slugs underneath our tin can recycling box had taken to resting up in an empty can to avoid the drying heat of the day. That was until I decided to flatten all the cans with a heavy wooden mallet, fortunately I had to empty the rainwater from the cans and found our toad mate before the hammer fell!

Happy wildlife spotting whether night or day, regards Pete

Nature Notes – August 2012 by Pete Lambert

It rained and rained making water the constant theme of conversations and a daily test of clothing choices.  A long trek on a rare sunny day took me along the Monts canal as far as the Carreghofa locks, I had wanted to take a look at the unusual aquatic plants that I had heard were to be found in the water trough of the Vrynwy aqueduct. Canals when still in-water and before navigation erodes their wildlife interest are unique reservoirs of our rarest water plants. The action of motorised craft churn up the water, exclude sunlight, cause siltation and disturbance. It is very difficult to balance the needs of navigation with biodiversity, locally off-line nature reserves at Aston locks are part of this challenging struggle to match the pleasure of leisurely travel and conserving the unique niches offered by these man-made water courses.

 On arrival at the aqueduct I was to be disappointed, the ironwork must of  sprung a leak sometime since my last visit, plugs of clay had been placed at both ends and plant life was absent.  As some compensation Azure damselflies were out in great numbers, either as pairs caught in a mating loop or singletons confidently flying to and fro across the water. This section of the canal up to and just beyond Llanmynech is abundant in emergent vegetation, the aquatic damselfly larvae climbing these stems to fix themselves for their final transformation into the adult flying form. The Azure damselfly is a member of a family of red and blue damselflies all of which can be told apart by the variation of stripes of colour along the slim body and markings such as the ace-of-spades marking on the Common blue.

Parking awkwardly I leapt out to take a peek down onto the river Perry at Milford bridge near Baschurch. I had been here back in May to enjoy the rising mayflies and occasionally get a closer look as they rested  on the parapet. Today it was the fluttering and strikingly gorgeous Demoiselles. The Banded demoiselle has a very distinctive dark blue/black metallic stripe across its wings, the Beautiful demoiselle wings on the other hand are uniformly black with iridescent veins. Unlike the Dragonflies, the damselflies hold their wings folded upright above their narrow, slim bodies. The Banded demoiselle dominated the throng, its aquatic nymph preferring the gravels and weedy margins present along this stretch of the river. The Beautiful Demoiselle nymph seeks slower streams with muddy bottoms, which explains their greater abundance higher on the river where it flows slowly across Baggy Moor.

Along both canal and brook the Hemlock Water dropwort has been in flower. The umbels of tiny white flowers are held on numerous rays rather like an exploding snowball. Bright green ridged stems grow stoutly to form a large waterside plant. It is one of our most poisonous plant species, easily mistaken for wild celery and the cause of a number of tragic fatalities. It has a pleasant parsley aroma, but even this can cause light-headedness. Cattle have also succumbed when inadvertently brought down to graze on a waterside where the Hemlock Water dropwort can be found, this was certainly this case during a very dry spell during the 1990’s in the West Country. There are a number of other water dropworts in the UK all of which are poisonous. 

Considerably less menacing is the non-native Monkey flower. First discovered on islands just off the Alaskan coast in 1812, this yellow flowered plant easily naturalised here by the mid 1800’s and I found mine enjoying the very damp conditions within the disused lock at Carreghofa, the leaking lock gate creating a misty cascade and the ideal conditions for this unusual but colourful plant. 

As a final footnote to the wettest summer I can remember friends were surprised by the loud splash of a squirrel diving into the canal, swimming across to the far bank and then adeptly clambering out to loop into the woods beyond, the message, I think is, be adaptable!

Happy nature watching, Pete.




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