derbyshire – Grantham Ecology

2017 Retrospective – The Rest!

December 31, 2017Grantham Ecology1 Comment

I like to take the opportunity which the end of the year presents to look back over what I’ve seen and encountered. Some fall nicely into groups so do check out trees, wildflowers, butterflies, bees and invertebrates on their own posts!

The remainder are individual species or places which don’t form a group, but which are an important part of the year just passed. I hope you enjoy!

Easegill Bat Surveys

I was lucky to be invited along to a hibernation check in the caves in Easegill, Cumbria by a friend in the bat group there. We found a number of hibernating myotis and brown long-eared bats in the various cave systems, along with the tissue moths, herald moths and cave spiders which use the same habitats over winter. It was a great day out in some stunning scenery, and the opportunity to do a spot of caving whilst searching for wildlife was a real treat! You can read more, and watch a short compilation video, on this post from January 2017.

Snowy walk along Stanage Edge

It takes around an hour and a half for us to get to some of the most stunning walks in the Peak District; a bit of a trek but always worth the visit especially if there’s snow to line the fields and de-mark the landscape with its series of hedges and stone walls. I love too how the hills in the far distance can give an illusion of mountains when they become snow-covered!

Smooth newt – Lissotriton vulgaris

I couldn’t resist this photograph when we were undertaking translocations at the beginning of the year. The legislative driver behind the translocation is the great crested newt, but we take the opportunity to move any species we encounter to a place of safety. With the juveniles, such as this little smooth newt, you need to keep a sharp eye to make sure you spot them all!

Common frog – Rana temporaria

Spring is one of the most rewarding times to have a garden pond – when the croaking begins and the surface is a mass of calling frogs. This was taken on a cool March day when the frogs had decided that spring had sprung! In this photo, I tried to capture the turbulence of the water which these amorous amphibians bring to a placid garden pond.

Slow worm – Anguis fragilis

We encountered this slow worm under a piece of corrugated metal in the woods near Woodhall Spa in the early summertime. There had been a rainshower which caught us out and the slow worms too had taken shelter. As the sun came out and the corrugated metal began to warm, the chances of catching one reduced significantly as they are anything but slow when they want to be! These reptiles are in fact legless lizards rather than snakes. Their habit of sheltering beneath these artificial refugia forms the basis of the reptile survey technique we use in ecological consultancy to find out whether reptiles are present on a particular site.

Dandelion seedhead before the full moon

The was taken at Muston Meadows at midnight when the moon was full and I couldn’t resist a walk. The dandelion seedheads glowed white against the dark grass but I was struggling to capture this in a photograph – then I thought this might make an interesting angle!

Shropshire Hills

We spent a few days over the May bank holiday in Ireland for a wedding, coming back via Anglesey and spending a night in Shropshire on our way back east. We walked over the Long Mynd at dusk, heading back towards our campsite, and this was the view as we began to descend.

Church of Saint Mary, Whitby

A weekend camping near Robin Hood’s Bay in the summer found us in Whitby before walking back along the coast. This is the taken at the Church of Saint Mary – set above the town and referenced in Dracula. I was struck with this view of the tombstones dark against the long meadow grasses and wished this was a more common sight – cemeteries and churchyards can be beautiful places full of life after death, if they’re managed sensitively for wildlife rather than manicured as bowling greens!

Curbar Edge, Derbyshire

We had a survey site which saw me out in the Peak District until 7pm one evening in August – after which I took the opportunity to see the heather and take a walk along Curbar Edge at sunset. This is the view out across from the Edge as the sun was sinking low on the horizon.

Vancouver Island

The following are a few photographs from Vancouver Island this year – we encountered some spectacular wildlife and were amazed by the scenery. You can read more in my blog posts here, but below are a few highlights.

Anna’s Hummingbird in Victoria

American red squirrel at Long Beach, Tofino

Black squirrel in Stanley Park, Vancouver

Orca’s from Victoria

Grey heron reflection against the vending machines on the marina in Vancouver

Slow worm – Anguis fragilis

This tiny slow worm was one of this year’s juveniles – we were surveying a site in Somerset and this was one of seven young ones which appeared under a single survey mat where the sun warmed a bank at the edge of the site. When I picked it up, it wrapped itself around my finger but was so small that the nose and tail didn’t quite meet!

Sunrise on the day of Storm Ophelia

This photograph was taken of the countryside in Warwickshire on the day Storm Ophelia swept across the UK. At that time, I didn’t realise what was causing the effect but was just taken by the colours – it turned out that the day was to be filled with the pseudo-apocolyptic light brought on by the Sahara sands.

Cattle at Muston Meadows

Muston Meadows is an ancient haymeadow and a National Nature Reserve in Leicestershire. The site is managed with a late-summer hay cut and is grazed in the winter by cattle. I visited one frosty morning in December and they were delighted to have a visitor, charging over before stopping and checking me out. They then accompanied me all the way off the site so perhaps their role is security as well as site management!

Icicles under Burbage Bridge

On a snowy cold day in December, I took a walk through the white from the Longshaw Estate in Derbyshire, through woodland and across tors and encountering these beautiful icicles hanging beneath the bridge which takes the road over Burbage Brook.

Clematis seedhead – Clematis vitalba

These are also commonly known as old man’s beard and it’s easy to see why! I came across these seedheads in a hedgerow on a survey site in Bedfordshire where the wind had left them with this shape over time – I liked the feeling of motion which they held even when still. It seemed appropriate for seeds which are waiting for their time to take to the wind and begin a new plant elsewhere in the landscape.

Teasel seedheads – Dipsacus fullonum

On the same site as the clematis above, I also found an amazing stand of teasel seedheads. These striking plants are excellent for wildlife – in the summer they provide an abundance of nectar for pollinators such as bees and butterflies, and the winter seedheads will play host to flocks of goldfinches foraging for the seeds.

2017 in Trees

December 22, 2017Grantham Ecology1 Comment

The darkness of the winter is always a good time to reflect on a year passed, not only to appreciate what you’ve seen and experienced but to look forward to the treasures which await the eager explorer in the year ahead.

As always, I find trees feature strongly when I look back at the photos I’ve taken. There is much to appreciate in the natural world and each element has its own pleasure and essence. Trees feel like communing with the elders (no pun intended!) – even a stand of spindly silver birch will have been alive almost as long as I have and some of the trees you meet allow you to reach back through the generations, to the limits of living memory and far beyond. Here are a just a few such encounters from this year.

Clumber Park

Clumber has much to offer at any time of year – the double lime avenue on the entrance just keeps rolling the trees before you like an unfurling scroll as you drive in, and the old parkland has many veterans to tell you their tales. This photo was taken across the lake, as the sun sunk low on a Sunday afternoon in January, lighting the trunks and stretching the reflections out across the water.

Grantham

This tree sits proudly on top of the hillside overlooking Grantham and I pass it most days on my lunchtime walk. It is a sycamore and sits at the end of an incongruous line of old oaks, beeches and other sycamores which speak of an older time. A friend refereed to it as ‘that amazing oak’, assuming the species from its stature and prowess. I wonder if she’ll read this… Stretching out below is the course grassland and gorse of Harrowby Hill and above it lies the Hills and Hollows where barn owls and short-eared owls hunt through the winter months and marsh orchids nestle in the summertime.

Hatfield Forest

We went with some friends to listen to Sam Lee’s ‘Singing with Nightingales‘ at Fingringhoe Wick in spring, and took the opportunity for a walk around Hatfield Forest. Hornbeam was growing in the woodlands with a frequency and regularity I never see here in the Midlands, but this particular specimen was exceptional. This is an old hornbeam pollard where the heartwood had rotted away and the tree split into two live, healthy halves which were easily large enough to walk through.

Treswell Wood

Treswell Wood is a very special place – Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust’s first reserve, it is an ash dominated ancient woodland in the north of the county which now plays host to the successfully reintroduced dormouse populations as well as supporting a whole range of other species. Springtime sees the trees burst into an abundance of fresh green leaves and creamy white blossom and this photograph of the mixed canopy captures this exuberance for me.

Muston Meadows

Muston Meadows is an ancient haymeadow in Leicestershire – it’s deep ridge and furrow grassland supports an exceptional population of green-winged orchid as well as a burnet, pignut, cowslip, quaking oat grass and meadowsweet. This photograph of the oak and ash within the boundary hedgerow was taken as a starlapse at midnight under moonlight in the springtime. I love to be somewhere that allows you to feel such a strong connection to the past, I imagine scenes from D. H. Lawrence’s works where the haymaking in these meadows was a time of great importance for sustenance and survival, as well as opportunities for intrigue and romance.

Bedford Purleius

The light filtered through a thousand leaves has subtleties of which vary from species to species, from place to place and from month to month. There can be few however to match the soft light of sunshine through newly unfurled beech leaves, as this stand in Bedford Purleius. Later in the season, the ground beneath these trunks will support helleborines which flower in mid-summer.

Millstone Edge, Derbyshire

Leaving the twisted, gnarled oak woodland of the valley beside the Burbage Brook, you turn onto an entirely different scene – one of light and green and air. This edge is populated almost entirely by silver birch with sketch a monchrome array between the greens of foliage above and grassland below.

Robin Hood’s Bay

This was an opportunistic photograph of the sunlight playing through woodsmoke from a bonfire in the clearing below. It’s not often that mist and fog will persist long enough through the day to allow such vertical shafts of light in a woodland scene, so I took advantage of serendipity to catch a shot which reminds me more of rainforest than an English woodland.

Quantocks

The Quantocks has become one of my favourite places to visit – the different characters of the trees and woodland set within an ancient landscape are irresistible. You can read more in this blog post from the autumn, but below are a couple of my favourites.

First is the gnarled oak woodland crowding the road which ventures up over the wooded hillside from Nether Stowey towards Crowcombe.

Next is the massed boughs of the coppiced beeches which line the Drove Road – a prehistoric track which runs across the ridge of the hillside above Crowcombe.

This photograph is perhaps my favourite of this year – it shows the woodland closing over the road with Tolkinesque grandeaur. If these were ents which came to life, I wouldn’t be so very surprised…

Cambridge Botanic Garden

This shows the beautiful soft browns of the autumn needles of swamp cypress – an evergreen conifer – against the backdrop of yellow maple leaves. I was in Cambridge for a meeting and had an hour before catching my train which gave a perfect opportunity to explore the botanic gardens which were conveniently close to the station. As well as the stunning floral displays and specimens, they have some beautiful trees and it’s a great spot for autumn colour!

Wappenbury Wood

Small-leaved lime used to be the key component of the woodlands around the midlands, before the clearance of the wildwood and the generation of the stands we see today. They still occur if you know where to look – Steve Falk‘s guides can help if you’re lucky enough to be in Warwickshire – and these old coppice stools within Wappenbury Wood are a fine example of a tree with which we should all be more familiar. Coppicing was the ancient practice of cutting the tree down to a bole, from which new growth would appear and could be substantially harvested without ever killing the tree. On the contrary, some of the oldest trees you can find are coppices and pollards, including small-leaved lime coppices in Westonbirt Arboretum thought to be over 2000 years old. This photo shows the tall, straight trunks of the regrowth many years after their last cut.

Bottesford Church

This photograph was taken at a local churchyard one frosty morning on Novembe. The night had turned the grass and gravestones to white whilst the sunrise caught the embers of autumn leaves on this beech and ignited them into a celebration of orange, umber and yellow. It was only a few more days before the leaves fell, but this was a moment when autumn had not yet given way to winter and the right morning can provide you with the best of both.

Staverton Park

I was very pleased to find myself within a few miles of this woodland in November, and took the opportunity to explore one of the most impressive assemblages of ancient trees in the country. You can read more in my blog post, but here area couple of my favourites.

The path through The Thicks wound its way between trees and shrubs, but split around this majestic old oak which stood in the centre of the path and demanded all that pass must pass around it.

This photograph was taken at sunrise, of one of the idiosyncratic old oaks on the edge of the parkland. The ground layer beneath is dominated by bracken, and I thought the frond and the tree made a nice contrast against the morning sky.

Whatton-in-the-Vale

Grantham Road is a bypass to the old road, which was subsequently bypassed again by the new A52 which avoids the village altogether. The road now links the two parts of the village and, though less than 100 years old, is bestowed an authority and antiquity by the double-line of planes which enclose it. The houses at the end are where the Griffin’s Head pub once stood. I liked the way the glow of life and civilisation lay at the end of the imposing avenue against a starry sky, like coming out of the woods into the safety of a home.

Millstone Edge

Back once more amongst the silver birches of Millstone Edge – their black and white stems through the snow transports you to another country, to Russia or else eastern Europe.

Bedford Purleius

With the seedheads of the helleborines still standing, this was the last view I had of these beech trees in 2017. I love the softness of the light which seems to remain as a memory of those leaves from early springtime.

Midlands Bat Conference 2014

May 14, 2014Grantham EcologyLeave a comment

The Bat Conservation Trust runs an annual Bat Conference in September each year which is attended by bat groups, enthusiasts and professionals from around the country. They also hold regional conferences once every two years and this year’s Midlands conference was at the end of April. The focus of the conference is not exclusively based in the region, but has talks from local bat group members and researchers as well as spotlight talks from the various bat groups in a region so that neighbouring groups can find out about projects which others in the area are involved in.

Morgan Bowers talking about the Brumbats Flight Cage at the BCT Midlands Bat Conference 2014 (image borrowed from the BCT Twitter feed)

The Warwickshire Barbastelle Project

Lois Browne gave an inspiring talk on the Warwickshire Barbastelle Project which has been running in Warwickshire for the last two years. This project studied the behaviour and habits of one of the rarest bat species in the UK through trapping and radio-tracking as well as traditional acoustic survey techniques. The study colony roosts in an ancient woodland site but forages further afield, leaving the woods and foraging in a valley to the south as well as around lakes and woodland fragments within 5km of the roost. Non-breeding bats were found to travel further to feed; up to 7km from the roost. Some bats were found to have very traditional routes which they stuck to each evening when they left the wood to reach their foraging grounds. Boxes erected as part of the project were used by the barbastelles, including use by maternity colonies. They found the Colin Morris design to be used preferentially. The project also carried out targeted work to enhance the local habitat for barbastelles, informed by the findings of their study. So far they have planted 800m of hedgerows and standards to improve connectivity, are developing three new wildflower meadows and have built a new pond.

Emergence behaviour of Natterer’s and brown long-eared bats

Rachel Fryer gave a talk on the emergence behaviour of Natterer’s and brown long-eared bats. She observed two known maternity roosts once a week between May and September and recorded each emerging bat to identify the earliest emergence time, the median emergence time and the number of bats emerging, and correlated this with environmental variables. The earliest emergence times proved interesting with records earlier than the textbook examples. The median emergence time for Natterer’s was 60-64 minutes after sunset whilst brown long-eared bats left a little earlier with a median emergence time of 44-49 minutes after sunset. The number of bats emerging were found to fluctuate between nights – this could relate to some bats remaining in the roost or the colony being split between different roost sites. However, there was a correlation between the number of brown long-eared bats emerging and the average wind speed with fewer bats emerging on windier nights. The light levels also seem to influence emergence behaviour with brown long-eared bats emerging later under higher light levels; and Natterer’s bats emerging earlier when there was higher cloud cover. This empirical information on the emergence characteristics is valuable as existing published information is often sparse and often doesn’t specify whether the time relates to the earliest or the median emergence time.

Species Distribution Modelling for Bechstein’s Bats

A talk given on behalf of Lia Gilmour from the University of Bristol shared the results of Species Distribution Modelling of Bechstein’s bats and the use of the results to identify further suitable habitat for this rare species. The principle behind this modelling is to look at the conditions in which the bats are found and identify further locations where these conditions are present. In theory therefore, if the SDM is modelling correctly, the bats may be found in these locations. This model found four key variables which appeared to be important: the presence of broadleaf/mixed woodland, a relatively low summer rainfall, a minimum January temperature of >7 degrees and a relatively high temperature range. This corresponds well with the southern distribution of this woodland dwelling bat. The model appeared to work well as new records were found to fall within the optimal or marginal suitability distributions predicted by the model. This is a valuable tool in targeting the search for further Bechstein’s colonies to those locations where the bats are most likely to be found. It will however only identify further habitat like the ones in the bats are known to dwell and so new colonies may still be found in unexpected locations outside of the current or accepted range. This problem is further exacerbated for the Bechstein’s as so much of the distribution is known from targeted surveys using acoustic lures to capture and identify the bats. These surveys were largely carried out in locations where the bats were most likely to be found – specifically broadleaf woodland sites in the south of the country and this will have influenced, in turn, the predictions of the models. It is a case of don’t look; don’t find and the risk with this approach is that more borderline sites may be overlooked if the limitations of the methodology are not appreciated.

Alcathoe Bat in the UK

Phil Brown has been undertaking research using DNA analysis of small myotis species bats. A cryptic species was recently identified in 2010 called the Alcathoe bat which is very similar to Brandt’s and Whiskered bats and, whilst known on the continent since 2001, was not known to exist in England. One of the aims of Phil’s research was to see whether these bats could be identified outside of their current known range of Sussex, Surrey and North Yorkshire. 70 sites were surveyed and 395 bats were caught of which 39 were whiskered/Brandt’s/Alcathoe (WAB). This targeted capture and DNA collection was supplemented by samples sent in by other bat workers around the country with the result that a total of 110 WAB samples were tested. 95 of these were found to be whiskered bats; 10 were found to be Brandt’s bats; and 5 were found to be Alcathoe. Sadly, these five bats were all found in Sussex/Surrey and so there remain no records in between their current known locations towards the north and south of the country.

Brumbats Flight Cage

Morgan Bowers from Brumbats gave an inspirational and enlightening talk on the new flight cage they have had built. This allows the bat carers to assess the health and abilities of rescued bats, gives the bats opportunity to exercise and to behave in a more natural manner, and allows them to be rehabilitated and soft-released with a more supportive environment if they take a little longer to build their abilities. This also saves the perennial bat carer issue of bats getting loose in the house and hiding in the most unlikely places – including inside a hoover! The flight cage is a good training tool as well as it offers a safe environment for new bat carers to learn their rehabilitation and handling skills. You can find out more about the flight cage here with some videos to watch too! Another blog on the conference can be found on the Brumbats page here.

White Nose Syndrome in the UK

The last talk of the day was given by Alex Barlow on White Nose Syndrome in the UK. This is a devastating disease in the USA which has seen mortality rates in hibernation sites of 97% for the little brown bat and 49% for the big brown bat. The syndrome is caused by a fungus which infects the bats and gives a characteristic white nose where the mycelium grows. The presence of the fungus leads to increased evapotranspiration and loss of electrolytes which effectively dehydrates the bat and it rouses out of torpor to drink – some bats have even been observed trying to eat snow. The survival of a bat through the winter is a finely balanced process and this wakening uses a large amount of the winter reserves of the bats which then can not find food to replace the energy they have lost. There were serious fears that this disease may spread to other locations but surveys and sampling across Europe have found the fungus but have not recorded any associated mass mortality events. DNA analysis of the fungus has found significant genetic diversity in Europe which suggests that it is endemic to the continent, whilst those in the USA are all genetically similar, suggesting it is a recent introduction. This may mean that the European bats have co-evolved alongside the fungus and will therefore be able to cope with it, whilst it is a novel pathogen to bats in the US and they have suffered badly from its effects. Further active surveys for the fungus are taking place through 2013/14 with 25 sites selected across the UK, especially those used for tourism or caving. The current state of knowledge allows us to be cautiously optimistic that this fungus should not lead to the same level of devastation in the UK as has been seen in the US.

Spotlight Talks on Local Bat Groups

The spotlight talks from the local bat ground included Lincolnshire all the way across to Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Derbyshire taking in Leicester and Rutland, Nottinghamshire and Birmingham and the Black Country on the way. A range of projects are underway including NBMP monitoring of roosts; the Nathusius pipistrelle project for which Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire are amongst the pilot groups; the BrumBats Batlas project which aims to extend their knowledge of bat distribution across the area; and a range of public engagement events including bat walks and talks. For more information on the activities of all of these groups, check their pages which are all linked above. Whatever your level of interest, there will be something to get involved with wherever in the Midlands you are!