Category: Biology

A scarce flower for Passover and Easter

We took a walk along the Devil’s Dyke hoping to see Green Hairstreaks and perhaps the Dotterals that had been sighted on neighbouring Ditch Farm. We had no luck with either of those, although there were lots of Brimstone butterflies, a few Whitethroats, and our first Willow Warbler of the year.

Almost in passing we noticed a pretty purple flower with a yellow centre. Mrs Sciencebase suggested it might be some kind of anemone and it is indeed in the same sub-family, Ranunculoideae, but it is specifically Pulsatilla vulgaris, known colloquially as the European Pasque Flower. Pasque from the Hebrew word for Passover, Pasakh. Obviously, quite apt for this time of year.

The plant is also known as the wind flower, prairie crocus, Easter flower, and meadow anemone. The showy purple parts are sepals rather than petal. It’s a scarce plant that likes chalky or limestone-rich land. Happily, the very substance of the raised earthworks that is Devil’s Dyke is a good proportion of chalk. It is also the ‘county flower’ of Cambridgeshire and neighbouring Hertfordshire. Pulsatilla species are toxic and can cause vomiting and diarrhoea if ingested and in serious cases of poisoning, convulsions, a critical drop in blood pressure, and coma.

Thanks to Twitter friends for the ID, one, to my chagrin, I did not know.

Counted 11 hares on adjacent farmland, lots of cowslips, lots of Brimstone butterfly, one or two Small Tortoiseshell, half a dozen European Peacock and lots of the same beige moth (perhaps a caddisfly?)

An American vagrant in Earith

I’ve been a bit under the weather with something other than covid but it’s had me stuck indoors for a few days nevertheless. I stoked myself up on some appropriate medication and ventured out to see the Black Redstarts, the Garganey, and the Blue-winged Teal that have all turned up on a fairly local patch (a fenland village currently with a lot of flooding).

There were lots of birders around with big scopes and a few toggers. Some of the birders is toggers too (to paraphrase Ice-T). Speaking of which, one of the birders that you can’t see in the photo told us he had covid, although thought he was probably past being infectious, I kept well away from him, the silly boy!

I latched on to one birder whom I recognised, he was well away from the crowd and had been there for about 5 hours, I asked him for guidance as to the whereabouts of the Garganeys and the Blue-winged Teal.

Garganey drake record shot

The Garganeys, which seem to have turned up in the British Isles in fairly large numbers from Spain recently, perhaps because of unusually dry weather there, were fairly static, but feeding and dabbling at a distance from the footpath of about 250 metres. More intriguingly a Garganey drake (Spatula querquedula) was on the far bank, roosting on a log, and right next to it the American vagrant. A female Blue-winged Teal.

Garganey drake and female Blue-winged Teal (trust me, it’s there, I saw it through a ‘scope)

The Blue-winged Teal (Spatula discors) is a duck that you normally only see in North America, Central America and the very northerly parts of South America. Intriguingly though our friend the Garganey drake, which is in the same genus as the blue-wing had been observed mating with this female earlier in the week. And, according to the expert was spending a lot of time with her. Another of the Garganey drakes, or maybe the same one, had also been seen mating a female another species in the same genus, a Northern Shoveller (Spatula clypeata).

As to the Black Redstarts, apparently, there was only one around, but I caught sight of it as it popped up to catching a flying invertebrate from the distant roof of a house beyond the village marina. No photo though. Sometimes just a birder and not so much a togger.

What do Peregrine Falcons eat?

What do Peregrine Falcons eat? It might be easier to ask what don’t they eat? Here’s a list of kills reported based on avian remains and feathers at the foot of the tall buildings frequented by the Cambridge Peregrines:

Bar-tailed Godwit, Blackbird, Black-tailed Godwit, Carrion Crow, Collared Dove, Feral Pigeon (Stock Dove), Fieldfare, Golden Plover, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Great Tit, Grey Partridge, House Sparrow, Moorhen, Redwing, Robin, Shoveller Duck, Starling, Teal, Woodcock.

The Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) is the world’s fastest animal. It stoops on its prey from way above and has been recorded as reaching speeds of an incredible 300 kilometres per hour. It basically slams into its prey to kill it and carries it off to a perch where it will pluck the bird before eating. It will also cache chunks of prey on tall buildings around its territory to eat later or for feeding nesting partner, and later chicks.

 

Glossy Ibis looking glossier

UPDATE: Breeding season 2023. In 2022, I mentioned the hope and possibility of Glossies breeding in the UK. This happened in 2023.

I’ve mentioned the Glossy Ibis many times before, there are still several in and around our local patch and almost 200 estimated to be across the British Isles. There were just four at a place where I’ve seen seven recently, but that’s fine. Four is better than zero.

They were all looking rather glossy, which is presumably in time for the breeding season. Whether or not these birds actually breed here is another matter. There is a breeding colony in Spain, but this African/Mediterranean species has been extending its range and hanging around the British Isles recently, but no reports of breeding or attempts at breeding just yet.

Maybe 2022 could be the year for it! Certainly, other recent acquisitions like Cattle, Great White, and Little Egret are in on the act.

Eurasian Crane, Grus grus

I’ve talked about the Common, or Eurasian, Crane on the Sciencebase site before, there are increasing numbers of this bird to be seen on our East Anglian patch, and that’s a very positive, natural thing.

There is something quite primaeval about the species. Snapped here with a 600mm Sigma zoom on 2/3 crop sensor Canon 7Dii from about 370 metres. I didn’t know ahead of the visit that they were even there and snapped them when I saw them and left them to their own devices.

Aperture f/8 shutter speed 1/1579s, ISO 1000. RAW image imported with Rawtherapee, denoised and sharpened in Topaz DeNoize AI, and final output tweaked with PaintShop Pro. Cropped to 40% original pixel-width.

Twentypence Otter

TL:DR – We saw an otter preening on the banks of a local waterway in early Spring 2022. Also a pun or two from friend of the blog, Patrick C.

A road that crosses the River Great Ouse a short way north of our village has the fabulous name of Twentypence Road. Downstream of the river is the Twentypence Marina where often you might espy Kingfishers darting about from branch to reed. Indeed, we parked up ahead of a country walk there and saw two within a couple of minutes of getting out of the car.

Upstream of the bridge is a nice walk that can take you along the edge of farmland to walk on the flood bank or you can head back towards our village along the Cottenham Lode. There is also a fishing lake surrounded by trees, which is often good for various bird species and beyond is a growing herd of roe deer to be stalked. However, today we took the north bank of the river and headed for the footpath beyond the riverside cottage.

It was in front of the cottage that I spotted a creature cleaning itself on the riverbank. An otter, or more precisely Lutra lutra, the repeated word, a tautonym, implying this species is the “archetype” of the Lutra genus. The species is often called the European or Eurasian Otter and sometimes that is qualified as River Otter to separate it from the Sea Otter. Anyway, it was a surprise to see it out in the open rather than simply catching a glimpse at a distance of a head ducking under the water. It made my day, as one might say.

Incidentally, otters are fairly closely related to weasels and stoats but also to seals, seals are certainly closer genetically speaking to otters than they are to dogs with which they are often compared.

Incidentally, my great friend Patrick tells a nice joke on this topic.

Patrick: Had a lovely chicken tarka at the curry house last night

Me: Sounds delicious, but don’t you mean a chicken tikka?

Patrick: No, it’s like a chicken tikka, but a little otter!

Me: Oh

Patrick: Had an onion budgie as a side

Me: Nice, but surely you mean an onion bhaji

Patrick: No, it’s like an onion bhaji, but a little cheeper…cheaper…cheeper, geddit? Ah, never mind…

Me: When was the last time you went clubbing?

Patrick: Aloo bangain?

Me: No idea, the songs all sound the same these days

Patrick: No, bangain bharta!

Me: I don’t care how much you haggled on the price to get in

Patrick: Naan?

Me: Don’t be silly, she prefers a tea dance

Patrick: Paneer tikka masala

Me: What she does in the privacy of her own home is none of your business

Patrick: Aloo gobi

Me: Yeah, see ya next time!

Smithy Fen Birding

UPDATE: October 2023. Despite recent heavy rains the patch of farmland, on which birders (Ian and Brendan) had ticked 160+ species, has remained unflooded so far this season. I suspect the drainage along the fields and/or the adjacent travellers’ site have been fixed. So, it was fun while it lasted and maybe it will happen again, but it seems that for the timebeing we are not going to have quite the birding on that patch as we did last winter and the previous couple of seasons, unfortunately. So much for creating a protected birdlife area.

Over the last year or more (2020-2022), a patch of farmland known, as Bullock’s Haste, which lies on the outskirts of our village has been perpetually flooded. Incredibly, over two winters it has attracted a greater and greater diversity of bird species who have spent time there feeding, preening, and roosting.

Two friends dedicated to the citizen science cause of birding (Brendan Doe and Ian Ellis) have observed and catalogued (on eBird) more than 150 species there in that time. I cannot claim to have seen even a fraction of that number there, although I have seen a good many of the “ticked” species in various other places and several of them at this site. There are a few other named spotters on the list who have ticked several species, but Doe and Ellis have done the bulk of this excellent work.

Here’s the list as it stands, in alphabetical order. I have removed terms such as Eurasian, European, Northern, and Western from these vernacular names to simplify things. You can visit the eBird list to get alternative formats. As you will see, there are a few fairly rare and unusual visitors on the list:

Arctic Tern
Barn Owl
Barn Swallow
Bewick’s Swan
Blackbird
Blackcap
Black-headed Gull
Black-tailed Godwit
Blue Tit
Brambling
Bullfinch
Buzzard
Canada Goose
Carrion Crow
Caspian Gull
Cetti’s Warbler
Chaffinch
Chiffchaff
Coal Tit
Collared Dove
Coot
Corn Bunting
Cuckoo
Curlew
Curlew Sandpiper
Dunlin
Dunnock
Egyptian Goose
Fieldfare
Gadwall
Garden Warbler
Garganey
Glossy Ibis
Goldcrest
Golden Plover
Goldfinch
Goosander
Great Black-backed Gull
Great Cormorant
Great Crested Grebe
Great Spotted Woodpecker
Great Tit
Great White Egret
Green Sandpiper
Green Woodpecker
Greenfinch
Greenshank
Green-winged Teal
Grey Heron
Grey Partridge
Grey Plover
Grey Wagtail
Greylag Goose
Greylag Goose (Domestic type) x Canada Goose (hybrid)
Greylag x Canada Goose (hybrid)
Hawfinch
Hen Harrier
Herring Gull
Hobby
House Martin
House Sparrow
Iceland Gull
Jack Snipe
Jackdaw
Jay
Kestrel
Kingfisher
Lapwing
Lesser Black-backed Gull
Lesser Redpoll
Lesser Whitethroat
Linnet
Little Egret
Little Grebe
Little Owl
Little Ringed Plover
Little Stint
Long-tailed Tit
Magpie
Mallard
Marsh Harrier
Meadow Pipit
Mediterranean Gull
Merlin
Mistle Thrush
Moorhen
Mute Swan
Nuthatch
Oystercatcher
Pectoral Sandpiper
Peregrine Falcon
Pheasant
Pied Avocet
Pied Flycatcher
Pied Wagtail/White Wagtail
Pink-footed Goose
Pintail
Pochard
Raven
Red Kite
Red-crested Pochard
Red-legged Partridge
Redshank
Redwing
Reed Bunting
Reed Warbler
Ringed Plover
Robin
Rock Dove
Rock Pipit
Rook
Ruff
Sand tin
Sanderling
Sandpiper
Sedge Warbler
Shelduck
Shoveler
Siskin
Skylark
Snipe
Song Thrush
Sparrowhawk
Spoonbill
Spotted Flycatcher
Spotted Redshank
Starling
Stock Dove
Stonechat
Swift
Tawny Owl
Temminck’s Stint
Tern
Tree Pipit
Tufted Duck
Turtle Dove
Water Rail
Wheatear
Whimbrel
Whinchat
Whitethroat
Whooper Swan
Wigeon
Willow Warbler
Wood Sandpiper
Woodcock
Woodpigeon
Wren
Yellow Wagtail
Yellowhammer
Yellow-legged Gull

UPDATE: 11 April 2022 – Little Gull has turned up

Kingfisher Bridge Spoonbills again

We ate the Spoonbill to extinction in the British Isles in the 17thC. But re-creating lost habitat, conservation work, and a reintroduction scheme is seeing their numbers crawling back.

North Norfolk is a good place to see them these days, but they’re also spreading their wings. Four have been present on one of our fenland nature reserves for weeks now, we saw them on a dull day back in the middle of winter. Kingfisher’s Bridge Nature Reserve.

Out of covid isolation at last, I thought I’d pay them another visit and was told by a birder (might have been a warden) that they weren’t around right now. Ten minutes later, two flew off the main lake and right over my head.

LepiLED for #mothsmatter science

TL:DR – The LepiLED UV lamp is a rather useful, low-power and portable lure for use in citizen science with nocturnal Lepidoptera

UPDATE: Aug/Sep 22 – Have done a couple of trips with the LepiLED and a portable trap. First, to the New Forest and then to Corfe Castle. The first, August trip, was quite productive with a few decent moths and a couple that were new to me, such as Rosy Footman. Fewer moths on the September trip, as you’d expect, but again a couple of new ones, including L-album Wainscot and Tachystola acroxantha.

L-album Wainscot moth
L-album Wainscot

UPDATE: Feb 22 – All set up and lit up on Friday evening at dusk just for a quick trial. The LepiLED is nice and bright and lasted several hours on the battery pack. However, the night was rather chilly, although the wind had dropped, there was very little visible invertebrate activity in the garden, sadly, and no moths seen. In previous years with fluorescent UV lamps, it has been the same, don’t tend to see any moths in February, activity picks up in mid-March.

Apparently, mothing became something of a lockdown hobby for nature fans who weren’t allowed to head out into their usual patch to watch birds, search for orchids, hug trees, etc. I can’t see I’ve heard much evidence that anyone who may have glanced at it as a hobby back in 2020 has kept up with it…let me know if you did and you have. Either way, I’ve been lighting up since July 2018 after being introduced to the idea by my good friend Rob that summer. It became something of an obsession and subsequent years and I’ve been keen to find ways to see new species each season. I’ve clocked and photographed well over 300 unique moth species in that time.

My German lepidopteral contact Gunnar Brehm of whom I’ve written a couple of times on here in the past has now supplied me with a LepiLED device. The device is basically a cluster of LED lights in a chunky protective canister made of ultraviolet-transparent borosilicate glass that is powered using a portable USB powerpack). It has three wavelength peaks for attracting nocturnal insects. Two peaks in the visible spectrum green (530 nanometres) and blue (450 nm), and a third, peak in the ultraviolet (365 nm). The associated research linked to the peak choice in the design can be found here.

The LepiLED 1.1 - a UV lamp for studying light-attracted organisms at night

Having spent the first four seasons (July 2018 onwards) of my scientific moth-trapping with conventional fluorescent UV tubes (the kind that are used, ironically, in bug zappers), I am very excited to have the opportunity to try a new approach with the lower power, tuned LepiLED device. The weather is not optimal at the moment, it’s very windy and we just had a squally hailstorm/snow shower. But, once I have set up the kit, I will start lighting up and report back to you with the countless specimens I see each evening as the moth season unfolds over the coming weeks.

Moth trap setup with the LepiLED in place showing vanes and funnel

I have now used an old actinic trap with its UV fluorescent tube removed to build a new rig for the LepiLED. As I mentioned, the lamp uses a USB power supply so should be portable, I can either hang it like it is in the above photo with a net sack added around the funnel (per Brehm’s field approach) to catch the moths or set it on the ground and use the box from the original trap with egg cartons as is traditional…I’ll try both at some point once the wind has died down and I’ve found a decent waterproof way to have the USB powerpack outside.

Spawnography 2022

I did think about hashtagging this post as #SpawnHub but…

As regular Sciencebase readers will know, I re-dug our garden pond in May 2019 (you can read about Operation Sciencebase Pond here, #PondLife). We’ve always seen frogs in the garden even when the pond was filled, but in 2020 there were at least nine using the refreshed pond. Spring of 2021, we had our first spawn in years, noted it on the 5th March, although there may have been some that appeared earlier and sunk.

On 21st February 2022, Matt was in the garden after dark and noticed two pairs of frogs and a dollop of spawn. I took a quick snap of one pair. I know it’s not a big deal, but it is rather gratifying to see new life beginning to emerge thanks to one’s small-scale efforts at wilding a garden. Lot’s or ram’s horn aquatic snails visible in the pond after dark too.

I recommend anyone who has the space (and you don’t need a lot, a Belfast sink or old tin bathtub in a backyard would do) to create a wildlife pond. I am planning my seeding for the garden already having said goodbye to our “digger” in January. I am also hoping to create a sloped edge from the pond that has a slight incline to allow a swamp-type area to develop away from the house. This will provide even greater, smallscape diversity and potentially attract other flora and fauna to the garden. Who knows what might turn up or self-seed.

You can track the nationwide progress of frog spawning here.