December 2008 - Posts
Last week saw something of an exodus from the Countryside Service office. But do not fear, as it was only for a few hours and all in the name of good service.
Over the course of two days, a few of us made a tour of all of the EDDC Local Nature Reserves to ensure that our ‘to do’ lists were completely up to date. Of course things came out of the woodwork, as they tend to do when looking at things afresh, but the overall feeling I was left with, was what a fabulous lot of places are out there to be enjoyed at your convenience.
While something new and exciting like the wetland creation on the river Axe is obvious, some of the ongoing projects lie very much behind the scenes, with very little physical evidence of their endeavours. One case in point is the ongoing battle of hearts and minds on the Exmouth Local Nature Reserve.
A few weeks ago I reported with a song in my heart and a spring in my step, that things were going well with a voluntary arrangement on the estuary in regard to water users between September and Christmas. So many of the local windsurfers and kitesurfers I spoke to knew about the arrangement and (to varying degrees) supported the venture. Some vehemently and vociferously supported the idea, others were a little less outspoken.
Unfortunately it looks like this is going to be an ongoing saga, as the photo printed here shows. The weekend weather a few weeks ago made the estuary a wind-powered wonderland, and scant regard was taken of the birds or the no-go-zone, by a couple of individuals captured here by a local photographer. Without speaking to these people personally, it’s impossible to say if they are locals who wanted to make the most of a good blow, or if they’ve come down from further afield and had never heard of the notion of bird disturbance.
I like to think the best of people whenever possible, so will opt to think it’s the latter situation. However, the good thing about kites and sails, is that they are really easy to identify. By spending more time out interacting with water users in Exmouth, I am already getting to know individuals and their rigs, so hopefully everyone will begin to act responsibly as word spreads and understanding grows that its in everyone’s interests to self-regulate.
Signage is the issue here. While the best situation is one where I can personally be on site every time there is a good wind between September and January, that’s not feasible, so on site information becomes so much more important. To be fair to everyone involved, this isn’t the case just yet, so before heads can roll, signs have to be erected.
Keeping signs and notice boards up to date is something of a perennial issue, as there is so much information that could do with being out there, being read, but only so much space for signs in the countryside. Also, it’s something of an administrative battle to coordinate. At the moment posters get put up when I am passing, so I am making a plea for anyone interested in volunteering as notice board monitors on various sites, to whom I could mail information for immediate billeting. If you think you would be interested in getting involved, please contact me at the District Council’s Countryside Service!
A few sites we visited had really begun to bloom thanks to the conservation efforts of volunteers. You may remember reading my pleas for scrub-bashing volunteers in this column around this time last year? Well, the resulting clearance has had major positive effects on the heathland of Trinity Hill. Patches of scrub have been pushed back and the heather and grasses below have flourished in the intervening months.
It’s great to see the fruits of your labour, and know that it is having a real effect on the quality of the local wildlife. Next year we will have more opportunities than ever to get involved, so make sure you pick up your copy of the events leaflet as soon as it is printed. In the New Year you should be able to find a copy in your local Tourist Information Centre, or on the EDDC website. Water voles will get their own weekly work force, so make the most of the opportunity to be personally involved in their return to the County.
Keep your eyes peeled over the coming weeks for any late invertebrates that have managed to avoid the autumnal frosts. For a change, it looks like we have had some sharp weather at the beginning of the winter period, so common darter dragonflies basking in the middle of December might not be a feature of this winter’s wildlife log. However, if you do see an unseasonal bumblebee, or an errant butterfly, let me know – I’m always interested to hear about your sightings.
The great thing about writing these columns is that I am seldom stuck for content. I suppose there’s a great deal to be said for writing about something you find interesting; I used to work as an industrial press officer and I promise you, once you can rattle off a few hundred words about the world-changing properties of the latest plastic headed rivet (fixes and finishes in one easy step), then writing about something interesting is a doddle!
Inspiration comes in many guises. Last week it was a chance encounter in the East Devon countryside, this week it comes from an interesting and thought provoking article on the web.
As many of you who read these ramblings regularly will know, the seven Local Nature Reserves I am fortunate enough to work on are very dear to my heart. Moreover, my colleague Fraser Rush – immediate family excluded – looks upon the reserves as his sole reason for getting up in the morning! So it was with great interest that I read an article from the pen (or should that be keyboard) of Chris Packham, entitled “What’s the point of Nature Reserves”. It was published on a website called Wildlife Extra (dot com) and I would heartily recommend a visit as it is a mine of information, the URL of the article is printed at the end of this piece.
Whoa, Chris! Hang on a minute, did I read that correctly? The point of Nature Reserves? I was intrigued.
I read on calmly and the ensuing article was well worth the effort, for although it didn’t really touch upon any earth-shattering alternatives, merely alluded to them which was a bit of a cop-out, it did raise some interesting points.
Chris made the analogy of nature reserves being something of a masterpiece painting (thanks very much Chris, we are pleased with them too) – but hang on, it seems Chris isn’t that keen on art. The analogy was illustrating how reserves represent a fixed point, some time in the past, which referred to some mythical utopia. And to this end, I had to tentatively agree, but is Utopia a bad thing?
Chris used heathland management as an example and, considering how we are blessed with some wonderful heathland around here, let’s use that too.
Heath is a totally man-made habitat, a by-product of ancient deforestation and centuries of low intensity grazing on acid soils. When these conditions combine, bingo, you get an ericaceous landscape dominated by heather. So, argued Chris, why do we as a nation spend vast amounts (and here I must disagree with you Mr P – we’ve not got budgets to envy) maintaining heath, when modern practices have moved on, leaving heaths behind.
So to cut to the chase before my word allocation runs out - beneath the headline grabbing question of the article, the nub of the issue is that honeypot management is inefficient and, in global terms, doomed to failure. But I think this is far too narrow a view.
Yes indeed, if you are looking at global biodiversity conservation, then the input from nature reserve management here in the UK is tiny, and possibly even grossly over-priced. My point is that at the critical moment, it only takes a dried blade of grass to make the mule collapse.
At a local level – which fittingly is the level at which your Local Authority manages sites – nature reserves are far from superfluous. They are vital. Sure enough, the world’s population of Dartford Warblers will not be saved if the only remaining population is that to be found on Fire Beacon Hill; four pairs and doing well, thanks very much. But in Britain, nature reserves represent something very unusual and that is access.
We live in an odd little country where, thanks to the ancient way in which it was ruled, pretty much all of it belongs to someone other than you, or me. This means we have, over time, developed the principal of public access, rights of way, the CROW Act. In other words over here you have to be explicitly told you can go somewhere before you dare venture out. Look elsewhere and things are a little different. Unless is says not to, you can wander where you like.
So landscape scale conservation, as much as it might be more efficient, more sustainable, is less accessible for you or I to appreciate and without awareness there is scant motivation to prioritise something.
In this little crowded place we call home, access to a wildlife oasis, be it a butterfly paradise in the middle of a built-up town, or a small nature reserve on the edge of the much larger Pebblebed Commons, is an incredibly worthwhile experience. The vast majority of people’s exposure to wildlife comes from trips to specific sites, and the common thread in this article and Chris’ is that exposure to wildlife, regardless of immediate proximity, is essential in keeping a balanced perspective of our place on the Earth. As a species we seem too able to assume we own this planet and forget that we in fact co-habit.
For anything to move on, you have to question the accepted norm (how I wish someone would do this with our 200 year-old means of getting from A to B by exploding fossilised trees) and in this respect, articles like this or Chris’ other similar thought-provoker, “Is it time to let the pandas go”, are important. However, if the underlying argument is that it’s just too expensive, well I think that’s a step too far.
The only way you deal with continental conservation, is to first deal with the individual, then the community, then the population. It all starts with the grass roots and nothing gets to the grass roots than your own local patch of paradise.
Read Chris Packham’s article in full at http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/nature-reserves729.html
You may not know this, but 2008 is the centenary year of the publication of Kenneth Grahame’s definitive work of English countryside fiction, The Wind in the Willows.
For some reason this has gone largely un-mentioned this year, and I think it is something of a missed opportunity. To see that at least in my own small way I can redress the balance, here’s a little comparison of the fictional stars of the book and their wild counterparts. Also, because the District Council is in the midst of a very exciting project involving water voles – the original ratty – it’s the perfect excuse to fly the flag for this work too!
The book begins with mole, and even though there are a number of key characters, it is he around which the book largely revolves. Mole is cleaning his home in readiness for spring and chattering to himself as he goes about his chores. I’m sure we all have our own mental picture of Moley’s cottage retreat – lots of gingham, woven reed seated dining chairs, simple country fare. It’s a cosy and incredibly inviting scene! Mole’s rather shy, fastidious character chimes with the real animal, as moles do indeed keep their tunnels spartan so as to maximise the number of earthworms they catch in these subterranean labyrinth traps. Their burrows are both home and food supply.
They could be seen as shy creatures too, however in the real world this manifests itself as fiercely territorial behaviour with moles guarding their home patch with sharp teeth and heavily muscled forepaws. With incredibly velvety fur which lies equally easily forwards or backwards along the animal, moles can slide through their burrows with ease. Rarely coming above ground, when forced to do so moles can swim very well, so the fictional Mole’s fear of the water is at odds with the zoological reality.
Badger is the stalwart character in the book; the rock; the wise old man of the woods. He lives in the dark woods, surrounded by the villainous element of Grahame’s world, but is so widely feared or respected, he lives there without molestation under his particularly gnarled old oak tree. What a fitting species for Kenneth to choose as his bastion. Badger wields a ruthless club when liberating Toad Hall, and is not a chap to be messed with.
The same could be said for Meles meles, one of the most powerful British mammals - as any of you who have tried to put a fence across a badger path may have found out; Badgers don’t go round obstacles, they go through them! Strong, stockily built omnivores, badgers forage widely through the countryside at night and scoff a range of foodstuffs from fruit and herbs to their favourite – worms.
Toad is the larger-than-life hedonist of the book, who steals centre stage with his antics. Scatty, well meaning but unfortunate, Toad is constantly looking for the next fad to satisfy his craving for adventure. One of my favourite images is after Toad’s car crash, as he lies deliriously in the twisted wreckage, mumbling incoherently: “Poop-poop, Poop-poop”; what fun! Really however, Toad is the diametric opposite of his wild brethren.
Toads are the plodding dependables amongst British amphibia. Ruthlessly faithful to their natal spawning pond, toads will travel along the same migratory routes between pond and hibernacula as generations before them have. This often brings toads into confrontation with human hazards like roads, and toad patrols are dedicated teams of volunteers who marshal our lanes and thoroughfares each spring to help Bufo bufo across our artificial deathtraps. Far from seeking the exciting high-life, toads are prone to spontaneous urination when excitement or fear strikes. A little too much of an adrenalin rush!
Finally to Ratty, for many people the star of the book. He is the quintessential English gent, messing about in boats, with the floppy felt cap of his Alma Mater; I’ve always assumed him to be a Cambridge chap. Quite how this convivial fellow is drawn into the hullabaloo that ensues is beyond me, I would have credited him with more common sense, however he is there from the out providing a foil for Mole’s shivery wimpery.
Ratty is the water rat, now know more correctly as the water vole. An animal with the scientific name Arvicola terrestris, which alludes to the fact that its usual habits are far from aquatic. Water voles have suffered dramatic decline throughout the country over the last 50 years, and by dramatic we are talking a 90% decline, with the widely-accepted extinction of this wonderful little animal in our County coming shortly before the Millennium. For the same water quality reasons that lead to the decline of otters in the late 60s, early 70s, water voles also had to contend with a double whammy of pressure in the shape of American mink.
Don’t get me wrong, mink per-se are not the out and out villain of this piece, sadly that credit falls at our feet as ever. In their appropriate place – America – they are to be celebrated for their power, fearlessness and voracious appetite. However, release this disproportionate powerhouse into an ecology that has not evolved to cope with it and the results are catastrophic. Female mink are able to squeeze into a water vole burrow and effortlessly wipe out the entire colony in a heartbeat. It was 1952 that the first record of mink breeding in the British Isle was observed, and that was here in Devon on the river Teign. Little surprise then that forty years later, water voles had been wiped out in Devon and we were the first county to record their total disappearance.
But all is not lost. River water quality has improved beyond recognition throughout Devon, with the riverbank management penny having dropped in the minds of most riparian land owners. Mervyn Newman is heading up a project at East Devon District Council to bring water voles back into Devon, though appropriate management of ponds and rivers, a motivated team of water vole volunteers and a network of mink monitoring and control. In the first few years of Mervyn’s work, water voles have moved 8 kilometres along the river Axe headwaters, making a beeline for Devon, and the natural recolonisation of our rivers.
My father grew up in North Devon and remembers well the plop of ratty jumping into rivers and streams on his beloved Exmoor. It’s a sound that has eluded my ears within this county for the last thirty years, but with the dedication of projects such as the East Devon Water Vole Project, it will not be long before I too can mess about on the river, accompanied by the splashes and plops of water voles once again. After all, there really is nothing more pleasant than messing about on the river!
Yes, yes I know – “24 little hours” and so on. However, there has been dramatic change locally and it happened in a metaphorical blink of an eye.
Last week’s freakish weather brought more to our District than ten foot snow drifts and atrocious flooding. The cold snap that hit the country last week also brought huge numbers of birds to the Exe Estuary, and now is the time to go and see our winter visitors in all their pre-Christmas glory.
The best place to witness the current spectacle is from the Imperial Rec at high water, so check the tide times online and get down there about an hour before high tide. Then sit back and watch the incoming water bring the birds to you.
There are four species of wildfowl that you are more than likely to see, the first being the ubiquitous mallard. This quintessentially English duck of village ponds up and down the country, mallards are often overlooked because of their commonness. But spare it a few moments and have a closer look at just how beautiful these birds are. The drakes in particular are resplendent in a vivid green and blue plumage and smart black wings.
Looking like a very elegant mallard with the colour contrast turned down, pintail ducks are a favourite of mine. The Exe Estuary is probably the best place in the South West of England for seeing these ducks, so make the most of it! The drakes have a chocolate brown head and neck which looks darker at distance. They have a very elegant long neck and gently sloping forehead with a white stripe running up the side of the neck. From distance, look out for their bright white chest, which immediately distinguishes pintails from mallards. You might notice they have beautifully pale blue sides to the bill, but to see this you need a really good view.
Wigeon are the third duck species you will see on the estuary, and they can be seen in numbers which dwarf all other ducks put together. Again look for the male birds with their chestnut head and pale cream stripe on the forehead. If you get a close enough view then you will see the plumage on their backs is a mottled grey, almost filigree pattern, so delicate and so pretty. The wigeon are responsible for much of the noise emanating from the water at this time of year, their whistling “wee-oo” call fills the air. The wigeon were back at Exmouth very early this year, with good numbers being seen from early September.
In stark contrast to the early-bird wigeon, the dark-bellied brent geese made their return very late this winter. The majority of the birds you can now see on the estuary only returned during the cold snap, but their arrival is a very welcome sight. These little geese have travelled the furthest distance to be with us, from the high arctic coasts of Siberia, some 4,000 miles away.
I always have to pinch myself when I see their flocks, to remind me just how alien this place must feel to them. After spending three months of the year in the arctic circle, several hundred miles from the nearest human being, they are thrust into the midst of our bustling town, and live alongside us until late March/early April.
The brent geese really are the stars of the local show, not only because of the mammoth migration they undertake, but also because of their global scarcity. The dark-bellied variety of brent goose is very rare and the thousand or so I was watching yesterday morning, mooching about on our estuary, amount to about 1% of the entire global population.
I feel a certain weight of responsibility to make sure that this important group of birds have a pleasant winter stay, and return to their Russian breeding grounds fully refreshed and well fed come next spring. I hope to instil some of this feeling in you guys too!
The “Friends of Exmouth Local Nature Reserve” is a small group of individuals who have signed up to receive information about the reserve and get involved in the conservation efforts on the estuary. Until now, and I have to be honest at this point, I have not overwhelmed them with mailings. I’ve teamed up with our Estuary Officer, Jenny Locket, and arranged clean up sessions on the sand, but apart from this, not much has happened. That is set to change.
Last week I met a group of residents down at the Imperial Rec on a “Meet the Birds” morning, which will happen on the first Thursday of the month throughout the winter. It was a fantastic morning, with a few passers by also making use of the telescopes and on-hand help. We spent a few hours chatting about the birds and enjoying the spectacle. I realised that the “Friends” group needs to grow and as word spreads, hopefully numbers will indeed pick up.
So if you are a local resident, if you enjoy reading these columns and would be interested in getting a bit more involved, then why to get in touch with the Countryside Service on 01395 517557 and Diane will put you on our mailing list. More importantly, if you know of someone who has no idea what monumentous wildlife spectacles we have here in East Devon – get them to get in touch too, its them I really want to meet.
We’ve got another couple of months left to really enjoy the glut of birds on the estuary, and I for one, intend to make the most of it!
As the last glowing embers of autumnal fire grace our countryside, it seems an appropriate time to look in a little more detail at what is actually happening up there in the branches. I have been known to bite off a little more than I can chew at times here, but I hope that the following resume of canopy chemistry doesn’t leaf (groan) you feeling cold.
Autumn is one of the times of year when you can see trees moving in a little more haste than usual. A big oak tree is a magnificent, dynamic organism, however its dynamism is spread over a much longer frame than we humans live our lives within, so its sometimes hard to appreciate. A very large oak was blown over in Holyford Woods Local Nature Reserve in the October storms of 2005 and the immediate impact was terrible. The huge trunk lay pitifully across the woodland track, and a tiny fraction of the tree’s roots remained forlornly in the soil. To be honest I thought it was a gonner.
We decided to leave the tree where it fell, and redirected the trail around this sleeping giant, hoping to be able to show visitors to the wood the importance of decaying timber to woodland species. How wrong we were. From the few roots that remained in the soil enough of the tree was receiving nutrients to give this ancient beam the strength to send forth an eruption of new shoots from what had been the 25 metre trunk. They started as think shoots and fast became small branches, before thickening into substantial tree-like limbs in their own right within about 18 months. It was remarkable to watch this happen, almost in recognisable speed!
But I digress, as I often do – how about colour, where does it come from and what is it for? Good questions the both.
Autumn for deciduous trees is a clear-out time. A bit like an out of season spring clean, the tree is packing unwanted waste chemicals into its leaves before allowing them to fall off and out of the system before its winter rest.
It is day length which prompts this action from the tree, as sunlight levels drop and photosynthesis becomes less efficient, the tree cuts its losses and shuts down for a winter rest. It’s this cessation of growth, which results in rings within the tree, a pale band for fast summer growth, and the contrasting darker ring for the winter slumber.
Oak trees, for all their biodiversity benefits, don’t put on the most spectacular shows of autumnal colour, if I am being brutally honest. Their colour tends to lie solely within a rather restricted palette of browns, and that comes from large quantities of tannin in the leaves – the same chemical which makes a cup of builder’s tea brown and creates that scrumptious mouth feel of a rich red wine, yummy.
Carotene is a yellow pigment, found in many plants, giving rise to orange colours in the natural world. Carotene is present throughout the year in leaves of trees such as beech or sycamore. Carotene also decomposes at a slower rate than chlorophyll, so as the tree stops producing replacement chemicals towards the end of October, so the green pigment fades and a yellow blush is seen to replace it.
Finally, the rich reds of maple come from anthocyanins, which when given the right combination of temperature and sugars within the leaf can put on the most spectacular blazes of colour. Anthocyanin is the same chemical which makes a red apple red, and you can sometimes see where an apple has grown half in the sunlight, when the skin is partially coloured.
Even though there are no Bunsen burners and heat-proof mats up there, there is no less of a chemistry lesson happening above our heads at this time of year. Get yourself out into an autumn woodland before it’s too late and see if you can find all those variety of colours and chemicals.
One final thought. Scientists in Japan have recently made a breakthrough in successfully cloning a mouse from DNA that had been dead and frozen for some considerable time. Immediately this gave rise to suggestions that we could at some point in the not too distant future bring back long extinct species, in a process straight from the pages of Jurassic Park. Oh whoopee – I sometimes find it frustrating that we spend time, money and inspiration chasing these headline grabbers, when we should be looking to preserve what is on this planet now! The thought of dragging a mammoth species back into existence when polar bears face man-made extinction pressures, is nothing short of absurd.
I attended a very interesting conference last week. I know, it sounds like a contradiction in terms, but this one was more than just a lot of hot air. It was actually well worth attending.
The morning consisted of a series of presentations about the Devon Biodiversity Action Plan, or BAP, and gave a broad overview of conservation work going on in our County. Working solely in East Devon I sometimes feel a little closeted away from the rest of the County, so its always interesting to get together once in a while and see what your neighbours are up to. Things are looking good out there, I can tell you.
Lynne Kenderdine of the Devon Wildlife Trust gave a particularly interesting presentation about County Wildlife Sites and their vital role in local wildlife conservation. Did you know that 250,000 hectares, about 1% of Devon, is classified as a County Wildlife Site; a designation with no legal muscle or legislative framework. Most County Wildlife Sites are in private ownership and, by and large, they are all the better for it. There may not be any legal precedent why a site isn’t bulldozed and built on, but the vast majority of owners, once informed of the intrinsic value of their land, are responsible in their future plans.
And so it is that a great deal of Devon’s wildlife is in protective management through a system with not much weight behind it apart from a moral plea. These sites may not boast the rarities of a SSSI, SAC or SPA, but as far as providing stepping stones for biodiversity to flourish across the County, CWSs are essential - long may they continue to thrive!
Lynne’s presentation got me thinking about making space for wildlife around us, and the fact that a formal nature reserve designation is all well and good for protecting the sole site of an immobile plant or sluggish slug, but the bigger, more flighty things need something a little more holistic.
As I was making my way back from the conference I witnessed a spectacle which brought this into immediate clarity.
The biggest flock of long-tailed *** I have seen for many years were feeding in the trees surrounding Triangle Car Park in the centre of Exeter. A less likely spot for something so wonderfully natural, one is hard pushed to find in Exeter. The noise the birds were making was so loud it actually drowned out the passing traffic noise!
25-30 long-tailed *** were flocking, presumably due to the sudden cold snap, making their way through the trees in search of tiny flies and spiders to fuel their minute bodies. A long-tailed tit call is a high pitched piping whistle, which by itself is a weedy but very endearing noise. The collaborative efforts of these two dozen birds was a cacophony which lifted my spirits and made me stop and gawp skywards for several minutes.
It brought a big smile to my face and, for me, illustrated starkly one reason why living consciously alongside wildlife is so important – even in towns and cities. A few hundred metres away was the desolate glass and concrete of the new shopping development, and yet here was a little oasis of reality benefiting from the slightly warmer climate of a city centre. What a welcome sight!
East Devon is fortunate to have many glimpses of such nature. And most of these are on a much grander scale than the one I have just described. But, in the same way that herbs grown in a window box on a block of flats taste better to their cultivator than a packet from the local shop, so a splash of wildlife in our immediate environs can be as special as a breaching humpback!
So thanks to everyone for putting on such a good show; to County for hosting the conference, and to those little birds for making all seem a bit more real. As you are reading now take a moment to look up and recognise all the wildness that surrounds you at this moment, everything that is within your sensual reach that has not been put there by a person. See if it makes you smile too?