Adventures in Monkwood

Monkwood was the destination of our wildlife adventures this weekend and it did not disappoint. It is an area of semi-natural, ancient woodland just a few miles north of Worcester, near a village called Sinton Green. There has been woodland here from at least the year 961, impressive. The woodland is jointly owned by the Worcestershire Wildlife Trust and Butterfly Conservation and covers an area of 152 acres.

Looking for Birds

The Woodland Ride

Shortly after getting out of the car my 11 year old daughter asked to take the camera as she wanted to take photos of plants and invertebrates. I handed her the camera and she got involved exploring the woodland.

Solider Beetle

Another Beetle

Monkwood is a stunning place to visit and enjoy a few hours wandering around. The management of the woodland has created wonderful wide woodland rides which we had the pleasure to walk through. The sun was pushing through the clouds intermittently creating some beautiful light. It was such a pleasure meandering along the footpaths. My daughter, on her photographic adventure, commented about the Common Hogweed flowers. “Each flower head has loads of insects, and on each flower head the insects are all different.”

Buff-Tailed Bumble

Common Hogweed Flower Head with Invertebrates 

She was correct. To stop and acknowledge the biodiversity supported by something as common and familiar as Common Hogweed was quite mind blowing. The Hogweed is an impressive plant in its own right and could easily be overlooked. Growing large dominating leaves and sending up a tall flower stalk upwards of two meters in some cases. It makes it stand proud of the surrounding flora. The large white flower heads, comprised of hundreds of individual flowers, with delicate hints of pink and yellow, which act as a beacon for the passing pollinators. Consequently each flower head was teaming with flies, bees and beetles; some large and many small but all playing their part in increasing the interest and biodiversity of the woodland.

Hoverfly

Common Hogweed Flower Head

The best find of the day was the crab spiders (Thomisus spectabilis). Crab spiders are fascinating arachnids as they are not your typical web creating hunting spider. They exploit the evolution technique of camouflage and wait to ambush their victim using their long 'crab' like front leg to hold the pray when they provide it with a fatal bite. Perhaps the best bit of Biology is the way they are camouflaged, they can change the colour of their body to match the colour of the flower they are living on. In our case, on the Hogweed, the spiders were white. We even spotted one with a hover fly in its grip.

Crab Spider with Hover Fly

Longhorn Beetle and Others

Other notable species we found on or around the Hogweed were Solider Beetles, Yellow and Black Longhorn Beetles, Thick-legged Flower Beetles, Dock Bug, Green-legged Sawfly. However, we really went there to spot some butterflies. Unfortunately only 2 species were noted.

Yellow and Black Longhorn Beetles

Green-legged Sawfly

We did spot a Large Skipper and a Speckled Wood. The Large skipper was enjoying the nectar of the plant Ragged Robin. Ragged Robin is a plant that is wide spread across Britain and tends to be found in wet meadows and wet woodlands, such as Monkwood. Due to the reduction in meadows it has unfortunately seen a decline in its numbers. It is important nectar source for many species, such as this Large Skipper, and many other butterflies and long tongued bees.

Large Skipper on Ragged Robin

Look at that tongue

All in all we had an exciting few hours but most importantly my daughter really engaged in the wildlife and had fun. I feel it is so important to allow children to engage in nature, it helps then love and understand wildlife and see why it is important to our planet to have healthy ecosystems. Then they will want to protect them in the future. All photos were taken by her, (except the very first one).  

Large Skipper

Dock Bug

Fly

Sunny Days Volunteering to Help Nature

On Sunday we as a family got involved with some volunteering at the local nature reserve. I love volunteering, there is something intrinsically rewarding about giving up your time for someone else or something else. I especially enjoy volunteering in conservation, as it is my opportunity to give back all the enjoyment that I take from our natural environments, ensuring that they remain as they are. On this occasion we were part of a small team tasked to remove as much of the invasive and non-native Himalayan Balsam as possible. We started at the Diglas Bridge and worked our way south. 

Removing Himalayan Balsam

  

Himalayan Balsam

 Himalayan balsam is a tall, fast growing annual plant. This means that it grows from seeds each year. It also spreads very quickly as it has a very effective seed dispersal method. An individual plant can spread its seeds up to 4 meters away. Additionally, due to favouring riverbanks it can spread its seeds down stream. This has resulted in vast areas of the Severn becoming over run by the balsam.

Ephemera vulgata - Drake Mackerel Mayfly  

Red-tailed Bumblebee

It alters the ecology of ecosystems in a number of ways. Firstly, it is an annual, so when it has finished its seed dispersal it dies down completely. This means that there is no root material to hold the river banks together. This can have severe effects when rivers flood in winter. So there is an increase in soil erosion.

White-tailed Bumblebee

Gall from Willow Redgall Sawfly

Due to its fast growing nature, and height (2.5m), it will out compete native plants. It grows in large dense thickets that suppress our native species. It also out competes our native plants in the pollination department. It produces large quantities of pollen over a long season. This then results in many pollinators avoiding our native species in favour of this invader. Our native species lose out in several ways and it all has the same effect – it reduces our biodiversity by up to two thirds. We need to get rid of it!

Tree Bumblebee

When we were at the nature reserve I was impressed with the quantity of comfrey. There were good quantities of it between the balsam. It was doing an amazing job of providing pollen for the bees. I stopped pulling up the balsam to enjoy the insect life that the Comfrey was supporting. There were several species of bee, grasshoppers, mayflies, damselflies. It was amazing to see. It was also hard not to be inspired by the continual sound track provided in the back ground by the birds: Blackbirds, Song Thrushes, Wrens, Blackcaps and both species of Whitethroats.

Whitethorat

Common Spotted Orchid

After the volunteering there was a big community picnic to bring together the people of the area. This was a lot of fun, bringing the wider community together, and with the hot sunny weather it was a special day. After that I had the pleasure of walking around the Nature Reserve with some of my good friends and their 3 year old son. It was the first time they had seen the reserve and it was a real privilege watching there son engage with the natural world in a positive way. It was clear that he enjoyed his time walking around the Nature Reserve, it was great to see his reaction to spotting a Green Woodpecker. These small reserves in city centres are an important part of our wider approach to help prevent the decline in so many of our species. They also provide an opportunity for us to be able to destress, relax and enjoy the beauty of our natural world, possibly the best medicine in the world. 

Common Blue Butterfly 

Getting out of Worcester for Half Term/Pembrokeshire

This blog is not about the wildlife in and around Worcester because last week was the school half term holiday. This meant that we would be heading out of Worcester and off to Pembrokeshire for a few days camping. We arrived on Saturday morning, put our tent up and headed to the small town of Newport for a walk along the costal path. We had not got far from the carpark in the town when we had our first, and possibly one of the best, wildlife encounters of the whole holiday: a Sandwich Tern. It was a very special moment for me as it was a life tick and I do love terns. Unfortunately by the time I had the bird in my sights and got a positive ID it flew off, so no photo.

Newport

Razorbills

There are 12,000 breeding pairs of sandwich Terns in the UK, with their strong hold in Anglesey. They begin to arrive in the UK in March from their wintering grounds as far away as South Africa. They can live up to 30 years so they will get some serious miles under their belt in their lifetime. Not sure what this individual was up to as Anglesey is quite a distance from Pembrokeshire, but it certainly got my holiday off to an excellent start.

Fulmar on Nest

Stonechat on Gorse

Day two of the holiday we headed to the Island of Ramsey. It was our second visit and it is really becoming a special place for our family. Predictably it is full of sea birds: Kittiwakes, Fulmars, Guillemots, Razorbills. There were also good numbers of Stonechats, a few Wheatears and we got some good views of a Spotted Flycatcher. However, the stars of the show are the Choughs. They are great fun to watch flying around in the air and scratching on the grass. In addition to being great fun to watch they were also the subject of a photo my son took which has recently been shortlisted for the British Wildlife Photography Awards.

Choughs

Choughs are the rarest member of the crow family the lives in the UK. Despite there only being 300 breeding pairs in the UK they are increasing in number. This is down to some excellent conservation work taking place to ensure that they have the right habitat for breeding and feeding. They nest on ledges on rocky cliffs or in sea caves and then require rough grazed land to do their feeding, where they scratch around looking for invertebrates in the short grazed grass. It is the maintenance of this type of farmland on Ramsey that helps their continued success on the Island. With more wide spread management, of this type, on the farmland around our coasts we could see more of these beautiful little corvids.

Walking on Ramsey

  

Walking on Ramsey

Ramsey is also a breeding location for Manx Shearwaters. They are a seabird that nests in burrows under the ground. They return to the Islands from their wintering grounds in South America in March, where they will return to the same burrow to breed again, with the same partner. Burrowing in the ground makes them vulnerable to rats. This means they only really can be found on Islands that do not have rats.

Razorbill's

Stonechat

We were told that a good spot to watch Manx Shearwaters was at Strumble Head and they start flying past in the evening at around 7 o'clock when they return to their burrows. We arrived at around 6:30 and waited. Initially it was fun watching Auks, Gannets and Dolphins and the half hour to 7 went quickly. It was not long after 7 when we spotted our first small group of around 8 birds flying in. We sat watching them until 8 and must have seen around 300 Shearwaters. There are approximately 400,000 breeding pairs in the world, 90% breed in Britain and 50% in Pembrokeshire, so our 300 was really just the tip of the iceberg.

Harbour Porpoise 

Gannet

In total we spotted 74 different species of bird. However, the real highlight of the holiday was the truly beautiful Pembrokeshire coast. We really enjoyed the days walking along the cliff watching the seabirds and admiring the range of wild flowers. Here are some of the wild flowers my daughter photographed: 

Bird's-eye Primrose

Bladder Campion

Milkwort

Common Spotted Orchid

Sheep's Bit

Kidney Vetch

Red-tailed Bumble Bee on Sheep's Bit