Early summer invertebrating

Invertebrates are insanely underrated organisms; up close and personal, their hugely varied body plans and lifestyles make the humans in tabloid magazines look decidedly average.

This spider (Cyclosa conica) has a rear-end a Kardashian can only dream of...

When it comes to managing habitats around an airport, the best practice is not to do anything which might encourage large flocking birds to the area. This can make conservation more of a challenge, but focusing on habitat management for invertebrates is a smart way to go.
   Invertebrates are highly versatile and incredibly important for ecosystems: grazers, predators, nutrient recyclers, soil aerators, habitat manipulators and plant pollinators; to name but a few. Without them, food webs would collapse and biodiversity (including us) would be non-existant.

Searching for deadwood invertebrates

Just last week, I was lucky enough to have a crack team of entomologists visiting our sites in the North West Zone, just north of the airfield. Scotty D, Jeremy and Keith were looking at a variety of habitats, using varied searching techniques in order to list as many different invertebrates as possible.
  Here are some of the habitats we were scrabbling about in:

Entomologist in natural habitat, scrub west of Brockley Wood

Shaded section of Man's Brook, Brockley Wood

Brockley Wood South Ride

Excavated soil on a grass slope

River Mole floodplain grasslands

Everyone was kept busy as Jeremy searched out the solitary bee species, Keith hunted for deadwood invertebrates and Scotty listed everything and anything. Despite the variable weather conditions, the list grew rapidly and the 100 species target was easily passed. Here are some of my highlights (i.e. the stuff I could photograph before it got away)

Silver-ground Carpet Moth (Xanthorhoe montanata)

Spider with no common name (Cyclosa conica), but which I shall now think of as Cone-Bum Spider

Violet Ground Beetle (Carabus violaceus)

Shiny Woodlouse (Oniscus asellus), which is only half shiny because it is in the process of shedding its old exoskeleton in order to grow

 A less common wetland species of woodlouse (Trachelipus rathkii)

Green Hairstreak Butterfly (Callophrys rubi)

Thistle Tortoise Beetles (Cassida rubiginosa), a copulating pair

Flat-backed Millipede (Polydesmus angustus)

I've saved Jeremy's pics until last; these really show the jewel-like quality of certain insects. It's incredible to think that we swat these things away and think of them as a nuisance...

Black Colonel (Odontomyia tigrina), a type of Soldier Fly

Malachite Beetle (Malachius bipustulatus) female

Longhorn Beetle (Rhagium mordax) on Hawthorn

Mining Bee (Andrena carantonica) female on Hawthorn

Orange-tailed Mining Bee (Andrena haemorrhoa) female on Hawthorn

Scorpion Fly (Panorpa communis), male

Hoverfly (Helophilus pendulus), female

Hoverfly (Xanthogramma pedissequum)

Wasp Beetle (Clytus arietis)

Nature Conservation Imaging by Jeremy Early

It seems like most things want to be a wasp these days.
   I'm already looking forward to the follow up survey later in summer!

April Summary

The trend is broken and my monthly summaries are now going over into next month (it was never going to last!). Ah well, here is what we have been up to in April...

The clearing by the Hornbeam in Lower Picketts Wood

Our habitat management has quietened down for spring, so now is the time for wildlife walks and educational talks. Last weekend, Tom S. led a guided walk in the Land East of the Railway Line, looking at the results of our winter works and the flourishing wildlife there. 

The footpath through Horleyland Wood

The woodland groundflora looks fantastic right now and the clearings are busy with foraging flies and bees. Tom knows a whole lot about woodlands because of his background in forestry, so even the tough questions get an answer!
   While out and about in these areas, I have been collecting a small number of Cuckoo Bees (Nomada spp.) for further identification. To dispatch them humanely, I put them in the freezer for several days...

'Zom-bee'

Then after just a few minutes under the warm microscope, this little Nomada jerked back into life and was off to freedom! Somewhere in the Portacabin at least.

Close up of a Cuckoo Bee head under the microscope (x10)

The malaise trap is back up, this time in the North West Zone. I have mixed feelings about this as I still have a massive backlog of last year's insect samples to sort... All the same, many thanks to Tom S. and assistant Lewis.

Malaise trap: flying insects hit a panel inside then try to fly upwards,

 eventually falling into the collecting pot at the apex

We had an interesting and vibrant River Mole Catchment Partnership meeting, with both Surrey Wildlife Trust and the Environment Agency hosting. The talks were well illustrated, to the point and particularly interesting were some statistics for the recent flooding around the airport; the floodplain of the diverted section of river was praised!

The illustrious Jim Jones, Surrey Wildlife Trust's Wetlands Officer, giving a talk on recent conservation works and techniques to improve river channels. His ever-changing hair style keeps audiences rapt

 A felt 'Ketso' board - an interactive way of sharing and noting down ideas of how we can improve the river system. This was fun, but we're gonna need a bigger board!

We have completed a full check of all Gatwick's Dormouse boxes, both old and new. Finding over 100 boxes in one afternoon is no mean feat (it sucks), so I was massively grateful to be accompanied by Mum plus one of my sisters, Evie.

Also very helpful was Evie's iPhone, since I lost all my pens somewhere among those pesky Bluebells. The results are in; sadly no Dormice, but we do have around 40 nesting Blue Tits and Great Tits, plus two Yellow-necked Mice.

Newly hatched Blue Tit chicks

Yellow-necked Mouse (Apodemus flavicollis)

Here are some other wee beasties you might have seen out and about this past month:

One of Tom Simpson's Honeybees, drinking out of a puddle. Some bees have no standards

Grass Snake in a brash pile, Goat Meadow

Dark-bordered Beefly (Bombylius major)

Large Red Damselfly (Pyrrhosoma nymphula). My first of the year

Green-veined White Butterfly (Pieris napi). Lots of these about at the moment

Common Carder Bee (Bombus pascuorum). This is probably a queen

This large jumping spider is sometimes called the Fencepost Jumper (Marpissa muscosa). It is fairly common to South East but scarce in other parts of the UK

An oak apple gall, caused by a Gall Wasp. Possibly Biorhiza pallida

Finally, we got results from the infrared trail camera; sadly no Badger as of yet. I had been spending quite a lot of time watching through the video clips with absolutely nothing on them, so the very end of this video made me jump...

Early Breeding Bird Surveys 2014

North West Zone: Thursday 24th

I'm not my shiniest at 5.30am, but the spring bird song along the River Mole corridor is well worth hauling out of bed for.

Tom F of Gatwick Greenspace Partnership leads the main bird surveys here, which we carry out four times a year. Last week it was the early breeding birds and we were hoping to pick up on the newly arrived summer migrants. Our first port of call was the North West Zone, closest to the runway...

The very start of our transect brought us the goods, with Swifts and Swallows overhead at Povey Cross. Over here the scrub, grassland and wetland produces warbler action in the form of Blackcap, Chiffchaff and Common Whitethroat. I got excited to hear the weird song of a Lesser Whitethroat, although its a shame it was all on its ownsome.

It seems like the wildflowers are peaking already, with Ragged Robin and Cowslip coming into their own...

A group of nodding Cowslip (Primula veris)

Ragged Robin is a pants name for such a lovely flower, but at least it has a fancy binomial 

(Lychnis flos-cuculi)

Earlier grasses are also coming into flower, as my violent hayfever can attest to. Above is Meadow Foxtail (Alopecurus pratensis)

Reed Bunting and Reed Warbler have begun setting up their territories in wetland scrub and reed beds. If you look closely, you can just about make out a brown splodge perched at the top of a reed stem (possibly only the 3rd worst photo of a male Reed Bunting ever taken).

 

This Reed Bunting song is from the awesome bird call website Xeno Canto. This species seems to have quite a regional variation, so it took a while to find a recording similar to those individuals I am hearing here (this one happens to have been recorded in Berlin, Germany).

In the rough grassland at the very end of the transect was a new bird for our survey - a group of Common Starling. They have always been a stone's throw away on the airfield, so perhaps it is just luck we saw them today.

This is the day's list for the NWZ:

1.       Stock Dove

2.       Wood Pigeon

3.       Swift

4.       Great Spotted Woodpecker

5.       Green Woodpecker

6.       Jay

7.       Magpie

8.       Jackdaw

9.       Carrion Crow

10.   Starling

11.   Swallow

12.   Great Tit

13.   Blue Tit

14.   Blackbird

15.   Song Thrush

16.   Robin

17.   Blackcap

18.   Chiffchaff

19.   Whitethroat

20.   Lesser Whitethroat

21.   Reed Warbler

22.   Goldfinch

23.   Chaffinch

24.   Bullfinch

25.   Reed Bunting

26.   Dunnock

27.   Wren

28.   Common buzzard

29.   Pheasant

30.   Mallard

31.   Moorhen

Land East of the Railway Line: Friday 25th

This morning was a bit duller and cooler after some refreshing overnight rain. Over on this side of the airport, we have more extensive ancient woodland as well as the larger water treatment ponds.

Tom F. setting a badger trail camera before the survey

I had left my camera on charge this morning (gahh), so resorted to using my camera phone instead. It doesn't cope so well with the low light levels and the pics have come out with a weird, ethereal glow to them...

Native Bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta)

These white Bluebells are most likely our native type, but an occasional genetic mutation can result in the complete lack of pigment.

♪ Purple haze, all around... ♫

The Bluebells seem to be putting on an intense show this year, almost as if they are sensing impending pressure of future woodland environmental policy...
   The woodlands are alive with birds (as well as the occasional plane engine roar), so we have to make several stop whilst standing agape, trying to pick out the individual species. Wren, Robin, Dunnock, Great Tit and Blue Tit do a good job of trying to drown out the competition. The warblers have been setting up territory here too, with Chiffchaff and Blackcap in abundance.

I am doubling up our recording effort with a survey form I have created for iRecord, hopefully to help with speedier bird data entry. I put numbered markers onto a printed aerial map, then reference them next to our species list.

Moschatel or Town Hall Clock (Adoxa moschatellina) is a cute but often overlooked woodland flower

For me, the find of the day was a Willow Warbler in Goat Meadow. This is a new record for our Gatwick bird surveys and our 6th species of Warbler. The song has a lovely, mellow descending trill which shows on this sonogram...

This slightly made up for the fact that the regular Marsh Tits I had promised Tom had stood us up. 

   Other woodland niceties showed up towards the end of our transects, including Tree Creeper, Nuthatch, Great Spotted Woodpecker and Goldcrest. Barn Swallows have arrived in the last couple of weeks and they could be seen and heard hawking over the water treatment ponds.

A young Mug Tree

We finally tracked down our singing Song Thrush at the end of the transect, ruling over a group of squabbling Dunnocks in the Upper Picketts deadhedge. The final list was shorter than our usual average of 30, possibly due to the slightly cooler day, or perhaps some species are already busy nesting and have less time to sing.

LERL final list:

1. Stock Dove
2. Wood Pigeon
3. Great Spotted Woodpecker
4. Green Woodpecker
5. Jay
6. Magpie
7. Jackdaw
8. Carrion Crow
9. Swallow
10. Great Tit
11. Blue Tit
12. Coal Tit
13. Long-tailed Tit
14. Blackbird
15. Song Thrush
16. Robin
17. Goldcrest
18. Blackcap
19. Chiffchaff
20. Willow Warbler
21. Chaffinch
22. Dunnock
23. Wren
24. Treecreeper
25. Nuthatch

Small mammals vs. large mammals

Working with animals and teenagers may at first seem a hairy sort of idea, but then again you might be surprised.

At the end of a manic March, a group of around 15 of the Gatwick Greenspace Partnership's Youth Rangers visited our woodlands and grasslands, over in the Land East of the Railway Line. The main aim of the day was to survey Gatwick's small mammals, targeting the different habitats to see what we could find. 

A Longworth trap in woodland undergrowth

Vacancies: a free overnight stay with full board

In the 3 days leading up to this event, I set out some humane Longworth traps which were checked and reset every 12 hours. They were stuffed with plenty of warm hay, a generous stash of porridge oats, fresh carrot and mealworms to suit all mammally tastes.
  Surveying over several days gives time for the small mammals to acclimatise to the presence of the traps, so every day our capture rate increased. On the last day we got a record number of mammal captures, so it was fortunate having the Youth Rangers to carry out the brunt of the work!

This group did an awesome job, becoming efficient at emptying each trap carefully into a bag, recording the weight and sex of the critter before releasing it out and finally resetting the trap. I was impressed by how well they communicated with each other and minimised the stress to these small furry beasts. Here's a selection of what we came across...

Bank Vole (Clethrionomys glareolus)

Bank Vole (Clethrionomys glareolus)

Wood Mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus)

Yellow-necked Mouse (Apodemus flavicollis) with distinctive yellow collar across the chest

Wood Mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus), back out to freedom

Out of the 28 traps, almost every single one had triggered overnight (a few possibly accountable to intrepid slugs), 19 of them containing a small rodent. We found 3 different species, the commonest being Wood Mouse with 14 individuals counted.
  .

Checking our Hedgehog tracking pads

Lots of tiny tracks which are much too small for Hedgehog, so most likely Wood Mouse or Bank Vole

But the work did not stop there, as I wanted to get my money's worth out of this keen bunch! We also checked the Hedgehog tracking tunnels and cracked on with building the new stands for future Harvest Mouse surveys (an idea we blatantly plagiarised from the Surrey Mammal Group - thanks again Jim!).

Creating Harvest Mouse trap stands

I had also set up a camera trap in a hidden part of the woods, as I am keen to finally pick up recorded evidence of Gatwick's Badgers. We trekked over to the site and found that our badgery lure of raisins and peanuts had all been hoovered up, so it was with excitement that we played back the camera footage....

Tip: when setting up a camera trap, check the batteries are working.

...my bad. Still, it's always a good day out with the Gatwick Greenspace Partnership volunteers and I'm lucky to work with such an ecclectic bunch of people of all ages. Thanks again to everyone involved: Tom S, Tom F and the Sussex Mammal Group for lending your time and equipment, and finally to all of you teens - you're al'ight, yeah.

  If you or anyone you know is interested in local wildlife and conservation around the Gatwick area, check out the Gatwick Greenspace Partnership webpage