Gatwick Wildlife Day 2015

Thursday 7th May - the night before

Time: 2000hrs
Where: The River Mole, north of the airfield, Sussex/Surrey border (TQ260414)
Who: Gatwick Greenspace Partnership, local residents, keen volunteers, professional conservationists, ecologists and representatives from Sussex Moth Group and Surrey Bat Group.

Gathering around the moth trap: an actinic light bulb over an open plastic bucket 

with some empty eggboxes inside

This was Gatwick's second ever wildlife day, and energy levels were high as we arrived to set up basecamp. Over in the woods, Martyn erected his bat 'harp traps', while out on the floodplain, Penny and Dave set out the generators and moth trapping equipment. As the night gradually crept in, so did the wildlife and one of our very first records was a Noctule Bat, Nyctalus noctula giving an impressive aerial display above us.

Our first few moth records:

Green Carpet Colostygia pectinataria

(Photo by Maria Donoghue)

Brimstone Moth Opisthograptis luteolata

(Photo by Maria Donoghue)

Tom Forward setting up a trail camera

Several humane longworth traps had been borrowed from Sussex Mammal Group, baited with hay and tasty rodent treats, hidden along the floodplain and the woodland strip...

Bag o'Wood Mouse; the trap is emptied into a bag, the occupant sexed and 

weighed before being released. (Photo by Helen Cradduck)

The traps came up trumps this evening with many occupants, but all happened to be the same species...

Wood Mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus) scruffing -  a safe holding technique for both rodent and human 

(Photo by Maria Donoghue)

One of Martyn's harp traps: frame with vertical strings, a collecting bag at the base and an electronic lure with attached microphone playing out high frequency bat calls. 

After last year's evening session had resulted in no bat captures, this year our luck had changed...

Common Pipistrelle Pipistrellus pipistrellus

(Photo by Maria Donoghue)

Common Pipistrelle wing 

(Photo by Maria Donoghue)

Brandt's Bat Myotis brandti

(Photo by Helen Cradduck)

Gently measuring the forearm length. All bats tend to look angry while ecolocating!

The traps gave us 3 individuals of 3 different species: Common Pipistrelle, Soprano Pipistrelle and Brandt's Bat. The biometric data collected by licensed bat workers like Martyn and bat groups is important stuff; we need to know as much as possible about our bat species if we hope to conserve them for the future.

Naturalists at night; important distinction between the words 

'naturalist' and 'naturist'; we were all fully clothed

Wildlife Day - Friday 8th May 

Time: 0900hrs
Who: Around 67 people including keen naturalists, Gatwick Airport staff, Gatwick Greenspace Partnership, representatives from Surrey Biodiversity Records Centre, Surrey Botanical Society, Sussex Fungi Group and Sussex Moth Group

A bright and sunny morning, with lots to catch up on from the evening before. After a coffee and a natter, Tom Forward gathered everyone in to give an outline of the day ahead.

First up was the moth trap reveal with Dave Green, checking out a fantastic variety of species and listing the numbers of overnight occupants...

Gatwick staff getting up close and personal with moths

Pebble Hook-tip Drepana falcataria

(Photo by Maria Donoghue)

Maiden's Blush Cyclophora punctaria

(Photo by Maria Donoghue)

Poplar Hawkmoth Laothoe populi 

(Photo by Krisztina Fekete)

Rose Parker of Surrey Biodiversity Information Centre, our records collator for the day

Our youngest biological recorder was Sid, pictured here getting to grips with a lovely Birch Mocha

Birch Mocha Cyclophora albipunctata 

(Photo by Helen Cradduck)

Mammal and reptile surveys

Tom Simpson and I led the groups on reptile and small mammal surveys. First of all we wetted appetites with a view of two beautiful male Slow-worms, borrowed from a friend's nearby garden...

Slow-worm (Anguis fragilis), a type of legless lizard

Then it was off into the field to retrieve our mammal traps...

Searching the vegetation along the River Mole

Wood Mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus)

We emptied the longworth traps of their overnight occupants, which once more all turned out to be Wood Mice! So not quite the diversity of small mammal species we were hoping for.

   We had our fingers crossed for the reptile refugia...

Lifting a reptile tin

(Photo by Kevin Lerwill)

The lucky afternoon group was rewarded with a glimpse of this quick-moving, gorgeous little Grass Snake...

A young Grass Snake Natrix natrix

(Photo by Ian Chalk)

Birds

Tom Forward lead teams out on a linear walk along the river footpath, identifying as many species of the feathered variety as possible. He was also testing the group's bird song identification and recall skills with recordings on his handy iPad (other brands of tablet computer are also available).

Common Buzzard wheeling right over our heads at basecamp
(Photo by Krisztina Fekete)

By making it into a game, this can help us to fixates information into our memories. A highlight for the group was seeing a male Song Thrush sitting out in the open, bellowing out its charismatic and variable tune...

 Swallow, House Martins and Common Swift also made their presence known...

And a blooming rare thing was one of my own bird photos coming out alright!!

Reed Warbler perched up in Blackthorn

Theirs is a distinctive song commonly heard from the reedbeds at Gatwick...

Tom and his groups finally tallied 42 species, easily beating our usual bird survey record!

1. Blackbird

2. Blackcap

3. Blue Tit

4. Bullfinch

5. Carrion Crow

6. Chaffinch

7. Chiffchaff

8. Coal Tit

9. Collared Dove

10. Common Buzzard

11. Dunnock

12. Garden Warbler

13. Goldfinch

14. Great Spotted Woodpecker

15. Great Tit

16. Green Woodpecker

17. Greenfinch

18. Grey Heron

19. Herring Gull

20. House Martin

21. Jackdaw

22. Jay

23. Kestrel

24. Kingfisher

25. L.Whitethroat

26. Long-tailed Tit

27. Magpie

28. Mallard

29. Mandarin

30. Moorhen

31. Pheasant

32. Reed Bunting

33. Reed Warbler

34. Robin

35. Rook

36. Song Thrush

37. Swallow

38. Swift

39. Tawny Owl

40. Whitethroat

41. Wood Pigeon

42. Wren

Lunch break

Coffee time! Hannah and Karen from Environment Health and Safety

(Photo by Ian Chalk)

Riverside lunch break just before the afternoon shift

(Photo by Kevin Lerwill)

In the afternoon the sun had retreated behind gathering clouds, but on the upside this made a great opportunity to snap flowering plants in good light, plus the 'roosting' invertebrates in the vegetation...

Plants & Invertebrates

 

Cuckoo Flower, aka 'Lady's Smock' Cardamine pratensis 

with a roosting female Orange Tip Butterfly on the left

(Photo by Ian Chalk)

Germander Speedwell Veronica chamaedrys

(Photo by Ian Chalk)

We were fortunate to have a good turn out of members from the Surrey Botanical Society, who collectively between them recorded around 150 species of plant. That will boost our count up!!

Banded Demoiselle (female) Calopteryx splendens

(Photo by Tom Forward)

A closer view of the Orange Tip Butterfly (female) Anthocharis cardamines 

(Photo by Tom Forward)

Four-spotted Chaser Dragonfly Libellula quadrimaculata

(Photo by Ian Chalk)

Helophilus pendulus a common hoverfly, fondly called 'The Footballer' for its stripey kit

(Photo by Linda Pryke)

Andrew checks his net after sweeping the vegetation

(Photo by Ian Chalk)

Entomologist Andrew Halstead was able to turn up some exciting species, including an extremely rare type soldierfly...

Stratiomys longicornis, also called the Long-horned General. 

It is a salt marsh specialist, so perhaps it hitched a ride from the coast?!

(Photo by Andrew Halstead)

And that was not the only Long-Horned beastie which Andrew managed to turn up!

Long-Horned Bee (Eucera longicornis)

I was particularly chuffed this charismatic little fella put in an appearance, as I'm going to be surveying for it through the summer. The organisation Buglife describe Long-horned Bees as only being present at a few dozen sites across the UK, mostly restricted to the coastline. This makes it yet another interesting find so far inland!
As the rain rolled in, we then shifted our focus onto the wetter species...

Fungi

Nick Aplin of Sussex Fungi Group, checking out microfungi with a hand lense

Nick was able to steal time out of his busy schedule for a scout along the River Mole, searching out the things we would most certainly have missed! His specimens (and photography) are quite exquisite... 

 Orange Bonnet Mycena acicula

(Photo by Nick Aplin)

Loving the name of this one...

Scurfy Twiglet Tubaria furfuracea

(Photo by Nick Aplin) 

Dock Rust Puccinia phragmitis is pretty stunning when viewed in macro. Looks almost Christmassy!

(Photo by Nick Aplin)

And for something even more bizaare, this fungus living on tree bark...

Hysteropatella prostii fruiting bodies on the left. Its ascopores are stained and here viewed under higher magnification on the right

(Photo by Nick Aplin)

Nick wants to check this one thoroughly, but this is potentially yet another new species for the UK! The above is just a tiny selection of Nick's 51 species, which is pretty darn good work for one day.

Aquatics

While surveying one of our amphibian ponds, no signs of of adult newts but some evidence of the Great Crested variety could be found...

Cranbrook Nursery pond

Great Crested Newt egg, laid on a Flag Iris leaf

Great Crested Newt Triturus cristatus larva or newtpole. only a couple of millimeters long at this stage

Tom Simpson and Kevin Lerwill of GGP lead the afternoon session of river kick-sampling

You don't always need to see the adult version of a beastie to know that it is present. Different life stages can also count as biological records, such as the larvae of Damselflies..

Kick sample of freshwater invertebrates, which need closer examination to get to species level 

Photo by Helen Cradduck

Sometimes, you can even trace back evidence of a species beyond the larval life stages...

.

The distinctive signature of the Willow Emerald Damselfly Lestes viridis - oviposition scars on the riverside Willow (where an adult female has laid eggs)

(Photo by Linda Pryke)

This species is a recent colonist to the UK, so I'll be keeping an eye on this spot later this season to try to glimpse an adult on the wing! Finally, our total number of species? Rose has counted well over 300 records with more being sent in to all the time, which means we have beat last year by a long shot! 

As this never ending blogpost actually comes to an end, I would like to say a huge thank you to Gatwick's Environment Team, absolutely everyone else who came along on the day, anyone who read this epic chronicle of a blogpost, and a special thanks to...

Tom, Kevin and Tom of the Gatwick Greenspace Partnership, without who these awesome events would not happen. Rest now lads, your work is complete.

Oh, alright then... One more bee pic for good measure.

Long-Horned Bee Eucera longicornis along the River Mole

Gatsbees B-Log: April 2015

Our local bee inspector called to check that there are no signs in our colonies already of these two tropical insects...

Small Hive Beetle (stolen from the internet obviously: ladepeche.fr)

...Small Hive Beetle, originally from Africa (Aethina tumida) and Tropilaelaps (a mite) from Asia, which are on their way to Britain and would cause havoc in the beekeeping industry.

The Beehive Gatwick

The Gatsbees apiary is part of a national scheme by The National Bee Unit, in which the beekeepers of apiaries close to borders, ports and airports where the insects may arrive, send samples to the NBU of debris taken at least twice a year from their colonies to check for evidence of these invaders.

Fencepost Jumping Spider (Marpissa muscosa)

One of our unofficial residents in the hives in Ashley's Field, and definitely my favourite, is the Fencepost Jumping Spider Marpissa muscosa, a great character which has 4 big eyes on the front of its head, 4 behind and it hunts by springing 50 times its own length onto its prey. I’m about to put some into training to eliminate the Varroa mites in my hives….

Varroa mite (1.5mm wide)

The appropriately named Varroa destructor arrived in Britain in the early 1990's and travelled across the country, spreading disease and changing the uncomplicated old ways of beekeeping forever. Imagine walking round with a cushion crawling around your body and you have an idea of the size of the mite and how inconvenient it must be.

Varroa on larvae pulled out of a cell

The Varroa reproduce in a cell on the frame in the hive. The mated female mite runs into a cell where there is a developing bee larva, shortly before the cell is capped over with wax. Then the mite lays eggs and the young mites feed on the blood of the pupa, mate in the cell and emerge into the colony with the fully developed bee to repeat the cycle.

Bee with Deformed Wing Virus

It’s not so much the mites which debilitate the bees, but the viruses that they inject into the bee’s blood as they feed. This bee has deformed wing virus, (one of 6 types of virus) which also bloats the stomach and renders them paralysed.

Give us more space!

All our colonies had DWV last year in varying degrees, but they all seemed to fly it off in the sunshine; or were there so many bees that we didn’t see the sick ones crawl away amongst them?

Heads in cells

So far this season, the deformed wing virus seems to be less prevalent but I had one colony out of 9 die out over the winter from sickness. When a colony is ill, the bees die off rapidly and there aren’t enough to keep each other warm or live within the bounds of the honey stores, so several bees had their heads in the cells, indicating that they were starving, when in fact, there was plenty of food.

The best way to get rid of diseased equipment.

Book Scorpion, Chelifer cancroides (Wikimedia Commons). Up to 4mm

Incidentally, the Beenature-Project in Germany which is studying the Book Scorpion has discovered, or rediscovered that associated with feral Honey Bee colonies (which often live in trees), are these tiny arachnids living in the cracks of the wood and feeding on the blood of the Varroa mite. Hope springs eternal! A great story, check it out - Beenature-Project. All those musty old books from your grandma’s attic can now be used to save the honeybee. Now, where’s that jumping spider………….

Camellia; blousy but simple enough for a bee to collect pollen.

Gill x

Walking with bees

I said previously that would be the last workshop for while... but I'd forgotten about the one I was helping to organise, hosted at Gatwick itself!

Possibly the first ever insect identification workshop held at Destinations Place, Gatwick's offices 

Last week we were lucky to be visited by Dr Richard Comont from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. Another contender in the League of Pan-species Listers, Richard is an all-round ecologist and an advocate of citizen science. A large part of his works involves communicating about the native bees of the UK, particularly the bumbley variety... 

 

...so we were all here to learn about bumblebees, their recent decline in the UK and what we can do to help. A mark of how popular a workshop on bees can be is the turn out of people on the day; we had 15 people along with some having travelled impressive distances, including Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Man!! 

A-typical setting for a bee workshop

Richard's talk was in-depth and fascinating stuff, highlighting the vital role of pollinating insects for commercial farming and agriculture as well as for natural ecosystems. We learned how bees can be effective indicators of environmental change, so if something is going very wrong their populations may crash.

He also went into some detail about bumblebee life cycles... Did you know that there are cuckoo bumblebees, which look a lot like normal bumbles but live like a Cuckoo (hence the name), sneaking into other bee nests to lay their own eggs, then leaving the host colony to raise the young! I'm not sure if that's great parenting or terrible parenting.
   We also learned that is vitally important to monitor populations of common species as well as the rare, as what is common today might not be tomorrow...

In the afternoon it was a short drive over to the River Mole where it flows north of the airfield. Richard explained to us the methodology of the the BeeWalk survey, involving an hour walk along a fixed route each month, identifying and counting bumblebees then submitting the data online. This will be my BeeWalk transect for the coming summer months and we wandered along floodplain path as a group, keeping a sharp eye out for anything round and fuzzy out on the wing. 

A feisty Queen Buff-tailed (Bombus terrestris)

The great thing about bumblebees is that there is only a few species to learn (24 in the UK), but the variation within species and differences between males, queens and workers means you'll never get bored! Today's weather conditions were a little cool and breezy, so not much invertebrate activity but this made it all the more exciting whenever we spotted one! In the end we saw the following three species...

These pics were pilfered from BBCT's handy little guide 'What's that bumblebee?'

There are lots of helpful people and brilliant online resources available for beginners, such as the BeeWatch scheme. I've had a lot of fun playing around with their training tool, its very user friendly and anyone can sign up for a free account to practice honing their bumble i.d. skills.

  We found a dead specimen on the path which was an opportunity to see bumblebee features close up, such as the large, flattened hind legs for sticking pollen to and an extremely long extendible tongue for reaching into the deeper flowers.

The Bumblebee CSI team concluded no evidence of aircraft altercation

Want to get involved in bumblebee conservation? Of course you do! Click here to learn more: http://bumblebeeconservation.org/get-involved/

Thanks again to Richard and everyone who attended this day and the best of luck on your surveys!

The key thing about hymenoptera

My 5th weekend workshop at the British Entomological and Natural History Society (I know, I should just move right in) and I'm realising the best thing about these meetings (aside from the biscuits) is overhearing and chatting with such a diverse group of people about explorations into invertebrate identification.

BENHS HQ - Dinton Pastures workshop desks with light microscopes

Mike Edwards of BWARS led this course on Hymenoptera aculeata (bees, wasps, ants and sawflies), beginning with a presentation on their fantastic diversity and life strategies in the UK. These insects are broadly classified at having two pairs of clear wings (4 in total), joined by hooks and with an ovipositor at the rear which is modified into a 'stinger'. 

The walls are lined with drawers like this filled with carefully preserved and labelled specimens

Mike is an incredibly enthusiastic entomologist, one of many people trying to encourage a new generation of biological recorders. He asked us to bring along our specimens, so I brought some solitary bees from Gatwick, including one of my 'zom-bees' which came back to life after removing it from the fridge. I've subsequently learned a few tips on how NOT to preserve specimens...

...such as storing things in alcohol and then writing the labels in ink

Alcohol will also mat the hairs of insects which can be an important identification feature. 

Plus its a little undignified. This was an Andrena solitary bee, species is probably clarkella 

Just to make a brief point here: I don't collect invertebrate specimens for fun or for ownership (I'm no Pokémon master). Present day Entomologists collect specimens in order to identify a species, and because certain features can only be practically observed when something is no longer moving. You can read more about the entomology code of conduct here:

http://www.amentsoc.org/publications/online/collecting-code.html

Identification keys are quite like the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' books, in that you are presented with options and your choice tells you which page to go to. Mike has recently been updating and simplifying a key to British bees, this is a quick demo of part of it...
   For the pics I've used a smart phone down the lense of a microscope, but better naturalists than me will sketch features by hand as this helps with learning!

How to work out if your bee is male or female...

This female had 12 antennal segments...

...and 6 visible tergites (segments) on its rear end

So we know it is female, onto Key 2...

I can see 3 submarginal cells, slightly out of focus

Over to couplet 15...

Surface of eyes are definitely not hairy, and the marginal cell on the wing was relatively broad...

Over to couplet 16...

Couldn't see the tongue, but the wing vein was straight, plus the inner margin of the eyes are more straight than concave; over to 17...

I'm sure you get the jist! This one eventually keyed out to the genus Nomada, which is a type of Cuckoo Bee. These are common parasites of other solitary bees, laying their own eggs which after hatching then eat the larvae and food stores.

Now really is a good time to be getting into wildlife recording; with social media and online recources, everything is so much more accessible. Also, being able to share experiences with people at workshops or online means the entomological pursuit is no longer such an isolating one!

Many thanks again to Mike and everyone at BENHS who helps to put these workshops together.

Gatsbees B-Log: March 2015

In early March, a welcome sunny day may be followed by a frosty night so it’s better to just peek inside the beehive to make sure the bees have enough food.  Imagine someone takes off your roof, prizes apart all the walls, rips apart your pantry, kills a few of your family and lets in the cold. You’d probably be annoyed!

A good way to check the girls without opening the hive is to put a camera underneath and photograph the colony through the mesh floor. The dark area shows where the bees are clustering and if they smell good and the floor isn’t piled high with dead bees, then they must be ok.  For the moment at least!

Care must be taken while walking to the apiary as there are bees in all the warm puddles, collecting water to dissolve and eat the honey, which was stored in the comb last year.

It doesn’t have to be deep water as their proboscis sucks up the water like a straw...

...but they have claws and pressure pads on their feet to prevent them falling into deep water.

One of the major jobs for the winter is to clean any used wooden equipment by scorching it with a blow torch...

...and also to make up new frames on which the bees build their wax comb.

Spring fashion, yellow bloomers

Coming in to land. 

The longer I keep bees, the more remarkable they become and with April on the doorstep, the season is about to begin.

Get ready for take off..........

Gill X