Roving Records - Land East of the Railway Line: 19/03/2014

Recently I've been really spoiled by warm and sunny weather, so I had to give myself a kick to get outside on this cool, blustery day.

Underside of a Mink: the colour is quite beautiful but the fur is rather oily in texture

On the way to the site, along the A23 was a grim but still an interesting find: a squashed American Mink (Neovison vison), which came off worse after meeting a car. I've seen plenty of tracks and droppings around our streams and rivers, but I've yet to see a live one. American Mink were brought in and farmed in the UK for their fur before it was banned in the '90s. Sadly this practice still goes on in European countries and the US. The descendants of the escapees here are an invasive species and voracious predators, thought to be at least partly responsible for the decline of the UK's Water Voles.
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Scots Pine and Birch trees dominate the entrance of Upper Picketts Wood

Into Upper Picketts Wood and a colony of Jackdaws were making the most of the stiff breeze, leaping off the trees and being buffeted happily about. A group of Goldfinches high up in the Scots Pine were also singing lusitly, a sound which I normally associate with my housing estate.

The woodlands are really alive with bird song at the moment, in particular Wrens, Robins, Goldfinches, Great Tits and Chaffinches. Great-spotted Woodpeckers were drumming and a Green Woodpecker was 'yaffling' in the distance. I regularly hear a Marsh Tit around the entrance to Goat Meadow and have occasionally seen a pair flitting around together. I really like its shrill 'pit-choo' calls, which can feel like a greeting, though in actuality is telling me 'where to go'.

I was sneaking a look under the reptile refugia around the meadow, when something which looked like a massive rubber snake draped over a branch caught my eye...

Refugia at the Grass Snake boulevard

A rubber snake

It was in fact a very real and pretty massive Grass Snake! It's close to a meter long and I've seen this big ol' female in the same spot last year. I was hoping she wouldn't mind our rennovating her brash pile, which was breaking down and getting a bit sparse, but it seems to have gone down nicely.

Grass Snake (Natrix natrix)

On to checking the hedgehog tracking tunnels, kindly lent by one of our Ecology volunteers George. We are hoping to get some indication of Hedgehog activity on our sites...

A Hedgehog tracking tunnel - corrugated plastic with an ink pad and pieces of plain paper at either end

They were baited with spam and tinned sweetcorn, as like some humans, most mammals don't seem to be that fussy! After just one night, all the food was gone and left behind were lots of little inky mammal tracks. Sadly no hedgehog prints yet, although it was probably a bit of a long shot.

These tiny tracks are most likely from Field Voles and Common Shrews

Halfway through checking the tunnels, I spotted two bees hawking over the grass... I had a quick sweep of my net and one got away, but I snagged this cute little fella - a mining bee of the Andrena genus.

Male Andrena spp. As well as two large compound eyes, you can see the three ocelli (simple eyes) on the top of his head which assist with light detection and navigation

I was told it is probably the Small Sallow Mining-bee (Andrena praecox), one of the earlier species to be out and about. Male Andrenas can all look pretty similar so I would need to use an identification key to be sure, but as I am pretty tight for time, I let it go.

He was released on Blackthorn flowers, though it might have preferred a Willow catkin

Finally, under the reptile refugia I am also finding many of these little click beetles...

Elaterida is the Click Beetle family and consists of 73 species in the British Isles

At some point I will have a crack at using some invertebrate identification keys, but right now I am on a steep learning curve in terms of Airport and Aerodrome Ecology, so it is on the back burner!

Roving Records - Land East of the Railway Line: 10/05/13

On Friday I carried out a check of our dormouse boxes in the LERL; sadly no further evidence of their nesting activity. However the boxes are certainly being put to good use by the Blue Tits and Great Tits...

At the moment over 1/3 of the boxes contain either Blue Tit or Great Tit nests

I was crouched down while making some notes and when I looked up I don't know who was more surprised, me or this male Roe Deer...

Hazel coppice understory, a dense Bluebell carpet and a curious Roe Deer in Horleyland Wood

It wandered in a large circle around me and casually sauntered off, another male not far behind it. I must have blended in pretty well; my clothing has definitely become more 'grungy' since I first started here (whether that's a good thing or not.) I'd like to think I'm becoming a better naturalist; most recently I have acquired some collecting pots, bought a utility-belt (i.e. a bumbag) and I've mostly stopped caring about getting my feet wet.

Common Frog tadpoles in the shallows of Pond 3 (I like our exciting pond names)

I was checking the final Dormouse box when I spied this well-hidden nest between the boles (thick stems) of an old coppiced hazel, proving it to be rather useful habitat. They are likely Blackbird chicks and might have a harsh appearance just now, but their eyes are beginning to open and in a few more days their feathers will be pushing through...

Blackbird chicks in a nest

 Comma Butterfly (Polygonia c-album) in Horleyland Wood. These guys are territorial; it flew laps around me and always landed back at this spot

  (The butterfly formally known as Cabbage White) a Large White Butterfly (Pieris brassicae), over in Goat Meadow

It was a good week for butterflies as well as other invertebrates; the first Large Red Damselflies have been taking to the wing over in the North West Zone, Orange Tip and Peacock Butterflies have been busy along the River Mole, Gatwick Stream and our woodland margins. I was chuffed to get a photograph today of one of these beasties out on the move, they rarely keep still long enough to snap...

A rather conspicuous stalker...

A few days previously Scotty Dodd, Surrey Wildlife Trust's expert entomologist, visited this site with me in preparation for summer invertebrate surveys. I netted one of these and took a picture before releasing it back out. Scotty identified it as a type of Cuckoo Bee, most likely the species Nomada leucophthalma.

Potted for a close-up of this cool little wasp-like bee

No pollen-collecting bags on her back legs... this tiny sneak travels light!

Although very wasp-like in appearance with its shiny hairless abdomen, this is actually a type of bee and a 'cleptoparasite' of other solitary bees... Basically Nomada has a rather sinister lifestyle which involves following other foraging bees back to their burrow, then sneaking in to lay their own eggs on the hard-earned food supply. There were a plenty of these tiny little lurkers about, which also indicates a good size host population...

I spotted many of these tiny burrows along the edge of the path in the woodland strip - likely to be Nomada's target host

The host solitary bee in question - Andrena clarkella, eyeing me suspiciously

This little lady is what the Nomada are busy hounding - an early ground-nesting bee with the lovely name of Andrena clarkella. They are an early season solitary bee and mainly collect the pollen of willow flowers. It was great to take a moment and watch the bustling activity of all these different invertebrates, deeply engrossed in their individual missions while the good weather held out.

Brown Tree Ants (Lasius brunneus). They nest in the old deadwood of trees, probably in one of our large veteran oaks of the woodland strip

Then a bonus end to the day is finding your only pencil where you carefully left it on the footpath.