Gatwick Goes Wild in 2016

As part of The Wildlife Trusts' 30 Days Wild campaign, the Gatwick Greenspace Partnership held a six-day program of events in early June, engaging airport staff with the wealth of wildlife on their doorstep. Everyone got really stuck in and despite the occasional rain shower, we had rewarding encounters with small mammals, Grass Snakes, Banded Demoiselles, Long-horned Bees and Harvest Mice!

A huge thank you to Tom S., Tom F., Kevin, Lucy, Martyn and Richard for hosting this series of events and to all the volunteers and attendees for making the effort to visit. Below are a few picture highlights from the week....

Day 1. Small mammals and Harvest Mice

The morning was spent checking 10 longworth traps, identifying and releasing the occupants. On this occasion, we only trapped one small Wood Mouse...

Wood Mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus)

The wet weather meant not many insects were out on the wing, but closely checking the vegetation we found things roosting up, trying to keep dry...

A Snakefly! I don't think I've ever seen one of these before. Apparently we have 4 species in the UK

Tree Bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum) clinging on to a Bluebell in the rain

The wildlife was not the only thing caught out by the rain...

Mr Simpson; 'All the gear, no idea!'

Afternoon:

Lucy's talk with the Harvest Mice in Gatwck's offices went down very well, although the journey to the meeting room took a little longer than we anticipated...

Erm, which way to departures?

In the meeting room at Gatwick's South Terminal offices

Lucy is an animal keeper and charismatic speaker at the British Wildlife Centre, who kindly gave up her free time to visit us with her captive-bred Harvest Mice. These little guys will be released into the wild once they are fully grown.

Harvest Mice (Micromys minutus)

Day 2: Family bushcraft day

Tom Simpson has a secret forest school, hidden away in Goat Meadow, land east of the runway. We were invited to visit his site, tracking the wildlife and learning how to build a safe and sturdy shelter for protection from the elements... 

Tree leaf identification

A little moth caught by young Oliver - the Common Tubic (Alabonia geofrella)

Roe Deer tracks (Capreolus capreolus)

The super-shelter was constructed in the nick of time, as it began to pour down with rain!

By the afternoon, even the interior was being well insulated! But what good is a shelter without a flag? 

Leaf-printing with natural materials

Some sort of semaphore system?

As a final reward at the end of the day, we found this sleepy curled-up Grass Snake under a refugia...

Grass Snake (Natrix natrix) with the distinctive bright yellow collar

Day 3: Riverside Walk

 A short walk away from the South Terminal, we met up with Tom Forward at Riverside Garden Park. We examined the contents of the moth trap Tom had placed out the previous evening, then took a quick stroll to see what else might be hiding out in the nearby grasslands...

Silver Y moth (Autographa gamma)

Tom does an excellent Kingfisher impersonation (the call that is, not the flight)

Banded Demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens) male

One of our most colourful bumblebees - Early Bumblebee (Bombus pratorum) male

Day 4: Even more mammals

The camera trap from the night before brought us some lovely footage of a male Roe Deer...

Over to the traps. and this time we had caught 4 different species of small rodent - Wood Mouse, Yellow-necked Mouse, Short-tail Vole and Bank Vole.

Short tailed Vole (Microtus agrestis)

Yellow-necked Mouse (Apodemus flavicollis)

...and at lunchtime there was more Harvest Mouse action in the Gatwick meeting rooms

Even local celebrity TinyBirder had heard about it and came to see for himself...

Afternoon: Bat box checks

We had a fantastic walk through the River Mole woodlands, accompanying Kevin Lerwill and local bat ecologist Martyn Cooke as they checked the new bat boxes.

Woodland birds were in full song, and the ground flora was rich with ancient woodland indicator species.

Early Purple Orchid (Orchis mascula)

Bat box on an Oak tree

We were incredibly fortunate to be able to see a Soprano Pipistrelle in the hand; great confirmation that our bat boxes are being put to good use! 

Soprano Pipistrelle (Pipistrellus pygmaeus)

Saturday & Sunday: BeeWalk Training

Richard Comont from Bumblebee Conservation Trust (BBCT) visited us again a year on, delivering another weekend of Bumblebee identification training. Richard is a brilliant entomologist and another Pan-species Lister, so it's always a privilege to spend time out in the field with him.

This very popular course is run by the BBCT for free each year, at different locations around the UK...

Destinations Place, South Terminal Offices

In the afternoon we nipped over to the River Mole site, and luckily for us the weather was warming up...

Early Bumblebee (Bombus patorum) on Common Spotted Orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii)

Buff-tailed Bumblebee queen (Bombus terrestris)

Another cool find was this Rhinoceros Beetle (Sinodendron cylindricum)

We were also lucky to be able to provide Richard with a new tick for his life-list; Gatwick's very own Long-horned Bees!  

Long-horned Bee (Eucera longicornis)

Truly one of the best weeks I've ever had at work, I really hope it was as much fun for everyone else!

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!