March Summary

I have massively enjoyed my job this past month, despite being ill for approximately half of it!

Tom S. and Gilly, checking on their passengers after a short ride in the Gatwick Greenspace truck

We have some new workers on board with the project, with 3 bee hives installed in Ashley's Field. Inevitably, the bee-puns are flying back and forth and the staff are buzzing with excitement. Anyway, I shan't drone on as there will be more from Tom on that subject later!

Gatwick's Honey Bees, ready and raring to go...

We have carried out some further 'hibernacularing' with the help of Scotty T. I am getting a bit obsessed with diggers and could watch them for hours... 

Despite a wet spell at the beginning of the month, we've still managed to get all of our Black Poplar planted along the River Mole in the nick of time. Thanks again to the Security Leadership Team!

This past month, our surveys have been rather mammal focused. Here, George and Laurie are checking Dormouse boxes. The only occupant we found on this day was a chunky little Yellow-necked Mouse (Apodemus flavicollis).

George and Laurie

George and Louise also helped with installing some Hedgehog tracking tunnels in Goat Meadow. I am trying a selection of different baits to see whether we can entice a range of mammals to leave their inky footprints behind.

In the lead up to our Youth Ranger mammal surveying event, my mum and I have been out most mornings and evenings setting out longworth traps so that our small mammals could acclimatise to them. We found an intense number of Wood Mice (Apodemus sylvaticus), which would happily pop back into the traps as soon as we had reset them! I will reveal our final peak count in the next post.

Wood Mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus)

 Tom F. demonstrating how to gently scruff a Bank Vole (Clethrionomys glareolus)

Now I feel like it really is spring when Cuckoo Flower, aka Lady's-Smock (Cardamine pratensis) comes into flower. It means the Orange Tip Butterflies will soon be out in force!

I vastly underestimated the size of the Grass Snake in Goat Meadow; we saw her again a few days ago and she was more like 2 meters long. I really have to work on my estimations! This much smaller specimen was found under a refugia near Man's Brook... 

Grass Snake, around 30cm in length (maybe)

I spotted our first Gatwick Grass Snake of 2014 on March 5th. I looked up my past reptile records on the iRecord website and found last year's was on April 15th, so they seem to be active much earlier this year.

It's Mother's Day today, and I wouldn't be here and doing this job it wasn't for the support and help of my most excellent mum, Sue. So a massive thanks to you Mum and keep up the good work!

Hibernacularing

I find it quite fun making up unofficial biological terms (many people don't know I coined the word 'ecologising', spelt the UK English way.) Sadly, the JS Agriculture team know me pretty well and, more often than not, I get called on it.

A snake 'hibernaculum' - Illustration by Larry Eifert (larryeifert.com) Demonstrating a pit
 filled with a mixture of rubble and deadwood, with a growing top layer of vegetation

I should stress though that hibernaculum is a real word; a place where beasties such as cold-blooded reptiles and amphibians like to bed down for the winter. These 'hibernacula' (as Jake pointed out is the pluralisation, not 'hibernaculars' ...thankyouverymuch) are structures which can be natural or created, even sometimes accidentally, as a refuge. It is based on very simple principles - a mound or pit filled with clean or natural materials with holes and gaps to squeeze/curl up amongst/wedge into, where the temperature remains fairly constant and the frost cannot get in.

 Expert Hibernacularist, Jake of JS Agriculture

A pit was dug on slightly sloping ground, about 30cm-90cm deep. The base was

 broken up with the pick, with sand and plenty of rubble added

'La belle monticule pour les amphibiens' - the concise French term for hibernaculum.

 (I may have made that up too)

The finished article is pictured above - 5 star luxury accommodation, bordered by a sunny mound for those short, opportunistic spring days of sunbathing. A rambling rose garden with bramble scrub is available for hiding away in should any birds of prey pass by, or pesky humans with their nosy dogs.

The next one is situated in a more wooded habitat, close to our newt ponds:

Lauren - our smallest but very enthusiastic hibernacularist 

A pile of broken bricks topped with deadwood, bark chips, logs and nearby brash

'Le hibernacle'. The actual and rather dull translation into French by Google

Another luxury 5 star winter holiday home available to rent; this one with more of a woodland character, containing a nice warming, rotting logpile and large pool just out the back. The varying locations of our hibernacula affect the decor: this one under more tree cover contains a larger amount of wood and vegetation, whereas the one in the grassland has more stone and turf. We will continue to add natural materials to these structures as our nearby habitat management continues.

September Summary: New beginnings

This has never been my favourite time of year as it usually signifies the end of things – life slows down, flowers disappear, invertebrate diversity drops, the grass turns yellow, evenings creep in earlier and the mornings take their sweet time to get going. Migrating birds, such as Swallows and Martins, ram this point home by flying thousands of miles, risking storms, starvation and predators just to get away from it all. This time last year, sitting in my portacabin next to an aircraft hanger, a sense of poignancy pervaded.

The last of the dragons - a female Migrant Hawker, one of the latest active dragonflies

However, this year feels a little different as September has signified the beginning of new things. With the added help of other naturalists I have been squeezing in as many different ecological surveys as possible and we still have some exciting new ones to come including fungi, small mammals and pond invertebrates. I have been trying to cover as wide a range of species as possible.

The rare Bechstein's Bat we found earlier this month in Brockley Wood, North West Zone

The removal of American Signal Crayfish continues in a section of the River Mole - they love the spam.

The most commonly found species in our dormouse boxes - a Copper Underwing Moth

So there is life out there other than Craneflies!

The two main components of our Biodiversity Action Plan consist of monitoring wildlife, then hands-on conservation work to improve habitats. As the main survey season ends, our autumn practical tasks are kicking off with activities such as dead-hedging, reptile and amphibian hibernacula construction (a dug pit filled with rubble, logs and brash) and thinning out of old and dense tree plantations.

Airport volunteers opening up a woodland ride into Upper Picketts Wood. This creates 

space for the remaining trees to reach their full, healthy potential...

...also allowing the sun's valuable energy to strike the woodland floor, benefiting groundflora and fauna

Our first airport staff volunteers of the season were the Accounts Payable Department, lead by West Sussex County Council's Volunteer Co-ordinator, Darren Rolfe and assistant Tom Weedon. The day was a definite success; no wind, no rain, no trees dropping onto volunteers plus only one piece of equipment went missing in the long grass - must be some kind of record!

Thinning out the young tree plantation, targeting the Crack Willow for removal

Ashley's Field with a well-supplied work station

I joke of course, all our volunteer days go more than smoothly here. This group were a fantastic bunch with bags of enthusiasm and together they made a great difference. I must say I’ve never seen conservation workers so well kitted out, I mean, a cafetiere in the middle of a field? Fair play... mine's an espresso macchiato, please!

Gatwick Greenspace Partnership (GGP) of the Sussex Wildlife Trust are the main conservation group here, carrying out community and environmental projects in and around Gatwick. I hear it has been nearly 20 years and they are still going strong. So when's the party, guys?

   Another aim of ours is to increase local awareness of GGP's work and to strengthen ties with the airport's numerous departments. Earlier this month, we set up a communications stand at the British Airways offices at Jubilee House, demonstrating the conservation works around Gatwick in order to engage the staff. 

Kevin Lerwill of Gatwick Greenspace Partnership and Phil Townrow of British Airways Engineering

Phil Townrow, aka 'Phil the Bin', also joined us on the day: an interesting British Airways engineer who is green of mind and passionate about reducing the environmental impacts of aircraft operations, through projects such as aircraft waste recycling and biofuel production. Another example of how much is going on behind the scenes of an international airport and how little is known about it!

British Airways has ground-breaking plans for a biofuel plant, due to start operating in 2015

And so looking ahead there will be no time to relax in October, with a final push on reptile and mammal surveys, a jam-packed conservation schedule and a brand new Gatwick Greenspace team member joining the ranks; the pace is now picking up on Gatwick's Biodiversity Action Plans.

A surprise visit by this Dunnock who flew into the portacabin - maybe it was after my hobnob biscuits?