Wildlife Blog by Ron Allen 29 February 2024
Plants and birds, mammals and moths, and fungi
The spring equinox is just three weeks away on the 20th March but when the sun shines it seems as if spring is on the way. We have however, had some awful weather, cold, heavy rain, and sleet over the past few days drenching the land and flooding in places.
Plant life. The hazels have all but finished flowering, but some bushes beside the village hall still retain some of their yellow pollen filled catkins (image 1). Just now replacing them are the white flowers of blackthorn, with the earliest in full bloom at the back of the village green (image 2). Shrubs coming into leaf now include hazel, blackthorn and hawthorn, and oak buds are starting to swell. Primroses (image 3), daffodils, and crocuses are in bloom. Wild garlic is sending up its tender young leaves ready for flavouring pesto (image 4) and home cooked food, some recommend adding young nettle leaves to the mix. White deadnettle, also known by my favoured name ‘white archangel’ as it is not a nettle, (image 5), dog’s mercury (image 6) and lesser celandine (image 7) are in flower. A good time now to look for lichens on the leafless shrub stems (image 8).
1 Hazel catkins having just shed their pollen into the wind (by the village hall).
2 Blackthorn flowers (by the village hall).
3 Primroses are coming out in our garden.
4 Fresh young wild garlic leaves.
5 White dead nettle (white archangel) on the village green.
6 Dog’s mercury in flower.
7 Lesser celandine on the village green, rather washed out by heavy rain.
8 Colourful lichens on blackthorn.
For the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch in January we did two one-hour watches in our garden looking through our dining room window, one on Friday 26th and another on Saturday 27th. The results on both days were similar with 17 birds of 11 species on the Friday and 16 birds of 10 species on the Saturday. Both of our counts recorded blackbird, chaffinch, wood pigeon, blue and great tits, robin, dunnock, greenfinch, and house sparrow. The Friday additionally recorded starling and a pheasant while the Saturday was notable for four greenfinches and a single goldfinch. Interestingly, these were all common garden birds, unlike last year when we also saw great spotted woodpecker, wren, treecreeper, nuthatch, and long-tailed tit. Some of these birds turn up from time to time, but not during the allowed one hour. We did two one-hour watches in our garden looking through our dining room window, one on Friday 26th and another on Saturday 27th. The results on both days were similar with 17 birds of 11 species on the Friday and 16 birds of 10 species on the Saturday. Jeremy Mitchel added great spotted woodpecker to the village species list.
Of the mammals we see badger, fox, and wood mice on our wildlife cameras and moles are active judging by their mole-hills (image 9). Of the amphibians, our garden pond has seen frogs (image 10) and abundant palmate newts (image 11).
Winter Moth Challenges were set nationally for the first time this year, with moth enthusiasts recording their moths during January and again in February with great competition to see who could record the most macro and micro moths. 92 moth-ers sent in their records for January and I find our modest garden list came in at 48th with five macro-moth species and three micro-moth species along angle-shades moth caterpillars. In February, the number of moths increased with twelve macro-moths and six micro-moths. Early in January, winter moths were common but as the month progressed chestnut moths (image 12) became more abundant. In February, Chestnut moths were still the most frequent with pale brindled beauties (image 13) coming second.
9 Fresh mole hills on the verge between Red House corner and the New Buildings Farm access.
10 Paired frogs in our pond, no spawn yet though.
11 Palmate newts are common in our pond.
12 Chestnut moths. Females (above) climb our paling fence and emit pheromones to attract the males (below).
13 Pale brindled beauty moths.
14 Banded snail.
Out with a torch at night and many smaller invertebrate creatures can be found. Slugs are climbing trees feeding on algae, both garden and banded snails (image 14) are seeking algae and snacks from our garden plants, black multi-legged snake millipedes (image 15) also feed on algae while their distant cousins, the brown centipedes (image 16), are voracious hunters with poisonous fangs. In the pond, dragonfly larvae are hunting smaller aquatic species, while caddisfly larvae try and protect themselves with cases of plant fragments (image 17), sand grains or small shells.
Fungi have a kingdom all to themselves being neither plants nor animals and live by obtaining nutrients from decomposing (or sometimes living) plants and animals recycling their components back into the environment. There are various crustose, toadstool and cap-shaped types (image 18) out now. In addition, are the slime moulds currently showing on dead wood (image 19) and that appear fungal like but are placed in the Protista Kingdom along with algae and protozoans such as amoeba. Slime moulds are amoeba-like single celled protozoans that live in dead wood but when conditions are suitable, they clump together and emerge to the surface as fungi-lookalikes where they form fungi-like spores that are distributed by the wind ready to hatch out into single celled amoebae ready to start the cycle again.
Finally, cup fungi form another fungal group (the Pezizales) and come in a wide variety of forms, but this elf cap (or cup) is typical and comes up every spring on mossy or leaf covered dead wood in our garden (image 20). There are two very similar species of red-coloured elf cups (scarlet elf cup and ruby elf cup), only distinguishable under a microscope or from DNA analysis and so which species this is remains unknown.