By Martyn Stenning

December 2013:

The autumn is slowly progressing, but it is 14th November today and there are still plenty of green leaves on the trees.  Only 5 weeks to the winter solstice and there are green leaves on oak and ash trees.  The Acers such as field maple and sycamore are turning.  Birch leaves are yellow and falling like discoloured snow.  We have had the first significant frost, and most insects will have either died or found a refuge for the winter.  Wintering birds are flooding into the British Isles, and it is a while since I have seen a swallow or a warbler.  However I did see a late wheatear on Saturday 9th November on the summit of Mount Caburn near Lewes, there were also a number of meadow pipits.

There are three types of pipit commonly seen in Sussex. Meadow pipits, as their name suggests, live in meadows, or indeed any type of peaceful grassland.  We get them in West Park Local Nature Reserve in the winter.  There are also rock pipits, which as their name suggests, like to live in rocky habitats, usually by the sea. You can always find them at Splash Point at the easterly end of the promenade at Seaford.  Thirdly, there are the rather rare tree pipits, which as their name suggests, live mostly in trees, and can be seen in certain parts of Ashdown Forest.  All 3 pipits look and sound fairly similar, but can be distinguished on close inspection with binoculars and a good identification guide.  However, their identity is usually given away by their location.  All 3 species may be seen all the year round, but most tree pipits fly south for the winter, most meadow pipits remain in Britain all year, and most rock pipits are winter visitors from further north.

I am currently reading a book on skylarks.  There are many different species of larks around the world, and most of them live in arid habitats.  Some of them never drink water, but get all their moisture from eating juicy insects.  In Sussex, skylarks are fairly common, but are declining, and occupy the same type of habitat as meadow pipits.  We also have a few woodlarks on Ashdown Forest, but these are quite rare.  Rarer still are horned larks also known as shore larks, because they are winter visitors that are only seen on sea shores, and then only very rarely.  Horned larks breed in the Arctic, and those visiting Britain are thought to breed in northern Eurasia.

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November 2013:

The winds, rain and winter visitors of autumn have arrived.  I heard and saw my first redwings of the year yesterday (October 15th).  Redwings are small spotty thrushes that look like they have had a nasty accident, as they have two blood red patches just below each wing.  Redwings fly in mainly from Scandinavia in the autumn to spend the winter in parts of western Europe that are kept mild by the Atlantic Conveyor (Gulf Stream).  Redwings prefer to eat insects, but during the winter when insects are scarce, they resort to eating vast amounts of berries, especially hawthorn and rowan.  The soft fruit is digested, but the seeds of these plants pass right through their bodies and are ejected all over the wider countryside where they germinate.  This is an evolved system of seed dispersal which results in open areas of grassland succeeding to become scrub and eventually forest.  This process of succession results in habitats reaching what is called a climax community.  That is a community that cannot develop into anything larger.  In Sussex, the climax community is forest, usually dominated by oak.

There is another bird that disperses the seeds of oak (acorns), this is the jay, often known as the oak jay.  The jay is a species of crow, which in Britain is rather shy.  However, it can often be seen in the autumn collecting acorns from under oak trees, and carrying them in a beak pouch sometimes many miles before burying them in an open area such as a field or clearing.  During the winter, the jay sometimes remembers and sometimes forgets where they are buried.  It will feed on the remembered ones when hungry, and the forgotten ones will become new oak trees, ensuring food for future generations of jays etc.

Interestingly, the word field derives from ‘a felled area of forest’.  At one time, the whole of Sussex would have been high forest, and gradually it has been felled to form fields and other infrastructure for human survival such as houses and roads.  However, nature is constantly trying to reverse this trend, and the redwings and jays are contributing to this with good effect, and some neglected fields are again becoming forested, which is good for absorbing carbon dioxide.
It is interesting to note that a large proportion of hedgerows are now not maintained which has resulted in an increase in strips of woodland.

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October 2013:

We have just passed the autumn equinox, and the nights will now be longer than days until 21st March.  It is interesting to note that the equinox is global.  Everywhere on earth has equal day and night on about 21st September and 21st March. 

For us locally, autumn means we are seeing the migrant birds such as swallows, house martins and chiffchaffs, flying south.  Deciduous trees are deciding to drop their yellowing leaves, and the fruit trees, such as plums and apples, are burgeoning with harvest festival offerings.  It is also a time for spiders as they mop up the remaining insects in their gossamer webs.  Life is winding down for the winter.

However, autumn can also be a time of plenty, and a different kind of rebirth.  I did my monthly dormouse round at Lake Wood yesterday, and besides some single adults in some boxes, I found a lovely family of five young dormice with their mother.  They were still blind, but were just getting their orange fur which replaces the initial dark covering after about 14 days.  Dormice are not actually mice (such as house mice, which are part of the family Muridae) but are in a closely related family called Gliridae (dormice).  True mice do not hibernate, but the 20 or so species (globally) of dormice all apparently hibernate, sometimes for as many as 7 months of the year, they fatten up with autumn food before hibernating.  We have only one species of dormouse in Britain, and that is the hazel dormouse.  True mice have up to 10 litters each year of up to 14 young in each litter, but dormice have only one or two litters of up to 5 young.  Dormice have furry tails, but true mice have long naked looking tails with just a few very short hairs.  For the licensed recorder there are other differences, these are that dormice do not bite when handled, but true mice often do, and dormice do not foul their nests, but true mice are not house-trained, and make their nests increasingly smelly until even they have to desert them. 

The nest-boxes that I establish for the dormice also host other species.  These include yellow-necked mice, wood mice, blue tits, tree bumblebees, various wasps including hornets, ants, hunting and web-making spiders, woodlice, centipedes, various moths, earwigs, flees, hover and true flies, slugs, snails and various beetles.

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September 2013:

Many Naturalists spend lots of time watching species so as to understand how they fit in with Nature.  There is a lovely story of two 19th century naturalists, Fritz Müller and Henry Bates.  Both were fascinated by the fact that unrelated species often had similar shapes, colours and/or marking patterns.  They discovered that some species of animal have evolved to mimic others, and by doing so, enhanced their survival probabilities.  To understand this, it is necessary to understand warning signals.  Although many species of animal have camouflaged or cryptic bodies that hide them away from predators (e.g. green or brown frogs hiding from cats and snakes), some animals are brightly coloured (e.g. ladybirds).  It turns out that ladybirds are both toxic and distasteful when eaten, so that predators (usually birds) avoid them.  However, frogs are apparently good to eat, so need the ability to hide from predators.  So, if another species of beetle becomes red, but is also good to eat, predators will tend to avoid it because of its colour, and even though it is good to eat, it is more likely to survive and have offspring.  This is known as Batesian mimicry after Henry Bates.  It also works for flowers where plants that do not provide nectar mimic others that do, so that insects will pollinate them even if they do not provide a reward.

Fritz Müller went to South America and found that many species of butterfly, some closely related, and others not, all had similar shapes and markings, and all were toxic and distasteful.  So why were they all looking similar if they were all toxic or distasteful?  It turns out that even if an animal is bad to eat, it is less likely to be eaten if it looks like another animal that is bad to eat.  It is easier for a predator to learn one warning signal than lots of different signals. So appearances tend to converge over many generations.  So this is known as Müllerian mimicry.

There are many other types of mimicry in nature, such as the peacock butterfly, that has false eyes on its wings.  When its wings are closed it is cryptic and camouflaged.  However, if it moved, it may be spotted by a predator, if this happens, the butterfly suddenly opens its wings and the predator sees 2 huge eyes ‘looking’ at it and should jump back, giving the butterfly time to escape.

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August 2013:

Great to have a real summer for a change.  I write these notes about 2 weeks before they are published, so anything can happen in the mean-time.  Just now, the sun is shining, and it is hot.  The insects are buzzing and butterflies abound.  The main bird breeding season has finished, but there are many birds that are multiple brooded, and so produce young right through the summer; these include Blackbirds, House Sparrows, Pigeons of all five sorts, Swallows and House Martins.

One of the big questions in ecology is how does society work in social insects?  Social insects are those that have a queen, a few males and many worker non-breeding females.  Social insects include Honeybees, Bumblebees, Ants and Termites. There are also many species of semi social Bees and Wasps, and many more solitary species.  These insects may have evolved over several hundred million years.  The queen of a colony of social insects probably has very little control over their day to day behaviour, but the fact that they are all related means that what they do is under genetic control.  This means that they are programmed to behave in a particular way such as collecting food or attacking enemies.  The different casts of insect also live for different periods of time.  Queens may live several years, but workers just a few weeks.  Males do little work, but are redundant after they have mated, and therefore die very young as well.  Workers are always female.  This group of insects (with the exception of Termites) are grouped in the family Hymenoptera (Ants, Bees and Wasps).  Because they have been around for some time, they all perform very useful tasks in ecology.  For example, Bees in particular pollinate flowers so that seeds and fruit can form.  Ants are collectors of dead insects and other waste that is fed to other colony members.  Wasps are decomposers, cutting up waste plant and animal material for food and nest-building.  The vast majority of Wasps and Bees die with the first frosts, but Honeybees and Ants will overwinter in their colonies.  There may be as many as 60,000 honeybees in one colony!  These of course have now become domesticated, and are mostly managed in hives so that their products can be used to keep us Humans healthy.  It has recently been shown that Bee pollen can help to prevent prostate cancer in men.  Honey never goes off and is a rich source of good nutrients.

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July 2013:

Flaming June has arrived at last.  Yesterday (19th June) the temperature rose to 27°C. in the afternoon.  The hottest day of the year so far.  However today there are thunder storms forecast.  At least the old adage that an English summer is “…2 hot days and a thunderstorm.” Seems to still hold true despite the other inconsistencies of our disrupted climate.

The Wrens nesting in our porch fledged today.  I think there were about 5 babies.  The Latin name for Wren is Troglodytes troglodytes meaning cave dweller.  Wrens are insectivorous and love to go inside caves, buildings and other cavities.  They are Britain’s commonest bird, which is surprising as many people rarely see them.  The reasons they are rarely seen are that they are very small, they hide in undergrowth and apart from when they have freshly fledged babies, and they are rarely seen in groups.  However, if a winter is particularly cold, they do sometimes roost in a group inside a cavity to keep warm.  This could be a nest-box, hole in a tree or building.  There are many ways in which Wrens are unique in Britain, for a start, they are apparently the only species of British bird whose ancestors evolved in the New World.  There are many species of Wren in the Americas, but only one in the Old World. 

However, all other species of British birds apparently had ancestors that evolved in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australia.  Basically everywhere else apart from the Americas.  Wrens are also unusual in as much as it is the male that usually builds the main nest, but the female can sometimes line the inside.  The reason that Wrens are our commonest bird is that they can occupy almost every type of habitat, e.g. coast, hills, forest, garden wetland, and they distribute themselves throughout the land, and the male defends a territory of which there are estimated to be around 7.1 million in Britain.  So the actual population is about double that.  You may not see a Wren very often because of its shy skulking disposition, but you will certainly hear it, it has one of the loudest songs of all British birds, and will also make a very loud tick – tick call that can sometimes be very fast and long such that it sounds a bit like a chain being pulled through a pulley.  Probably the main predator of the Wren is the domestic cat, but maybe the main cause of death is probably cold in the winter.

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June 2013:

Oh dear, it is mid-May, it is raining outside and there is a blustery wind. The temperature outside is 7.7°C. this evening.  I really had thought that summer had come.  Well, it did for a few days in late April and early May.  Then the Jet Stream moved south, and we are subject to Arctic weather again.  However, the Swifts arrived about 5th May, that to me indicates that summer has arrived.  However, I think that increased melting of Arctic ice is cooling the sea currently at about 9°C off the Sussex coast as the Arctic water fights with the Gulfstream. So the mild, moist southerly wind is being cooled by the cold water and drops its wet load.

I saw four Slow-worms the other day, and one of them was a gravid female, all plump with babies.  The babies are usually born live and active (as opposed to hatching from pre-laid eggs as many reptiles are).  Slow-worms can live for more than 50 years if they are lucky.  They are not Worms at all, but actually leg-less Lizards with tails that can break off if grabbed by a predator.  Hence their Latin name Anguis fragilis.   Their main food is small Slugs, so should be welcome in the garden.  However, they are often killed by Cats.

The Bluebells are amazing this year!  Rich deep blue and dripping with flowers.  Internationally, they are a rare flower, occurring only in western Europe.  It is thought that up to 50% of all Bluebells in the world are in Britain.  However, where they do grow, they are so abundant that they carpet the woodland floor at about the time leaves burst forth on the trees above.  They are a type of Lily, their Latin name is Hyacinthoides non-scripta.

We are now entering the Orchid season, and I was looking at some beautiful Green-Winged Orchids yesterday.  These are Orchids of old undisturbed habitats, but are apparently declining.  We are fortunate to have many Orchid species of growing in Sussex, many of which are at the northernmost edge of their range.  One of the rarest is the Early Spider Orchid which grows only in the southern coastal region of Britain.  However, this plant is not confined to old habitats as it has turned up in large numbers at Samphire Hoe near Dover on land created from spoil dug out to form the Channel Tunnel!

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May 2013:

Summer is on its way at last!  The wind has changed and is now blowing from a more south-westerly direction.  Almost immediately, this change accelerated the swelling of buds on the trees. Also, at last the migrant birds are arriving, such as the Swallows which arrived in Uckfield about the 14th April.  Cuckoos have been heard and Chiffchaffs have started to sing.  As for the resident birds, a pair of Blackbirds has raised 3 chicks in a nest built among the Ivy on the side of our house.  They have been growing in the nest for about 10 days, and left the nest on 19th April.  The timing of this was amazingly lucky as hatching coincided with the change in wind direction. Consequential warming led to the reappearance of Earthworms on which parent Blackbirds rely to feed the chicks.  The Blue Tits have started building their nests, but are doing so about two weeks later than usual.

The (wild and cultivated) Daffodils have had an extended season this year; they seem to like the cold.  However, the Honeybees have not been able to get out and collect nectar and pollen until recently.  There may be a shortage of honey this year as many colonies have died during the extended winter. The Wood Anemones are flowering in the ancient woodlands now and are carpeting the woodland floor.  Lake Wood is a good place to see them.  By mid-May, they should be all but over, and replaced by Bluebells.  Wood Anemones are usually only found in truly ancient woodlands, that is, woodlands that have existed for at least 400 years, and have probably always existed since the last ice age about 10,000 years ago. They generally spread underground from tubers, and rarely survive if transplanted. Areas of woodland cleared of alien plant invaders such as Rhododendron ponticum which are surrounded by Wood Anemones take decades to be recolonized by Wood Anemones, indicating how slowly this plant spreads.  By late autumn, there will be no sign of the Anemone plants among the leaf litter.  When in flower their petals are mostly white, but some have various amounts of purple tinge on them.  Also, when they are in full flower on a windless day, the sweet aroma from these flowers can pervade the woodland.  The flowers close up at night, and generally open at about mid-day.  Bumble Bees quite like them, but other insects rarely visit them.  I have never seen any evidence of Anemones setting or growing from seed.

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April 2013:

Having experienced a beautifully mild day in February (see March Nature Notes), we have now experienced an Arctic blast in March (11th).  The closest I have experienced to the conditions on that day was 2 years ago on the island of Spizbergen in the Arctic.  However, it did not last long, and by Wednesday most of the snow had gone.  I was however, privileged to see a Barn Owl hunting by day on Wednesday, near to the road on the A26 between Uckfield and Lewes.  With the ground frozen by night, there is little chance of catching rodents which forces the owls to take to daytime hunting.  This is because the rodents themselves are forced to do the same.

Now in mid-March, we should be seeing the first butterflies and migrant birds; however, the best we have seen is snowdrops, crocuses and a few Daffodils.  Celandines are trying to appear, but progress is slow.  At least the days are getting longer, nothing can stop that.  On 21st March (the equinox) day will equal night over the whole planet.  After that, days will be longer than night in the northern hemisphere until September 21st (and converse in the southern hemisphere).

I am anticipating a warmer, dryer summer this year than last year; well it could not be much wetter.  An indication of how poor it was for nature is that honey bees made very little honey last year.  The insects had a very hard time, and consequently the insectivorous birds such as the migrants that visit Britain for our short term seasonal abundance of insects.  These include Blackcap, Whitethroat, Chiffchaff, Swallow, and Swift.  These will soon be arriving in Sussex to brighten our lives.

My pond is full of Frog spawn.  More than I have seen for many years.  There is more in West Park Nature Reserve, and I suspect many readers will have found more.  Toads too have been migrating back to their breeding ponds such as the one on Harland’s Farm.

Farmers (and others) are advised to do their winter hedge cutting by 6th March in order to avoid disturbing nesting birds.  Blackbirds are among the most vulnerable.  I was delighted to find a female Blackbird building her nest among the Ivy right next to our kitchen window.  She started on March 14th, which only goes to show how essential such guide-lines are.

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March 2013:

I’ve just experienced a real spring-like day on 18th February!  Honeybees are flying around looking for pollen and nectar, and also for people to sting if they get too close to the colony.  The target flowers will be mainly Crocuses and Snowdrops, but there are a few Celandines, Primroses and Violets around as well.

A pair of Buzzards was courting over the South Downs this afternoon, and being shouted at by two Carrion Crows.  These and other raptors are now on the increase as thankfully, they are not persecuted as much as they used to be.  I heard a report of a Goshawk near the Holy Cross Church Centre a few days ago; it was plucking a Pigeon, and eventually flew away with it.  Watch out also for Kestrels hovering as they search for prey, especially by roadsides, and Sparrowhawks either soaring overhead or shooting like an arrow through the trees and along hedgerows ready to pounce on an unwary Sparrow, Bluetit or other small bird.

There is a country rule that all hedgerows should be trimmed by 6th March, in order to avoid disturbing nesting birds and dormice etc.  I have been trimming a hedge at the University Ecology Field Trials Plot today, and was delighted to see that Elder is well into breaking bud, and Hawthorn is just starting.  Soon these hedgerows will be transformed from brown to green, and will provide cover for nesting Chaffinches, Long-Tailed Tits, Blackbirds, Songthrushes, Dunnocks (Hedge-Sparrows), Robins, Wrens and many other birds.  Dormice also will use the hedges as motorways to get between woodlots.  Many birds that nest on the ground such as Yellowhammers, Chiffchaffs, Whitethroats and Blackcaps will use the hedges as singing posts.  If you are awake at about 06:00 hrs. you will be treated to the dawn chorus from Blackbirds, Songthrushes, Dunnocks, Robins and Chaffinches right now.  These will soon be joined by many other birds as we progress through March, but as the days progress, so sunrise will get earlier, until it will be 05:30 by early April that the best chorus will be heard.

There will be other seasonal movements to be seen and heard as the amphibians wake up from their winter sleep, and there will be croaking from the ponds and Frog spawn will soon follow.

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February 2013:

With the lengthening of days, signs of the coming spring are beginning to appear.  Expanded hazel catkins can be seen, and the young cow parsley is showing its verdant green new leaves.  Song thrushes are singing on territory, and the young viridian blue/green daffodil shoots are beginning to push through the soil.  It will not be long before we see the first snowdrops in flower.

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and it is usually dangerous to generalise, especially about what can be seen in January and February.  I went for a picnic on the South Downs (dunes) at Beachy Head on Friday 11th January, and it felt quite warm in the bright sunshine.  I was delighted to see a hover fly land on my binoculars; it proceeded to explore this novel surface in the warm sun.  There were also dung flies on a cow pat, and it felt like spring.  Meadow pipits flew up from the closely grazed turf with “see see see” calls, clearly glad to find some insect prey in the depths of winter.  We watched as a pair of ravens, whose diagnostic “kronk kronk” call had given themselves away, were being mobbed by a pair of peregrine falcons.  There was a constant stream of lesser black-backed and herring gulls gliding along the front of the cliffs, but there was a more unusual bird gliding back and forth just below, and sometimes just above the edge of the cliff.  This was a fulmar petrel.  These primitive, enigmatic birds resemble gulls, but are not even in the same or close taxonomic order as gulls, but are more closely related to albatrosses and shearwaters.  These birds are often referred to as tube-noses, which describes the strange tube like structure along the upper mandible which is indeed the nose.  However, this nose tube is also used to excrete excess salt as these birds spend months at sea away from fresh water, so have to drink the sea, and they get rid of the excess salt through their specially adapted nose.

The cliffs had been collapsing at regular intervals along their length, and there were fresh piles of chalk rubble on the shingle below the clean white cliff-face.  These falls are probably exacerbated by the recent heavy rainfall.  2012 turns out to be the second wettest year since records began, second only to 2000.  Remarkable, considering it started with a drought that persisted at least until March.

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January 2013:

Now in the depths of the northern winter, we are all struggling to keep warm and free from illness.  Nature outside our house walls is doing the same, and its resilience is testimony to the wonderful array of adaptations that exist out there to do just that.  However cold the air gets, the soil just about 30 centimetres down remains about the same temperature all the year round.  So many animals, such as earthworms, slugs and ants know that and dive down into the depths of the soil to escape the cold and ride out the winter.  If there is a mild spell, some of them come back up and take a breath of fresh air before going back down again when the cold returns.

Deciduous trees have shed their leaves and carpeted the ground with a warm blanket of nutrients which provides food for fungi and bacteria. Micro-organism bodies in huge numbers generate heat which in turn keeps the roots of the tree warm, and the waste products of decay provide food for the trees in a wonderful process of recycling.  The roots of the tree will continue to grow in the winter while its naked branches are mainly dormant.  However, look closely and you will see the buds and in many cases catkins forming ready for the spring.  The colour of the trees seen from a distance will change over the course of the winter as this physical metamorphosis occurs.  Winter flying moths with antifreeze in their blood will mate and the females (often wingless) will climb the trees of their caterpillar days and lay their eggs on the base of these buds so that their caterpillars, when they hatch, can burrow into them and feast on the developing leaves in due time.

Hedgehogs, dormice and bats will hibernate, with slow heartbeat and low body temperature.  But true mice, otters and most other mammals will remain active searching out food in their warm winter coats grown especially for the season.  The coat of the stoat will often turn white and it will live up to its Latin name of Mustela erminea.  The pelts of these animals used to be prized for their softness and warmth.  Thank goodness we no longer steal them from their rightful owners who are allowed to live and hunt in peace, feeding mainly on rabbits whose numbers would be even greater without stoats.  Perhaps the greatest wonders are the small birds such as wrens and blue tits who, at about 10 grams, survive by making body fat and growing warmer feathers.

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