Adventures Archives - Page 13 of 16

One twitch does not a twitcher make (but it’s a good start)

I’ve seen a lovely variety of wildlife in the last fortnight, so I’ll just have to pick out the best ones for now. Beginning with some moth trapping in my hometown of big old London City, albeit actually in the suburbs. There were some beautiful individuals caught, one of which I’d been hoping to catch for a while – the Brimstone Moth.

Brimstone Moth

Isn’t it fab? To me, it is one of the best examples of how moths can be cool and not brown / dull / boring as most people think. Take this description: a delicate insect with large fluttering yellow wings. Many would think of a butterfly – a Clouded Yellow perhaps? But I was just trying to describe the moth. Like I said, moths can be as cool and as pretty as butterflies. I’d even go so far to say that perhaps they’re even cooler.

Small Magpie Moth (actually a micro)

Moving on from moths to another group of beautiful insects – damselflies. On a riverside walk in Surrey (oh yeh, I went to Surrey after London), I came across a whole cloud of them and could see that there were four different patterns on the damselflies. With this prompt, I found my notes and did some identification. It turned out that the cloud consisted of two species – Banded Demoiselle and Beautiful Demoiselle, with the males and females of both.

Female Beautiful Demoiselle Damselfly

Male Banded Demoiselle Damselfly

Back in Portland (Dorset), I was having a nice week. Albeit that the weather was a bit grim and I couldn’t put out the moth trap which is always a shame. On a mixed weather day, someone brought a moth into the centre which naturally cheered me up. It was the first of the species that I’ve seen in a Dorset – a Cream-spot Tiger Moth. However, I had actually seen this species before but in larvae form (i.e. caterpillar) all the way back in March!

Cream-spot Tiger Moth

Away from the insects and into the birding world. And not just birding … this week saw me edge into the somewhat more nerdy side of birdwatching – twitching! This is when someone travels a distance to see a particular bird and to add it to their list. For me, this was my first proper twitch, I normally just enjoy watching birds.

I decided to go for this twitch because 1) it was less than an hour away, 2) it was a bird that is very rarely seen in the UK and 3) it was an awesome bird – an eagle! More specifically a Short-toed Snake Eagle who is usually found in southwest Europe and western Europe up to the Gulf of Finland / northwest Africa / central Asia. According to ARKive, the western populations are migratory, so perhaps this is one that got blown off-course?

Short-toed Snake Eagle

I took an awful blurry photo by taking a photo with my phone through a telescope (known as digiscoping). But thanks to an editing program, I managed to change the lighting a bit so you can actually spot it in the photo. I’d say that I’m not going to turn into a twitcher, but I can’t promise anything, there may be another cool bird that is worth travelling to see!

June 1, 2014/2 Comments/by mgshersby

Adventures, Moths, S4F Traineeship

There’s a snake in my boot!

I lied, there wasn’t a snake in my boot this week … but snakes did feature, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to use this quote from such an epic film (Toy Story in case you didn’t know, but you should know because Toy Story is amazing and everyone has seen it!).

Before the snakes, there were birds. Lots of birds. I was doing a BTO (British Trust for Ornithology) course at the Kingcombe Meadows Nature Reserve, and it was fab to go out into the countryside with someone who could identify all the birds we could see and hear. The latter is particularly difficult most of the time as although some birds are very distinctive in their call or song, there are many that sound fairly similar. Plus, many have a variety of calls or song, and some birds mimic other species (I’m looking at you Great Tit!).

Blackcap hiding behind branches

All in all, there were: Great Tit, Blue Tit, Long-tailed Tit, House Sparrow, Chiff Chaff, Swallow, House Martin, Whitethroat, Blackcap, Wren, Goldcrest, Garden Warbler, Blackbird, Robin, Dunnock, Treecreeper, Buzzard and Rook. Another walk after the course had finished saw me adding Greater-spotted Woodpecker, Yellowhammer and Bullfinch to the list.

Bullfinch

I love this photo of a cheeky female House Sparrow in the chicken feed trough at Kingcombe

Reptilian training took place on Upton Heath Nature Reserve with the traineeship manager, and smooth snake / sand lizard licence holder, Steve Davis. It was an epic day – Common Lizard, Sand Lizard, Slow Worm and Smooth Snake were seen, and we got to handle the latter! I was quite nervous because … well, it’s a snake! I was afraid it might bite me, but I was also really nervous about stressing it out or dropping it. Luckily none of that happened, and instead we all marvelled over how cute they are!

Smooth snake, not too sure about having its photo taken!

Male sand lizard soaking up some rays

I also saw some lovely moths (naturally!) including the Common Heath moth of whom I saw both a male and a female! In addition, there were lots of lovely birds about – Stonechat, Linnet, Tree Pipit, Cuckoo and Dartford Warbler.

Common Heath moth (male)

Common Heath moth (female)

The second half of the week saw me back at the Chesil Beach Centre, but I was soon whisked away to do a quick search for a rare moth – the Least Owlet, whose only UK distribution is on Chesil Beach! We were looking for the larvae of this caterpillar, who are quite pedantic about their habitat, so it wasn’t too hard to find them once I got my eye into it.

The Least Owlet Moth larvae (just below the shell and leaf)

Following this mini expedition, I headed out on another one – a wildflower walk on Chesil Beach with Angela Thomas, the assistant warden for the Fleet Nature Reserve. There are many flowers out on the beach, and they are stunning. A couple of of my favourites are Sea Campion (white) and Thrift (pink), and you can see why – it’s gorgeous!

Sea Campion and Thrift with the Chesil Centre in the background

Naturally we saw a variety of other wildlife out on the beach, from birds (Linnet, Skylark, Wheatear, Herring Gull, Little Tern), to beetles and moths (I’m finding that there are moths everywhere if you look for them!).

Wheatear

Yellow Belle moth

So a very packed week, and I’ve not even included everything – I’ve seen a number of other moths (Muslin, Shuttle-shaped Dart, Cinnabar and some micros whose names I can’t remember!), startled a hedgehog in the garden and seen a number of butterflies (they’re not as interesting as moths though).

May 18, 2014/2 Comments/by mgshersby

Adventures, S4F Traineeship

Signals and mi-newt details

I know that every blog post, I say how amazing the last week has been and how I’ve seen so many cool species. This week is no exception and what a week it has been! There has been so much awesome stuff happen that this blog post would be ridiculously long if I were to mention everything, or even half of it! So it shall be a very slimmed down affair.

It started off with a visit to one of my favourite Dorset places – Brownsea island! It was just a super quick visit, but I saw a bird that I love which is the Black-Headed Gull, as it was among the first birds I learnt to identify at Chesil and I think that it is generally quite cute.

Black-headed Gull

Crayfish training was rather surprising as there are more non-native species in the UK than I thought! However, the big baddy is the Signal Crayfish from America which is a really awful invasive species and our native White-clawed Crayfish is really suffering as a result.

White-clawed Crayfish (note the whiteness on the underside of its claw)

It’s a combination of the American species acting as carriers for a disease that is fatal for our species, it is also bigger and breeds earlier, thus pushing out the native species. In addition, it’s practically impossible to remove the American species once it establishes itself in a river. Lastly, it is possible to spread the disease through human transmission – wellies and, I should think, leisure craft (e.g. kayaks).

It’s me! For once, there were waders in my size and I jumped in. I didn’t find any crayfish though.

From crayfish to amphibians, and even more awesomeness. After a theory session on ID on the different native and non-native species, we headed out to Powerstock Common Reserve and had a look for the species. We were particularly interested in Great Crested Newts (GCNs) as they’re a protected species and are also quite groovy animals. They’re relatively large, the largest of our newt species and the adults at unmistakable. The juveniles can have a bit of confusion with other species. SUPER COOL FACT: juvenile newts are called efts!

An eft! Not a great photo, but can you make out the gills at the back of the head?
Unknown whether smooth or palmate newt species.

ID features for GCNs include: size (up t0 16cm!), colouring (black on back, orange on belly), pattern on throat (spotted), feet (stripy!) and the male has a large crest with a distinct dip (this may only be during the breeding season though).

I enjoyed the amphibians training day so much that I’m considering doing a species/group profile post on newts! For now, Amphibian and Reptile Conservation have got a new ID guide in PDF format which can be downloaded for free.

Great Crested Newt male (note the large crest on his back). He is next to another newt species (much smaller!)

The last training of the week with Dorset Wildlife Trust was on Odonata – i.e. dragonflies and damselflies, of which there are far more species than of the amphibians! Again, a theory session in the morning was followed by a practical afternoon with a visit to Winfrith Nature Reserve. We were netting damselflies for ID, but you shouldn’t net dragonflies, so we were relying on them to rest for a little while in order to look at their ID features (body shape, colour, wing spots and patterning are the main ones).

I do believe one of the favourites of the day was the Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly, whose specific ID features are the last segments on the abdomen (though we would call it the tail). Segment 8 is half blue and half black, whilst segment 9 is blue with a distinctive black line one it (of 10 segments along the abdomen [tail]). You should be able to see it relatively easily in the photo (I would suggest opening up the photo separately in order to zoom).

Scarce Blue-tailed Damselfly (note the end segments of the abdomen [tail])

In addition to the lovely creatures that were the focus of the training days, there were so many other amazing species seen from a variety of groups including (but not limited to): Hobby, Grey Wagtail and Lapwing (birds), Green-veined White and Dingy Skipper (butterflies), Cream-spot (ladybird), Bugle, Green-winged Orchid and Yellow Archangel (flowers). I shall finish off this post with nice photos of some of the mentioned species.

Grey Wagtail flitting about whilst we were finding crayfish. Really amazing to watch it.

Dingy Skipper Butterfly. Although less bright and flashy than other butterflies, it is still a beauty.

Cream-spot Ladybird. A favourite of mine as it was one of the first ladybird species that I properly identified.

Yellow Archangel – look at that patterning!

May 13, 2014/5 Comments/by mgshersby

Adventures, Birds, Dorset, Moths, S4F Traineeship

No clever title, just a lovely week

There was a delay on this blog post as I was out late Sunday night on a brilliant evening of birding, but I shall come to that in due course.

As the week started with birds, the week also began with birds as I visited the Abbotsbury Swannery this week. It’s a lovely place, the only managed colony of nesting mute swans in the world – they even have a swanherd! It is at the opposite end of the Fleet to the Chesil Centre, and there are hundreds of swans who nest there.

Nesting swans

That in itself is amazing as they’re very territorial creatures, so the fact that they can nest in such close proximity to each other is pretty awesome. As is the fact that you can walk through the colony without stressing them out (obviously common sense dictates and you mustn’t go too close to the swans or their nest, because that would cause stress!).

Amongst the reeds

Whilst wandering around the swannery, I got a new tick – both for my Dorset birds list and for the birds I’ve ever seen … well, heard. It was a reed warbler, very exciting to hear.

I was back at the swannery later in the week where I saw another waterbird that I love. Specifically the chicks of a waterbird – moorhen chicks! They are just balls of complete fluff and incredibly cute.

Moorhen chick

The week saw the second session of the moth ID workshop, this one lasted at least three hours! And it was great, so many new species!

Coxcomb Prominent Moth

On Sunday, I spent the afternoon being crafty at the Chesil Centre, having spent some time trying to find some really fun arty crafty activities. A couple of my favourites were the jellyfish in a bottle and the cardboard octopus. I made an octopus, which was super cute, for one of the other trainees who had a birthday recently.

Octopus!

The evening saw my week end with birds on the Lulworth Ranges with Steve Hales, a local birdringer. It’s an amazing place, full of fabulous habitat and special species. We went there to mistnet and ring a couple of specific species, but unfortunately the birdringing session turned into a birdwatching session. Mind you, I still saw the birds – three new species for myself and some practice ID on other species. The new ones were: woodlark, Dartford warbler and nightjar. Plus I saw some bats on the drive back, thought to be pipestrelles.

As I didn’t get photos of the birds at the ranges, or the bats on the way home, I thought I would add in a photo of a fluffy lamb at the swannery.

May 6, 2014/0 Comments/by mgshersby

Adventures, Moths, S4F Traineeship

Wear Sunscreen

An interesting week full of different things – events, exploration and of course some moths. With a moth trap on loan from a friend, and permission to set it out in the garden, I’ve been hoping for some interesting moths. A plume moth was nearby but didn’t deign to enter the trap, but that was ok because there was a hedgehog in the garden! I haven’t seen in a hedgehog in so long, so I was super excited. The hedgehog was less impressed and buried its head in the grass in order to ignore me.

Hedgehog!

On Thursday came a real test for me, my first event at Chesil that I organized and led. It was a Wildlife Trackers day, with the children working out which animals had visited the centre and left clues behind. It was great fun, with everyone becoming detectives, considering the evidence and solving the mystery.

My creative-on-a-budget-side came up and I made an otter holt which I am incredibly proud of! Namely because my creative side normally hides away from me and I have to poke it out with a stick.

Otter clues – spraint and footprints, with a holt to peek into as well

Thursday also saw a bit of an exploration around Portland Bill as a friend was visiting. Whilst I already knew that Dorset / Portland is an amazing county, this little adventure reminded me of that. Look at these views!

Stunning!

Fab lighthouse

Later in the week, I joined in at a BioBlitz in Wareham. Now if you’ve not heard of a BioBlitz before, no worries, the premise is: IDENTIFY EVERYTHING! Luckily, the organisers enlist experts to cover most of, if not all of, the groups. This time round, the main experts were in plants which was useful for Sarah, another trainee, who is trying to improve her plant ID skills!

A confused Sarah

A Common Carder Bee (one of 20+ species of bumblebee!)

For me, the invertebrate expert arrived later, so I used social media and apps to help with the identification of caterpillars and ladybirds. It was actually really fun doing it this way and it helped me in learning how to use the apps for future reference.

We didn’t have a caterpillar book but Twitter saved the day! A Scarlet Tiger Moth caterpillar.

I caught a new moth on Saturday night, one that I’ve never come across before! A good learning opportunity. I browsed my moth ID book, but had trouble locating it there so crossed over to Twitter to browse the #teammoth to see if anyone had caught something similar. And sure enough, someone had! It was a male Shuttle-shaped Dart Moth. Quite a common species, so not extremely exciting, but good enough for a learner!

Shuttle-shaped Dart Moth

The week finished off in style – marshalling for the Walk For Wildlife Event, a fundraising event for Dorset Wildlife Trust. It was a truely difficult day that I had to fight my way through. Imagine this, sitting in the sunshine all day, at a local pub! How I managed it I do not know.

All kidding aside, there was a bad side to this – I’d forgotten my suntan lotion and got a horribly red face. Complete with a white eye mask due to my sunglasses. Such a great look (she says as she hides indoors!).

I shall end with this nice photo of a hoverfly who chilled at my pub table for a while, and a reminder to wear sunscreen because (a) red is not a good look and (b) to go without is very unhealthy for the skin.

What a cutie

April 14, 2014/2 Comments/by mgshersby

Adventures, Moths, S4F Traineeship

Step by Step, Lep by Lep

The title is a little obscure perhaps, but it is reference to the constant learning process that I’m going through, particularly when it comes to the moths whose taxonomic group happens to be Lepidoptera (which also includes butterflies).

This week didn’t start off with moths though, it started off with another topic that I am trying to learn more about: marine species. Marc, the Chesil Beach Centre Officer, led a training session for the volunteers at the centre. We headed out along the shore of the Fleet in time for the low tide and had a good rummage around amongst the rocks and the seaweeds, and wow we found some interesting beasties.

Common (spiny) spider crab

Yup, that’s a crab. This species has neat way of camouflaging itself, it actually has seaweeds and sponges attached to its carapace (shell)! I don’t think that anyone can deny that it’s not effective … though then again, a keen-eyed volunteer did spot this individual.

Shore crab

Ah, now that’s a crab that we’re more used to seeing. A common species in rockpools, this is the shore crab, distinguishable by the five wavy bits on the front bit of its carapace (shell). Apparently.

Marc in action

In the photo above, Marc is holding up something that is very commonly found on our shores, known as a mermaid’s purse. These purses are super cool because they’re actually the eggcases of some species of sharks, rays and skates! So similar to how a bird’s chick develops within an egg, as do the sharks, rays and skates. I do believe that the one he is holding there belongs to a small-spotted catshark (also known as the lesser spotted dogfish).

That night saw my first moth trapping on Portland, although only for a few evening hours. Despite the limited time, I still caught a decent number. Just a couple of moths is a good amount for a beginner to be identifying. I did manage a few of them, but struggled with a couple – the Pug (a group that are notoriously difficult, though mine was an easier one) and the micro-moth (since I don’t have an ID book for micros, yet).

Moths trapped: x1 Early Thorn, x1 Early Grey, x1 Double-Striped Pug, x2 Light Brown Apple Moth (a micro).

Early Thorn Moth

Later in the week, I delved further into the moth nerdiness, when I attended a 2 ½ hour long ID workshop. It was far more interesting than it sounds, and I learnt so much. Hopefully some of it will actually remain in my head, but it should help with if I do catch any of the species we covered.

I think one of my favourites covered was the Waved Umber, just look at that patterning!

Waved Umber

Another example one that was intriguing was the Satellite moth, with its rich red-brown colouration and spots. In the ID book, the three spots are either all white or all red-orange. However I noticed that the example we were looking at had two white spots and one red-orange. Yet another mystery in the world of moths.

Satellite Moth

Further Lepidoptera (moths/butterflies) fun occurred on Sunday when I travelled across to Southampton for the International Butterfly Symposium. This conference was actually three days long, but unfortunately could only afford Sunday’s half day session. Money may not make someone happy usually, but it could definitely make me more learned and educated. In my world this equates to greater happiness as it means books, symposia and training courses.

Anyway, back to the symposia. There’s some really interesting research being done, plenty of field-based conservation and laboratory observations. One that definitely caught my attention was the work of a Canadian researcher, Raynald H. Lemelin, who is studying human perceptions of insects. I was so engrossed that I even asked a question (albeit with a shaky voice as I realised that almost everyone was looking at me)!

A good example of an insect that people often have opinions on! However, this isn’t actually a bee or wasp, it’s a hoverfly! ID by Sean Foote.

With my role in community engagement (and previous experience with the Field Studies Council), I view at least part of my job as (1) increasing awareness of different creatures and (2) improving peoples’ perceptions of animals that they might otherwise be indifferent to or even dislike.

The best bit of this is that the animals involved are pretty damn amazing, even the simplest or most common is just splendid. The ecology of worms, the behaviour of moths, or the complexity of bird anatomy … each of these is an example of how remarkable nature can be, without us even noticing much of the time!

Even in this blog post, I’ve only touched on a couple of species but each one has a fascinating life cycle, anatomy and behaviour. What do you think?

If you’re very interested in the moths that I’ve been seeing, I have made a Dorset Moths List page of all the moths I’ve encountered since I moved to Dorset.

April 6, 2014/2,315 Comments/by admin

Adventures, Moths, S4F Traineeship

The bumblebee goes on flying anyway

This blog post focuses less on the traineeship and more on what I’ve been doing in my own time, and as with most of my learning so far, the majority has been on birds and moths. First, there was a revisit back to this gorgeous gull – the Iceland Gull. It’s been spending a lot of time on the Fleet recently, though at the time of writing I haven’t seen it in the last couple of days. It was actually pretty chilled about my presence, I got quite close and took some lovely photos, if only it had been a sunny day!

Iceland Gull

20 bags!

Last weekend was a blustery one, which was difficult for those taking part in the beach clean! But the volunteers were determined and 20 bags of litter were collected which I am thrilled with. Unfortunately, it’s a never-ending battle with marine litter on Chesil Beach – a reflection of just how much rubbish we throw away. There’s going to be another beach clean at the end of April (Sunday 27^th if you’re free) which will be a good opportunity to really hit out and get as much off the beach as possible.

A couple of days later saw me doing something that’s almost unthinkable for me – getting up for 4.30am! For my first ever twitch! Ok, I wasn’t travelling that far (just to the ‘mainland’) and it wasn’t a very rare bird (but locally rare!), and I wasn’t even going to see the bird (just to hear it!), but I’m counting it as a twitch! So what was I getting up this early for?! A booming bittern! And what an interesting sound it was! Rather like the noise of blowing across a bottle, it was a really odd noise for a bird to make! For the non-birders, I had to get up this early as the bittern actually stops booming just after dawn!

Ready for the dawn chorus

Despite the awful hour, it was a lovely time. Helpfully, a fellow naturalist, Sean Foote, was with me and he was able to point out the different bird calls and songs that I’d not learnt yet. I’ve got my chiffchaffs, blackbirds, great tits and coots down, but had never heard a Cetti’s warbler before! You can hear the dawn chorus at Sean’s blog.

Back to the daylight world and a day off! Well, it was a day off from work but not from enthusiasm! I headed up to the Portland Bird Observatory to eye up the moths they’ve been catching – Common Quaker, Early Grey, Clouded Drab and Hebrew Character.

Early Grey (centre) and x2 Hebrew Characters (bottom)

As well as to check up on the status of the spawn in the pond – now tadpoles! Though I believe they are toad tadpoles if I remember the shape of the spawn correctly (toad spawn is laid in lines rather than clumped together like frogspawn).

Toad tadpoles … I think (it’s been a while since I’ve done amphibians!)

I was also slightly cheeky and tagged along for the checking of the bird mist nets, i.e. large nets which birds fly into. These birds are then ringed and then their movements can be studied. Whilst the exciting period occurred earlier during the day, I still saw a new bird get caught (male House Sparrow) and the recatch of a Chiffchaff. Plus, there were the usual suspects flying around – goldfinches, greenfinches, stonechats and my first linnet!

The recaught Chiffchaff

Linnet

Extra bonuses – a bumblebee and shieldbug caught in the mist nets! Obviously I set both of them free.

Poor bumblebee

Shieldbug

The fortnight ended splendidly with a Sandwich Tern on a buoy near Ferrybridge, having travelled all the way from Africa! This one wasn’t quite in its breeding plumage, but still a great sight.

Sandwich Tern, it wasn’t actually taking off, just having a stretch

Last but not least, I caught my first Dorset moth – a Bloxworth Snout (what a name!). Thought to be a hibernating adult, especially as it was found inside. A slightly blurry photo I’m afraid.

Bloxworth Snout

And just because I’ve been practicing my birds in flight photography, I’m going to include this photo as well.

Herring Gull in flight (guess at a 3rd winter but don’t have my notes to hand)

March 30, 2014/2,315 Comments/by admin

Adventures, Moths, S4F Traineeship

You have to teach yourself new things

I really like that phrase above, it’s part of a quote I came across this week, I believe by Ray Winstone (corrections welcome if I’m wrong): “… you should never stop trying to get better. You have to teach yourself new things …”. That’s really what the ethos of my traineeship is about, learning and practicing new things – whether it’s information such as identification of species or new topics (geomorphology for me at Chesil!), or learning new skills.

This week’s learning returns back to the theme of birds. With so many interesting birds on The Fleet or flying past, is it surprise? I also spent 24 hours on Brownsea Island, where I saw 5 new bird species and another that I’d only seen once before very briefly.

Two Avocets

Whilst this isn’t a great photo (so much zoom!), there is a real variety of birds – Godwit, Sandwich Tern, Shelduck, Black-headed Gull, Herring Gull and Wigeon

My first Goldcrest photo!

I was also attempting to improve my birds in flight photography, and I think that this was my favourite, although not both are in focus.

Black-headed Gulls

Oak Beauty Moth

However, it wasn’t all birds on Brownsea! I also persuaded the warden to set out the moth trap, as that is another area where I’m trying to learn a lot. Despite the chill, we caught 14 moths in total, from 6 species! Although I’m keen on moth trapping, I’m a real novice so it was brilliant to open up the traps with the DWT Brownsea staff as they knew the moths and could point out the particular features. Whilst puzzling over them myself would’ve been great practice, we were in a bit of a rush!

Oak Beauty: 6

Yellow-horned Moth

Clouded Drab: 2

Twenty-Plumed: 1

Grey Pine Carpet: 1

Yellow-Horned: 3

Common Quaker: 1

We also caught this female minotaur beetle.

But the highlight of my visit has got to a particularly famous and gorgeous mammal.

Red squirrel!!

Back at Chesil, interesting birds were also cropping up. Having seen Twitter reports of the Iceland Gull for the last week, I was keen to see it myself, and finally did! What a gorgeous bird.

Iceland Gull at the pools on the Fleet

I also saw a red-breasted merganser, a little egret, skylarks and meadow pipits (as well as the usual suspects).

Last but not least on the birding agenda, I joined two other trainees on a WeBS – aka a Wetland Bird Survey. Struggling across very boggy fields was quite hard, more so because I was trying to keep an eye out for birds rather than only watching where I was stepping. It’s harder than it sounds.But I saw a variety of birds, including snipe, little egrets, shelducks and mute swans. My favourite though was the chap below. At first I was really doubting myself for thinking “it looks like a sparrow, but it isn’t!” After consulting my bird book, I found out that it was a reed bunting! I was thrilled as I had heard one a couple of weeks past, but hadn’t seen it.

Reed Bunting

So referring back to the blog title, I do feel that I’ve learnt a lot this week – particularly with bird and moth ID. And although I’m happy that I’ve learnt so much, I will definitely try to get better.

March 16, 2014/2,315 Comments/by admin

Adventures, S4F Traineeship

I find my lack of faith disturbing

(aka I had underestimated just how awesome this traineeship would be)

The original plan had been to write about the traineeship once a fortnight, but that resulted in small essays and cutting out some interesting details. And so for now, I shall be writing every week. The last 7 days have proven my point exactly, three amazingly cool days have happened, each of which could rightly deserve its own blog post.

It all kicked off with a road trip to the Fine Foundation Marine Centre in Kimmeridge Bay for a training session with the two trainees and the marine wardens there. It was a gorgeous day – blue skies, sunshine and just a touch of wind. After a morning of discussing the potential species out in the rockpools whilst we waited for low tide, we headed out to get our feet wet.

High(ish) tide before the sun came out. Jess said: There’s a few gulls outside if you want to practice your identification (!)

It began slowly, a few limpets and flat periwinkles until we got past the waterfall and out onto the beds of rock with the pools. And boy, did we find stuff! There were: anemones (of three species), fish, crabs, topshells and shrimps, as well as more limpets (both common and blue-rayed) and periwinkles (and their eggs). Of course, there were a variety of seaweeds but we weren’t examining those this time (that fun is saved for slightly later in the year).

Hello little periwinkle!

Flat periwinkle eggs

Blue-rayed Limpet on seaweed

Snakelocks Anemone – pretty groovy looking
(out of water so a bit less colourful)

A shy little hermit crab in a purple topshell’s shell

Our last exciting find was an unidentified species of chiton, a bizarre looking mollusc. I was congratulated on finding it, but as I said to the others, I was just “thinking seashore creature” (i.e. if I were a seashore creature, where would I be hiding?).

Chiton, photo credit: Philip Abraham

Limpets and rockpool searchers

On Saturday, the aforementioned Kimmeridge trainees, my Chesil Centre colleagues, and I attended a MARINElife training course on cetaceans and seabirds. I do believe we were all quite blown away by the variety of species found in UK waters. Despite being an all-round naturalist, I will admit to having lacked knowledge on our marine wildlife. And you can add coastal wildlife to that as well, hence why this traineeship is particularly useful for me, I’m learning loads! Did you know that the most of our local dolphins and whales come under the taxonomic group of Odontoceti who are the toothed whales?

A note on taxonomy: Taxonomy is the classifying of organisms (i.e. animals, plants etc) into similar groups dependent on shared characteristics. Thus the dolphins and whales in Odontoceti are more closely related to each other than they are to the other group – Mysticeti who are the baleen whales.

As well as discussing the species, we were also told about the ferry-based surveys that MARINElife volunteers undertake and introduced to how it all works. Jess had particular fun trying out the Heinemann stick – which is used to measure how far away something is. Interestingly, each volunteer has their own set of sticks (since each volunteer is unique in height/arm length) as one stick is needed per vounteer and a different stick is needed for each ferry that is travelled on (again, ship designs are different).

@jessmeadmarine trying out the Heinemann stick measurement on the @MARINElife_UK course at #Chesil, @DorsetWildlife pic.twitter.com/JfI3Wh854M

— Megan Shersby (@MeganShersby) March 8, 2014

On a day off, I headed up to the Portland Bird Observatory to introduce myself to the warden there, Martin Cade. Having tweeted to each other about birds and moths, I reckoned it was high time that we actually met in person! I’m particularly keen on the moths as he runs moth traps every night from spring onwards, and fortunately my mentor is happy for me to head up and help out. With the recent weather, it is taking a while to kick off but now that we’re getting into spring, I shall definitely be up there quite often!

I took a walk out to Portland Bill and practised my skills at photographing flying gulls – I definitely need more practice still but I do believe I’m getting better. Naturally, I was also admiring the coastline, it is so dramatic and impressive, especially with the waves crashing in. I was fortunate to see one of the local rock pipits that breed up there, flying about the place and singing away. Great little bird.

Rock Pipit near Portland Bill

Back to PBO, where I basked in the sunshine and made friends with the cat, until I got distracted by the little birds flying to and fro – including goldfinches and greenfinches. I also saw a bee, a toad, newts (either smooth or palmate) and toadspawn. What a day!

Last week a duck friend, this week a cat friend!

Toadspawn

In smaller news:

I contributed to my first school group, giving the introductory talk about Chesil Beach to a Yr 9 group. I was a bunch of nerves but apparently I did really well, so I’m very pleased.
The centre had the caterpillar of a Cream-spot Tiger Moth on its outside wall, look up the adult moth, it’s stunning!

Cream-spot Tiger Moth caterpillar

I headed over the road to Hamm Beach to photograph the turnstones (a bird species).

Turnstone on Hamm Beach

And at the end of writing this blog post, I find that I’ve still managed to write a small essay even though I’ve missed out a few things! There’s just so much to be learnt and so much going on!

I shall finish with some gull photos as they were lined up rather nicely on the boardwalk earlier this week.

PS – anyone else liking the Star Wars themed blog title? I think that’s my third Star Wars one now?

March 9, 2014/0 Comments/by admin

Adventures, Moths, S4F Traineeship

When you have seen one bird, you have not seen them all

Crumbs, what a fortnight it has been! Incredibly busy and full of interesting places. Half term was certainly an eventful week, starting with the closure of the Portland Beach Road and the cancellation of Saturday’s event at the centre. But after a clearup, we were back on our feet and raring to go. I spent the majority of the week doing children’s activities – making butterfly or bird feeders. One afternoon, I even spent a while doing some colouring in as I was instructed to by one little girl.

The beginners birdwatching course also continued, this time at RSPB Radipole. We were fortunate to see a water rail and the diving behaviour of a cormorant. Whilst marsh harriers and bitterns are known to be seen there, we unfortunately didn’t find them this time, though we did hear a reed bunting, find some otter spraint and view some stonechats.

Stonechat in the distance

The bigger stuff happened in the second week, starting with a road trip to Devon and the Living Coasts centre. It was very interesting, and I absolutely loved the birds section as they’ve got a couple of curious female ducks who like to wander over to you and sit next to you. At one point I do believe I got trapped by the two of them against a fence, but I’m not complaining, as they were utterly adorable!

Yay duck friend!

The last session of the birdwatching course meant a trip to a new reserve for me – Lodmoor, where I saw a couple of firsts. Although I may have seen the species before and just not realised what it was (quite new to birds that aren’t garden ones!). These included: oystercatchers, spoonbills and bearded tits (on a quick flyby), as well as seeing other species such as greenfinch, goldfinch, dunnock, various gulls and ducks.

I love this photo of an oystercatcher – very cute!

A lovely photo from Lodmoor

This week also saw the big highlight for all the trainees – a trip to Brownsea Island! Recently voted as the nation’s favourite nature reserve, with a range of amazing habitats and species, and we were there all day. One species that it’s well known for is the sandwich tern who nests on the little islands on the lagoon. We were helping out this species by chucking on our waders or wellies and splashing out to these islands to weed them, add more gravel and fence them.

Taking gravel out to the islands. Apparently harder than it looks (no waders for me, so I got ferried across, felt rather posh I won’t lie)

All these jobs are very important for the terns whilst raising their chicks. Weeding is important because too much plant cover and the terns won’t want to nest there, although too little and the chicks won’t have as many places to hide form predators. The gravel is needed as this what the adult terns love to nest on (just like the little terns at Chesil loving the pebbles). And the fencing, whilst an annoyance for photographers, is needed to prevent predators (e.g. herons) from flying in and decimating the chick population.

Whilst I didn’t see any red squirrels, I did see a new species of deer for me – Sika deer, albeit that they were partially hidden. And I know I’ll be back on the island before too long, I mean, come on, I live in the same county as our favourite reserve, how could I not be?

Hiding away

Last but not least, my training at Chesil included another event, this time focussed on birds (there seems to be a theme to this fortnight does there not?). Marc Smith, the Chesil Beach Centre Officer, gave talks on the Spring Birds of the Fleet and who we can expect to depart / arrive on migrations. The accompanying dance moves made the talks particularly good. The talks coincided with the optics day, where an Opticron respresentative came down and people could try out the range. I had particular fun with one of the scopes, the zoom was amazing!

Outside of training, I’ve had the most amazing time. I went all the way over to Wareham for a talk on the moths of Dorset by Dr Phil Sterling, who is one of the famous names in the moth-ing world. He is also a fantastic speaker and I (along with everyone else in the room) was enthralled, and amazed by the moths found in Dorset. Naturally, I wrote plenty of notes, so much so that someone actually asked if I was a journalist! I also spoke to him about helping out, so I hopefully I’ll shall be doing some interesting moth work this year. Pun intended – I’m rather hoping he will take me under his wing.

From my first solo moth trapping, Elephant Hawkmoth – what a stunner!

My fortnight finished off with yet another first when a fellow naturalist offered to show me where the local barn owl roosts. I’ve dealt with many owl pellets and seen a number of rescue owls (even worked with one), but I’ve never seen a properly wild barn owl. So off we went … to the local prison! Well, not quite, but the roost is actually on the edge of its property. And guess what happened. I saw a barn owl! Not just that, I saw two! I was absolutely thrilled to bits! I can’t wait for the rain to pass and head back over to see them, maybe I’ll even get a photo this time.

Well, as you can see, I’ve had an eventful fortnight, and thus a rather long blog post, despite cutting out a number of less exciting but still pretty awesome things.

In case you’ve not had enough of my blogging, I have also badgered Steve Davis (the trainees’ manager) into letting me get started on the traineeship blog so that should be posting again soon. You’ll be able to read up on everyone’s exploits here.

To finish with, a distinctly non-bird photo.

One of the feral goats over at East Weares on Portland

NB on the title: I came across the full quote “When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all.” during this week and felt it was rather appropriate for a bird-focussed blog post. The quote is from E.O.Wilson, a famous scientist whose main area of research has been on ants (who are more fascinating animals than people give them credit for).

March 2, 2014/2 Comments/by admin