Island 2000 Trust Blog

Look at this stunning thing:
It’s a Jersey Tiger moth. This lovely species is pretty much restricted in UK distribution to the Channel Islands and parts of the south coast . On the mainland it is commonest in south Devon, but colonies have recently appeared in Dorset and here on the Isle of Wight. So this may be a stray continental migrant or home-grown. There is also a thriving population in central London, but who knows if this is a natural expansion of range or perhaps more likely the result of an introduction. It’s clunky latin name is Euplagia quadripunctaria and is presumably a reference to the four distinct spots (rather than the two additional blobs) on the bright red underwings.
Sean, our conservation manager, photographed this one while out on his project rounds.

Look at this!

It’s a Grass Snake, but just a little one (see the nearby snail).

Turned it up during recent reptile survey work along with stacks of Slow Worms (see below).
This is such a beautiful creature - the yellow collar is the key identification clue. Although this is a baby, Grass Snakes can be really BIG - 1.8m+ !!

And here are the SWs . We seem to be finding tremendous numbers this year, but maybe that’s just because the weather’s rubbish and they’re far to cold to be out and about when we come calling.

The larger darker adults are on the left and the paler juveniles on the right. Grown-ups in the kitchen drinking tea, kids all crowded round a DS or a PSP - the usual story.

ahhhhh.

Now that summer’s here, lovely high pressure and warm southerlies (now and then) it’s good weather for dragonflies and damselflies. What’s the difference? Not much really - the big damselflies are about the same size as the small dragonflies, although generally they’re slighter and daintier. But there is one very obvious morphological difference between the two groups: damsels’ eyes don’t touch in the middle of their heads but dragons’ do. So there you are. This one is a fabulously beautiful Red-veined Darter Sympetrum fonscolombei photographed by Island odonata maestro Dave Dana. It’s quite common in southern Europe but is turning up more and more regularly as a migrant in the UK. It’s hard to imagine these little things travelling such huge distances but there is quite a list of regular migrant species that visit us annually and so it’s more than mere accident. We monitor dragonflies at all of our major wetland sites as they can be very useful indicators of the general health of the habitats we’re working on.

Nettles have got a bad reputation known in the main for their formidable sting! However did you know that the nettle is one of the most important plants for wildlife in the UK?

Recent research has revealed the cause of the sting to be fr

om three chemicals – a histamine that irritates the skin, acetylcholine which causes a burning sensation and serotonin, that encourages the other two chemicals.

The power of the sting actually makes the nettle’s leaves a haven for over forty species of insect, defending them against grazing animals. Nettle patches are also host to swarms of aphids a great source of food for ladybirds and birds in early spring.

Stinging nettle leaves are tasty and full of nutrients - lovely in tea and soup. Hooray for the humble, yet ferocious nettle. For more info on all things nettle-y see www.nettles.org.uk.
Be nice to nettles - we are.

Lady Ridley’s Nettle Soup

Why not try Lady Ridley’s nettle soup recipe? Let us know what you think or tell us your own favourite nettle recipe.

Ingredients:

1 lb potatoes
½ lb young nettles
2 oz butter
1½ pts chicken or vegetable stock
sea salt & black pepper
4 tablespoons sour cream

Method:

Cook the peeled, chopped potatoes for 10 mins in salted water. Drain.

Wash & chop coarsely the nettles (Only pick the new, young tops,using gloves!)

Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the nettles and stew gently for a few minutes. Add the potatoes and heated stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes or until tender.

When all is soft, cool slightly & purée in a blender, adding seasoning and the sour cream.

I hope you enjoy the nettle soup. The hardest work is picking the nettles. Half a pound is a lot of small leaves, but it is fun to do, in season, once a year.

THE VISCOUNTESS RIDLEY

Our Wetland Walk down near Sandown has always been one of the most popular of the Gift to Nature project sites, visited by thousands of locals and visitors alike each year. It’s also a great place for hands-on conservation tasks and that’s just what went on last week with the excellent Newchurch Scouts. Here you can see them stuffing new wetland plants into old socks pre-filled with stones before hurling them into the pond and watching them sink to the bottom. This is our patented method for hard-to-reach spots and it works a treat.

And here’s a set ready to go:

The Scouts also made some excellent mining-bee homes:

All in all much good work was done for the Wetland Walk and Mother Nature and great fun had by all; and what would a Scout event be without something tribal too?

The Isle of Wight Land Care project (www.landcare.island2000.org.uk) set out its stall in the marquee at the IW Hedgelaying Competition on Saturday 24th February. All sorts of serious (but free) bits of paper were on offer to help farmers look after the soil and water on their land - titles like ‘Ditch management’ and ‘Understanding buffer strips’ were disappearing fast from the display tables.

Several people asked what the cute furry animal in one of the photos was - a water vole, still common here because there are no mink (as long as those ditches are properly managed).

Meanwhile the wet soil below me was sucking the heat from my feet. Only when I stood on the woodchips (put down to keep boots and mud apart) did they recover. A practical demonstration of the insulating power of mulch.

Outside, the hedgelaying competitors were doing a more public demonstration of a practical skill - the craft of keeping hedges in good condition for wildlife, livestock fencing, and of course soil conservation. There’s more on hedges at the National Hedgelaying Society’s website, www.hedgelaying.org.uk/.

But the best moment for me was when a young visitor pointed in excitement and correctly identified another photo - ‘That’s an earthworm!’
Charles Darwin wrote his last book about worms, and how they help to make soil - you can read it online at http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_VegetableMouldandWorms.html.

Here’s to the mighty earthworms. Long may they eat the soil.

I’m just now in the middle of a series of Feb/Mar talks ( funded by the Heritage Lottery) on the extraordinary archaeological find we made down in Alverstone in summer 05 and which still rumbles on, as mysterious as ever. We just wanted a nice wildlife pond - and we’ve got one now; but on the way the seemingly otherwise uninteresting little field chosen as the site revealed an unbelievable find: a massive cobbled Roman road underlain by six interlinked prehistoric (maybe Iron Age) timber causeways and overlain by later ones (maybe Saxon )! So, Alverstone, sleepy, tranquil, sedate and serene village of today was for hundreds of years, two thousand years and more ago, a bustling commercial and community centre. But why? There are even Roman military finds - amongst the Island’s first. What was going on? Amongst the fins (see below) was a particularly curious carved stick - perhaps a wand, perhaps evidence of a long-standing ceremonial function that this point on the Yar provided to the people of the Island? The road looks as if it crossed the river - maybe this was the main crossing of the Eastern Yar at a time when Alverstone was at the head of the estuary? Peat and mud cores from the site down to seven metres show saltmarsh flora and diatoms at the right layers for this. It’ll take at least another two years to properly unravel all this - so watch this space! in the meantime here are some pics : (http://www.britarch.ac.uk/communityarchaeology/wikka.php?wakka=HomePage ,for more info and other nice things from the Council for British Archaeology)

is this a ceremonial wand?

spear cap and ballista bolt

beautiful axe-head

the amazing cobbled road

Today is St. Bride’s Day: Imbolc, the feast of Spring’s awakening. On this day Adders abandon their winter lairs and Oystercatchers appear bringing spring with them! Hooray! It still looks grey and miserable outside nonetheless; still, if it’s Imbolc then its Imbolc and that’s an end to it.

And in the spirit of all this we’re busy buying in assorted native flora for major planting projects down on the Lukely Brook (part of our urban river work) and out on the Medina where we’re creating a fab picnic spot at Merstone Station.

There’s loads more besides of course – have a look at the Feb newsletter and let us know if there’s anything that interests you.

Top of our list of new ventures is the investigation of peat wetland management (a big thing for us) as a local carbon sequestration/carbon offset scheme. Watch this space………….