Island 2000 Trust Blog

Sunday dawned bright and blue despite the rotten forecast from the day before and an intrepid band had soon assembled down on Small Hope Beach for the 3rd annual SandmanSnowman event. The great thing about that bit of the Shanklin esplanade is that there are so many people out and about anyway and sure enough we soon had some game passers-by joining in. There were carrots and coal and lashings of hot chocolate, all the necessary ingredients for an excellent day and sure enough wonderful creations soon began to sprout from the sand. Take a look at the Flickr gallery to see them all:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandmansnowman/

Now that the autumn leaves are all but gone these striking growths have become very obvious in birch trees around the Island. They can look a lot like birds’ nests and a large birch can support over 100 of them. But they are in truth the result of a fungal infection.  The fungus is called Taphrina betulina (sounds like a Russian ballerina) and does a clever thing - it stimulates the tree to produce a mass of new growth (twigs and leaves) from the point of infection and then proceeds to feed on that larder. Surprisingly this  does little harm to the tree and strictly speaking this makes Witches’ Broom a gall, defined as an abnormal growth prompted by parasitic attack. The colloquial name for the gall originates in the belief that they were a sure sign of a witch having passed over.  Bearing in mind just how many of these things there are out there the Island sky must be fairly buzzing with commuting witches; now was that a crow flapping raggedly overhead just now or……..?

The  team have been doing a wonderful job at Robin Hill throughout August running Really Wild Fridays. One of the events on offer is a minibeast hunt followed by a look at all the fab things collected under a microscope (actually a USB plug-in through a laptop and then projected onto a big screen for all to see - very effective). The bugs are caught using sweep nest and then safely collected up in pooters ( pots with straws in and out for sucking up insects - just make sure you use the right straw). In the close quarters and confines of the pooter pot however all manner of carnage can ensue which of course only makes the spectacle the more fascinating! Here you can see a voracious Damsel Bug about to puncture a  spider with its wicked-looking rostrum: a stabbing, hollow beak for sucking out insides. Yummy.