Here are some nice pictures of a female Slow Worm we found while surveying a site in the south of the island. You can tell it’s a female by the quite marked narrowing of the abdomen and also by the ‘neck’ formed by a slight narrowing behind the head. Mr. Slow is in the background.
This is our latest homemade bit of kit thanks to Simon’s ingenuity. It’s a new and improved Dormouse hairtube. When we’re surveying for Dormice we generally try to find evidence of them feeding on hazelnuts. But of course if there are no hazel trees then we’ll find no nuts, but there may well be Dormice tittering at us from the undergrowth nonetheless. So, we use temporary nest tubes - just day shelters we can tie up in likely spots and check in the day when any animals that may have made use of them from the night before will still be in there snoring. This can take a while to get results but is if you like the ‘industry standard’. As a quicker supplement to this hair tubes are often used. These are lengths of plastic drainpipe baited with peanut butter (we think they prefer crunchy) and cut to allow 2 strips of sticky tape to run across the diameter. The theory is that the hungry/greedy Dormouse will squeeze under the tape to get to the bait and in doing so will leave behind a few hairs stuck to the tape. We then come along and check any hairs under a microscope to see which mammal they might be (could be mice or voles too). It sounds like an instrument of torture but the tape’s not that sticky, so they don’t come out bald. The trouble has been that clever Dormice can just as easily run across the top of the tape, so Simon has devised a tube where there is sticky on both sides and the tube is positioned so that the tape is vertical and the animals have to squeeze past one side or the other come what may. Good thinking. We’ll be testing these out this month.
Is this the year of the Lesser Whitethroat? I’ve never heard so many around as in the past couple of weeks. It’s great to hear such an obscure little bird it out and about shouting from gardens,the seafront, the railway embankments but its such a skulker you just can’t get more than the most fleeting of glimpses. Quite a pretty bird in a dark kind of way, especially when they’re all freshly arrived and still quite neat: slate grey with a darker face and blue legs. The song is a machine-gun-like rattle, not terribly musical but quite distinctive. Listen out for it and so long as you’re not near a war-zone or on MOD land you can be fairly confident that you too have heard the Lesser Whitethroat.
Sean took some fabulous pics of these delightful Long-tailed Tits carefully constructing their nest from lichen and spiderweb (can it get any more ethereal?). Eventually the nest will be a dome with a small entrance hole and by then well-hidden by the rapidly sprouting willow.
Here’s a handy I2K invention, and made entirely from recycled birch too. These are Water Vole spoons. “Don’t they have cutlery of their own?” I hear you cry. Yes of course, but that’s not the point. These are for jamming into river banks water so that the spoon bit lays out just over the water; we bait them with apple, come back the next day and scoop up the droppings left over from the feast-on-the-spoon. Water Vole’s are really rather secretive and hard to survey for, but they do have fairly distinctive droppings and what’s more we create a little mud on the platform, Water Vole footprints
are excellent i.d.
But not just yet. Simon’s off to Kent to talk to The Wildwood Trust about our early thoughts on (re) introducing European Beaver to the Island first. They have proven to be fantastically effective elsewhere at managing small, patchy and derelict wetlands and that’s exactly what we want them for. We have 3 sites in 2 river catchments identified as possibilities for further feasibility work and so far consultees seem interested and supportive however outlandish the scheme may at first appear! Their doing well in Scotland by the way.
Enterprising sparrows have adopted an old swallows nest with interesting results (we found this in a shed while we were searching for Barn Owls). The swallows (writing in transit of course) have complained that the conversion is clearly unsympathetic to the original design. They go further and describe the new build as ‘hideous’ and ‘just typical of those chavvy sparrow types’.
Well what else would you call a flint finch?
Winter’s an excellent time to have a wander along Ryde sea front and look for birds. There a Mediterranean Gulls all over the place, grebes and sea-ducks just offshore, Redwings galore up in the park and who knows what else. One of the most delightful sights though is a flurry of Sanderling as they rush about at the water’s edge picking up whatever uncovers there. Somehow they look as if they’re on a different speed-setting to the rest of reality. This lovely picture of Sanderlings roosting on a shingle bank isn’t actually from the Island - it’s from Rye Harbour and the fabulous nature reserves there. To see more amazing wildlife photography visit their website: rxwildlife.org.uk
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