Sunday, 25 September 2016

Post 439 - Numerous Wonderous & Astounding - Northern Wood Ant

A Northern Wood Ant (Formica lugubris)
Hey guys, this is post 439, and I've been out and about as usual but because of the lovely warm weather lately I've seen quite a lot of insects, more than I remember seeing in my summer holidays! On one walk Dad and I went on we were looking for a Wildlife Trust Nature Reserve called Birch Wood. We didn't actually find it (as it was on a completely different road!) but went for a great woodland walk and we did see lots of nice wildlife while we were there. One particular thing, although it was actually quite a lot of things, was the Northern Wood Ant.

I did a post generally about ants a little while ago but these wood ants are amazing creatures to watch and I had to find out more about them, so, here are some facts:

  • They are Red Listed in the UK as they are Classed as Local and on the Scottish Biodiversity List.
  • Wood ants are the largest UK ants and are about 1cm long.


  • Another name for them is the 'Hairy Wood Ant', strange because I didn't actually see any hair on them at all! But, to be fair, you would need a microscope!
  • The extent of the wood ant's population reaches as far up in the Highlands of Scotland to, sometimes, the South of Wales.


  • In these areas there are many local colonies most of which appear to be stable at the moment.


  • Like I say they live in colonies which can have up to half a million ants in them! This is quite amazing as sometimes there is only one queen that lays all the eggs!
  • You can probably guess from their name that these ants live in woods. They like coniferous or mixed woodlands mainly.


Some of the ants pointed their abdomens at us -
squirting formic acid in defence 
  • Wood ants make up a very important part of the eco-system in the forests as they eat insects that are pests to the trees such as the bordered white moth Bupalus piniaria which can defoliate pines.
  • I found these ants walking quite a long way into the forest as they were on our route for quite a while, even crossing a little bridge we had to cross. They emerge from the nests working in long lines like this to gather prey. Sometimes they will gather honeydew from aphids on trees (by stroking them!) and other times they will hunt invertebrates. 
  • They can kill small prey with their pincers, larger prey will be attacked by lots of ants working together. They can use formic acid which they squirt from their abdomens for attack too. This can be squirted up to 5cm by the ants and is also used in defence.


  • All the workers in the colony are Female and, as they are not developed, don't reproduce. They can, interestingly, lay eggs, but they are used only as a food.


  • The Males, though, don't really do ANTything ;) and their only purpose is to mate with the queen.


  • Going back to the workers, they do really as their name suggests, they bring food in, keep the nest standing and tend to the queen. 


    Some were carrying pine needles but dropped them
    as we went by.
  • The nest can be over one metre high and 2.5m in diameter, but the tunnels extend into the ground where most of the ants spend their time.
  • The ants nests' are made up of pine needles, quite a lot of them, but the ants take a lot of care in placing the needles so that they act like a thatched roof and keep water out.
  • Many tunnels line the nest and one of the ways that the ants control the nest temperature is to open and close tunnels to let air flow through. Also they make the next a bit flatter on the south side of the nest so it can absorb more heat from the sun.
  • A final way they can warm up the nest is to send workers out to sunbathe. Once they've warmed up they return to the nest brood chambers and act like little radiators releasing the heat they got from sunbathing.

I didn't have time when I was out for my walk to find the nest. Dad seems to remember seeing one a few years ago but now I've read about them I want to see one as they sound amazing. Dr Roger Key also told me about a beetle larvae that live in the nests sometimes and is protected by the colony, in the spring I might be able to see the adult leaf beetle which is yellow - sounds great so I want to find the nest soon.

Before I finish off the post I'd like to say thank you to all of the people that took part in my Thunderclap and thank everyone that has signed my petition. There were exactly 5,600 signatures on it when I checked earlier! That's great, over halfway to a government response now! If you don't know about my petition you can read about it here, basically it's about trying to get some strong laws to protect our wildlife when the EU laws don't apply after #brexit. If you agree please sign up and tell others about it please.

Oh, and one last thing, when I went out again for a walk near Rievaulx and we took a different route home, Dad had worked out where Birch Wood actually was so I had a quick stop off. Now we've found it I think I'll enjoy exploring this place in the Autumn, looks like it will be great for fungi and lovely autumnal colours as the leaves start to change colour.


Hope you enjoyed,

Z.

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Sunday, 18 September 2016

Post 438 - Magnificent Mig Fest

Probably the star bird of MigFest - Kentish Plover
One of the MigFest Photos by Dave Tucker
Hey everyone today's post is 438 and this time last week I was still recovering after an amazing weekend at Spurn Point. Specifically, Mig Fest! This is an event that happens every year at Spurn to celebrate all the migratory birds coming through on their annual migration.

Dad picked me up from school and after a brief stop at home to say bye to Mum and Esme we set off. Even though I live in Yorkshire it's still a long way to Spurn! We got there and put the tent up straight away as it was already getting dark, and then we went off to the talk about how some migratory birds that you wouldn't expect to end up here with theories such as reverse migration theory (where the birds go entirely in the wrong direction) and the dog leg theory (where they start off right and then take a 45* turn.)

Saturday was wet! Dad and I drying off a bit in the barn
Stuart (@raptorwatcher) has his back to the camera
It was great to get to say hello to a lot of people I knew again too like Stuart Pike, a lot of the young birders from BTO bird camp (more on that in a bit) and some of the BTO staff like Andy, Paul and Debbie. Over the weekend too I got to bump into Mike Dilger who I'd missed meeting at Birdfair but who was at Migfest as he's the patron of Spurn Bird Observatory. It was great to meet Mike and we talked about blogs and birds for a while while waiting for tea,

It was dry when we got there on Friday evening, but not the next morning! It rained pretty much from 4 in the morning to 6 at night. And there was a lot of it! We were out at 6am and spent pretty much all of that day wet, and there was no point changing either as those clothes would have got sodden too! I'm quite used to the rain, living in the North, but as people were coming from all of the country (some even from the rest of the world), some people weren't best pleased about the rain!

Still damp but happy and nice to meet Mike!
It didn't matter though about the rain, It was a magical experience to see how many birds there are there, I remember going there in February and not being as impressed as this time, but that was because I went at a quiet time. This was absolutely amazing, I saw 9 new species of bird when I was there:


  • Red-Throated Diver
  • Common Scoter
  • Manx Shearwater
  • Whinchat
  • Wheatear
  • Spotted Flycatcher
  • Arctic Skua
  • Pied Flycatcher
  • Kentish Plover



The last two were both interesting finds, the Pied Flycatcher was when I was talking to some people in the Triangle and a small black and white bird flew up and hovered for a few seconds before going back down.

The Kentish Plover was when we were Sea-watching and word came through over the radio. Andy Clements had found it.


Dawn from the campsite
The hide erupted with activity as everyone rushed to the car park to get a lift from someone down to where it was seen.   We got there and met up with the group that were with Andy when he found it and started to have a good look round for it. After looking for about 10 or 20 minutes, it was decided it had flown somewhere else. Me and some other young birders (George Dunbar, Eleanor Morrison, Sam Pitt-Miller , Jacob Spinks, Harry, Ellis Lucas, Joel Tragen, Findlay Wilde, Frank Osterberg, Toby Carter  and Darragh Hudson  decided to have a look at Kilnsea Wetlands as the tide was coming in and a lot of the birds would probably head there. It was nice to go there and get into the hide out of the rain for a while too. Low and behold it was there, Findlay refound it. We headed out in the rain to get better views like these:

A Meadow Pipit being ringed

I spent most of the rest of the day birding with the young birders until it was teatime and time for more talks.

The Saturday night  talks and had speakers from two other amazing bird observatories on peninsulas, one in America (Cape May) and another in Sweden (Falsterbo). They were amazing places and the numbers of birds that passed through them were incredible. It seems that peninsulas are the best places to see migrating birds as they all get funnelled down the land before they eventually head off to sea, so that way you get to see lots of them. These two observatories and Spurn are going to be working together on research in the future. After this most people headed to the pub so I joined the young birders in a glass of J2O, chatted about birding and just generally had a bit on banter and a laugh. We tried to twitch a badger too but sadly we missed it.

Sunday was another early start as I had arranged to meet the Young Birders at the sea watching hide again at first light. It was hard to get up at 5am but worth it as dawn was amazing. Funny thing with Spurn is that you could see both dawn and sunset over the sea! Sunday was a lovely warm sunny day and was definitely a Meadow Pipit day, thousands of them flew over that day. We saw a flock of Golden Plovers too high in the sky which was incredible watching how they glittered as they changed direction. I spent quite a while there before I went off for another activity,

Looking up at the lighthouse
My blog has been a brilliant project for me. I've met lots of great people, seen lots of great people and lots of great places. My Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserves challenge has been great too and because of what I have been doing they did a really nice thing for me. They offered me a free Spurn Safari which was so nice, thank you very much YWT! I got to go right to the point on the Unimog (a big truck with seats in the back) so I managed to get some good pictures of wildlife on the way there. But when we were there we went right to the top of the lighthouse to have a look round. It was an amazing view as you could see for miles right up the point and straight over the Humber!

A panoramic shot from the top of the lighthouse

When we came down we went for a walk with the Guide who was extremely knowledgeable about the history of the Point and also about the wildlife around there. Common Lizard and Common Blue butterflies were the highlights - it might have been a Barred Warbler but the glimpse of the bird that may have been one was too quick to be sure sadly.  We stood at the very tip of the peninsula which was the most southerly point in East Yorkshire before heading back.

A Common Blue Butterfly on the point
That was more or less the end of the weekend. We headed to the farm to put the tent away, dried out by the lovely sunshine and then managed to get to say goodbye to a few people before setting off.

Well, it was an amazing weekend and I look forward to next year!


Hope you enjoyed,

Z.
Posted by at 2 comments:

Wednesday, 14 September 2016

Post 437 - State of Nature & a Petition update

Hey everyone,

I sat down tonight to start Post 437 which was going to be about a brilliant weekend at Spurn Point at Migfest, but something important was released today that made me think I should maybe blog about this instead. (I will come back to Spurn though!).

I'm talking of course about the State of Nature report - you can find the whole state of nature report on the RSPB website but also if you don't want to read it all there's a great summary too.

So why is it important? Well it gives us a big warning about how we are treating our environment. They have collected masses of data to support the findings, there were 7.5 million hours of volunteer monitoring covering 9,670 species, which I guess was on top of experts too.

There are a few headlines from the report that are very worrying....

Nature is in trouble!

Using modern Red List criteria, which identify species of the highest conservation concern, we assessed 8,000 species. Of these, 15% are extinct or threatened with extinction from Great Britain.


This is horrible news for me, I love nature, I love doing my blog and seeing what I can find, it's my favourite thing to do. If in 50 years time and half of all wildlife is gone (or even 10%) then I'd be more than devastated. So it was quite upsetting to read that the UK is one of the worst countries in the world (189th out of 218) for its biodiversity intactness - basically meaning that wildlife and the environment fares much worse in our country than in most others!

But there are some bits of good news, this tweet from the BTO show some of the highlights...

Exactly, this is fantastic news. to know that some species are actually on the rise is amazing news. All the work that we've put into helping species has come off great. If we can all just push that little more and we could get things like Hedgehogs and Turtle Doves on the rise, then hopefully everything would be great again! The report does give examples of how species can and are being helped so we just need to do a bit more.

The report is not the only thing that has been in the news lately about the environment, some MP's are wanting to protect nature too...
The National Trust are also supporting changes to farming to help the environment...
So with all of the conservation organisations involved in the State of Nature report, (there were 50 or more!) and lots of organisations and MP's wanting to protect the environment maybe there is some hope that we can help many of the species that are declining. The headline that is in most papers and articles I've see though is that 1 in 7 species in the UK are in danger of becoming extinct.

There is a lot we can do to help though, like getting involved with some of the conservation organsations like the Wildlife Trusts.
You could also support my  petition which I have been promoting for a while which  I started with my Post 430 it's doing OK and is up to 4825 signatures but needs over another 5000 to get a response from the government.

If you want to help defend nature by getting strong laws to protect it when we leave the EU please sign it by clicking the link below...

Protect UK Environment & Wildlife - adopt European environmental legislation.

...and by supporting the Thunderclap I've set up

Post-Brexit Nature Protection

While there is a lot of hope for nature it is so important that we keep telling our politicians, and everyone really, that nature is important and that we want it to be protected.

Hope you enjoyed,

Zach.

Posted by at 1 comment:

Post 437 - State of Nature & a Petition update

Hey everyone,

I sat down tonight to start Post 437 which was going to be about a brilliant weekend at Spurn Point at Migfest, but something important was released today that made me think I should maybe blog about this instead. (I will come back to Spurn though!).

I'm talking of course about the State of Nature report - you can find the whole state of nature report on the RSPB website but also if you don't want to read it all there's a great summary too.

So why is it important? Well it gives us a big warning about how we are treating our environment. They have collected masses of data to support the findings, there were 7.5 million hours of volunteer monitoring covering 9,670 species, which I guess was on top of experts too.

There are a few headlines from the report that are very worrying....

Nature is in trouble!

Using modern Red List criteria, which identify species of the highest conservation concern, we assessed 8,000 species. Of these, 15% are extinct or threatened with extinction from Great Britain.


This is horrible news for me, I love nature, I love doing my blog and seeing what I can find, it's my favourite thing to do. If in 50 years time and half of all wildlife is gone (or even 10%) then I'd be more than devastated. So it was quite upsetting to read that the UK is one of the worst countries in the world (189th out of 218) for its biodiversity intactness - basically meaning that wildlife and the environment fares much worse in our country than in most others!

But there are some bits of good news, this tweet from the BTO show some of the highlights...

Exactly, this is fantastic news. to know that some species are actually on the rise is amazing news. All the work that we've put into helping species has come off great. If we can all just push that little more and we could get things like Hedgehogs and Turtle Doves on the rise, then hopefully everything would be great again! The report does give examples of how species can and are being helped so we just need to do a bit more.

The report is not the only thing that has been in the news lately about the environment, some MP's are wanting to protect nature too...
The National Trust are also supporting changes to farming to help the environment...
So with all of the conservation organisations involved in the State of Nature report, (there were 50 or more!) and lots of organisations and MP's wanting to protect the environment maybe there is some hope that we can help many of the species that are declining. The headline that is in most papers and articles I've see though is that 1 in 7 species in the UK are in danger of becoming extinct.

There is a lot we can do to help though, like getting involved with some of the conservation organsations like the Wildlife Trusts.
You could also support my  petition which I have been promoting for a while which  I started with my Post 430 it's doing OK and is up to 4825 signatures but needs over another 5000 to get a response from the government.

If you want to help defend nature by getting strong laws to protect it when we leave the EU please sign it by clicking the link below...

Protect UK Environment & Wildlife - adopt European environmental legislation.

...and by supporting the Thunderclap I've set up

Post-Brexit Nature Protection

While there is a lot of hope for nature it is so important that we keep telling our politicians, and everyone really, that nature is important and that we want it to be protected.

Hope you enjoyed,

Zach.

Posted by at 1 comment:
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