Monday, 7 November 2016

Post 446 - Fundraising for Wonderful Wildlife Trust

Hey everyone,

Just a quick post today to let you all know about a little project that has been keeping me and Dad busy lately.

The front cover 
If you read my blog regularly you'll know that I've been trying to get to as many Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserves as I can this year. I had hoped to get to them all but there are a lot and Yorkshire is very big! This year I've found out just how big and how long it takes Dad to drive us around. I won't manage them all this year but I do hope to get to a few more yet. I've really enjoyed it and I've found some wonderful places!

In the summer I had hoped to be going along to a fundraising walk for the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. I wanted to help as I've loved seeing all the places they care for. Sadly I was too young this year. So instead as I started to think about putting a calendar together again, and wondered if it would be a good idea to share the proceeds with the YWT. Dad got in touch and they thought that was a pretty good idea too. They've been very helpful and are selling them through their webshop at the link below and at their flagship reserve at Potteric Carr if you can get there.


If you like my blogs and photos then I think you'll like it. I saved a few good photos and had to scan through loads of others to find some great ones to go in it. I'm very grateful to YWT for the help in selling it and for the lovely write up they've given me - (thanks Jono & Rich :-)

Me on my stand at the Big Bang Fair
I'm sharing any profits with YWT and I plan to use mine for one of two things. If we sell enough I hope to buy a better lens for my new camera so that I can take even better pictures. My new camera is a digital SLR, a Canon EOS 700D, which is great but needs new lenses for me to get better shots. Either that or I'll use it to help cover the costs of going to the Big Bang Fair final (a big science
festival) in March next year.

You might remember that I went to the local heats of the Big Bang Fair, this year and I won a couple of awards for my blog as well as a place in the national finals. Well the awards came with the prize of some shopping vouchers and that was how I got my new camera. Well for the finals they are asking contestants to raise money to cover the cost of attending. Most projects are team efforts so it must get expensive for the schools as it needs you to stay over for two nights, so it might be good to use the proceeds for that.

Before I can do either though the calendars need to be sold. Thanks to Mary Arnold that's starting to happen, thanks Mary for being buyer number 1!


Hopefully there's a few more readers of my blog that would like one too.

Thanks very much to everyone that does :-)

Hope you enjoy,

Z.
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Sunday, 6 November 2016

Post 445 - Fabulously Fascinating Fungi - Part 4

Fly Agaric's and dewy cobwebs on a misty morning
Hey everyone, Post 445 today and I don't think I could let Autumn go by without a post on fungi. I've been seeing them around and about most places I've been and some are very pretty, They are great things to look out for when you're walking around this time of year.

A fungi cluster on a stump at Silton Forest
I've looked at fungi before, but I didn't realise how much until I had a search back through my blog! My first post on them was on Day 8 of my year of nature after a walk on the moors. I found some more at Fairburn Ings and included them in a post on Day 18 called Puffy and Fluffy.  A good while after that I came back to them and started to write about them as a species.  Day 321 - Fascinating Fungi Part 1 was about their biology, Day 330 - Fabulous Fungi - Part 2 - Useful Yeast! was about how useful one fungi is to us (and has some really cool pics in it) and Day 370 - Fabulously Fascinating Fungi Part 3 was about other uses of different fungi. I've covered particular species too like the Jelly ear fungus. I didn't realise just how much they have fascinated me!

Puffballs at Silton Forest
I've covered how life is pretty dependent on them - how the Mycelium is made up of lots of fine threads called Hyphae which secrete enzymes that break down dead plant material and how they can have a symbiotic relation with plants most of which rely on Mycorrhizal fungi around their roots to provide nutrients and water acting as an extension to their roots. The fungi get some sugars from the plants in exchange.

I've also found out how big they can be, probably the biggest living organism on earth  - a 2,384 acre area of a Honey Fungus Mycelium was found in Oregon, USA. It's estimated that it was 1,665 football fields large! That's a lot of mushroom!

So with all that what more could I find out about them?

Breaking down a log...
Well what I didn't realise is how ancient they are....

One was found to be 440 million years old! It was found fossilised and has been said to have 'kick started life of Earth' because it filled a gap of evolution by beginning to rot and break down the soil so that other plants could grow and so that the animals could come out of the sea and feed on these plants.

People have said it filled a gap and that around the time it existed pretty much all life was confined to the sea, apart from this. This fungi provides evidence that plants had colonised the land before any animals had left the sea.

This fungi is called Tortotubus and since they have mycelium that carries the nutrients around to the other parts of the fungi, the ground around it got some nutrients helping the Earth to become the lush green environment it is today.

A candelabra or coral fungus.
Nor did I know how old they can be...

I've talked about how ancient some forms of fungi are, but age is a different thing. Pretty much everyone knows about fairy rings, circles of mushrooms with a bit of mythology thrown over them. But what you might not know is that the bigger the circles are, the older it is! Fairy rings start as a spore and the mycelium grows out from this original spot. When they fruit, that is when we see the mushrooms and toadstools, you can see the area the mycelium covers. The older the fungus the further the mycelium spreads.

Remember the fungus I mentioned earlier, the one that covers 2,384 acres, well to get that big it must be at least 2.400 years old! It could be much older though and scientists think it might be as much as 8,650 years old!

So, that's altogether pretty amazing. They are the largest, probably the oldest (certainly one of the oldest) living things on earth and the first living organisms to populate dry land and without them we probably wouldn't exist!

Fungi can be amazing colours as well as everything else!
No wonder I find them so
fascinating.

Here are some links to some more information:

Scientific American - the largest organism on earth is a fungus

 The Telegraph - Meet the 440-million-year-old Scottish fungus which kick-started the human race

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.

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Tuesday, 1 November 2016

Post 444 - What I've learnt from the Grouse debate

Hey everyone, I was busy yesterday with my post on half term so I didn't get time to read about the debate on grouse shooting. So I decided to look today at what people were saying about it on social media. From what I have seen it doesn't seem to have been a very fair discussion. Lots of people seem really unhappy that the grouse moor owners and shooting organisation's side of the argument was the one that was mainly heard and that some of the evidence that was quoted wasn't right. Nature got a mention but the main things that people say were mentioned is that Gamekeepers are the saviours of our nature, that they work hard to conserve many species. I'm not sure that the Hen Harriers that hardly got a mention would agree with that...
It has been great as a young person to watch how this debate came about. I've seen all the hard work that a lot of people - Mark Avery in particular - have put in to get the debate to happen. I've learnt about making petitions and about writing to my MP. I've had some responses and I've learnt how my MP at least is quite good at not quite answering the question I ask. (I asked if he thought it was fair to give money to grouse moors for a few people to have a hobby when our local hospital needs funds to provide important services for lots of people).

I've learnt how wildlife charities and other people have to work very hard to do studies to show what is happening to nature in our moors. I've learnt how a lot of people ignore evidence if it doesn't suit them. I've learnt a lot about how our Government works. If it's always like this I learnt that I don't like it very much, that it doesn't seem very fair.

There are some things I don't understand though. Why do so many MP's support this hobby. It's a pretty horrible one when you just frighten birds towards a load of people waiting to shoot them. Why do we pay land owners to make the moors great for grouse but not for raptors? Why can't some moors at least be left to be more natural and wild to help Hen Harriers and other birds? Maybe they are but there can't be enough of them if we only have a few Hen Harriers managing to nest and raise young.

I tried to help a little bit by writing to my MP, by tweeting about the petition like lots of other people did. I think it is amazing how much people like Mark Avery and Chris Packham have worked on this and I'd like to say a big thank you to them. I'd also like to thank Caroline Lucas and Natalie Bennett for sticking up for nature.

 Another thing I've learnt is that you need to have a lot of energy and persistence to try and make changes happen and that I think it is more important than ever that we tell our Government and MP's how much we treasure nature and how we want them to protect it.


I saw what Mark was doing with the Grouse petition and I decided after the Brexit vote that I would start one asking the Government to look after nature when we leave the EU. Reading about the grouse debate has made me even more glad I did. I've got about two months left to go and I need just over 3,600 signatures to get a government response so I'm going to do my best to try and get one!

The petition is here if you want to sign it, I'd be very grateful if you did and so might our wildlife and future generations that enjoy it if we can get the message through to our Government.

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.
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Monday, 31 October 2016

Post 443 - Happy Half Term Trips

A very thoughtful baby gorilla at Durrell Wildlife Park
One of the frogs in the Amphibian & Reptile house
Hey everyone, and you may have realised that I haven't posted in a while, this is mainly because  I went on holiday last week! And this wasn't a normal holiday for me because I usually try and keep my carbon footprint quite low, so I try to keep twitches to a minimum and, I have never been on a plane. Until last week! I only went on a short flight as it was my first and my parent's first in 20 years as Mum's not a great one for flying so we only went to Jersey. Well I say only, it was one of the best experiences of my life! The landscape was amazing, as anyone that has been there will know (I loved the rugged coast and coves) and it was quite hot for the end of October. It was mainly a sight seeing holiday as we hadn't been there before but the wildlife there was really good too!


One nature highlight was when we went to Durrell Wildlife Park, which was amazing. It was great to see all of the exotic wildlife there, my favourites probably being the Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla [Yes that is their Latin name!]) as well as the Amphibian and lizard section. I found it really funny how you could be looking for a Komodo Dragon and not see it for 2 minutes but when you do see it you get really surprised because it turns out to be looking straight at you! I was so impressed by the work that the park does in helping to conserve endangered species, it would be an awesome place to work, it would be so good to contribute to saving so many wonderful species. If you get a chance to go it is amazing!

I also did a potential Cairngorms Nature Presenter video on Orangutans! You can see it here:





Orangutans have oppossable toes too, this mother
never let go of her baby while they were swinging around
This was really hard to do as there were lots of people around and it was hard to get good bits of film. I wasn't happy with it so I had the chance to go to Wheldrake Ings on Saturday which is usually a great place to see Barn Owls. Nature being nature it doesn't perform as we'd like sometimes and I didn't see any this time but on other occasions I have seen four hunting at once here. I thought my film was better though and this is the one I've submitted for the Cairngorms Young Nature Presenter Competition:




But anyway, we were out looking for things like Fulmars and Shags but instead of these we managed to see something else that I hadn't seen, the Rock Pipit! These are amazing birds that I love and hope to see more of again. I've now seen three of the pipits, this, on top of Meadow and Tree! Although I haven't got as close to Tree Pipits but I have rung a Meadow Pipit!

On Friday I also went to Spurn Point again! There had been loads of interesting migrants sighted the previous few days, when we were away, and we wanted to see if we could catch anything else. Well, it turned out that everything decided to fly away before we got there, and we spent most of the day looking for pretty much anything. We saw around 40 species and got things like Little Egrets and Widgeon, Grey Plover, the usual, but the highlights of the day were the Brent Geese, and, another lifer, the Ring Ouzel! This is a bird that I'd heard of but never really paid much attention to them as a species so it made it even more amazing to see it, especially as it was the last bird of the day before we headed home to walk Esme.
A Ring Ouzel at Spurn

Anyway, I hope you liked my quick update on what I've been doing! I hope to post again soon. I have an autumn post in the making and I want to do an update on my petition. It's got a couple of months to go and its about two thirds of the way to a response from the government - I would really like to get a response. Its such an important subject, making sure that we get strong protection for our wildlife when we leave the EU. You can see it and sign it here if you haven't already -

Protect UK Environment & Wildlife

Oh, and the other thing that has kept me busy is I've been making another calendar. I'm going to sell some and give half of the profits to the Yorkshire Wildlife Trusts. I had hoped to do the Three Peaks this year with them to raise funds but as I couldn't I thought I'd do this instead. With my share of the profits I hope to buy a new macro lens so that I can take even better pictures. If you would like a calendar please let me know but I will post more about this soon too.

Hope you enjoyed,

Z.

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Saturday, 22 October 2016

Post 442 - Dawdling down dales mulling over great grouse debate

Autumn colours in Teesdale woods
Hi everyone, today's post 442, and quite a timely topical visit today. Before I get into that though just a quick note to say apologies for not posting much in the last couple of weeks. It's been a busy period for us. Work for Mum and Dad has been busy and it's their 20th Wedding Anniversary this year so we've been celebrating that a bit too :)

Wonderful and wild or sheepwrecked?
I seem to have had a lot of school related activities to take care of too. One of these was a visit to RSPB Saltholme - I was so glad that the school took people on a nature based trip and it was great to go with some school friends and share a bit of my passion. I didn't see much to excite my regular readers but it was good to see more of my school friends getting a bit closer to nature. I hope there are more trips to come!

Landscape architects at work
Anyhow, back to today. We decided that we wanted to go back to a place we enjoyed in the summer today, and I hoped I might add another bird to my life list in the process. It turned out to be a very topical visit though. Today we took a drive up to Upper Teesdale. Our first stop was at a place we visited in the summer and the highlight then was seeing a group of Crossbills coming down to a stream to drink. No luck today but the woods were full of trees of all colours (well no blue or purple ones :-) and it was a lovely autumnal walk along a beck with lots of waterfalls.

After that we carried on to a place called Cow Beck Reservoir for a bit more of a walk. As you'll see from the photos it is a lovely place, really wild, and is what @georgemonbiot would call sheep wrecked. Not many trees here! It's better in the valleys but not on the high ground. Why is that? Well it's kept that way by grazing and we saw more than a few sheep.

Red Grouse food - young heather among the moss
The reason it is like this is down to the little bird in this photo! Even though this area is part of a National Nature Reserve sadly driven grouse shooting happens here too. There were lots of Red Grouse around. We watched them eating, calling and flying around and they didn't seem too bothered by us which was nice and I got one or two nice photos of them. I'd never managed to see their fluffy legs before as most of the time I've only seen them poking their heads out of heather. Their calls are lovely too.

Red Grouse - see the fluffy legs
Now the bird I came to find was the Black Grouse. I caught a glimpse of one on the horizon on the ridge of a hill but too far off to photograph or appreciate properly. I didn't see any more on my walk but on the way home we kept a look out in the fields and that paid off. I saw a field with about a dozen of them in! Wonderful! I stopped and got a few pictures and watched them for a while. They were much more still and quiet than their Red relatives! I will have to come back and do a species write up on these birds! Sadly these are also shot in the area I visited!

Black Grouse - a lifer for me!
Well why is all of this is topical, you probably know, but just in case you don't, Driven Grouse Shooting is going to have a parliamentary debate on the 31st October. The whole reason the landscape in much of Yorkshire and Upper Teesdale is like it is and isn't much more varied is because it is managed for Grouse to be shot. Things that eat grouse aren't very welcome and I have to say I didn't see a single bird of prey all the time I was around the area.

Driven shooting means people scare the birds towards a line of people who shoot them. I don't think that's at all nice, nor do around 123,000 other people who signed Mark Avery's petition (here's Marks blog). It's because of that there is a debate. If you have some time this weekend it would be good if you could write a letter to your MP and tell them that you don't like it much either.

Upper Teesdale NNR
I've written twice to my MP but he hasn't answered my main question yet. He campaigns about our local hospital. Some services have had to go to other hospitals further away - such as children's A&E! - because of money or lack of it. So I asked if he thought it was fair that grouse moors get money from the government so that a few rich people can have a hobby shooting Grouse when a hospital that provides help to lots of people struggles. As he's not answered that properly yet I'm going to ask again.

There's lots of advice on Marks blog if you want to write to your MP too.

Hope you enjoyed, and look out for a blog on Grouse soon!

Z.



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Sunday, 9 October 2016

Post 441 - The Four Seasons

Autumn colours starting to show at Silton Forest
Hey everyone, Post 441 today and as it's Autumn here in the Northern Hemisphere (and Spring for you guys down in the Southern) I thought it would be a good time to do a post that I'm surprised I haven't done yet. Also, with my grandparents coming up from Birmingham I haven't had as much time as usual to get out and explore the world this weekend and I thought it would be an idea to do something that you can experience from your window. In case you haven't guessed already I'm talking about the Seasons! As I've been travelling around I've been looking out of the car window at signs of the seasons and I started to wonder what caused them.
Berries everywhere - all sorts of colours!


Dragon and Damsel hunting always
makes me think of summer 
Summer meadows!
Firstly, a question that I myself cannot answer: What is your favourite Season? I have no idea what mine is, I like them all for different reasons, and during each one I seem to prefer it! Probably as I'm out enjoying it and seeing what I can find. In terms of nature hunting, I would probably say Spring as you have all the migratory birds coming in, the flowers and plants are coming up and all of the bugs are starting to come out onto the plants. Things are coming alive rather than preparing for winter, but that's what makes Autumn great too. You get more birds on the move heading to their winter sites, plants are producing fruits and seeds to feed birds and mammals as they prepare for winter.


Frost and cobwebs at Silton forest
Anyway, onto how the seasons are caused. Simply it's all about how the Earth rotates and how the sun hits the different parts of the globe. The earth rotates on an axis which you can imagine as a big pole going through the Earth from North pole to South pole and the spinning causes day and night. The Earth also takes a year to rotate around the sun but because the Earth is on an axis that is a bit tilted (nobody really knows why though... :) different parts of the Earth face the sun more directly at different times of the year. Because of this around the June Solstice the North Pole is tilted more towards the Sun and the Northern Hemisphere gets more of the light and heat over June, July and August while the Southern Hemisphere gets it in December, January and February.


One of my favourite winter frosty pics from my garden
It is not distance from the sun that causes seasons it is just the angles at which we face the sun, you get more of the sun's energy spread over a smaller area in the summer. It's like if you were in space with no suit you would be burned on one side and frozen on the other, although thanks to our atmosphere it isn't that bad here.


Even though there is such a small difference between the distance from the sun in the two hemispheres solar energy is more effective to collect when more directly facing the sun but as there aren't many landmasses and as it takes longer for the sea to warm up the Northern and Southern Hemisphere, Summers have almost no temperature difference.


Lambs! Enjoying the spring sun.
The Earth's Path around the sun is not circular and the sun isn't at the centre of its path the whole time so this obviously means that the Earth is closer to the Sun at some times of the year than others. So this does mean that some places on the globe are hotter in the different seasons.


As I was travelling around I saw several signs of the season, which you are probably seeing too but I thought I'd highlight some of my favourites of each season:

Winter - Snow falling - Frost Forming - Crisp mornings - Trees with no Leaves

Spring - Flowers coming out again - Insects being seen - Migratory birds passing through
Spring flowers and insects

Summer - Insects everywhere! - A little bit less rain :)

Autumn - Leaves starting to go brown and orange - The nights coming in - Berries everywhere - birds feeding and migrating - A profusion of fungi!


Anyway, I hope I have wrapped up well for you how the seasons work and I hope you enjoy whatever season you're going into!


Hope you enjoyed,


Z.

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Sunday, 2 October 2016

Post 440 - An Awesome Autumn Nourishing Nectar Source

The patch of Asters
Bumble Bees were feeding
Hey everyone - Post 440 today and I didn't have to go far for this post. It was a lovely sunny day and I saw quite a lot of activity on one little patch so I thought I ought to write about it.

As were little flies...
...and big flies...
...and shiny flies!
We keep patches of our garden quite wild (something you can tell by just looking at how manic it is) and we have some quite nice plants growing, there are a few native wild plants in the garden, but nearly all of them Mum and Dad chose because they are great for wildlife such as the Asters which was the little busy patch in my garden today. They flower quite late and so are a great source of nectar for lots of different insects. I often overlook the insects in my own garden, so this is the time to highlight pretty much all of the ones that I see not just on the Asters, but all over my garden.

But first, talking about how wild my garden is, I thought I'd talk a little bit about Rewilding. If you don't know what this is, it's basically a project to make the UK (and the world) a little bit more wild again, of course with a little management from us. Check out this site to find out more about Rewilding in Britain


A Red Admiral joined the feast
Basically this would involve, for example, letting rivers follow their own course and re-introducing some species back into the wild again. This has been done with Beevers and some people want to see more pine martens, lynx and possibly even wolves back in our UK countryside.  In my garden, I can't really do this on such a large scale (not sure what the local cats would think about a Lynx!) but I can let the plants do what they want and don't use ANY pesticides, weedkillers or artificial fertilisers and just let the wildlife live as long as it can and prosper in its environment... :)

It stayed for a while.
Hoverflies had a feed then decided
to make more hoverflies!
There's lots of different types of plant that we often overlook. Things like Ivy, now I don't have many pictures of Ivy or the facts at the moment, but luckily, Alex (@appletonwild) on Twitter, did a great blog on it already and how good it is for wildlife right now! Click here to see it!

Anyway, like I said at the start, I see so many different types of insects in just my garden (I think some days I see as many if not more than I see when I'm out at the forest)  that I could easily do a blog post on them. Well, I'm doing one now! The variety of things that I see is immense. From Tree Bumblebees nesting in the eaves of my house, to solitary wasps laying their eggs in dung flies, and from hoverflies mating to Red Admirals sunning themselves on the Buddleia. And that's not even getting down to anything wingless! What one of my policies goes like this: I love birds, in fact, they are probably my favourite part of nature. And twitching can also be fun too! My life list is something like 187 and I went to go twitch the Purple Swamphen in Lincolnshire and there were some people there that had come up from Birmingham. We had set off at about half five in the morning, and they must have set off at about the same time. And why were we all there? Just to try and see this one bird (which no-one actually got in the end that day). But that`s the way it is with twitching and we all live in hope of catching a glimpse, it's why we do it :)

My favourite photo of the day - a Honey Bee
When I go, I usually just go for as long as I want to, most times it ends up at about 2 or 3 hours, and I honestly really like doing it. I find it hard though to sit there for 12 hours like I've heard some people do, especially when you could just pop into your garden to see something which can be, in my opinion, just as amazing as seeing a particularly rare bird. All the different insects you can see is amazing! And if you're still on the hunt for something rare, you might even find a completely undiscovered species!

I hope you enjoyed this and take something from it and see how astonishing your back garden really is! I watched the insects for quite a while and decided to make a little film of them feeding.



Hope you enjoyed,

Z.









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