Frosty weather
The week ahead is promising falling temperatures and a hard frost. How will this affect the reserve’s flora?
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Christmas tree
Which is the greener option when it comes to Christmas trees: real or artificial? A real Christmas tree is a beautiful and traditional addition to our commercialised modern Christmases but it comes with a frisson of guilt. Should we be cutting down trees at a time when our struggling planet and its biosphere need all the trees they can get? Fear not; the news is good.
Continue reading “Christmas tree”Spotted flycatcher
On this very cold and damp Sunday morning, let’s look back at one of our summer visitors: Muscicapa striata, the spotted fly catcher.
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Camouflage
Some of our residents are really quite hard to see. Here are some of the late DKG’s pictures of the well-camouflaged.
Header picture: public domain.
Fact of the week!
Eurasian wrens (Troglodytes troglodytes) share territories during the winter, in particular they will share sheltered winter roosts, sometimes crowding together for warmth in nesting boxes. The record number of wrens seen leaving a nesting box after a cold night is sixty three.
Header image: wren by Cheryl Cronnie
Why walking, wellbeing and nature go hand-in-hand
by David Feather
On 2 November an event was held in Glasgow to review the benefits of walking in nature.
Continue readingStaghorn Lichen
Staghorn lichen (Evernia prunastri), also called oakmoss, is common and widespread in deciduous woodlands. This example was found in the park by Ian, on low growing oak branches. It is very sensitive to air pollution and is an indicator of good air quality.
Continue reading “Staghorn Lichen”We apologise for the delay in posting. A series of errors, some mine and some from the organisation that registers our domain name, resulted in the webpage being taken offline for a couple of days. Sorry.
Black and yellow
In the world of invertebrates, black and yellow signals danger. It says to predators: I am poisonous or I will bite you.
Read on to discover more:Butterfly rescue
At this time of year, if you find a butterfly fluttering on the inside of your window, it will probably be either a peacock (Aglais io) or a small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae). It will have come in during the autumn looking for a cool, dark and sheltered place to overwinter and the gap behind the wardrobe in your bedroom must have seemed just right.
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Fact of the week
According to the sort of scientists that count things, there is only one mammal in the UK more numerous than we humans: Microtus agrestis, the field vole. The latest estimates put the field vole’s population at 75 million while our own is only 67 million.
Header image: field vole by Sam McMillan (CC BY-NC 2.0) flickr.com
Predation
Hoping for a pine marten, a top predator, to move into the reserve might seem a strange idea but predation is an important factor in ecological dynamics. The lack of predators is one of the reasons the UK’s biosphere is so unbalanced and in such danger.
Continue reading “Predation”More about our oaks
The reserve provides habitat for all kinds of wasps. This year, despite the drought, must have been a good year for gall wasps because our oak trees are showing a goodish crop of the various round galls we call oak apples.
Continue reading “More about our oaks”Bag it and bin it
To make it easier for you to access the reserve’s litter bins, we have laid flagstones through the muddy approaches that inevitably grow around the bins once the wet winter weather has set in.
Dog faeces on the reserve’s paths are unpleasant and unsightly; in the fields they are a source of infection for the animals that will eat next summer’s hay; everywhere and anywhere, they are a danger to the health of our visitors, their children and their pets. Bag it and bin it, please.
Thank you
Lambrok wetland areas
Clive Knight has sent in pictures of the wetland scrapes in Lambrok Meadow. Now that the rain has refilled Lambrok Stream and spilled into the scrapes, we can see how they are intended to develop.
Continue readingMagpie moth
A magpie moth (Abraxas grossulariata), identified in the reserve during the summer.
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Fact of the week
In Britain we have two native species of oak which look very similar. This is how to tell them apart: pedunculate oaks (Quercus robur) produce acorns which hang on a stalk or peduncle while the acorns of the sessile oak (Quercus petraea) are stalkless.
Left: sessile oak; right: pedunculate oak. Header image: the oak by the bridge between Sleepers and Cornfield photographed by Ian Bushell
Winter moths
The Winter moth (Operophtera brumata) is one of the few Lepidopterans that can cope with winter’s freezing temperatures in its adult stage. They are endothermic which means that they can produce heat internally by biochemical processes, just as warm-blooded creatures do.
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Native reptiles
There are six species of native British reptiles and three of them are resident in the reserve: we have European adders (Vipera berus), grass snakes (Natrix natrix), and slow worms (Anguis fragilis).
Continue readingWorld population
The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs tells us that some time today the world’s human population will reach 8 billion, double that of 1970.
Continue reading “World population”The blackbird question.
A message from Barbara Johnson:
Where have all the blackbirds gone? Are they able to find enough food in the wild so don’t need to visit our gardens?
Continue reading “The blackbird question.”
Grey squirrels facts
Here are ten things you may not have known about Sciurus carolinensis.
Continue readingFly agaric again
This is fly agaric, a mycorrhizal fungus, Amanita muscaria, which is found in the reserve every year despite our lack of its preferred partners: birch and pine trees. In classic pictures of this red and white fungus, those that don’t have an elf sitting on top are usually growing picturesquely in the moss under a birch tree.
Read on:Fact of the week
There is no scientific distinction between frogs and toads. They all belong to the order Anura and most anurans are commonly referred to as one or the other – which is why we try to use scientific names when we can.
Broad buckler-fern
Here is another of the plants first identified in the reserve by County Recorder Richard Aisbitt when he visited us this summer: broad buckler-fern, Dryopteris dilatata.
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Southwick Country Park Nature Reserve 