The future's bright, the future's orange with hedgelaying gear. The 2008 Isle of Wight Hedgelaying Competition brightened a drizzling grey day on the last Saturday of February (the traditional day, if 17 years is long enough for a tradition).
Every year there are more people muffled in their cosiest scarves and gloves to watch the brave people who work all day on their stretch of hedge, whatever the weather. National champions, Island champions - and maybe the champions of the future, students from the Isle of Wight College, whose team names are as punning as any pub quiz team.
Island 2000 was there in many guises and disguises.
Paul Sivell, now moved on to higher things, was one of the three judges.
Sam Buck was there with the Gift to Nature display.
And Rowan Adams was trying to load down the visitors with booklets on all aspects of land care, and promoting hedges for all the good things they do.
But of course the real point of the day was Debbie and Joy's delicious rolls and lemon drizzle cake...
Take a look at this clip. It was filmed on Sean's camera and shows a stunning cloud of Starlings wheeling about over Newport before dropping out of the sky and into the conifers around the College to roost for the night. The UK's Biodiversity Action Plan was recently updated. It makes changes to those species and habitats defined as priority species or habitats. Some of the new entries are pretty shocking: Hedgehog, Toad, Eel and the dear old Starling. It's sad to think that a bird once so fantastically common it was almost a pest is now considered a national target for conservation effort.
Here you can see the progress of The Purple Kite from scraps of plywood pulled out of a skip, to the proud craft bobbing down the river below.
Like many projects, it's the result of a random turn in a conversation. Simon was talking about beavers and streams, then someone said it would be great if we had an inflatable canoe for surveying wildlife in ponds and rivers. After that someone came up with a challenge: to make our own boat in one day using only recycled materials and anything we could find in the office and then row it across the River Medina and back.
We set to work in our small inventions workshop in East Cowes which SEEDA let us use specifically for making interesting and unlikely creations.
Well, we failed to make it in a day and cheated by buying a box of screws, but as it took shape over the next week our confidence grew that it really would stay afloat with us in it. It started to feel more and more like a proper boat.
The more organic lines can be explained by the fact that there weren't any plans and there wasn't a lot of measuring either.
This picture shows Simon ceremonially rubbing down the boat in whiskey prior to painting.
There are two port-holes in the bottom for observing fish, rocks, seaweed and submarines passing beneath us.
At this point the boat had no name, but by means of a democratic process, we arrived at The Purple Kite. The Island 2000 logo is of course a purple kite and it is also, by sheer coincidence, the rarest species of sea-bird to be found in the British Isles, never having been observed or recorded.
Launchday - a last minute attack of responsibility makes us leave behind our recycled life-jacketsand ask Offshore Challenges next door if they can lend us something more reliable. They hand us two very swanky-looking flotation devices which, we understand, deploy automatically as soon as they get a whiff of sea-water. Simon instructs us that if it looks like we're going down, we're to throw them back onto the land to avoid the punitive cost of recharging the gas canisters. Luckily, this isn't necessary as itturns out to be the driest rowing boat we've been in. We launch from the slipway just next to the car ferry, waved off in a cloud of sherbet by well-wishers and curious staff from Red Funnel. The oars are on the long side for such a small boat, but The Purple Kite is easy to row and very manoeuvrable, sitting surprisingly high in the water. If you'd like to see the cross-Medina escapade for yourself, take a look at the Youtube video below.
We're now planning to produce some commentaries on the wildlife of the Isle of Wight's rivers, viewed and recorded from the water. The Purple Kite is availablefor other water-borne tasks or challenges. Any suggestions?
Here is the splendid Petrobius maritimus or Sea Bristletail. It's really a bigger cousin of the Silverfish you may be more familiar with. These were found holing up in a crack in that big lump of limestone on the way down from Flowers Brook to Steephill Cove. We were walking the coastal path between Ventnor and the Botanic Gardens on Sunday with Friends of Nature members (part of the Gift to Nature scheme - have a look at the website for details) and these fabulous things were one of the winter wildlife highlights.
Deep in the woods perched the pixie. I hid myself in the bracken and waited for his magic to begin when suddenly he turned his impish eye in my direction and spoke: "Can I come down now please, Dad, and why are you crawling about under those leaves?" And so the spell was broken and I returned once more to the human world.
Yes, it's the mighty Ganoderma - the Artist's fungus, so called because any patterns or words you might scratch into its soft underside will stay there for good. The sturdy shelf that Jerry's sitting on here is just the fruiting body, the toadstool bit; the rest is devouring the insides of its Beech tree host. This particular one is in the woods behind the Griffin Pub in Godshill, a place I visited for the first time last year when I went on a fungus foray there run by the IW Natural History Society and led by Dr. Colin Pope. It was absolutely brilliant - loads of weird and wonderful things, plus an excellent rope-swing for the kids and the pub to look forward to on the way back. Toadstools, rope-swings and Guinness - it really doesn't get any better.
A skinny little toad we rescued from a concrete bunker into which it had presumably fallen and become trapped. It was terribly thin but still quite active, so we released it onto some nice wet and wormy ground where it might feed up in peace. I tried to encourage it with a woodlouse but it seemed a bit reluctant to have a go. It was the best I could find at the time. The really sad thing is that it isn't just this unfortunate individual toad that's having such a hard time - it's all of them. Back in the summer there were revisions made to something called the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (UKBAP) and in particular to its list of species of conservation concern - in other words the plants and animals in decline across the country. There are a few shocks in it. The once familiar Toad as we've said, but also Hedgehogs, Starlings, House Sparrows and Eels. Creatures we think of still as familiar and even common-place (whether we've seen them recently ourselves or not) really aren't anymore. There's a great deal we can all do though to help, perhaps at or in our work, certainly at home in our gardens, and more generally in the way we respond to what we see going on in the world around us. We are very lucky here on the Island to share in an environment so well-blessed with wildlife, truly a refuge for so many species in serious decline or even now extinct elsewhere across the south. But that doesn't happen by accident and it's neither a given nor a guarantee for the future. There's an awful lot of hard work going on out there to protect and conserve wildlife - not just because it's green and good but because the natural world is a part of our daily lives and a part our wellbeing. Without it around us even the shiniest of nice new technological marvels is a pretty dull thing. So be kind to toads please.
I have just returned from a family trip to Frankfurt's Christmas Market, where we spent much time marvelling at tat from a different culture. I was very taken however with the fantastic painted bird boxes on offer at one stall. I now feel we have done the poor old Grey Wagtails and House Sparrows a dis-service with our 1960-esque concrete carbuncles. I wonder if we may find tiny burned out cars lining the Troll Trail before long, and the better off birds emigrating to Germany where they can buy a stylish pad for a few Euros.
Well I hope you're not eating. But if you are, imagine swallowing the packaging too and coughing it up later because that's what Barn Owls do. These are yummy Barn Owl pellets - regurgitated fur and bone from mice, voles and shrews. We collected these from beneath a nestbox we know is regularly used just outside Newport because we wanted something to point our fantastic USB microscope at. The one opposite is just with the digital camera on macro, but the one below is taken with the microscope. The detail is amazing, just look at those little teeth. And just to add to the horror, in amongst it all was an insect pupa!
To the untrained eye these are indeed just nibbled nuts in neat rows. But to the nature detective there's more: the top line is the work of Red Squirrels - nuts shattered or split in two. The second line belongs to Dormice - a very neat hole and nearly smooth inner rim. 3rd line down probably comes from Wood Mice - parallel grooves and a scratchy surface. And 4th is the raggedy work of Bank Voles. These Hazel nuts were all collected from hedges on the edge of Newport as part of a set of ecological surveys we're undertaking, but it's just fascinating to think of all this busy rodent activity going on out there. The woods must be a chorus of crunching. Of course none of these species actually lays out their discarded shells in this neat and convenient way, this is characteristic evidence of the work of Sean, a rather larger mammal.
Look at this stunning thing: It's a Jersey Tiger moth. This lovely species is pretty much restricted in UK distribution to the Channel Islands and parts of the south coast . On the mainland it is commonest in south Devon, but colonies have recently appeared in Dorset and here on the Isle of Wight. So this may be a stray continental migrant or home-grown. There is also a thriving population in central London, but who knows if this is a natural expansion of range or perhaps more likely the result of an introduction. It's clunky latin name is Euplagia quadripunctaria and is presumably a reference to the four distinct spots (rather than the two additional blobs) on the bright red underwings. Sean, our conservation manager, photographed this one while out on his project rounds.
Now that summer's here, lovely high pressure and warm southerlies (now and then) it's good weather for dragonflies and damselflies. What's the difference? Not much really - the big damselflies are about the same size as the small dragonflies, although generally they're slighter and daintier. But there is one very obvious morphological difference between the two groups: damsels' eyes don't touch in the middle of their heads but dragons' do. So there you are. This one is a fabulously beautiful Red-veined Darter Sympetrum fonscolombei photographed by Island odonata maestro Dave Dana. It's quite common in southern Europe but is turning up more and more regularly as a migrant in the UK. It's hard to imagine these little things travelling such huge distances but there is quite a list of regular migrant species that visit us annually and so it's more than mere accident. We monitor dragonflies at all of our major wetland sites as they can be very useful indicators of the general health of the habitats we're working on.
Nettles have got a bad reputation known in the main for their formidable sting! However did you know that the nettle is one of the most important plants for wildlife in the UK?
Recent research has revealed the cause of the sting to be from three chemicals – a histamine that irritates the skin, acetylcholine which causes a burning sensation and serotonin, that encourages the other two chemicals.
The power of the sting actually makes the nettle’s leaves a haven for over forty species of insect, defending them against grazing animals. Nettle patches are also host to swarms of aphids a great source of food for ladybirds and birds in early spring.
Stinging nettle leaves are tasty and full of nutrients - lovely in tea and soup. Hooray for the humble, yet ferocious nettle. For more info on all things nettle-y see www.nettles.org.uk. Be nice to nettles - we are.
Lady Ridley's Nettle Soup
Why not try Lady Ridley's nettle soup recipe? Let us know what you think or tell us your own favourite nettle recipe.
Ingredients:
1 lb potatoes ½ lb young nettles 2 oz butter 1½ pts chicken or vegetable stock sea salt & black pepper 4 tablespoons sour cream
Method:
Cook the peeled, chopped potatoes for 10 mins in salted water. Drain.
Wash & chop coarsely the nettles (Only pick the new, young tops,using gloves!)
Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the nettles and stew gently for a few minutes. Add the potatoes and heated stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes or until tender.
When all is soft, cool slightly & purée in a blender, adding seasoning and the sour cream.
I hope you enjoy the nettle soup. The hardest work is picking the nettles. Half a pound is a lot of small leaves, but it is fun to do, in season, once a year.
Our Wetland Walk down near Sandown has always been one of the most popular of the Gift to Nature project sites, visited by thousands of locals and visitors alike each year. It's also a great place for hands-on conservation tasks and that's just what went on last week with the excellent Newchurch Scouts. Here you can see them stuffing new wetland plants into old socks pre-filled with stones before hurling them into the pond and watching them sink to the bottom. This is our patented method for hard-to-reach spots and it works a treat.
And here's a set ready to go:
The Scouts also made some excellent mining-bee homes:
All in all much good work was done for the Wetland Walk and Mother Nature and great fun had by all; and what would a Scout event be without something tribal too?
I'm just now in the middle of a series of Feb/Mar talks ( funded by the Heritage Lottery) on the extraordinary archaeological find we made down in Alverstone in summer 05 and which still rumbles on, as mysterious as ever. We just wanted a nice wildlife pond - and we've got one now; but on the way the seemingly otherwise uninteresting little field chosen as the site revealed an unbelievable find: a massive cobbled Roman road underlain by six interlinked prehistoric (maybe Iron Age) timber causeways and overlain by later ones (maybe Saxon )! So, Alverstone, sleepy, tranquil, sedate and serene village of today was for hundreds of years, two thousand years and more ago, a bustling commercial and community centre. But why? There are even Roman military finds - amongst the Island's first. What was going on? Amongst the fins (see below) was a particularly curious carved stick - perhaps a wand, perhaps evidence of a long-standing ceremonial function that this point on the Yar provided to the people of the Island? The road looks as if it crossed the river - maybe this was the main crossing of the Eastern Yar at a time when Alverstone was at the head of the estuary? Peat and mud cores from the site down to seven metres show saltmarsh flora and diatoms at the right layers for this. It'll take at least another two years to properly unravel all this - so watch this space! in the meantime here are some pics : (http://www.britarch.ac.uk/communityarchaeology/wikka.php?wakka=HomePage ,for more info and other nice things from the Council for British Archaeology)
is this a ceremonial wand?spear cap and ballista bolt
