Wildwood and Small Mammal Surveying

I spent the whole day at the Wildwood Centre near Canterbury on their small mammal surveying day course organised on this occasion by Kent Wildlife Trust. We learnt how to set traps, identify and characterise any mammals caught, with great care for both our own and the animals' safety. I shall have to consider whether to carry out a survey near Hadlow, perhaps on a tetrad which hasn't been surveyed before! Its difficult to find a good site, with a mixed variety of habitat.

We found House Mice (Mus musculus, rather smelly introductions to the UK and so many other countries in the world), quite a few Wood Mice of both sexes and all ages, Apodemus sylvaticus, a Bank Vole, Myodes glareolus, and a Common Shrew, Sorex araneus, in the wooded surrounds of the centre. We didn't find any Yellow-necked Mice, Apodemus flavicollis, which I would have liked to see. However we also saw Water Voles, Arvicola amphibius, Brown Rats, Rattus norvegicus, Water Shrews, Neomys fodiens, a Harvest Mouse, Micromys minutus, a Dormouse, Muscardinus avellanarius, a Fox, Vulpes vulpes, an Otter, Lutra lutra, a Eurasian Lynx, Lynx lynx, some smaller deer, Grey Squirrels, Sciurus caroliniensis, a Red Squirrel, Sciurus vulgaris, Wallabies, Macropus spp., Beavers, Castor fiber, very close up in their lodge, an Adder, Vipera berus, a Raven, Corvus corax, Little Egrets, Egretta garzetta, Mallard, Anas platyrynchos, Pochard, Aythya ferina, all in the collection at Wildwood itself, as well as seeing the new bat soft release flight cage.

It was a great day, with lots of interest. I was particularly aware of the good number of wood mice we caught. I can only assume that the woods are fairly full of small animals that we are generally unaware of as we walk through them. It would be interesting to carry out a survey in somewhere like Dene Park, but it would be difficult to ensure the safety of the traps with so many dog walkers and other usage of the wood. I am sure it would be easier in somewhere like Upper Lodge Wood.

Green Islands at Dene Park

Wow, today has been a bit of a revelation! Firstly a more careful check of some of the leaves on the Beech hedge in the front garden have revealed two old mines of a Stigmella, which must be Stigmella hemargyrella.

I had no idea that either of the Stigmella species was in the locality, nor that this species was present here, in our own front garden. The only time I've identified this leaf-miner before has been at Oldbury Hill on the Lower Greensand Ridge some distance to the North, where I photographed it on the 13th of September. What a turn-up for the books! Perhaps I've missed it at other sites as well, I just can't be sure!

In both pictures below the mine appears to start from near the margin of the leaf, and travels towards the mibrib where it ends, which is the main diagnostic characteristic of Stigmella hemargyrella as opposed to Stigmella tityrella. This is perhaps clearest in the second picture. In both cases you can also see the white spotting of the feeding marks of the Beech Leafhopper on the upper leaf surface.

The major leaf miner found in the hedge, much commoner than the two Stigmella I found today, is the ubiquitous Phyllonorycter maestingella, at least as identified according to the characteristics of the mine. This insect is specific to Beech. Ideally the adults would be raised in order to definitively separate it from Phyllonorycter messianella, which is found on a range of trees, also including Beech. However the ID to species can still be made fairly confidently I think, because of the long tubular mine which is well made within the boundaries of the main ribs of the leaf. P. messianella should be a more oval shaped mine.

Here in the picture below on the underside of a leaf you can see two old Phyllonorycter maestingella mines, both fairly decrepit. The one on the left is as found, but I had opened the one on the right to look for its contents.

Looking closer at the opened mine, I found some aphids sheltering in the old mine. Insects that use the structures of others are referred to as inquilines. I have no information on which species these may be or whether they have been noted by other observers.

Once I'd got over the enjoyable shock of locating Stigmella hemargyrella so close to home, I got Monty into the car and I struggled to get my bandaged foot into my walking boots. We headed off to Dene Park, not really hoping to do anything more than confirm previous sightings of the leaf mines and galls seen there previously, as I thought I was getting to know the Beech trees there quite well by now. The paths were clearly autumnal now, and the overall appearance of the woods has changed significantly since I was last here a week ago.

As quite a few of the Beech leaves have now turned colour, some of the branches are still mainly green, but others are already mainly golden or russet.

Amongst such concentrations of leaves that have already turned, a very few of them have either remained green entirely or remained green in obvious sections, sometimes clearly delineated by their veins. I have heard that this is a sign of hormonal interference from leafminers - and wow - that's exactly what is happening! In the picture below we can see an old Phyllonorycter maestingella mine on the top side of the midrib, which is having some, but little, effect, and two Stigmella tityrella mines on the lower side, which are very clearly causing the lamina all around them to remain bright green, and are likely to be at least recently, if not currently active. The caterpillar on the right (at least) seems to be still within the mine, visible at the end of the tunnel. These Stigmella mines must be Stigmella tityrella because the mines start next to the midrib, and generally travels outward the margin of the leaf, weaving sharply from side to side and each staying with their own segment created by two adjacent major veins.

This was fantastic! The very first time I had identified this insect was in North Wales last weekend, and I've not seen it in Kent at all before, despite the fact that it must have been there, and I'd been looking for it. And yet, I found these two almost as soon as I looked at the Beech trees, by noticing the green island - and there were these two mines!! Its going to be very easy to find some more, if they are actually present here, and they form such clear green islands!

And here is another, again Stigmella tityrella and again very obvious from the green island effect, and again found very quickly. Clearly Stigmella tityrella has been here in Dene Park all along during my autumn visits, just as Stigmella hemargyrella has been present in the garden hedge since at least earlier in the autumn!

Now that I had my eye in, and knew the patterns to look for I found half a dozen other S. tityrella mines, including this one on a leaf that was still completely green. The occupant may have only recently left, leaving the "flap-door" open!

The effect is however not confined just to Stigmella, as seen in this Phyllonorycter maestingella mine found further down the side track. Could this be an example of convergent evolution?

And here we go again, the midge Hartigiola annulipes, a very common gall former on Beech, also seems to have a very effective mechanism of keeping the majority of, if not the whole of the leaf, green. Here is a fairly clear example of the effect, of which I saw many examples.

Here is the gall again, a rather better pair of specimens perhaps, again on a green, quite fresh-looking, leaf

and here that same photo is again, this time in close-up. Note that there was a third gall, but it has been knocked off, just leaving its base.

Some of the leaves have been subject to a fungus leaf spot, which seems to appear on particular clusters of leaves, perhaps due to inoculum potential!

I've seen this damage below illustrated somewhere before, but I cannot remember for the life of me which insect causes this bizarre, if not unique, damage. Its the first time I've ever seen it in real life, but I know I've seen this picture in a book somewhere!

I spent most of our visit today in amongst the various compartments of Beech - they do look great with their russet carpet of leaves and clean woodland floors where the dense foliage of beech has inhibited the development of any significant undergrowth.

Point of Ayr at high tide, or just after.

2,000 oystercatchers, 500 curlew, 100+ black-tailed godwit, 50+ redshank, 3+ grey plover, 4+ dunlin, 100 black-headed gulls, 40+ herring gulls, 10+ lesser black-backed gulls, 10 teal, 30 mallard, 80+ shelduck, 20 wigeon, 20 cormorant, 1 kestrel (nice and fairly close on a ridge).

Excellent views and what a great afternoon!

Here is a distant shot of the female kestrel on the ridge in front of the shoreline.

and some of the approximately 2,000 oystercatchers,

Bod Petrual, Glocaenog Forest

Squeeky trees, but, very sadly, no birds of the relatively good numbers seen up near the tops of the trees were positively identified.

There was a lovely little pond, could well be worth checking for dragonflies next year.

And there, on the South side of the pond, I hope I found a new leaf miner for me, Stigmella tityrella (Stainton, 1854), with the egg apparently always laid on the underside and amongst the hairs in the angle of a vein directly against the midrib of the Beech leaves! I should have photographed the underside of the leaves, not the topside, for a clearer view of the mine. However this error did mean that I picked up the leafhopper feeding marks as well.

The mines of S. tityrella are said to characteristically weave dramatically from side to side, but generally remain within the single leaf segment created by the midrib and two adjacent main veins. Sometimes this typical pattern can be seen but on the other hand the pictures on the web of some mines are much, much straighter than others - e.g. in Suffolk? Overall the identification certainly looks pretty good! The moth's specific list number is 0077, and a common name for the adult is the Small Beech Pigmy Moth.

However it is worth looking at the left hand leaf, and seeing how, given a very restrictively sized segment near the tip of a leaf to start off with, the mine actually crosses a main vein at the very margin of the leaf, and doubles back into a second segment, but this time heading inwards towards the midrib again. Perhaps a careless adult left this egg too close to the tip of the leaf? I wonder how often this happens.

These couple of mines were a fantastic sight, with such a clear and interesting "behavioural" separation of the two species Stigmella tityrella (seen here at Bod Petrual) and Stigmella hemargyrella (seen earlier this year at Oldbury Hill, see below), with only these two Stigmella species reported on Beech on the UK Leafminer site. These particular mines appeared to be empty of their creators (mine activity listed as June-July and August-October, with earlier flight periods of the adults), apart from the full distribution of "uncoiled" frass in the main sections of tunnel, and the narrower central line of frass in the first narrower section of tunnel. Sadly I felt I didn't have the time to search for any more mines on this site, and no other galls or mines were seen in the few dozen leaves so quickly and cursorily checked.

This species is found across UK and Europe as far as the Russian border. According to the rather limited NBN Gateway, S. tityrella has been recorded as scattered records across North Wales for example as mines in Coedydd Aber NNR, (September, 1973), Maenan (September, 1974), Maentwrog and Glan Conwy (September, 1975), Church Island, Menai Bridge (September, 1980) and as unspecified field observations in Burley Hill Quarry (Summer, 2000) and Weston Rhyn and Preston Mountford in Shropshire (July 2010). It hasn't been recorded on the NBN near Glocaenog, but this may be just lack of recording effort, or more likely, limited inputting to the Gateway.

In Norfolk or Northamptonshire (Eakringbirds), where it seems to have been actively looked for, it can apparently be found in about half the squares looked at, according to the County organisation. In East Sussex however it doesn't seem to be densely concentrated, and the County records seem to be limited to October - perhaps as mines again? The mines are said to be found in "green islands" in leaves over the autumn/winter period - so well worth looking for.

It has also been found in Kent, but there are even fewer NBN records here. There are only three listings in the whole of the county, two from the 1970s and one from 1990, with very limited details, so its something I should still keep my eyes open for in my own county!! The BBCS Kent Moth Report indicated significantly more records than this, thanks to the redoubtable David Gardiner!

Compare the blog on the 13th of September at Oldbury Hill, for the other Stigmella species that I have seen on Beech, Stigmella hemargyrella (Kollar, 1832), whose eggs are laid mainly on the upper, but on either surface of the leaf, and not against the midrib, so tends to tunnel from the margin towards the midrib. The mine often crosses at least one vein, and the frass, initially a thin central line, is said to be "coiled" from part way along the mine, although the frass trail commonly narrows again somewhat, later on in the final stages of the mine as the caterpillar approaches pupation (I wonder why?).

S. hemargyrella also initially seems to be recorded very patchily across the country with only one record on the NBN Gateway in Kent. However reference to the BBCS Kent website and its Moth Reports again indicates a wider distribution and a greater degree of abundance than listed in the NBN. Adults are also said to be easily collected on beech trunks from the beginning of May until the middle of June; the adults of the less common summer generation fly from mid-July to early August. This micro-moth is specific list number 00081, with a "common" name of the Beech Pigmy Moth, although it doesn't seem significantly smaller than S. tityrella.

S. hemargyrella has more or less the same overall phenology and European distribution as S. tityrella. From the pictures on the web I would personally say that frass patterns in both species are quite unreliable, and should not be used on their own as definitive ID. On the NBN gateway in North Wales, S. hemargyrella was found with S. tityrella in Maenan in 1974 and Burley Hill Quarry in 2000, but not in the other S. tityrella North Wales sites. I would guess from these overall indicators that S. tityrella is a little more commonly recorded than S. hemargyrella. There are no NBN records North of the Great Glen for either species although S. tityrella was logged close to Inverness itself.

Here is a rather nice overall world website for some of these leafminers, the Nepticulidae, http://nepticuloidea.info/

Fantastic, what a lucky one-off spot, another step towards completion of the Fagus sylvatica list, four of the seven possible leafminers have now been definitely spotted, in just over half a dozen visits to beech woods throughout the UK!

RSPB Conwy and Rhos Point

RSPB Conwy


20 black-tailed godwit, 12 dunlin, 40 redshank, 40 teal (just gorgeous), 10 mallard, 2 shellduck, 1 little egret, 1 grey heron, 40 black-headed gulls, 10 herring gulls, 3 mute swan, 5 red-breasted mergansers, 4 widgeon, 5 coot, 1 moorhen,

Here is a very distant shot of two of the five red breasted mergansers, Mergus serrator. The one on the right is definitely a male, with the right colour pattern on its side, and a fairly clear dark green crest on the head. You can also just see the dark line running up the back of the white neck. Even at this distance the male's bill looks noticeably thin, one of the main recognition points of all these saw-billed duck species.
Wonderful and colourful saw-billed ducks, these are excellent divers and catchers of fish such as trout and salmon that tend to be coastal during the winter, unlike the rather similar Goosander which is generally restricted to freshwater all year round. Both species are thought to breed on occasions I believe on the river that runs through Tomich.

These particular Red Breasted Mergansers could have come from breeding sites on rivers in Wales, Northern England, Scotland, Iceland or Scandinavia for example. The total UK breeding population is said to be about five thousand. This small flock of five, perhaps a family unit, may have taken up residence here for a short or long period in the winter. Others may arrive to build this particular flock up further, as numbers are said to peak in December - on some waters very large flocks of this bird may develop, as it is quite gregarious in winter.

Here are two females of the many teal, Anas cracca, scattered around the reserve, which seem not to mind the presence of humans so close to hand.

Here are some of the roosting mallards, Anas platyrhynchos, together with one of the oystercatchers, Hematopus ostralegus, and one of the mute swans, Cygnus olor.

Overall this is a really fantastic reserve created from the Conwy tunnel spoil, it really caters for visitors very well.

Rhos Point


2(?) turnstone, 20 curlew, 6 redshank, 10 oystercatchers, 20 black-headed gulls, 18 herring gulls, but no purple sandpipers I'm afraid!

And it was too dark to take pictures.

Whetsted Gravel Pits

9 little grebe, 5 great crested grebe, 160 black headed gulls, 95 coot, 26 gadwall, 6 mallard, 7 tufted duck, 3 drake shoveller, 9 mute swan, 3 great tit, 1 chaffinch, 1 yellow wagtail, 26 jackdaws, 14 canada geese, 2 greylag geese. 16 starling, 2 green woodpecker

Fungus walk in Dene Park

Its been so very dry for so many weeks that the light rain of the past few nights has been entirely insufficient to bring out the fungi, except perhaps for some of the smallest rapid responders. Judging from today's weather, the weather is on the very point of changing!

A small group of interested people met in the morning's intermittent light drizzle at the car-park at 10 a.m. to join the Medway Valley Countryside Partnership organised fungus walk, with quite a few people who had booked not actually turning up. We were introduced to our excellent leader, Patricia Moxey, who had come over from Essex as her daughter lives in Hadlow.

We were first shown some Sainsbury's Mushrooms to illustrate cap structure, and some mushroom spawn to see the mycelium, and we discussed the place of mushrooms in nature and their ecology. Tricia also said that woodland fungi may form up to 70% of a deer's diet in the autumn as it tries to lay down food reserves for the winter. This is a very interesting thought - I had no idea!

We explored risks to fungal habitat and the apparent slow but steady decline in fungi in Europe as a whole, whether due to harvesting or possibly to pollution, perhaps particularly eutrophication by NOx or other substances.

We also talked about dormice and the strong suspicion that grey squirrels, as opportunistic feeders on almost anything, have a particular tendency to predate upon dormice young.

We moved off to see some excellently coloured Fly Agaric, Amanita muscaria, growing as usual by some birch, one of the easiest examples of mycorrhizal relationships to be found. There always used to be a fairly reliable "mushrooming" close by a tall silver birch opposite the canteen in the college every autumn, until the birch caught a disease and was felled. I haven't seen the Amanita there since, perhaps supporting the view that the fungus really does need that continuous supply of sugars in order to fruit, or perhaps survive.

Tricia talked about its hallucinogenic and toxic properties, and later we saw some more orangey caps in the shade - I did wonder whether the development of the reddish colouration is improved by sunlight in some way. In the well coloured specimens in the photograph above, you can also see that the white specks of the older cap in particular have already been largely washed off in the recent rain.

In the moist shade of the woodland canopy, some of the younger participants found a small Mycena, or Fairy's Bonnet, which Tricia suggested might have come up over night in response to the light rain. Unfortunately it was too dark under the trees to get a photograph of this one, or the other specimen which was found towards the end of the walk. Tricia took the second specimen back to try to determine species so that she could submit the record, as Dene Park is under-recorded for most groups. At this point the penny dropped and I realised that I had know Tricia's daughter and her family for many years, since Jackie had been a horticultural student at Hadlow in the mid 1990s, had settled in the village after she had finished her degree, and married a fellow student, Chris. What a small world!

We looked carefully around the beech compartment and then crossed the track into the more mixed woodland, where on a stump we found two clumps of the very common but really quite poisonous Sulphur Tuft fungus, Hypholoma fasciculare,

A little further along there were some Yellow Club-Horns or Yellow Antlers fungus, Calocera viscosa, which is supposed by some to have chemicals within it with significant anti-tumour properties. I ramped up the ISO rating to the max on the camera to make up for the poor light and still get this picture.

At this point Kevyn, the arboriculture lecturer from the College, and my colleague, joined the group. As we moved along the narrow track, I stopped to photograph a blotch leaf miner on the oak leaves, rather silvery and with a lobed margin, that I don't think I have seen before.

Kevyn and I also diverted to examine the Tulley tubes on some of the underplanting. Hopefully some of her students can be engaged at some stage in removing some of these, to benefit the young trees. Surveying the tree stock as a whole could also be a useful exercise!

We had a look at the "copparded" hornbeams on the edge of the woodland, which Tricia thought might be hundreds of years old, perhaps Elizabethan. Close to the Clearhedges Corner as we turned back alongside the road we found (I think) an old neglected coppice, which had a couple of standard stems growing up from it.

The standard stems were being well attacked by an Artists' Fungus, a Ganoderma, possibly adspersum, but perhaps applanatum, a spore examination might be required to be sure.

We discussed the immense value of tree rot fungi in ecology and biodiversity, as well as the role of gut fungi in some xylogenic (wood eating) beetles, then deviating on to talking about dormice hibernating close to ground level, in stumps or even under leaves and other aspects of woodland ecology.
Another absolutely great morning - but more was to come!

After teaching for the afternoon I went back to Dene Park as dusk fell to give Monty his walk, and have a further look for fungi. It was raining well by that stage, and actually, according to an amateur Tonbridge Weather Station we had had about 12 - 15 mm by the end of the day, a tidy amount. I wandered into the birches just further along from the Beech compartment, and found the very common Birch Polypore fungus, Piptoporus betulinus on the side of a dead Silver Birch, Betula pendula, trunk.

Fairly close to this I came across a flat-topped and fairly sharp-margined polypore on an unidentified dead tree trunk.

The pores were relatively large, even somewhat elongated along the axis of the bracket. I think this might have been the Blushing Bracket, Daedaleopsis confragosa.

Back out onto the track I walked along nearly to the junction close to the lodge roadway, and turned right into the dark path that runs parallel to, and just before the main circular path.

About 50 metres along the path I came upon a single white fungus growing out of the side of an oak tree trunk. The stem came out horizontally, turned up through 90 degrees until it was vertical, then joined the cap eccentrically. The rim was clearly inrolled, and there were the just possible remains of a veil stuck around the rim. The gills were at least partly decurrent, and could have been regarded as crowded.

It was almost certainly a Pleurotus, or related genus, and I think most likely to be the Veiled Oyster Fungus, Pleurotus dryinus, which has been recorded in squares such as TQ 63, 64 and 65 before. I think here we are in TQ63 - but I should check of course. The specimen looked pretty good for this species when compared to the images that can be seen on Google.

By now it was getting too dark to see much, although I repeatedly heard a tawny owl calling, and disturbed several woodpigeons which I could hear exploding away above the pitter-patter of raindrops.

I have to say it was really lovely in the soft misty rain and the darkening woods. Two fantastic trips in a great day!