I'm back! Full disclosure: most of this post was written a few weeks ago, but I was so busy with my costume for MCM ComicCon that I didn't have time to finish it. ^^ But now the con season is over, and I'm back to finish the post, and add an update about how the breeding birds in my area are getting on.
Back a few weeks ago, my mum and I both had a day off, so we decided to go to one of our favourite nature reserves, Titchfield Haven near Fareham. Spring is a wonderful time to visit and watch the thriving Black-headed Gull colony (yes, the one I keep meaning to do a sketchbook post about- next post!) but of course they aren't the only species in the breeding mood. Though I don't think either of us expected to see what we did when we walked along the harbour to the visitor's centre and there were a pair of Black Swans among the Mute Swans, Mallards and Mallard/farmyard duck mixes!
Black Swans are a species from Australia that will definitely never arrive in the UK naturally, but they do escape from wildfowl collections a lot and there are quite a few in the country. Wildfowl collections are prone to escapes because the birds are usually not kept in aviaries, just on ponds with their wings clipped, and this wouldn't be the first time wildfowl from collections have turned up at Titchfield Haven! There's been such fantastic visitors as Fulvous Whistling Duck, Cinnamon Teal, a previous single Black Swan and a Cackling Goose, as well as a Canada Goose thought to be part Bar-headed Goose that was in the reserve's feral goose flock several years ago. The only one of those that might appear naturally in Britain is the Cackling Goose, which resembles a tiny Canada Goose, but it was clear that this one wasn't wild by it's complete lack of shyness as it fed with the Canada Geese a few metres from the hide. I've written a little about escaped ducks in this post where I talk about thinking I saw wild Red-crested Pochards on a village pond when I was about eight...so naive at that age. ^^
Unlike Canada Geese and Mandarin Ducks, Black Swans aren't currently a self-sustaining population, but apparently some are worried they will be the next Canada Geese and sweep the country with large, destructive populations! I don't see that happening, at least not in my lifetime, but according to the staff in the centre there are several feral Black Swans living on the Isle of Wight, a mere skip and a jump over the solent from Titchfield Haven, so that's probably where this pair came from. And as we watched them it became clear that they were thinking about the next generation!
The swans were facing each other with their necks gently curved, making the classic swan's-necks-make-a-heart greetings card pose, and then they began to mimic each other, with one dipping its head under water and back up, and the other doing the same a second later. Then the male moved closer to the female so his breast was touching her side, and looped his neck over her body and into the water on the other side. After he came up he kept his neck draped over her back, and all the time they were making little quiet calls to each other. Then the male slowly began to clamber onto her back so they could mate- actually he climbed on the wrong way round, but she was very patient with him while he slowly and carefully maneuvered his way round to face the same way as her. The actual mating looked a bit difficult and uncomfortable, with her back sinking into the water and him grasping onto the back on her neck with his beak, possibly to help him stay on, but it was over in a second and they broke apart, faced each other, both raised their necks straight up in the air and each gave a loud, triumphant call! You could see the middles of their necks expand out in a comical way while they called. The whole thing was an amazing sight to see, and took place about 5 metres away from the bridge we were watching from. I wished I'd had my camera on me- it's no good for photographing wildlife usually, but they were so close I could certainly have a taken a video of the whole thing!
The Black Swan pair continued to swim together, and later on we saw a Mute Swan pair swim a little too close to them. Suddenly feeling threatened, the Black Swans split up, and each took a Mute Swan to chase, flapping and splashing aggressively and successfully seeing off the bigger swan pair! We wondered if the male chased the male and the female the female, but as Black Swans appear to be sex alike it wasn't possible to tell- I only identified the male in the mating dance from his role. While the male Mute Swan is bigger than the female with a larger lump on his bill, and sometimes holds his wings raised over his back to look bigger, the Black Swans were both the same size, both had the same red bill with a white stripe on it and the same gorgeous, wavy feathers on the base of the back. I've heard Black Swans described as ugly but their plumage certainly isn't- I think it's the rather odd, contrasting bright red beak that gets people. Black Swans have white primary feathers, and I noticed when they flapped at the Mute Swans that at least one of them had no clipping on its wing feathers, suggesting it had moulted at least once since escaping!
Whether or not this pair made a good choice for their nest site, incubate well, and get lucky with the weather and predation (they may well be inexperienced), it was just so fascinating to watch such a natural Spring behaviour as courtship and mating in these captive born birds. I've not seen courtship displays in very many British birds- I've seen Great-Crested Grebes do their beautiful mating dance just once in my entire birdwatching history, and I've seen Buzzards flirting in flight, and Woodpigeons billing and cooing, but there's not many other birds that I can remember watching courting. I did very much enjoy seeing Avocet courtship on Springwatch the other night, though! It involved delicate splashing with the long, beautiful beaks, and then a sort of wing-hug after the actual mating. ^^ Such amazing birds. At some point I will cast my mind back to 2011 and write about the time I saw baby Avocets...
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Speaking of Springwatch, I wrote last time about the baby Blackbirds in our garden, and like Springwatch I am able to give you an update! I was a little concerned to see one baby being fed several times in a row, but this was not a long term problem, and both babies were seen again, getting more confident all the time. What's more, they were joined by a third! Soon the babies were no longer hiding in bushes but were joining the adults on the ground feeder. At first they begged their parents constantly for food, and then they began to peck at the food themselves but only when the parents weren't around. As soon as a parent would appear, the babies would completely forget about their newfound feeding independence and beg shamelessly, opening their still visible gapes and peeping and wing-fluttering..it was quite hilarious to watch, and the poor parents were so frazzled!
Blackbirds have multiple broods, and it didn't take long for the female to stop attending the babies at all, as she was no doubt concentrating on brewing the next clutch of eggs, and probably renewing and strengthening the nest after the strain of having had three large babies wriggling about in it. When it comes to feeding, impressively she sometimes uses one of our sunflower heart feeders! Thrushes are not really built for feeders, but she can stay hanging on long enough to gulp a few down. The sunflower hearts also proved a good meal for the babies as they began to feed themselves in earnest, as they were able to peck up all the seeds the messy finches are always dropping. The male was still around keeping an eye on the babies in a sort of hands-off way, and though they still pestered him for food when he was around and he'd sometimes feed them out of habit, they were really almost fully independent. They were flying properly, their tails were almost full length (if a little wonky and scruffy), and their gapes were almost gone.
It was just about at this point when another baby Blackbird appeared in the garden! This one was a really young one, with the tiny tail, speckley breast and giant yellow gape. The female of the first brood was still absent most of the time, probably incubating her second brood, so this wasn't the original Blackbird pair's baby but from a new brood, and a different pair! It was really funny seeing the contrast between the slightly older babies and the new one.
Next baby bird to appear was a young Starling, joining the adults on the ground feeder. I'd been looking forward to seeing the first baby Starlings ever since I found the eggshells I wrote about last time, and was so happy when the day finally arrived! The juvenile Starling didn't have the scruffy feathers the baby Blackbirds had, but was just as slim and streamlined as the adults, though light grey all over. I couldn't see any external gape, and its begging technique was different from the baby Blackbirds- it didn't flutter or peep, but just sat there with its great, gaping beak open while the adults stuffed in food! Its beak was bright yellowy-orange on the inside. There were at least 3 adults on the ground feeder with the baby so it wasn't just with its parents, but none of the adults seemed at all worried about each others' presence or the baby's presence, showing the Starlings truly are flock birds, even in the breeding season. This is in stark contrast to Blackbirds, who don't flock in the breeding season, and in fact the father of the first Blackbird babies got into a rather violent scuffle with another Blackbird (probably the father of the second Blackbird babies as I doubt there's room for any more Blackbirds around here!). It was a proper pecking, rolling around and clawing fight and something I've never seen. It was hard to tell who won, but 'our' Blackbird (the father of the first babies) has been looking a bit worse for wear every since, as he lost a whole chunk of the feathers on his forehead. A few weeks later, he's still like that, but now the poor guy has also had an encounter with (probably) a cat, which cost him all of his tail feathers! It's sad to see him wagging his behind automatically, and having no tail to flourish proudly. The moulting season is coming up anyway, though, so he should soon be growing new ones. And until then there's plenty of food about.
Next to appear was an adorable baby Robin, and two scruffy baby Dunnocks (they have pink beaks! It's weird). Then a couple of weeks ago, there were yet more baby birds in the form of a beautiful (and HUNGRY) Great Tit family, and then the Goldfinches were next, with three beige-faced youngsters watching the adults on the feeder and begging shamelessly for food. Young Goldfinches may not have the black, white and red face pattern of the adults but they already have the yellow wing bars that makes Goldfinches so distinctive. Young Great Tits have the same pattern as the adults but they have yellow cheeks, as do young Blue Tits. When I was younger I saw a picture of this in a bird book and was surprised to see that the youngsters seemed even more colourful than the adults which didn't seem a good idea for baby birds, but when you actually see them the effect of the yellow is to tone down the contrast on the head pattern, turning black and white into black and pale yellow. This, combined with an overall 'desaturation' of the colour on the rest of the feathers means they are far less noticeable than the adults. We don't think either of these species nested in the garden or all that close to it, but we're glad they came to our garden to feed their hungry young. :) Goldfinches are everyday visitors to the feeders, but before the babies came the Great Tit was seen only occasionally this Spring, usually in the evening when it would stop by for a quick bite to eat at the feeder.
And this evening, I looked out of the window and saw tiny, ball-shaped birds whizzing around the garden- it was a Wren family! The babies perched in our hedgerow and wildflower area, occasionally fluttering from bush, whirring their little stumpy wings at top speed. Despite their tiny size the yellow gape at the edges of their beaks was very visible. We counted three young attended by one adult, who by contrast looked very sleek and confident as it balanced expertly on small stems to pick little insects from under the leaves.
At my local patch, I've seen baby Robins (out on their own) and a baby Great Tit (fiercely attended by a noisy adult with an extremely wide black belly stripe!), and best of all, last visit there were three young Long-tailed Tits! I couldn't see an adult and they seemed pretty much independent, and they already had full-length tails, but the big smudge of black over their eyes gave them away. It really emphasised the orange eyes Long-tailed Tits have. I've found Robin eggshells and, more unusually, the vivid bright blue of a Song Thrush eggshell. Song Thrushes aren't unusual of course but I rarely ever see them on my patch, or hear them, with the only singing male I've heard there coming from far away, possibly from a garden on one of the suburban estates at the edge of my small arable farm patch. In my egg post I talk about the Starlings dropping their hatched eggshells away from the nest, so maybe a thrush flew all the way in from a neighbouring garden to really throw predators off the scent?
The male Whitethroat is back in his usual singing spot, and the male Yellowhammer is singing in the hedgerow, both familiar from last year (this is only my second Spring watching this patch) but there's a new player in the form of a lovely Goldfinch pair who I suspect are nesting in the shrubs below the mature trees in the middle of the farm. The Skylarks are hovering and landing on the fields a lot, and it's exciting to think that somewhere in the sea of green crop are hidden eggs. The Carrion Crow pair are back in the same patch of trees as last year, but not in the nest I found last year, which I suspect blew apart in the winter storms. They have a new one, more deeply hidden in the trees, and now both members of the pair are flying around again which I suspect means the babies have hatched! There's a Jackdaw pair around that area, and a Magpie pair in the trees at the edge of the farm.
Finally, the House Martins, who nest in the area but not in the actual patch (perhaps on the estate too), are visiting their favourite mud puddle on one of the paths to pick up mud for their nests. At one point I counted 17 landing there all at once! I always hope that I'll see their tiny footprints and beak marks in the mud, but I haven't yet. They are extremely light, after all!
How is the breeding season shaping up in your area? Are there baby birds in your garden, or at your patch? Tell me all about them! :)
Tuesday, 3 June 2014
Monday, 14 April 2014
Eggs, Baby Birds and Books
The first baby birds are in our garden! Last Tuesday I was enjoying the newly light evenings and watching the garden when I spotted some wing fluttering and feeding action in one of the trees. A quick look through binoculars showed that this wasn't a male courtship feeding a female, as the bird being fed was reddish-brown and appeared very round because of its fluffed up feathers and almost complete lack of tail. It was a baby, the first one of any species I've seen this year! (The day after I first spotted the Blackbirds, however, I saw the first tiny Mallard duckings in St James's Park!) A closer look showed it had a visible gape, which is the wide, colourful mouth-edge baby birds have in the nest to make their beaks super visible to the parents birds when they come with food. You can see these on all kinds of songbirds.
On a closer look, there were two babies, being attended by the male. One was hunched up and still, and I doubt I would have spotted it if I hadn't seen the male arrive initially, which really shows how quietness and stillness can hide baby birds when their parents are away finding food. The other baby, however, was quite active and was fly-jumping around the tree like anything, it's tiny tail cocked, looking like a giant wren! Interestingly the male visited and fed the still baby three times while I was watching, with the active baby not being fed once, even though at one point it hopped right over to where the male was feeding the first baby and sat there looking expectant. I don't know what's happening there, but I have to say the hopping chick seemed very energetic and healthy so I doubt any long term neglect is happening. Blackbirds are such efficient breeders, they tend to be the first baby birds you see in the spring and starting early means they can often churn out 3 broods in a season, and therefore don't go in for massive clutches, so long-term favouritism in their broods doesn't make sense for them.
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The day after seeing the young Blackbirds, I found these in our drive:
Of course I immediately jumped to the conclusion that they must be the Blackbirds eggshells! But after borrowing my Mum's guide to bird eggs and nests, I found that Blackbird eggs are extremely speckley, and these very pale blue, almost speckle-free eggshells are actually a much better fit for a Starling. This makes sense as Starlings nested under our neighbour's roof tiles last year and we've been seeing them there again. These were actually found surprisingly close to where the nest is, as birds usually take the shells a little distance away to drop them so they don't draw predators to the nest, but at least they weren't directly under it I suppose! I guess here is a possibility it's from Starlings at a completely different site.
This seems a good time to point out the difference between these eggs and the one I found back in January that I guessed had been predated by a corvid. That one had an intact shell except for a big hole in its side. These ones, however, have been cut neatly around the middle! Here's another photo so you can better see what I mean:
Look at those careful, regular cuts! A tiny bird has cut those using its egg tooth while still inside. Regular halves are a sure sign that you are looking at naturally hatched eggshells.
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Forgive the absence of posts recently, I've been working on a costume for an upcoming convention I'm going to! Cosplay and birds are my two passions. :D And I'm also in the middle of a post about a Black-headed Gull colony I sketched at about a month ago, but sketchbook posts take forever to put together and I wanted to talk about baby birds! Have you seen any baby birds yet? If so, tell me all about it!
Now, earlier in the post I mentioned that my Mum has a guide to birds eggs and nests. It's worth mentioning that (as far as I know) you cannot buy these new, because egg collecting has been such a huge thing in the past, it is all kinds of illegal now, but it still happens and the last thing anyone wants to do is encourage it. This is really important, but it can be annoying if you find an eggshell and can't find a book to ID it. My Mum's book was published in the 70s (and was actually published in Czechoslovakia, which I only realised recently and which explains some of the birds included that had puzzled me in the past, like Short-Toed Treecreeper, Crested Lark and Great Reed Warbler, none of which breed in Britain!), and for my last birthday my sister gave me an egg book of my own, which she had found second hand. That, I think, is the best thing to do if you want a book about bird eggs- check second hand shops and stalls, and hopefully you will come across one. Mine is not quite as useful as my Mum's as it limits itself to 'woodland and hill birds', which doesn't appear to include Blackbird or Starling, but it has all the other thrushes, the tits, corvids, pigeons, farmland birds, game birds etc etc so that's all very useful. :) It was also published in Czechoslovakia in the 70s, though the author and illustrator are not the same as my Mum's, which was interesting to spot- maybe loads of bird egg books were coming out of Eastern Europe at the time and being translated? The range of birds is even wider and includes Roller, Nutcracker, Griffin Vulture, Hazel Grouse, Eagle Owl and all that cool stuff! My sister was really on the ball when she bought me that. :D
By the way, though I am a feather collector and have a growing collection of bones (and one deer tail), I wouldn't recommend anyone to collect eggshells because egg collecting is still just too close to home, at least in the UK. Hatched eggshells are very different from ones blown by a collector, but still, I prefer not to go there at all. The ones in my photo were put back outside once I'd photographed them. Bird eggs are beautiful, but they only belong in the wild, and in the UK every single one of them, no matter how common the bird, is protected to the full extent of the law from human intervention. Nests and eggs are more precious than gold.
On a closer look, there were two babies, being attended by the male. One was hunched up and still, and I doubt I would have spotted it if I hadn't seen the male arrive initially, which really shows how quietness and stillness can hide baby birds when their parents are away finding food. The other baby, however, was quite active and was fly-jumping around the tree like anything, it's tiny tail cocked, looking like a giant wren! Interestingly the male visited and fed the still baby three times while I was watching, with the active baby not being fed once, even though at one point it hopped right over to where the male was feeding the first baby and sat there looking expectant. I don't know what's happening there, but I have to say the hopping chick seemed very energetic and healthy so I doubt any long term neglect is happening. Blackbirds are such efficient breeders, they tend to be the first baby birds you see in the spring and starting early means they can often churn out 3 broods in a season, and therefore don't go in for massive clutches, so long-term favouritism in their broods doesn't make sense for them.
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The day after seeing the young Blackbirds, I found these in our drive:
This seems a good time to point out the difference between these eggs and the one I found back in January that I guessed had been predated by a corvid. That one had an intact shell except for a big hole in its side. These ones, however, have been cut neatly around the middle! Here's another photo so you can better see what I mean:
Look at those careful, regular cuts! A tiny bird has cut those using its egg tooth while still inside. Regular halves are a sure sign that you are looking at naturally hatched eggshells.
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Forgive the absence of posts recently, I've been working on a costume for an upcoming convention I'm going to! Cosplay and birds are my two passions. :D And I'm also in the middle of a post about a Black-headed Gull colony I sketched at about a month ago, but sketchbook posts take forever to put together and I wanted to talk about baby birds! Have you seen any baby birds yet? If so, tell me all about it!
Now, earlier in the post I mentioned that my Mum has a guide to birds eggs and nests. It's worth mentioning that (as far as I know) you cannot buy these new, because egg collecting has been such a huge thing in the past, it is all kinds of illegal now, but it still happens and the last thing anyone wants to do is encourage it. This is really important, but it can be annoying if you find an eggshell and can't find a book to ID it. My Mum's book was published in the 70s (and was actually published in Czechoslovakia, which I only realised recently and which explains some of the birds included that had puzzled me in the past, like Short-Toed Treecreeper, Crested Lark and Great Reed Warbler, none of which breed in Britain!), and for my last birthday my sister gave me an egg book of my own, which she had found second hand. That, I think, is the best thing to do if you want a book about bird eggs- check second hand shops and stalls, and hopefully you will come across one. Mine is not quite as useful as my Mum's as it limits itself to 'woodland and hill birds', which doesn't appear to include Blackbird or Starling, but it has all the other thrushes, the tits, corvids, pigeons, farmland birds, game birds etc etc so that's all very useful. :) It was also published in Czechoslovakia in the 70s, though the author and illustrator are not the same as my Mum's, which was interesting to spot- maybe loads of bird egg books were coming out of Eastern Europe at the time and being translated? The range of birds is even wider and includes Roller, Nutcracker, Griffin Vulture, Hazel Grouse, Eagle Owl and all that cool stuff! My sister was really on the ball when she bought me that. :D
By the way, though I am a feather collector and have a growing collection of bones (and one deer tail), I wouldn't recommend anyone to collect eggshells because egg collecting is still just too close to home, at least in the UK. Hatched eggshells are very different from ones blown by a collector, but still, I prefer not to go there at all. The ones in my photo were put back outside once I'd photographed them. Bird eggs are beautiful, but they only belong in the wild, and in the UK every single one of them, no matter how common the bird, is protected to the full extent of the law from human intervention. Nests and eggs are more precious than gold.
Thursday, 20 March 2014
Mystery Mammal part 1, and the Tale of a Tail
Back in my New Years' roundup post, I wrote: 'With
the help of a friend, I added to these records two mammal records for my area
which were both unexpected and exciting, because they were species I didn’t know
were about. I hope to write about both
of them soon!' This post is going to be about the first one.
Last June, I got up one Sunday ready to go to my local patch for my weekly BTO Birdtrack survey, turned on my phone and found a text from a friend of mine. He'd been cycling back from the station late the night before, and had found what he described as a baby deer, dead on the road, and recently judging by the good condition. Being a lot less squeamish than I am, and a cool guy who likes to share stuff (we both find examining dead animals very interesting for naturalist reasons), he picked the deer up and transported it to the entrance of my local patch which was a little way along the road, and left it there under the trees at the entrance. He then sent me a text with the location, and urged me to go and look at it as soon as possible- as I've mentioned, my patch is a very popular dog walking spot, and this was a sunny Sunday, which meant there'd be dogs out in force, dogs who would no doubt be very interested in a dead deer. So I hurried there as quickly as possible, armed with my camera and sketchbook.
Upon arrival, I searched fruitlessly for a while before finding the poor thing. It was indeed small for a deer, and sort of odd-looking to my inexperienced eyes (inexperienced at deer, anyway!). I'd seen Roe Deer before at the patch and thought of them as the only deer in the area, but this deer was definitely too small. As my friend had called it a baby deer I was still working on the assumption that this was what it was, so I decided to look it up when I got home and started taking photos.
I won't be using many of the photos I took in this post because looking back at them, honestly the poor deer looks terrible. It didn't smell at all-I think it quite likely died the night my friend found it-and at the time I thought dogs hadn't damaged it that much, but looking at the photos now I think I was wrong. The deer presumably died after being hit by a car but it's hard to tell which of its injuries were caused by the car and which were the dogs. One of its back legs was badly broken, which probably was the car, but its tail had been torn right off and was missing, which was no doubt a dog, and the unbroken back leg had been quite obviously chewed. There were also bloody marks on its muzzle, around the eye and on its head, which could have been a corvid, possibly the Magpie that was sitting in a tree above eying the deer while I was there. The fur on the deer was also thin with small bald patches, which I suppose could have been from poor health before it died, but I suspect dogs worrying the corpse as more likely.
But enough morbid talk! I may not be using my photos, but I did do this sketch:
Most of the deer I've seen in the wild are Roe Deer, and they are the most common where I live. I've seen Fallow Deer a few times in the New Forest, but all my other observations of (wild, non-park) deer have been of Roes. Going by my assumption that this deer would be a Roe Deer, hopefully you can see from my sketch of what its head looked like why I would say it looked odd. Firstly, its head is wide but tapers sharply down to a thin, pointy nose. The inside of its ear has very little hair on it, with only a tuft where it joins the head and the rest bare, pink-grey, slightly wrinkled skin. The top of the head has odd ridges on it, running down the nose. And next to the eye is a strange, curved hole in the skin. At the time I assumed this was more damage to the body.
I texted my friend to say I'd found the deer, and he texted back saying 'I think it's a Muntjac'. At the time I thought 'Nah!' because I was so convinced Roe Deer were the only species in the area. By the time I got home and had a chance to google Muntjac Deer, my friend was starting to doubt that it was one. However once I saw the results of my google search, I was absolutely positive it was! Because I saw...this:
Well, not exactly this one, this is a stock image of a Muntjac, but it does the trick. It really helped that I had spent so much time carefully studying the ridges on the head and the texture of the inner ears while sketching, because when I looked at the photos, those were the features that jumped out at me and made me certain. Here's a Roe Deer for comparison:
You can see the Roe's ears are much hairier, its muzzle less pointy, and it lacks the distinctive head ridges the Muntjac has. Incidentally the Muntjac in the stock picture is a buck with antlers and you can see they grow out of the ends of the ridges, making the antlers seem to lie along the head rather than grow out of the top like the antlers of the native British deer species. The Muntjac I sketched didn't have antlers but both sexes have the ridges, and it was mostly their distinctiveness that made me sure it was a Muntjac. In the pictures you can also see the Muntjac is shorter-legged, shorter necked and stockier, and its fur is a yellow-brown shade while the Roe is more reddish-brown. And regarding the hole below the eye of the Muntjac that I thought was damage to the corpse- the stock picture doesn't really get close enough but you can just see little marks below the eyes. According to the British Deer Society those are actually sub-orbital glands, which are very large on Muntjac Deer.
Until my friend found the dead Muntjac, I had no idea there were Muntjac in Hampshire at all, especially not in my area! I knew very little about them, and I still don't know much, other than what they look like and that unlike other deer they tend to be solitary. Road kill is always sad to see, but there are often times when it can tell you a lot about an animal, and as I've mentioned in previous posts the National Mammal Atlas accepts records of all signs of mammals, so submitted findings of road kill can help build a more complete picture of the distribution of these mammals, and finding and identifying dead mammals that you'd have little chance of seeing alive in the wild is a great way of building your own knowledge of the wildlife in your local area. When I post Mystery Mammals part 2, I'll show another example of the discovery of a dead mammal I didn't have any idea was in the area that was found as road kill. By the way, if you're an artist interested in animal anatomy like myself, I highly recommend sketching dead animals from life, if you have the time and it's safe to do so (obviously if the mammal is in the middle of a road and it isn't possible or hygienic to move it, then maybe photos only!). Drawing the Muntjac from life when I didn't know what species it was helped me pick up on the details that would later allow me to identify it without doubt, and I got a sketch that I'm very happy with and which is much better observed than if I'd copied one of the photos I took instead.
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The sketch isn't the only thing I have relating to this deer. When I finished sketching and photographing, I was walking out of the area of woodland when I noticed a patch of fur under a tree. It was clearly the deer's fur, and nearby I found a much larger scrap that I realised was the deer's entire tail that had been torn off by a dog. On a whim, and thanks to a plastic sandwich bag I'd brought in case I found any feathers, I picked it up, wrapped it in the bag and took it home. My friend (a different friend) knew a bit about preservation techniques for pelts, and I thought I'd show it to her and see if she could teach me how to preserve it.
Mindful of decomposition, I asked her as soon as possible and she recommended I cure it with salt. Looking for a little more information, I discovered this tutorial about salt cure taxidermy. It recommends iodized salt, which I found without too much difficulty in a medium sized supermarket. Before starting I examined the tail and found it had come off relatively cleanly, and though I could feel a firm line along the middle where the end of the spine would go, there was no bone left in it at all- it must have remained on the carcass when the tail came off. The firmness was just the edges of the hole the spine had been in pressing together.
As the tutorial describes, I covered the bottom of a small box with a layer of salt. Then I sprinkled salt over the place where the tail had come off the body, as this is the area that needs the moisture drawn out of it the most, and then placed the tail in the box. Then I covered it up with salt and left it for 8 weeks. (The tutorial says 6-8 weeks depending on size but I went with the longest option to be safe!)
Here it is!
Last June, I got up one Sunday ready to go to my local patch for my weekly BTO Birdtrack survey, turned on my phone and found a text from a friend of mine. He'd been cycling back from the station late the night before, and had found what he described as a baby deer, dead on the road, and recently judging by the good condition. Being a lot less squeamish than I am, and a cool guy who likes to share stuff (we both find examining dead animals very interesting for naturalist reasons), he picked the deer up and transported it to the entrance of my local patch which was a little way along the road, and left it there under the trees at the entrance. He then sent me a text with the location, and urged me to go and look at it as soon as possible- as I've mentioned, my patch is a very popular dog walking spot, and this was a sunny Sunday, which meant there'd be dogs out in force, dogs who would no doubt be very interested in a dead deer. So I hurried there as quickly as possible, armed with my camera and sketchbook.
Upon arrival, I searched fruitlessly for a while before finding the poor thing. It was indeed small for a deer, and sort of odd-looking to my inexperienced eyes (inexperienced at deer, anyway!). I'd seen Roe Deer before at the patch and thought of them as the only deer in the area, but this deer was definitely too small. As my friend had called it a baby deer I was still working on the assumption that this was what it was, so I decided to look it up when I got home and started taking photos.
I won't be using many of the photos I took in this post because looking back at them, honestly the poor deer looks terrible. It didn't smell at all-I think it quite likely died the night my friend found it-and at the time I thought dogs hadn't damaged it that much, but looking at the photos now I think I was wrong. The deer presumably died after being hit by a car but it's hard to tell which of its injuries were caused by the car and which were the dogs. One of its back legs was badly broken, which probably was the car, but its tail had been torn right off and was missing, which was no doubt a dog, and the unbroken back leg had been quite obviously chewed. There were also bloody marks on its muzzle, around the eye and on its head, which could have been a corvid, possibly the Magpie that was sitting in a tree above eying the deer while I was there. The fur on the deer was also thin with small bald patches, which I suppose could have been from poor health before it died, but I suspect dogs worrying the corpse as more likely.
But enough morbid talk! I may not be using my photos, but I did do this sketch:
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| It was lying on leaf litter and one of the ears was buried, which is why I haven't drawn all of it |
Most of the deer I've seen in the wild are Roe Deer, and they are the most common where I live. I've seen Fallow Deer a few times in the New Forest, but all my other observations of (wild, non-park) deer have been of Roes. Going by my assumption that this deer would be a Roe Deer, hopefully you can see from my sketch of what its head looked like why I would say it looked odd. Firstly, its head is wide but tapers sharply down to a thin, pointy nose. The inside of its ear has very little hair on it, with only a tuft where it joins the head and the rest bare, pink-grey, slightly wrinkled skin. The top of the head has odd ridges on it, running down the nose. And next to the eye is a strange, curved hole in the skin. At the time I assumed this was more damage to the body.
I texted my friend to say I'd found the deer, and he texted back saying 'I think it's a Muntjac'. At the time I thought 'Nah!' because I was so convinced Roe Deer were the only species in the area. By the time I got home and had a chance to google Muntjac Deer, my friend was starting to doubt that it was one. However once I saw the results of my google search, I was absolutely positive it was! Because I saw...this:
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| By Nilfanion (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons |
Well, not exactly this one, this is a stock image of a Muntjac, but it does the trick. It really helped that I had spent so much time carefully studying the ridges on the head and the texture of the inner ears while sketching, because when I looked at the photos, those were the features that jumped out at me and made me certain. Here's a Roe Deer for comparison:
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| By Malene Thyssen (User Malene) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC-BY-SA-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons |
You can see the Roe's ears are much hairier, its muzzle less pointy, and it lacks the distinctive head ridges the Muntjac has. Incidentally the Muntjac in the stock picture is a buck with antlers and you can see they grow out of the ends of the ridges, making the antlers seem to lie along the head rather than grow out of the top like the antlers of the native British deer species. The Muntjac I sketched didn't have antlers but both sexes have the ridges, and it was mostly their distinctiveness that made me sure it was a Muntjac. In the pictures you can also see the Muntjac is shorter-legged, shorter necked and stockier, and its fur is a yellow-brown shade while the Roe is more reddish-brown. And regarding the hole below the eye of the Muntjac that I thought was damage to the corpse- the stock picture doesn't really get close enough but you can just see little marks below the eyes. According to the British Deer Society those are actually sub-orbital glands, which are very large on Muntjac Deer.
Until my friend found the dead Muntjac, I had no idea there were Muntjac in Hampshire at all, especially not in my area! I knew very little about them, and I still don't know much, other than what they look like and that unlike other deer they tend to be solitary. Road kill is always sad to see, but there are often times when it can tell you a lot about an animal, and as I've mentioned in previous posts the National Mammal Atlas accepts records of all signs of mammals, so submitted findings of road kill can help build a more complete picture of the distribution of these mammals, and finding and identifying dead mammals that you'd have little chance of seeing alive in the wild is a great way of building your own knowledge of the wildlife in your local area. When I post Mystery Mammals part 2, I'll show another example of the discovery of a dead mammal I didn't have any idea was in the area that was found as road kill. By the way, if you're an artist interested in animal anatomy like myself, I highly recommend sketching dead animals from life, if you have the time and it's safe to do so (obviously if the mammal is in the middle of a road and it isn't possible or hygienic to move it, then maybe photos only!). Drawing the Muntjac from life when I didn't know what species it was helped me pick up on the details that would later allow me to identify it without doubt, and I got a sketch that I'm very happy with and which is much better observed than if I'd copied one of the photos I took instead.
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The sketch isn't the only thing I have relating to this deer. When I finished sketching and photographing, I was walking out of the area of woodland when I noticed a patch of fur under a tree. It was clearly the deer's fur, and nearby I found a much larger scrap that I realised was the deer's entire tail that had been torn off by a dog. On a whim, and thanks to a plastic sandwich bag I'd brought in case I found any feathers, I picked it up, wrapped it in the bag and took it home. My friend (a different friend) knew a bit about preservation techniques for pelts, and I thought I'd show it to her and see if she could teach me how to preserve it.
Mindful of decomposition, I asked her as soon as possible and she recommended I cure it with salt. Looking for a little more information, I discovered this tutorial about salt cure taxidermy. It recommends iodized salt, which I found without too much difficulty in a medium sized supermarket. Before starting I examined the tail and found it had come off relatively cleanly, and though I could feel a firm line along the middle where the end of the spine would go, there was no bone left in it at all- it must have remained on the carcass when the tail came off. The firmness was just the edges of the hole the spine had been in pressing together.
As the tutorial describes, I covered the bottom of a small box with a layer of salt. Then I sprinkled salt over the place where the tail had come off the body, as this is the area that needs the moisture drawn out of it the most, and then placed the tail in the box. Then I covered it up with salt and left it for 8 weeks. (The tutorial says 6-8 weeks depending on size but I went with the longest option to be safe!)
Here it is!
Look at the gorgeous colour in that fur. :) As you can see from the bottom photo, everything dried out just fine and though there was never much flesh on it, what there was is now preserved.
The Muntjac tail is now part of my not-very-big collection of things that aren't feathers. I have a few small bones, which I will write about one day, and a Roe Deer antler (bought not found, sadly), and now my first tail, of an animal I've never seen alive. I doubt I will make collecting tails from road kill into a habit but it's an interesting part of my naturalistic collection. I sometimes read blogs of people who skin animals and preserve the pelt, or stuff roadkill, but I'm not interested in doing any of these things myself, nor am I interested in making jewellery out of (legally collected) preserved animal tails, which the tutorial I used seems to have been made for the purpose of. It's interesting to read about these things, though! That reminds me, I really must start a blogroll in a sidebar on this blog showing blogs I read and admire.
Thursday, 13 March 2014
Guessing at Fungi, and a Sly Visitor!
If you've been reading my blog in the past few months you will know that I love fungi, but it's really a very recent thing that was kickstarted last autumn, when I was looking for birds (unsuccessfully) in a local wood, and suddenly noticed I was surrounded by autumn fungi, of all shapes and sizes. Then it turned into an obsession when I was in a German wood and found fungi in red, yellow, green and purple, and all kinds of shapes and textures. From then on, I've been noticing fungi everywhere.
I can't remember why I never noticed fungi before this autumn, as I was always out birdwatching before that in places where fungi might be found. I think it was something to do with an idea I had about most fungi being brown and white mushrooms that all looked the same and weren't very interesting. I knew there were more different shapes and colours and textures, but I thought you had to be an expert to find those ones, and you'd only get to that point after getting really good at looking at the brown mushrooms. However, I now realise this is absolutely not true- once you begin looking out for fungi you will start to realise that some of the commonest species of fungi are some of the most brightly coloured, strangest in shape, and weirdest in texture! I'm going to go on to show you some examples that I found in the past couple of months at my local patch during my weekly bird-counting visits- despite the bright colours of some of it, I might have overlooked if I hadn't had my eyes open for fungi.
First, a quick note: fungi is awesome to look at, but even species that look really distinctive can be strangely hard to identify. I found this out with my Meadow Coral/Yellow Stagshorn confusion in the Germany post I linked above, and from some correspondence I had with the excellent Mark Baldwin at Wildlife Online (http://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/) I learned that photographing fungi where it grows may not be enough to always be sure of a positive ID- you may need to photograph the gill structure as well, or cut it in half to look at the structure inside, or for some of the 'brown mushrooms' I mention above, you might even need to taste the fungus's secretion! (Note: do NOT do this unless you are an expert!!! I certainly won't be trying it for a while!) The identification book for fungi that I use (which Mark also recommends), is Mushrooms by Roger Phillips, which I have on long-term loan from my dad, but I really must get my own copy ^^- this book includes how common a fungus is which is really useful (and also how poisonous/good to eat a fungus is, which is just interesting!). To back this up, when I think I've IDed something I use the Hampshire Fungus Recording Group website that I mention at the end of this post, and if there's not many records of it I reconsider the plausibility of my ID. I may also do a google image search on a species I think I've found, especially if it looked close but was a slightly different colour or shape than in the picture in the book, as fungi are widely variable in colour and shape (some with age, some...just to be annoying, I think XD) and an image search should show you several variations of the same species.
Now: on to the fungi!
I think these interesting little things are most likely to be Common Jellyspot, even though most of the pictures I saw of Jellyspot were more orange than these various shades of pink and maroon! I love the huge variety of shapes, sizes and textures that were all on the same log. The incredible smoothness, curvyness and shininess looks like some sort of modern art. Looking back at these photos now, I kind of wish I'd poked them with a stick to see if they were as squashy as they look! In the 4th photo down is what looks like one that's been squashed, so maybe they are.
These are both the same one- you can see in the top one how it seems to melt into the tree, and in the second one how high the dome is. I love this one because of how wet and jelly-like it looks, as if it's sort of melted down over the bark! Unlike the Jellyspot (and most other fungi I seem to see), this one was on its own. This was hard to ID but I think it might be White Milking Bonnet? Heeding Mark's advice about the gill structure, and also because I wanted to see what the stem was like under the cap, I took the following photo:
Even though this photo came out really nicely, I'm not experienced enough to actually use the gill structure to verify ID yet. I think the White Milking Bonnet is a subspecies of Milking Bonnet, and there aren't as many records of White Milking Bonnet in Hampshire as there are Milking Bonnet, but it's tricky with subspecies. This was a really hard one to get even a tentative ID on so if anyone knows about Milking Bonnet-type fungi or has another ID suggestion for my melting white mushroom, let me know! :)
This little bright one was a relatively easy; it's a Yellow Brain fungus! I couldn't have thought of a better name myself. Again, these are photos of the same one from different angles.
This one was an odd one. It looks quite like the Jelly Spot without any of the colour, but I found a photo of a fungus that looked like it in the suggested images while looking at google search results for the Yellow Brain- clicking into it showed it was called the Crystal Brain. Despite the name, as you can see it's not really that similar looking to the Yellow Brain, and the Latin names (Tremella mesenterica and Myxarium nucleatum) suggest they are not closely related at all. (Even fungi that do look alike aren't necessarily related, of course!) Crystal was the closest ID I could find for the fungi in the photo, but weirdly Crystal Brain wasn't in Roger Phillips' fungi guide at all, not even under the Latin name. But when I searched the name in the Hampshire fungi site, there were many records. Does anyone know why it might not have been in the book? Very odd, and it's a good thing the name is similar to the Yellow Brain or I might never have even had an idea what it might be!
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The more interested I get in fungi, the more I see it everywhere! And to an extent, the same thing is happening with signs of mammals. As I wrote about in this post, I've been keeping notes about signs of mammals I see for the National Mammal Database, and my local patch is no exception. Warning in case you're eating dinner: poo pictures to follow!
Up at the top of my patch there's a railway line surrounded by scrubby vegetation, and back in January I detected a sly visitor up there! Unlike most mammals, you can sometimes detect this one with your sense of smell. Walking along the field margin next to the railway line, I smelled a distinctive, spicy, peppery odour that can only mean one animal- a fox! And aside from the smell, there were various visual signs.
I can't remember why I never noticed fungi before this autumn, as I was always out birdwatching before that in places where fungi might be found. I think it was something to do with an idea I had about most fungi being brown and white mushrooms that all looked the same and weren't very interesting. I knew there were more different shapes and colours and textures, but I thought you had to be an expert to find those ones, and you'd only get to that point after getting really good at looking at the brown mushrooms. However, I now realise this is absolutely not true- once you begin looking out for fungi you will start to realise that some of the commonest species of fungi are some of the most brightly coloured, strangest in shape, and weirdest in texture! I'm going to go on to show you some examples that I found in the past couple of months at my local patch during my weekly bird-counting visits- despite the bright colours of some of it, I might have overlooked if I hadn't had my eyes open for fungi.
First, a quick note: fungi is awesome to look at, but even species that look really distinctive can be strangely hard to identify. I found this out with my Meadow Coral/Yellow Stagshorn confusion in the Germany post I linked above, and from some correspondence I had with the excellent Mark Baldwin at Wildlife Online (http://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/) I learned that photographing fungi where it grows may not be enough to always be sure of a positive ID- you may need to photograph the gill structure as well, or cut it in half to look at the structure inside, or for some of the 'brown mushrooms' I mention above, you might even need to taste the fungus's secretion! (Note: do NOT do this unless you are an expert!!! I certainly won't be trying it for a while!) The identification book for fungi that I use (which Mark also recommends), is Mushrooms by Roger Phillips, which I have on long-term loan from my dad, but I really must get my own copy ^^- this book includes how common a fungus is which is really useful (and also how poisonous/good to eat a fungus is, which is just interesting!). To back this up, when I think I've IDed something I use the Hampshire Fungus Recording Group website that I mention at the end of this post, and if there's not many records of it I reconsider the plausibility of my ID. I may also do a google image search on a species I think I've found, especially if it looked close but was a slightly different colour or shape than in the picture in the book, as fungi are widely variable in colour and shape (some with age, some...just to be annoying, I think XD) and an image search should show you several variations of the same species.
Now: on to the fungi!
I think these interesting little things are most likely to be Common Jellyspot, even though most of the pictures I saw of Jellyspot were more orange than these various shades of pink and maroon! I love the huge variety of shapes, sizes and textures that were all on the same log. The incredible smoothness, curvyness and shininess looks like some sort of modern art. Looking back at these photos now, I kind of wish I'd poked them with a stick to see if they were as squashy as they look! In the 4th photo down is what looks like one that's been squashed, so maybe they are.
These are both the same one- you can see in the top one how it seems to melt into the tree, and in the second one how high the dome is. I love this one because of how wet and jelly-like it looks, as if it's sort of melted down over the bark! Unlike the Jellyspot (and most other fungi I seem to see), this one was on its own. This was hard to ID but I think it might be White Milking Bonnet? Heeding Mark's advice about the gill structure, and also because I wanted to see what the stem was like under the cap, I took the following photo:
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| I had to make it bigger than the others as it's one of my favourite photos I've ever taken! :D |
Even though this photo came out really nicely, I'm not experienced enough to actually use the gill structure to verify ID yet. I think the White Milking Bonnet is a subspecies of Milking Bonnet, and there aren't as many records of White Milking Bonnet in Hampshire as there are Milking Bonnet, but it's tricky with subspecies. This was a really hard one to get even a tentative ID on so if anyone knows about Milking Bonnet-type fungi or has another ID suggestion for my melting white mushroom, let me know! :)
This little bright one was a relatively easy; it's a Yellow Brain fungus! I couldn't have thought of a better name myself. Again, these are photos of the same one from different angles.
This one was an odd one. It looks quite like the Jelly Spot without any of the colour, but I found a photo of a fungus that looked like it in the suggested images while looking at google search results for the Yellow Brain- clicking into it showed it was called the Crystal Brain. Despite the name, as you can see it's not really that similar looking to the Yellow Brain, and the Latin names (Tremella mesenterica and Myxarium nucleatum) suggest they are not closely related at all. (Even fungi that do look alike aren't necessarily related, of course!) Crystal was the closest ID I could find for the fungi in the photo, but weirdly Crystal Brain wasn't in Roger Phillips' fungi guide at all, not even under the Latin name. But when I searched the name in the Hampshire fungi site, there were many records. Does anyone know why it might not have been in the book? Very odd, and it's a good thing the name is similar to the Yellow Brain or I might never have even had an idea what it might be!
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The more interested I get in fungi, the more I see it everywhere! And to an extent, the same thing is happening with signs of mammals. As I wrote about in this post, I've been keeping notes about signs of mammals I see for the National Mammal Database, and my local patch is no exception. Warning in case you're eating dinner: poo pictures to follow!
Up at the top of my patch there's a railway line surrounded by scrubby vegetation, and back in January I detected a sly visitor up there! Unlike most mammals, you can sometimes detect this one with your sense of smell. Walking along the field margin next to the railway line, I smelled a distinctive, spicy, peppery odour that can only mean one animal- a fox! And aside from the smell, there were various visual signs.
My local patch is very popular with dog walkers, and unfortunately a large number of them don't clean up their dog mess, so dog would be the main confusion species for these droppings. However as you can see from the closeup, there are feathers and what looks like crunched up bones in this dropping, not something you'd generally find in the poo of a dog fed on dog food. Plus when I was taking this photo, I noticed that the smell was...actually not as bad as you'd expect from a dog! While dog poo really stinks (and it makes my patch a bit unpleasant on a hot summers day, I can tell you!) this poo merely smelled like more of the fox smell, which wasn't unbearably unpleasant. I haven't included badger as a confusion species for this despite the size being similar, because I've seen no evidence of badgers at my patch or in the area at all, and don't think it's likely. But as I mentioned in the post I linked at the start of this section, badger poo doesn't really seem to have a smell.
I also found these nearby:
Considering that the fox droppings had feathers in them, and these Woodpigeon feathers have been broken off by the shaft, I suspect that someone caught a pigeon and ate at least some of it near here! A sign you can use to tell if a mammal removed the feathers from a kill rather than a bird of prey is if the feathers are bedraggled, which can be due to the saliva of the animal and the fact that they sometimes chew the feathers. However in this case I think they're bedraggled because of the rain. The feathers in fox poo show a much more likely connection.
And finally, I found what looked like trails a fox-sized animal would make while pushing through the undergrowth:
I was glad to find so many signs of my sly visitor! I don't know if any foxes have a territory nearby, and I've never seen or heard one in the area near my patch (it's near the suburban neighbourhood where I live, and I've never had any reason to believe there are urban foxes about), so it's possible this fox was just passing through. I did smell the foxy odour on a couple more visits since this, but never found so many clear signs again. This was all found a few months ago, I wonder where the fox is now?
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It's funny- the more I look for different types of nature, the more I realise the value of educated guessing. You may not know 100% what you're looking at all the time, but you can get better at guessing, while waiting until you know more, or perhaps meet someone who knows more who can help you. For example, when I first was contacted by Mark Baldwin at Wildlife Online (linked at the top of this post) he verified some speculation I'd been mulling over in my Badger Mysteries post about whether badgers ever kill pheasants and other gamebirds. Mark showed me research that says- they do! It was brilliant to find out for sure. :) Thanks Mark, and as I always say, if you can give me the answers to any of my questions or you want to correct me on something, then I would absolutely love to hear from you!
And as the Spring rolls in, while you're keeping your eyes on the trees and your ears open for birdsong, don't forget to look down to the ground and keep your nose open too! ;)
Wednesday, 19 February 2014
Amazing Lichen
...Once again, I keep meaning to post more often, and that fungi post is still waiting for me to get the book out and ID them! Plus a lot of stuff has been going on and I've started another new job (last time it was a Christmas job, but hopefully this one will be long term!). But for now, let me share with you an amazing thing I saw a couple of weeks ago.
I went to one of the New Forest coniferous/deciduous enclosures in the hope of finding Siskins and Bramblings, but had no luck, so I'd decided to go back and move on to Keyhaven when I noticed a tree stump that was covered in lichen.
I went in closer for a look, and was amazed by the diversity of structures of lichen on this one stump. And yet I really think they were all the same species, because there were still similarities despite the different shapes.
A large amount of the stump was covered in blunt, branched spikes like these ones:
On some, the branches ended in rounded, shallow cups.
And on some of the stalks, the ends were larger and flatter, looking a little like water-lily leaves!
But there was something even more surprising. Look at this photo:
Yep, it's quite distinctive- there's a shiny red globule on the end of one of the stems! What's more, to the left of it you can just see another one starting to appear. I had never seen anything like it. What on earth is it? It couldn't possibly be a flower, could it?
It wasn't the only one either: here's but one of the photos I took of another one that was helpfully isolated on its own so I could get a clear shot:
They look so shiny! They also look like they'd be wet and squashy, but I'm pretty sure I tested this out by poking them with something and they actually were quite solid. Whatever they're for, looking shiny must be useful for that in some way!
While trying to identify this lichen, I found this helpful picture guide where you can choose what category you think your lichen best fits in. I decided mine was a Shrubby lichen, and that led me to three species that have red growths: Cladonia polydactyla, Cladonia coccifera and Cladonia bellidiflora. (I think all the species in that section are in the Cladonia family.) Coccifera and bellidiflora had different shapes and textures of branch in the photos I saw, so I'm going to tentatively identify the species I found as Cladonia polydactyla, though I could always be wrong so please do correct me if so! Interesting, the photo the site had of Cladonia polydactyla had red growths on practically every stalk, and the growths also looked less shiny, so I wonder if the one I found was only just starting to grow its red globules, and the ones it did have looked shiny because they were very new, and soon, perhaps by now as I'm writing this, the red globules would be absolutely everywhere? I wish I could see the stump again right now!
As you can probably tell, I not only know very little about lichens but have never really considered knowing more before I found this lichen that interested me so much. I probably should read up more on lichens and find out what the red things are and why they are all coming out now. If I do, I'll be sure to write another post, but for now I'll certainly be keeping my eyes open for lichen like never before!
I went to one of the New Forest coniferous/deciduous enclosures in the hope of finding Siskins and Bramblings, but had no luck, so I'd decided to go back and move on to Keyhaven when I noticed a tree stump that was covered in lichen.
I went in closer for a look, and was amazed by the diversity of structures of lichen on this one stump. And yet I really think they were all the same species, because there were still similarities despite the different shapes.
A large amount of the stump was covered in blunt, branched spikes like these ones:
On some, the branches ended in rounded, shallow cups.
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| The long red things are old pine needles in case you were wondering! |
And on some of the stalks, the ends were larger and flatter, looking a little like water-lily leaves!
 |
| I didn't really notice the tiny white dots while I was taking this photo, but now I wonder if those are the beginnings of new stems? |
But there was something even more surprising. Look at this photo:
Yep, it's quite distinctive- there's a shiny red globule on the end of one of the stems! What's more, to the left of it you can just see another one starting to appear. I had never seen anything like it. What on earth is it? It couldn't possibly be a flower, could it?
It wasn't the only one either: here's but one of the photos I took of another one that was helpfully isolated on its own so I could get a clear shot:
I've seen some weird, colourful fungi, in a variety of textures, but all the lichen I'd ever seen before had been crusty and rough-looking, so this was the first time I'd ever seen smoothness on lichen. Maybe that's why I found this so fascinating, as well as the fact that it seemed so different in colour and texture from the rest of the lichen growths, very like a colourful flower growing from a green stem, only lichens aren't plants and as far as I know don't need to be pollinated, so what is the purpose of the red globules? If anyone knows, or can tell me the proper name for the globules, please please let me know! Part of me is happy reveling in how weird they are, but the rest of me would love to know what's actually going on here. ^^
But that wasn't all! There were multi-growth globules too!
They look so shiny! They also look like they'd be wet and squashy, but I'm pretty sure I tested this out by poking them with something and they actually were quite solid. Whatever they're for, looking shiny must be useful for that in some way!
While trying to identify this lichen, I found this helpful picture guide where you can choose what category you think your lichen best fits in. I decided mine was a Shrubby lichen, and that led me to three species that have red growths: Cladonia polydactyla, Cladonia coccifera and Cladonia bellidiflora. (I think all the species in that section are in the Cladonia family.) Coccifera and bellidiflora had different shapes and textures of branch in the photos I saw, so I'm going to tentatively identify the species I found as Cladonia polydactyla, though I could always be wrong so please do correct me if so! Interesting, the photo the site had of Cladonia polydactyla had red growths on practically every stalk, and the growths also looked less shiny, so I wonder if the one I found was only just starting to grow its red globules, and the ones it did have looked shiny because they were very new, and soon, perhaps by now as I'm writing this, the red globules would be absolutely everywhere? I wish I could see the stump again right now!
As you can probably tell, I not only know very little about lichens but have never really considered knowing more before I found this lichen that interested me so much. I probably should read up more on lichens and find out what the red things are and why they are all coming out now. If I do, I'll be sure to write another post, but for now I'll certainly be keeping my eyes open for lichen like never before!
Monday, 3 February 2014
Sparrowhawks and Magpies
I have a post about fungi and foxes in the works, but I want to write about something I saw a few days ago in my garden. There was a sudden commotion of birds outside, with flocks of small birds bursting out of the trees and Rooks and Black-headed Gulls swirling up above, and then suddenly a large, brown Woodpigeon-sized blur whooshed into the garden at top speed and disappeared into one of the trees. The garden was suddenly empty of birds, and that made me almost certain that the blur that arrived wasn't a Woodpigeon (well, that and the speed it arrived at!), but a Sparrowhawk!
I kept watching, and sure enough a female Sparrowhawk soon hopped into view, and sat in the tree. I expected her to leave pretty quickly, but she actually stayed about 2 hours. She was left in peace for a little while, and then all of a sudden a pair of Magpies arrived in a flurry of tailfeathers and landed in the same tree. Magpies are an unusual visitor in my garden, probably more so than Sparrowhawks, but they are the corvid that currently visits most often.
The Magpies began to hop around the tree, not getting too close to the hawk but obviously intending to bother her. They were fluffing their feathers, flaring their tails and making sudden movements. They were also hitting the tree branches with their beaks, especially when they were near the hawk. I kept trying to convince myself it was a feeding behaviour but the longer I watched the more it seemed like a sort of intimidation tactic aimed at the Sparrowhawk, as if saying 'look how sharp and powerful our beaks are and how strong we are!' I later saw a Magpie sitting on another tree pecking the ends off branches, but that time it was clearly picking something off the tree (early buds? Who knows but anything's possible this winter!), and this was different from the branch hammering. Has anyone else seen Magpies pecking branches as an intimidation tactic? I may be totally off with this theory. ^^
The Sparrowhawk didn't budge at all, but kept turning her head to keep an eye on the Magpies, occasionally preening or tucking her foot into her breastfeathers. It was interesting to see how the Magpies avoided going close to her, and it made me realise I'd never seen a mobbing situation happen in a tree before, only in flight. I knew mobbing in trees happened because it's a known method for finding roosting owls, as you can see smaller birds making a commotion around the area in the tree where the owl is. I've heard Jays making an appalling screeching at Tawny Owls before (didn't see either of them but heard some irate hooting!), but never been able to see the mobbing actually happening. It was very interesting to see a tree mobbing incident.
I've seen in-flight mobbing many times (though I believe I've only written about it once: the Sparrowhawk mobbing Goshawk incident in Germany), and seen crows and Rooks mobbing Buzzards all the time at my patch, and the corvids often fly daringly close to the Buzzard, even provoking it to swing its talons so they have to dodge out of the way. I'm sure birds of prey do occasionally manage to kill birds that are mobbing them, but it's clear that being in flight means the birds can use their maximum flying agility to dodge. But perched, they are at a high risk of the hawk suddenly scratching with a talon and inflicting a dangerous wound that could potentially be fatal. It's a similar principle to why Red Deer avoid attacking each other with their antlers during the rut unless they have to-when there's sharp objects involved, it has to be really, really worth it! I'm sure that's why the Magpies avoided going too near, even though the hawk wasn't moving at all.
The Magpies stopped trying after a while and left, and the hawk was sitting as tight as ever. The small birds were starting to regroup and were all keeping an eye on her; flocks of Chaffinches, Goldfinches and Chaffinches and the Blue Tit pair were all watching that Sparrowhawk with caution, as well as a Grey Squirrel that had begun to climb into her tree but turned back quickly when it spotted her!
Then suddenly the Magpies were back, but they'd brought reinforcements in the form of two more Magpies. A fifth one was also at the back of the garden- this was more Magpies together than I'd ever seen in my garden before! The four Magpies continued to bounce around the tree, trying to intimidate the hawk. At one point they all flew back to join the single Magpie in the back tree, before suddenly flying back to the hawk's tree in a rush, as if trying to intimidate her with numbers, which was comical to watch. The hawk continued to sit tight, until she seemed to become fed up with being surrounded by Magpies. She made a sudden movement, jumping from her branch to an upper branch, and the Magpies scattered. What's more, they did not return. Their hassling had had no effect, but the Sparrowhawk had got rid of them in one swoop!
Magpies are confident, bossy birds and it was interesting seeing them be intimidated in this way. I don't know why the Sparrowhawk wanted to sit in our garden, whether she was digesting a meal or thinking of doing some hunting, but whatever it was she obviously didn't feel like being bothered. As far as I know my garden isn't part of Magpies' territory (or if it is, as I've said before, they don't visit my garden very much- I don't think they like that it's quite a confined space), so I guess they decided it was too risky to continue their attempt to shoo her away. If you have any stories of Magpies or other corvids bothering predators, whether the corvids persisted or were driven away by the predator, please send me a comment or email me and tell me all about it! :)
I wrote before about a female Sparrowhawk visiting the garden but I don't think it was the same bird as I saw a few days ago. The bird the above post is about had a little orange-red barring on her upper breast instead of the usual dark grey female barring, while the bird from last October had only dark grey baring. Male Sparrowhawks have orange-red barring all over the breast, and I have seen a few females with a little reddish barring too, but have never seen this explained in a bird book. Its impossible for the birds with a little reddish barring to be males because females are so much bigger. Does it mean these female birds are first-winters? That's the only thing I can think of but it seems wrong somehow, because why would young female Sparrowhawks moult into a brighter plumage before getting their adult feathers? It's possible there's no reason for it and it's just natural variation. If anyone can confirm either of these or knows the real reason, please do contact me. I'd love to find out more.
I kept watching, and sure enough a female Sparrowhawk soon hopped into view, and sat in the tree. I expected her to leave pretty quickly, but she actually stayed about 2 hours. She was left in peace for a little while, and then all of a sudden a pair of Magpies arrived in a flurry of tailfeathers and landed in the same tree. Magpies are an unusual visitor in my garden, probably more so than Sparrowhawks, but they are the corvid that currently visits most often.
The Magpies began to hop around the tree, not getting too close to the hawk but obviously intending to bother her. They were fluffing their feathers, flaring their tails and making sudden movements. They were also hitting the tree branches with their beaks, especially when they were near the hawk. I kept trying to convince myself it was a feeding behaviour but the longer I watched the more it seemed like a sort of intimidation tactic aimed at the Sparrowhawk, as if saying 'look how sharp and powerful our beaks are and how strong we are!' I later saw a Magpie sitting on another tree pecking the ends off branches, but that time it was clearly picking something off the tree (early buds? Who knows but anything's possible this winter!), and this was different from the branch hammering. Has anyone else seen Magpies pecking branches as an intimidation tactic? I may be totally off with this theory. ^^
The Sparrowhawk didn't budge at all, but kept turning her head to keep an eye on the Magpies, occasionally preening or tucking her foot into her breastfeathers. It was interesting to see how the Magpies avoided going close to her, and it made me realise I'd never seen a mobbing situation happen in a tree before, only in flight. I knew mobbing in trees happened because it's a known method for finding roosting owls, as you can see smaller birds making a commotion around the area in the tree where the owl is. I've heard Jays making an appalling screeching at Tawny Owls before (didn't see either of them but heard some irate hooting!), but never been able to see the mobbing actually happening. It was very interesting to see a tree mobbing incident.
I've seen in-flight mobbing many times (though I believe I've only written about it once: the Sparrowhawk mobbing Goshawk incident in Germany), and seen crows and Rooks mobbing Buzzards all the time at my patch, and the corvids often fly daringly close to the Buzzard, even provoking it to swing its talons so they have to dodge out of the way. I'm sure birds of prey do occasionally manage to kill birds that are mobbing them, but it's clear that being in flight means the birds can use their maximum flying agility to dodge. But perched, they are at a high risk of the hawk suddenly scratching with a talon and inflicting a dangerous wound that could potentially be fatal. It's a similar principle to why Red Deer avoid attacking each other with their antlers during the rut unless they have to-when there's sharp objects involved, it has to be really, really worth it! I'm sure that's why the Magpies avoided going too near, even though the hawk wasn't moving at all.
The Magpies stopped trying after a while and left, and the hawk was sitting as tight as ever. The small birds were starting to regroup and were all keeping an eye on her; flocks of Chaffinches, Goldfinches and Chaffinches and the Blue Tit pair were all watching that Sparrowhawk with caution, as well as a Grey Squirrel that had begun to climb into her tree but turned back quickly when it spotted her!
Then suddenly the Magpies were back, but they'd brought reinforcements in the form of two more Magpies. A fifth one was also at the back of the garden- this was more Magpies together than I'd ever seen in my garden before! The four Magpies continued to bounce around the tree, trying to intimidate the hawk. At one point they all flew back to join the single Magpie in the back tree, before suddenly flying back to the hawk's tree in a rush, as if trying to intimidate her with numbers, which was comical to watch. The hawk continued to sit tight, until she seemed to become fed up with being surrounded by Magpies. She made a sudden movement, jumping from her branch to an upper branch, and the Magpies scattered. What's more, they did not return. Their hassling had had no effect, but the Sparrowhawk had got rid of them in one swoop!
Magpies are confident, bossy birds and it was interesting seeing them be intimidated in this way. I don't know why the Sparrowhawk wanted to sit in our garden, whether she was digesting a meal or thinking of doing some hunting, but whatever it was she obviously didn't feel like being bothered. As far as I know my garden isn't part of Magpies' territory (or if it is, as I've said before, they don't visit my garden very much- I don't think they like that it's quite a confined space), so I guess they decided it was too risky to continue their attempt to shoo her away. If you have any stories of Magpies or other corvids bothering predators, whether the corvids persisted or were driven away by the predator, please send me a comment or email me and tell me all about it! :)
I wrote before about a female Sparrowhawk visiting the garden but I don't think it was the same bird as I saw a few days ago. The bird the above post is about had a little orange-red barring on her upper breast instead of the usual dark grey female barring, while the bird from last October had only dark grey baring. Male Sparrowhawks have orange-red barring all over the breast, and I have seen a few females with a little reddish barring too, but have never seen this explained in a bird book. Its impossible for the birds with a little reddish barring to be males because females are so much bigger. Does it mean these female birds are first-winters? That's the only thing I can think of but it seems wrong somehow, because why would young female Sparrowhawks moult into a brighter plumage before getting their adult feathers? It's possible there's no reason for it and it's just natural variation. If anyone can confirm either of these or knows the real reason, please do contact me. I'd love to find out more.
Thursday, 23 January 2014
Amorous Activities in the Pigeon Family
This is sort of a continuation to my last post about early signs of Spring caused by the mild winter, but only sort of, as hopefully I will show! On a walk about a week ago, I found this:
This is a Woodpigeon's egg, which has been predated. If it had hatched naturally it would have broken into two halves due to the way a baby bird pecks around an egg to escape it using its egg-tooth. And according to my trusty Helm Identification Guide 'Tracks & Signs of the Birds of Britain and Europe', a predator such as a weasel would smash the whole egg up when it ate it. The hole in this otherwise intact eggshell shows that it was predated by a bird, such as a corvid.
The reason I said that this is only sort of a sign of early Spring is that Woodpigeons (and other pigeon species such as Collared Dove) are known to breed at all times of year. They can do this because, unlike most passerines, they can regurgitate food to feed to their babies in a substance known as pigeon milk, meaning as long as there's food for the adults there's food for the babies. Other species of birds, such as Blue Tits, need soft food such as caterpillars and insects for their babies, so they have to breed at the right time of year for that food.
However, weather still matters and I doubt Woodpigeons would have been breeding last January. It was just too cold. And even with this year's mild winter, if this egg hadn't been predated I wouldn't have expected it to survive. Woodpigeons build very basic nests of just a few twigs in a tree, and it's been SO windy and rainy this winter that the nest would have probably blown down.
Speaking of breeding behaviour in the pigeon family, today I was looking out into my garden and saw a pair of Collared Doves start mating! Then, as if that wasn't enough, only a few minutes later there was a pair of Woodpigeons who also began to mate, but this time I got the chance to see a little bit of their courtship too. What first drew my attention was one pigeon began pecking at the beak of the other, and then stuck its beak right inside the other's; it was being fed on pigeon milk! I'd never seen anything like it before. I guessed the one doing the feeding must have been the male, and sure enough when they began to mate it was this bird that jumped on top. Before mating they sort of snuggled up together, with the male puffing up his breast feathers to look bigger.
I've talked about courtship feeding before, and how I've seen females in both Blue Tits and Carrion Crows use a wing-fluttering display to show they want to be fed by the male. The female pecking the male's beak was different though, and reminded me more of the Herring Gull chicks when they pecked their parent's beak on the red pecking spot to get them to regurgitate. Only in the case of the adult Herring Gulls, they were regurgitating a large lump of food onto the ground for the chicks, while the Woodpigeon behaviour I saw suggests that their young take food straight from the parents' beaks. Well, the name 'pigeon milk' does suggest liquid! The male Woodpigeon was showing the female how well he'd be able to feed babies when it came to the time, as well as how well he would feed the female while she was laying and incubating. It looks like more eggs are coming in the future, so let's hope we don't get any more storms!
Woodpigeons are such fascinating birds to watch, especially as you can often observe their behaviour very closely when they are in gardens and parks. We have a ground feeder in our garden and I've noticed how dominant Woodpigeons have a sort of 'lurch forward and wing-flap' gesture that they do to scare off other birds feeding on it. Or at least, it's supposed to! It works on other Woodpigeons and on Collared Doves; they all back off. But Starlings tend to ignore the gesture completely! Starlings may be a good bit smaller than pigeons but they aren't easily intimidated. And perhaps pigeon body language doesn't translate well outside the family?
I hope I'll have the chance to write more about Woodpigeons in the future, because I've seen all kinds of interesting interactions among them. I've seen them squaring up, bowing to each other, standing up as tall as possible, mimicking each other's behaviour...what do these behaviours mean? To guess at that I'd need to watch them more closely, which I plan to do in the future. Since writing this blog I've started watching bird behaviour more closely than ever before, and I feel like I'm finding out new things all the time! As always, please do submit stories of your own about bird behaviour- have you seen any pigeon courtship this winter? If so, leave me comment and tell me all about it! :)
**************************
This is unrelated to pigeons, but on the same walk that I found that eggshell, I saw this:
On the left is a small animal hole (I'd say the photo is about actual size), and in the middle and bottom you can see the shells of seeds. I don't know what species lives here but I'm sure its either a mouse or a vole, as they both eat seeds. Leaving all the seed shells outside reminds me a bit of our hamster, who tends to spit his empty shells outside of his bed! Of course a small animal that lives in a hole doesn't really need to hide its seed shells, as it is safe inside and the hole is so obvious anyway.
**************************
And finally, and back on the pigeons, here's a slightly disturbing pop cultural reference to pigeon milk! I'm a big fan of the game series Animal Crossing, in which there's a pigeon character named the Brewster who owns a coffee shop. After you get to know him a bit, he offers you some pigeon milk to put in your coffee. Um........:O
Someone in this game's development had a sense of humour alright!
...But as you can see from the picture, in the game your character seems to really enjoy the pigeon milk-infused coffee. So I guess it's not so bad!
This is a Woodpigeon's egg, which has been predated. If it had hatched naturally it would have broken into two halves due to the way a baby bird pecks around an egg to escape it using its egg-tooth. And according to my trusty Helm Identification Guide 'Tracks & Signs of the Birds of Britain and Europe', a predator such as a weasel would smash the whole egg up when it ate it. The hole in this otherwise intact eggshell shows that it was predated by a bird, such as a corvid.
The reason I said that this is only sort of a sign of early Spring is that Woodpigeons (and other pigeon species such as Collared Dove) are known to breed at all times of year. They can do this because, unlike most passerines, they can regurgitate food to feed to their babies in a substance known as pigeon milk, meaning as long as there's food for the adults there's food for the babies. Other species of birds, such as Blue Tits, need soft food such as caterpillars and insects for their babies, so they have to breed at the right time of year for that food.
However, weather still matters and I doubt Woodpigeons would have been breeding last January. It was just too cold. And even with this year's mild winter, if this egg hadn't been predated I wouldn't have expected it to survive. Woodpigeons build very basic nests of just a few twigs in a tree, and it's been SO windy and rainy this winter that the nest would have probably blown down.
Speaking of breeding behaviour in the pigeon family, today I was looking out into my garden and saw a pair of Collared Doves start mating! Then, as if that wasn't enough, only a few minutes later there was a pair of Woodpigeons who also began to mate, but this time I got the chance to see a little bit of their courtship too. What first drew my attention was one pigeon began pecking at the beak of the other, and then stuck its beak right inside the other's; it was being fed on pigeon milk! I'd never seen anything like it before. I guessed the one doing the feeding must have been the male, and sure enough when they began to mate it was this bird that jumped on top. Before mating they sort of snuggled up together, with the male puffing up his breast feathers to look bigger.
I've talked about courtship feeding before, and how I've seen females in both Blue Tits and Carrion Crows use a wing-fluttering display to show they want to be fed by the male. The female pecking the male's beak was different though, and reminded me more of the Herring Gull chicks when they pecked their parent's beak on the red pecking spot to get them to regurgitate. Only in the case of the adult Herring Gulls, they were regurgitating a large lump of food onto the ground for the chicks, while the Woodpigeon behaviour I saw suggests that their young take food straight from the parents' beaks. Well, the name 'pigeon milk' does suggest liquid! The male Woodpigeon was showing the female how well he'd be able to feed babies when it came to the time, as well as how well he would feed the female while she was laying and incubating. It looks like more eggs are coming in the future, so let's hope we don't get any more storms!
Woodpigeons are such fascinating birds to watch, especially as you can often observe their behaviour very closely when they are in gardens and parks. We have a ground feeder in our garden and I've noticed how dominant Woodpigeons have a sort of 'lurch forward and wing-flap' gesture that they do to scare off other birds feeding on it. Or at least, it's supposed to! It works on other Woodpigeons and on Collared Doves; they all back off. But Starlings tend to ignore the gesture completely! Starlings may be a good bit smaller than pigeons but they aren't easily intimidated. And perhaps pigeon body language doesn't translate well outside the family?
I hope I'll have the chance to write more about Woodpigeons in the future, because I've seen all kinds of interesting interactions among them. I've seen them squaring up, bowing to each other, standing up as tall as possible, mimicking each other's behaviour...what do these behaviours mean? To guess at that I'd need to watch them more closely, which I plan to do in the future. Since writing this blog I've started watching bird behaviour more closely than ever before, and I feel like I'm finding out new things all the time! As always, please do submit stories of your own about bird behaviour- have you seen any pigeon courtship this winter? If so, leave me comment and tell me all about it! :)
**************************
This is unrelated to pigeons, but on the same walk that I found that eggshell, I saw this:
On the left is a small animal hole (I'd say the photo is about actual size), and in the middle and bottom you can see the shells of seeds. I don't know what species lives here but I'm sure its either a mouse or a vole, as they both eat seeds. Leaving all the seed shells outside reminds me a bit of our hamster, who tends to spit his empty shells outside of his bed! Of course a small animal that lives in a hole doesn't really need to hide its seed shells, as it is safe inside and the hole is so obvious anyway.
**************************
And finally, and back on the pigeons, here's a slightly disturbing pop cultural reference to pigeon milk! I'm a big fan of the game series Animal Crossing, in which there's a pigeon character named the Brewster who owns a coffee shop. After you get to know him a bit, he offers you some pigeon milk to put in your coffee. Um........:O
Someone in this game's development had a sense of humour alright!
 |
| Source: http://soapboxview.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/the-animal-crossing-new-leaf-photo-post.html |
...But as you can see from the picture, in the game your character seems to really enjoy the pigeon milk-infused coffee. So I guess it's not so bad!
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