Count me in!

I’ve been told that there are only three types of people in this world: those that can count, and those that can’t. For those that can’t, the numbers game can be something of mystery, or even a painful experience. But for those that can (and those that can’t!), numbers form the basis of most of the measurements by which we judge our lives. They represent targets, achievements and goals, they provide a benchmark against which we strive to improve or compete, and mark the passing of time to give context to those achievements.

So it is in conservation and birding. We count birds; whether to determine population trends over time or simply for competition with others or ourselves. We count numbers of individuals, breeding pairs, numbers of species, fledged young, and we do this repeatedly to assess the health or otherwise of a particular habitat or location, and then to see what happens in that place over time.

One particular place where this has been happening lately is the Isles of Scilly. The archipelago is a group of over 100 islands (depending on the tide) located 28 miles off the tip of Cornwall, with a permanent population of around 2,200 people. For the last nine years I have been privileged enough to visit the islands each autumn to lead guided walks for the RSPB on Tresco, one of the five inhabited islands. The purpose of the visit is to raise awareness of the work the RSPB are doing on the islands for wildlife, and success is largely judged on numbers: how many people we meet, how many walks we do, how much money we raise, how many members we make. But these numbers don’t tell the whole story here. Other numbers have started to become more important.

Storm clouds off Bryher

Back in 2013, a partnership project involving five different organisations began, with the aim of improving the productivity of breeding seabirds around the islands. About 20,000 individuals from 14 different species of seabird come to the Isles of Scilly to breed each year, but populations of most of them have been doing badly due to predation of eggs and chicks by rats. The Isles of Scilly Seabird Recovery Project aims to remove rats from St Agnes and Gugh, two of the most important seabird nesting areas, and started doing so in autumn 2013. The 84 inhabitants of the islands all signed letters of support for the proposal, and baiting began. Over just six weeks all signs of rats disappeared, and no rats have been seen since!

A survey tunnel

The knock on impact of this work was seen in 2014, when surveys revealed manx shearwater chicks on St Agnes and Gugh surviving to fledging – 10 of them in fact. And in 2015 there were 28 of them. This may seem like small fry, but this is where numbers come in. Not a single manx shearwater chick had been recorded by anyone on those islands in living memory. None. That’s zero productivity over perhaps 100 years. And now there are at least 28 chicks leaving the islands for a life at sea. Even better, storm petrel chicks have been confirmed in 2015 – the first for many years.

A Manx Shearwater chick

Conservation projects are rarely so successful so quickly, and we can only assess how well they are performing using data – without a baseline we would have nothing to compare to, and without rigorous, consistent survey techniques we would not be able to draw reliable conclusions. The Isles of Scilly Seabird Recovery Project is a fantastic example of what can be achieved through partnership working and community support, and of course an excellent example of how numbers have shown that success. Let’s just hope the surveyors were not among the five out of every four people who have problems with fractions.

Mothtastic!

Somehow it's been months since I posted anything on here. There's a lot of catching up to do! Alas I'm only just recovering from a busy summer of work and weddings, more of which I'm sure will feature in due course. For now I'm mostly treading water, but I've come up for air long enough to write a brief post.

This last few weeks the sun has disappeared all too quickly in the evenings. As a result the floodlights have been a vital ingredient for hockey training, and the bright lights have been attracting insects, and the insects have been attracting bats. For any bat detectorists out there I might suggest spending an evening by the astroturf taking a peek for yourselves.

Last Tuesday, whilst I was supposed to be coaching, I noticed a large moth struggling to get airborne. It was huge, and dropped to the ground on the edge of the pitch, where I managed to locate it. Being an amateur naturalist I have some appreciation of our larger moths, but this didn't look like anything I had encountered before. It had cryptic upper wings designed for camouflage, but beneath them revealed a blue, purple and black set of bands across the underwing. I had a good look at it, but failed to take a photo and thought little more of it.

The following day I tried to look it up. I wondered if it was a hawkmoth, due to it's large size, but most hawkmoths are quite striking and have bold patterns and wing shapes. So I wondered about an underwing, having recently seen a lot of red underwings. This one had the usual camouflage on the top wings but no bright warning colours beneath. When I searched 'underwing' on google I scrolled down until an image burst out at me. I have no copyright to show you the image, but it was exactly as I recalled from the night before.

To my amazement and great satisfaction, it identified the moth as a 'blue underwing'. I have never heard of this before, so I delved further. The blue underwing is also known as Clifden Nonpareil, and it turns out to be something of a superstar in the moth world (lepidopterland?). Many a moth-er (not mother) has Cliften Nonpareil at the top of their wish list, it transpires. This is, in part, due to it's rarity. It is not resident in the UK and so the handful that turn up each year are all immigrants. It is also due to it's uniqueness - almost no British moths have blue on them!

Armed with this information, I began to doubt myself. I asked a naturalist colleague whether there were any similar species that I should look at in case I had misidentified it. His response was 'None whatsoever, la la la la la didn't happen you B*stard', which gave me some indication of it's appeal to those in the know. I contacted the Wiltshire moth recorder, and sheepishly suggested that I might have a probable record of a Cliften Nonpareil, and could he give me his advice. When he replied he said it was 'unmistakably so', and what a fine record it was too. There have, apparently, been a few recent records of them in the county, and in several other counties.

I strongly suggest you all look up this little beauty. It is a truly stunning beast, unlike anything else on the UK moth scene. And you never know when you might just come across one yourself!

P.S. One week later I saw the moth again at training, and this time managed to catch it and take a photo!