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!

The Perfect Storm

Did anyone else thoroughly enjoy the storms overnight last night? Not only did they bring welcome relief from the stifling heat, and even brief respite from the worst affects of hay fever, but it was one of the most spectacular storms I can recall. I'm sure in my youth I saw some pretty spectacular storms, but I genuinely can't remember the last time I saw such astonishing forked lightning.

I think I was about seven or eight, and I was staying with my grandparents in Torquay. Waking up in the night to the rumbles of thunder, my sister and I crept downstairs to the living room, where there were two comfortable recliners sitting in a giant wall length window at one end of the room. We turned the seats to face outwards, and were treated to half an hour of horizontal forked lightning that spread from one side of the window to the other like a giant widescreen light display. The fork would actually spread over several seconds, snaking and splitting its way in every direction like the boughs of a tree in winter. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it before or since.

So last night I had just gone to bed when I noticed flickering lights in the bathroom. Fearing a suspect bulb or an alien invasion I went to investigate. Realising they were coming from outside, I opened the window to see what crazy Friday night activity was lighting up the sky. The flashes were so frequent that I assumed they had to be created by man in some way. But the sky illuminated in the same way as lightning, and soon the thunder started to rumble ominously in the distance. Very quickly the fork lightning started, and I realised it was heading my way.

I've always wanted to try to photograph a storm like this, so I tried to think through all the equipment I would need and where it was. With all the lights off to enjoy the storm at it's best, dressed in just my boxer shorts and in a sleepy frame of mind, the next five minutes was an awkward series of bumping into walls, stubbing toes and expletives as I searched the house. I grabbed my camera and two lenses, a tripod and a head torch and made my way back to the bathroom.

Standing in the bath with the window open fully I had the full expanse of sky at my disposal. Electing to use a wide angle to maximise my chances of capturing something, I found the longest exposure I could and fired. From this I could gain an idea of where the houses and the focus were, and adjust each shot accordingly. The first few shots actually turned out to be the best.

After a few minutes the cloud and rain came in and obscured the best of the lightning. At this point the whole sky was lit up with each flash and exposure became an issue as it was impossible to judge how much light would actually reach the sensor over the 15-30 second shutter release.

As the storm intensified the rain became too much and was starting to come in through the window, so I relocated to the bedroom on the other side of the house and watched the monsoon pass. Great torrents of water were flowing down the road and pavement too, so that each passing car was spraying a wave onto the roadside. The storm continued overhead, and protected from the prevailing wind I was able to get some more photos from the front window. This time the challenge was the street lights, which overexposed the houses opposite but failed to capture the best of the light in the sky. It did throw up some interesting light trails from the passing cars, and at one point a fire engine went through the shot.

Overall the shots were not as spectacular as the storm itself, but they were never likely to be and as a first attempt I'm not too disappointed. What a fantastic display of pyrotechnics. The storm took over an hour to pass entirely, and from what I hear continued north exciting a similar response from people across the country.

Musical musings

I have an iPod. On my iPod there are 9036 songs from a variety of genres. From time to time I pick up my iPod and can't decide what to listen to. Its clearly not lack of choice. Usually I scroll through a few artists and then settle into one of the same half dozen latest albums that I always listen to. 

Not so today. Today my indecision lead me to select my entire song collection and hit the random button. So far I've moved seamlessly between Richard Ashcroft (of the Verve), the Corrs, a live Counting Crows number, the dulcet tones of Ben Folds Five, and I'm currently listening to some smooth jazz from Miles Davis.

A personal highlight for me was the brief interlude of birdsong that punctuated the Corrs and Counting Crows (appropriately). I have several bird song snippets on my iPod, and when they emerge by chance I like to play 'guess the artist' as I would with any other track. This one was a skylark.

What radio station plays such an eclectic mix of tunes in such close proximity? I'm not a huge fan of radio-too much chat, not enough music-but I would happily listen to a show that could switch from pop to classical, leap between rock & blues, interspersed with a sprinkling of jazz, heavy metal, dance & electronica, all finished off with a topping of ethnic, traditional & folk. I might urge them to go easy on anything that verges on R&B, rap or house (except Backstreet's 'No Diggity' of course).

If variety be the spice of life, play on (player)!

Mr Wind

I was reminded recently of an excellent advert I saw some time ago, featuring Mr Wind. It's nothing sinister, just an excellent point about renewable energy well made. It's so good in fact that I thought I would share it with you all.

Click here to enjoy!

Human Nature

I love what I do, largely because I do what I love. I've always enjoyed the great outdoors and been fascinated by wildlife, so I'm very fortunate (or massively skilful) to have a job that allows me to indulge in these passions. And sometimes I can forget what passions they are because it is, after all, still a job. But today I was suddenly struck by a few instances in this last week that remind me of those passions all over again.

Firstly, I had friends to visit with their young children. They are a very active and outdoorsy sort of family, and they encourage and nurture their children's inquisitiveness. We went out for a drive on Salisbury Plain, and stopped in a small area of grassland to go for a walk. We barely made it 50 yards from the truck as the kids were fascinated by literally everything. Each new creepy crawly deserved attention, each new butterfly was followed, and a rabbit hole was the perfect size to poke a brave face into. Young and eager eyes soaked up the novelty of it all, and revelled in it.

Family fun!

Secondly, I camped out on Saturday night with a friend. For one night, the phone was switched off, there was no music except the breeze, and no traffic, no lights and nothing to do except soak up the natural environment around us. At dusk, two foraging badgers, without realising we were stood there silently watching, strolled confidently to within ten paces of us, looked up, sniffed, and pottered off into the bushes. The sun went down and the stars came out, and in the night an owl shrieked and a stone-curlew called eerily to it's mate as it flew overhead: somehow a more intense and meaningful experience for the darkness.

A badger from a previous encounter

Thirdly, I saw a friend of mine, who also works in conservation, post a picture of a mum teaching her daughter about plants in a beautiful meadow. My friend's job is to educate people about grasslands such as this, and yet she spoke passionately about the importance and significance of this moment in the young girl's life. This was not because she was paid for it - she genuinely believed in the power of nature and people.

Picture stolen from my friend

Fourthly (is that a word?!), on a bright evening at the end of a day off, I sat in the garden with my housemate having a beer and enjoying the opportunity to discover what my small patch of back yard held. There were swifts screaming overhead, a blue tit dropped through the tree towards the seed feeders, and then we noticed a huge moth attempting to disguise itself against the fencing. And then a second of the same type. A quick peek in the ID book confirmed it was an eyed hawkmoth - a magnificent beast with bright blue spots on hidden underwings to ward off potential predators. Despite my many years of investigating nature, I can not recall ever having seen one of these before, despite it's apparently common status as a garden species.

Eyed Hawkmoth

Finally, I spoke to two of my colleagues who were working on Sunday at an 'Open Farm Sunday' event, representing the RSPB and the work of the local farmers for members of the public. Both said that on a beautiful sunny day they shared stories and experiences of nature with families, young and old, and had discussions about conservation and current contentious issues. Afterwards they went to a known site for turtle dove and were lucky enough to see one singing. This stunning species has undergone a massive decline in the UK and it is no exaggeration to say that they could go extinct in this country in the coming decade. And so my colleagues were delighted to see this one bird, a genuinely rare sighting these days, at the end of a day filled with people and nature.

The RSPB 'engaging' the public!

And that is the thought that occurred to me late on a Monday evening. All of these things are things that come to me through my passions, and through my job, yet none of them was 'work'. The boundaries of work and life have become so totally blurred that I can not put one down and pick the other up. I'm always 'working' in one sense, because I choose to live my life this way, and because I enjoy it.

The second thing that occurred to me was that all of my natural history highlights this week have been connected to people. Whilst I moan about and deride people as the cause of many environmental problems, they are also the most likely solution, and these cases give me cause for optimism. Yes they were all moments in nature, but they were shared moments, and for that they are all the more memorable.

Having your cake and eating it...

So last week was my sister's birthday. On the big day, I managed to remember to call to wish her a great many happy returns (I won't say how many), and asked how the day had been. Aside from the joys of work, she had had decided to pop into a cake shop in order to procure sweet treats to take to work. On entering said delicatessen, she was amused to hear Stevie Wonder's 'Happy Birthday' playing in the store, but was even more amazed when the shop assistant randomly asked her if it was her birthday. Having replied in the affirmative, a momentary game of 'no way', 'yes way' ensued until the shop assistant called over a colleague to verify this astounding coincidence - having never once asked a customer that question before, she refused to believe that it could possible be true. My sister was duly able to provide evidence in the form of a driver's license, whereupon the three of them danced around the store to Stevie Wonder. Finally, at the end of the song, they gave her free cake.

What a truly bizarre and wonderful coming together of circumstance.