Caspian Tern at Gibraltar Point

Just got back from a day on the east coast. We set out at 6am in the direction of Titchwell on the North Norfolk coast in the hope that the great knot which had been there for about 4 days would be present again after going AWOL yesterday evening, with the back up plan being that we would divert to Gibraltar Point near Skegness if no news or negative news was received by the time we got to the Boston roundabout on the A17.

At 7:15am we were still a good two and a half hours drive from Titchwell when we received news that the bird was again present on Titchwell beach so Gibraltar Point was forgotten and we headed for Norfolk. Unfortunately we then got news that the bird had disappeared again at about 7:30am. However, at least it was still in the area so we pressed on undettered and confident that we would see the bird. How wrong we were. The bird was not seen again all day up to the time of writing. A couple of year ticks in the form of red-crested pochard and spotted redshank plus at least 250 avocets and an adult Mediterranean gull were scant consolation, and at 11:30am, just over 90 minutes after arriving but 4 hours since the bird was last seen, we decided to abandon Norfolk and get to Gibraltar Point to try to salvage something from the day.

Two hours later we were watching a stunning Caspian tern on Tennyson Sands at Gib Point, one of two birds which have been here for 5 days. Well worth the effort. It was a 440 mile round trip, which is exactly half what Ray did last Saturday, so not too bad really!

Year: 233 (Caspian tern, spotted redshank, red-crested pochard & little bittern (last week))

eDNA surveying

I was eDNA surveying for great crested newts this morning at the site of a proposed new development on the Welsh borders. It's a technique of collecting water samples from ponds which are then sent away to a lab and analysed for newt DNA to check for GCN presence in the pond. I like the scientific aspect of this work and it avoids the need to wade around in ponds at dawn and dusk putting bottle traps in or taking them out, but you're generally not going to see a newt during an eDNA survey. As a naturalist I like finding newts and other aquatic animals in bottles and I enjoy searching for newt eggs or seeing the animals by torch light etc. From a purely personal perspective, eDNA is good if you have a pond where you're unlikely to find newts or it's in a dodgey area where you might meet a few unsavoury characters at night, but if you have a pond in a nice location where there might actually be newts, give me the bottle trapping method any day!

Presumably this is the sort of "red tape" that the EU brexit campaign would do away with if we leave the EU. Why worry about wildlife if it gets in the way of making a fast buck?

I've been in the area all week doing different types of survey, breeding bird, phase 1 and eDNA. Grasshopper warbler and a couple of singing lesser whitethroats have been the bird highlights, and plants have included a nice selection of orchids.

Bee orchid.

Pyramidal orchid.

Common spotted orchid.

Southern marsh orchid.

Pennington Flash

Nice views of a little ringed plover chick with two adults at the flash this evening, also 4 redshank and a common tern.

Why I'm voting to Remain

Ok first off, I don’t think we should be even having a vote on EU membership. Why, well because an ordinary bloke like me can’t possibly have all of the information to hand to make an educated decision on whether it’s better to remain or leave. Too many people are likely to vote on petty prejudices or things that affect their own personal circumstances. You only have to watch ordinary folk being interviewed on the telly. Q: “Why are you going to vote to leave?” A: “err, well too many migrants taking our jobs” or that other favourite A: "We want to take back our country". Anybody know what that actually means? One woman when asked why she was going to vote to leave just shrugged her shoulders, struggled to answer and then just said “because we should, shouldn’t we?”. Should we? Have you really thought this through?

Frankly, I don’t trust the British public (including myself) to make the correct decision (whatever that may be). How can I possibly know what’s best for the UK as a whole, not only today but in the future as well? Perhaps naively, I vote for an MP to make these types of decisions on my behalf, in the hope that they are better informed than me. After all, my MP votes on lots of other important issues on my behalf and like it or not, that’s actually why we have MPs. So I don’t think that we should even be having a referendum.

However, given that we are having a referendum on EU membership, I’m voting remain. I said previously that I don’t have all of the information to hand to make an educated decision, which is true. However what I do know is that every living British Prime Minister past and present thinks that we should remain, the majority of economists think that we should remain, the majority of the present government thinks that we should remain, the labour party including the leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn and the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and most other opposition parties such as the Scottish Nationalist Party think that we should remain and Barack Obama the US president thinks that we should remain.

I find it very bizarre that in the face of all of this advice from respected figures across the political spectrum, many ordinary working class people are preferring to take the advice of Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage, Ian Duncan Smith and Michael Gove by standing shoulder to shoulder with them and voting to leave. How safe will workers rights be with these people? How safe will the environment be with these people? The "red tape" they're talking about getting rid of if we leave is workers rights and legislation which protects wildlife and the environment.

So why am I even talking about this on a wildlife blog? Well it's relevant because there will be important implications to wildlife if we decide to leave. Most of the UK's wildlife and environmental legislation is based on EU Directives and there is no certainty as to how these would be replaced if the UK were to leave the EU. None of us can understand all of the implications of our decision, whether it be remain or leave, but I suggest that everybody with a love of wildlife and the environment should read ‘The EU & Our Environment: What UK membership means for the environment, and potential consequences of a UK departure from the Union’, a joint publication from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, The World Wildlife Fund and The Wildlife Trusts, which is available to download here. The environment has done pretty well out of the EU, through, for example, the Birds and Habitats Directives. There is a real risk to the environment if we vote to leave.

Furthermore, in a vote of members, the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM, the professional body to which I belong), voted overwhelmingly (93%) in favour of remaining in the EU. You can read the full CIEEM statement here, but it concludes by saying “CIEEM is convinced that leaving the EU would have significant detrimental effects on the UK’s natural environment, on the economy, and on society. CIEEM encourages all who are concerned with the natural environment to vote to remain a member of the EU.”

So I'm going to listen to the advice of prime ministers past and present, the US president, the majority of economists, the majority of UK opposition parties, the RSPB, the World Wildlife Fund, the Wildlife Trusts and CIEEM because I reckon that lot combined might have a pretty good understanding of what's best for the UK, and I’m going to ignore Boris, Nigel, Ian and Michael and vote to remain.

The barking Little Bittern, Old Moor RSPB

I was lured to Old Moor RSPB this morning by the presence of a singing male little bittern. Expecting the Bittern hide to be packed, I made my way first to the "Bus stop", a view point over the reedbed from where I figured I might have more chance of seeing the bird. This proved a good move since within minutes somebody picked out the bird climbing to the top of a bush near the closed Reedbed hide. However after a minute or two it took off and flew right over the Bittern hide and landed out of view in the bushes behind.  A decent flight view of the bird.

I joined the assembled throng of birders on the path near to the place where the bird was last seen, but this low down viewing was not easy through the reeds and bushes. Over the next hour we could hear the bird singing at relatively close range but couldn't see it, until at last somebody picked it up as it again climbed to near the top of a bush. Now it was a really good view and we watched as it called for a few minutes before it again flew and was lost to sight. A really nice bird, and great to hear it as well as see it. It's song was nothing like a great bittern, it was more like croaking or barking call, repeated every couple of minutes. I'm not sure I've ever heard little bittern song before, perhaps in Europe I suppose but I don't remember hearing it.

This is the second year that a male little bittern has been present at  Old Moor, presumably the same individual. I saw the bird last year, but it was much more distant, and only in flight.

Great Reed Warbler Paxton Gravel Pits

At Paxton Gravel Pits in Cambridgeshire this morning, the long staying great reed warbler was blasting out its song and occasionally showed well when it climbed to the stop of  a reed, before dropping down again and out of sight. My second great reed warbler of the year, but only my third ever in the UK.

The pits are well known for their nightingales which now total about 28 pairs, as well as an important inland colony of cormorants. Nightingales are now beginning to stop singing as I discovered last week at Whisby, but even so I managed to hear one at point blank range. Also today a few garden warblers and a cuckoo.

Foulshaw to Leighton Moss

A seemingly near perfect day for watching butterflies at Gait Barrows near Silverdale today did nothing to allay my fears for the health of the UKs butterfly populations. Hot and sunny all day with not a breath of wind, we spent two hours at the reserve and saw just a handful of species in very small numbers. Three or four pearl-borded fritillaries, two brimstones, a couple of whites, a couple of blues and a speckled wood were just about the lot. Not a single Duke of Burgandy, no green hairstreaks and no dingy skippers. There were reports of a single Duke being seen earlier in the morning, but seriously has it come to this, one butterfly seen on a perfect day in the peak flight period? More worryingly there were periods of 15 minutes or more when I didn't see a single butterfly of any species, not even a white.

It was a similar story at Trowbarrow Nature Reserve near Leighton Moss, even less butterflies here though we did at least add a couple of dingy skippers to the list. Also here, no fly orchids. Earlier we went to Foulshaw Moss in Cumbria where there were loads of large-red damselflies and a few four-spot chasers, but not a single white-faced darter.

There were two ospreys on the nest at Foulshaw and a couple of tree pipits, three spoonbills asleep on the Eric Morecombe Pools where we also saw three lesser whitethroats together and a Cetti's warbler just outside the hide.

At Gait Barrows, the plastic Lady's Slipper Orchids are currently in full flower, and are about as wild as a pelican in Cornwall.

Year: 229 (Osprey, tree pipit, nightingale (Whisby Nature Park), bearded tit (Blacktoft))

Recently emerged four-spot chaser with it exuvia.

Foulshaw Moss.

Leighton Moss.

Garden warbler.

Herb Paris at Gait Barrows.

Lesser whitethroat.

Lilly of the Valley at Gait Barrows.

Male marsh harrier.

Above, below and within the Cloud Forest of Madeira

Being an East Atlantic Island off the coast of North West Africa, Madeira has a hot, wet climate and is very green. However during our week long stay we found that there were actually three quite different major climates on the island, depending on altitude, with a fourth encompassing the eastern peninsular of Ponta de São Lourenço and the nearby island of Porto Santos (and probably also the Desertas Islands, though we didn't visit these). This summary is based on a single one week visit in the middle of May and  is probably completely wrong so see it for what it is, simply an attempt to summarise our holiday.

Sea level to 600m

From sea level to about 600m it was often cloudy or at least partially cloudy and not much warmer than an average UK summer. The vegetation here was very lush and a clear indicator of the amount of rain the island gets. Despite the mountainous nature of the whole island right down to sea level, it seemed at times that every inch of available land especially on the south side was tightly packed with the terraces of small holdings growing their own crops. The birds typical of this area included Maderian race kestrel, Atlantic canary and plain swift, though the latter especially was not restricted to low levels and could be found anywhere on the island, even around the highest peaks.

Fig. 1 the terraces of the southern coast.

 Fig, 2 the cliffs are generally steeper on the northern coast but there are still plenty of terraces.

The exception in this lush, green, low level zone, and in fact as far as I could see, unique to the whole of Madeira, was the very arid Ponta de São Lourenço in the east which along with the nearby island of Porto Santos had a unique flora and fauna quite unlike anything else we found during our short stay, with plants such as iceplant Mesembryanthemum crystallinum and the endemic Berthelot's pipit. Both these species were also common on Porto Santos.

Fig. 3 Ponta de São Lourenço, arid and volcanic.

Fig. 4 Far from green and lush, the flora at Ponta de São Lourenço is unlike anywhere else on Madeira.

The middle level - 600m to 1400m

Between about 600m - 1400m there was often thick cloud. In this belt of cloud on the north side of Madeira is the magnificent laurisilva, a type of rain forest also known as cloud forest and for good reason. Its a very moist, humid place often covered in a blanket of fog or low cloud, with consistant temperatures throughout the year. The laurisilva of Madeira is a very ancient woodland, a UNESCO World Heritage site, dominated by a variety of laurel trees, with a splendid understorey dominated by ferns and bryophytes, and is the largest remaiming example of a forest that once covered large areas of Southern Europe. Endemic birds such as Madeiran firecrest, Trocaz pigeon and the Madeiran race chaffinch are common here.

Fig. 5 A whole host of communities living on a laurel tree in the cloud forest.

Fig. 6 The laurisilva. This particular spot is grazed by cows, hence the lack of understorey.

Fig. 7 The laurisilva is not always in cloud, but this bit was 30 minutes after I took the photo!

The mountain levels - 1400m to 1860m

Above 1400m we were often (though not always) above the clouds and into a mountain climate. However, despite getting up to around 1800m (around 6000ft), I didn't find any plants that I would recognise as tyipcally alpine apart from the occasional Saxifraga pickeringii or the spectacular Aeonium glandulosum. Perhaps this far south the mountains just aren't high enough for alpines. Typical plant species here included Erica arborea, a type of heather also known as tree heath which typically can grow up to 4m tall but sometimes can reach 7m. I've been above the clouds before in the mountains, in the Alps for example, but this was different, this wasn't just the occasional cloud drifting past below, this was often a whole belt of cloud for as far as the eye could see, the sort of view you get from an aircraft when approaching Manchester on your way home, bright blue sky above and dazzling white cloud below, the difference being that in this case you could also see islands in the clouds as the various peaks broke through. As you might expect, just like in Manchester, the best of the Madeiran weather was above the clouds, hot and sunny. This is where you had the best chance of getting a tan, or worse!

Fig. 8 Islands in the clouds.

Fig. 9 Pic do Arieiro. High above the clouds and home to the oceanic Zino's petrel.

Whilst we are in the high mountains it's worth mentioning another reason why these high peaks are different to any others that I have encounted, in that they hold the entire world population of one of the most Oceanic and endangered seabirds in the world, Zino's petrel. It's hard to put into words how awe-inspiring it is to be above the clouds on a bright moonlit night watching and listening to Zino's petrels flying around their nesting burrows, birds which otherwise you would only expect to see in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. Only around 70 pairs in existance, and they all nest here on Pic do Arieiro, above the clouds on Madeira and they have an eerie call, typical of so many of these sea birds at their burrows. With so few other birds up here, it's amazing to think that without doubt the evocative sound of Pic do Arieiro is the call of such an oceanic bird! Unfortunately, unless you're there at night, around midnight, you'll never hear it.
 
A few bryophytes and ferns of the laurisilva

However, exciting as these rare endemic sea birds might be, it is not they or any other bird which makes Madeira so important and special, it's the laurisilva forest and the flora, bryophytes and ferns it supports. While we were in Madeira I wrote many blog posts regarding the other flora and fauna that we saw and you can find them all by simply scrolling down the page. For the rest of this post I'm going to concentrate on the bryophytes and ferns because they deserve a special mention of their own and they are so often overlooked by the overwhelming majority of visitors, who actually probably consider the low cloud and fog an inconvenience to the their holiday rather than embracing it and recognising that it is the cloud and the moisture which is what makes Madeira and in particular the laurisilva such a special place.

There are so many endemic species on Madeira that I can't possibly put a name to all of the plants below, and it would be foolish to try. I'm not even sure that a book exists to help me name them, and I'm wary enough of putting names to British bryophytes and ferns let alone those in Madeira! Even so, I'll try to comment of those which look familiar (even if in reality they're not!). Please note, where I've suggested a name below it does not mean that it is that species, just that it looks a bit like it! I didn't even have a hand lense with me to help. The birding equivalent would be for me to say that a Fea's petrel looks a bit like a Zino's petrel without the aid of binoculars. Don't take it literally!

 A bryophyte wall in the laurisilva.

Bryophytes

Possibly a liverwort, looks a bit like a scalewort.

Looks a bit like Pleurozium schreberi.

A liverwort, looks a bit like Conocephalum conicum.

A liverwort.

Looks like a thyme-moss.

Looks a bit like Plagiomnium undulatum.

Looks a bit like Mnium hornum.

I'm not sure what this is but I only found growing on waterfalls and it is the species I was photographing in the photos of the bryophyte wall above.

A liverwort, the purple fringe gives it a look of  Reboulia hemisphaerica.

Some type of bristle-moss? I love the capsules they really look alien like!

This moss was not in the laurisilva, it was at an altitude of about 1800m in the mountains.

Ferns 

Some type of hard fern.

A filmy fern.

A type of maidenhair fern.

Looks a bit like lanceolate spleenwort.

A different type of Madeiran fern.