AUTUMN
UPDATE
- NOVEMBER 2008
As
we swing from dull, damp days, through gale and storm-ridden days
to full bright sunny days, spare a thought for our local wildlife.
We can safely hide away from 70 mph winds, torrential rain and
frosty nights, bit of course, our wildlife cannot. However,
different species have developed different ways of surviving these
extremes of weather to ensure sufficient survive to breed the next
season which, apart from providing us with much pleasure and
fascination, is the main reason wildlife exists.
Insects
ustilise the full gamut of survival strategies for the winter
months. The more obvious species such as butterflies are perhaps
the most adaptable. Some over-winter as full-grown adults and we
will already have noticed those Peacocks and Red Admirals, wings
folded, in a dry nook or cranny in the garden shed or greenhouse.
Some, such as the Small Tortoiseshell, start hibernating amazingly
early, around July time, emerging the following March or April.
Other species over-winter in the egg stage, still others as pupae,
whilst such migratory species as Painted Lady rely totally
on early spring arrivals from North Africa to give us a resident
population later in the year.
Few
will be surprised that 2008 has been officially declared as the
worst year for butterfly populations for a quarter of a century,
with 2007 coming a close second! It will be interesting to see how
long it takes them to re-gain traditional populations, always
assuming of course 2009 isn’t the same!
Lots
of other creepy crawlers depend entirely on the eggs they laid in
summer surviving the winter, as the entire adult population dies
come the onset of cold weather. This includes many species of
spiders, so please think twice before swiping those egg-sacs
you’ve spotted in your alcoves and tight corners of the house;
it’s more than one generation you are destroying in so doing!
One
of the last flying insects of summer we will see are the
dragonflies, some even surviving into November. They too have had
a very poor year for reproduction, with insufficient warm, calm
days for breeding, and high water levels washing away their
nymphs, which is again significant as the entire adult population
perishes each year. Future populations are always dependent upon
the number of nymphs which can survive to adult-hood. As a
water-born nymph, provided fish, frogs, Herons and other
birds have not eaten you, life depends on the amount of food
available in your particular pond. Then you hope the summer
isn’t too hot which might dry the pond up. Then you pray the
pond owner doesn’t dredge it every year, dragging you out to fry
on the bank. If you are the nymph of one of the larger
dragonflies, you have to endure these challenges for up to 5 years
before at last escaping to wide blue yonder – well, for a few
weeks before you die anyway! What a life!
One
bit of goods news is the provision of a new piece of aquatic
landscape as part of the work being done in Marsh Meadow at the
moment, to improve flood control. Hopefully this new bit of
habitat will proved a much needed haven for a wide range of plants
and creatures; time will tell.
On
the bird front, our summer migrants couldn’t wait to get away
this year, with many of them gone by early August. Even Swallows
and House Martins were well away as soon as they finished
breeding. Thank you to those who submitted information about
breeding Swifts and House Martins in the village. We
only got records about 1 Swift nest and 2 House Martins
nests, a pretty poor showing. I imagine there were more so please
do let us know of any you had on your house if you haven’t
already done so.
By
October, with un-seasonal north and east winds, winter migrants
such as Redwings and Fieldfares were already
streaming across the country. In fact the first record of Redwing
in Berkshire occurred on 24th September. By the way,
there are currently large numbers of Waxwings in Scotland
and North-east England, indicating an ‘irruption’ year, so do
keep an eye open in supermarket car parks, where often the higher
concentrations of their favourite food-plants, Rowan and Cotoneaster
are planted.
Many
will have witnessed the impressive gatherings of geese on
harvested fields, especially along the Switchback. This is an
annual spectacle, which would last much longer were it not for the
new-found techniques of winter-sown seeds. Thus the stubble in
many such fields is only available for about a month after which
it is ploughed in and re-seeded for next year’s crops.
Over-winter fallow food sources for wildlife is unfortunately a
thing of the past, as now is set-aside, due to changes in EU
regulations, so we will see less and less of these sorts of scenes
in the future. But whilst it lasted, there up to 448 Canada
Geese, some 200 Greylag Geese, and no less than 171 Egyptian
Geese at the highest count. The Egyptian Geese gather
from 3 main locations, spending their day times at Summerleaze
Gravel Pit, Little Marlow Gravel Pit and the Dorney Rowing Lake
respectively.
Then
of course there are ‘our’ Red Kites, which have grouped
in equally spectacular numbers at various times this autumn, the
highest single gathering I have witnessed being no less than 46
individuals! Readers may well have seen the sensationalised
headlines about this bird in a recent front-page story concerning
a Kite reported as trying to carry off a full-grown Terrier, and
the furore caused amongst knowledgeable and experienced people in
the letters columns which followed. Very little of what I said to
reporters in a 15-minute interview was used in the piece and, with
so many Kites in the Cookhams, it needs to be said that this bird
has the smallest feet of any of the ‘birds of prey’, only
about the size of a pigeon’s foot. It could no more wrap them
around an animal of the size of this dog than it could an
elephant! Secondly, it only weighs about 1kg and could only fly
off with small prey such as rats, young rabbits and the like. It
is a bird of carrion, not a killer like other raptors. This
autumn, I have seen up to 10 at a time on recently ploughed fields
behind the cricket pitch and alongside Long Lane eating worms and
leather-jackets. If this dog was attacked by a bird, it would have
to be more like a large falconers bird such as an Eagle Owl or
one of the larger eagles often used in displays, and which escape
with amazing regularity (typically 1000 such birds flying free at
any one moment nation-wide).
If
however it was a Kite involved in the incident described, its
actions must have been mis-understood. Kites are very
‘familiar’ around humans; it always has been and across its
large range elsewhere in the world, is traditionally found in and
around towns and villages, gardens and public places. It is an
opportunist feeder and scavenger, regularly coming down to profit
on thrown away food and scarps. I saw one swoop down in a
playground full of children to swipe a discarded sandwich earlier
this year. I suspect this bird, if it was indeed a Kite, came down
either to investigate what it was the dog owner was throwing on
the ground (she had one of those plastic ball throws to exercise
her dog) or had seen a mouse or large insect disturbed by the dog
itself.
So
please do not be afraid of them, or rush your pets and children
inside when they appear. Mind you, to be fair, if I lived in
Strand Lane, I wouldn’t leave revered mice or hamsters running
freely around the garden for too long!
Amongst
the messages we have received from residents this season, we have
site visitors from further a-field. Dave Caulkin of Hare Hatch
reported what will have been a Mink pinching fish from his
pond at dusk (joining the badgers, rabbits and foxes that were
already raiding the veg patch regularly!) Mink are certainly
abroad around Marsh Meadow ditch and Strand Water and I watched 2 gambolling
together on the adjacent Jubilee River this month. Judith Goodwin
had what might have been a Willow Tit in her local garden,
a now very scarce species in the region, but it turned out to be a
Marsh Tit, which nonetheless is a rapidly declining bird in
the Thames Valley. Pam Knight has kept us up to date with activity
on her garden feeding station, and the haunting sounds of local
owls and Pam Raisey noted a rare Firecrest along Strand
Lane this summer, of particular interest given the breeding
success of this nationally-scarce species in nearby Cliveden, as
reported earlier. Thanks to them and all our other correspondents.
Well,
those unsightly rusted conker tree leaves have just about fallen,
and even the Oaks are now giving up their foliage, the traditional
colourful backdrop to the Cookhams disappearing for another year.
I’m sure many will know that in the same way the roots of
deciduous trees feed the leaves in spring and summer, it is the
process of the tree re-absorbing the sugars and chemicals of the
leaves prior to dropping them for winter that creates our annual
spectacle across our tree-scapes; a slow motion firework display
which we must now wait until next year to experience again.
Happy
wildlife hunting, and don’t forget to report any interesting
sightings for our Cookham Wildlife Dossier.
Brian
Clews
November
2008
|
|