Results from pet lacewing project

Here he is, Trevor the lacewing larvae last August. I found him on a bush in the back garden and decided to keep him as a pet. For a start I didn't know he was a lacewing but with jaws like it really couldn't be much else.

My first conundrum was how to feed him. I had never kept a predator before. I would need to keep a whole herd of prey animals as well as him just to see him through. So I went out every morning and picked the most aphid coated leaf from our sweet-peas that I could find and then put it in the jam jar with him. His appetite was unbelievable. The only two words that adequately describes it is that he went on the rampage, engorging himself in a blood drunk feeding frenzy. He single handedly nearly ate every aphid in my garden! His hunting stile was simple. He would walk along until he found an aphid, grab it in his massive jaws, wrench it off the leaf and whilst holding it aloft suck it dry. The white aphid husks fell like snow as Trevor grew fatter. One day Trevor looked a bit anxious. His speed increased and he stopped eating. Within a couple of hours he had spun a perfect ball of silk under one of the leaves and then began an enormously long pupation.

Five months later, Trevor emerged. He cut through the silk cocoon with his larval jaws and emerged still within the ill fitting skin of his old self. After a stroll of about 5cm his skin split down the back and out climbed new Trevor the bright green lacewing. He exchanged the massive jaws of his old skin for a pair of gleaming translucent wings. Then he excreted once before keeling over dead. Bugger.

Well better luck next time. The experience has taught me allot about lacewing husbandry and I am sure that next time we will be more successful.

This is my favourite photo. Both the new Trevor, his old skin and the cocoon are all visible. We will miss you Trevor.

Birds at Attenborough

Over half term we managed to get out to Attenborough Nature Reserve near Nottingham. Though it was a bit cold to start with it was a pleasant day out and the sun did say hello to us at sunset. Around the visitor centre there was a flock of ducks and geese that contained a couple of interesting birds.

Who am I? I'm an Egyptian Goose of course! This is the best view I have ever got (or am likely to get) of this wonderful bird. Just before Christmas I managed to film a flock of 17 over Rutland water but there is nothing quite so satisfying as looking at them eyeball to eyeball.

We also spotted this female Pochard in one of the lakes. I didn't recognise her at first because of her white cheeks. If you compare this photo to others I have taken of female Pochards you can see that this one is at the end of winter feather season.

And finally a mega mega never seen one of these before mega new bird - a female Ruddy Shelduck. What a beautiful animal!

The map below shows the route we walked around the reserve

Grindleford photojourney

(1) Burbage Brook

(2) Dunnock

(3) River Derwent

Over half term we managed to get out to Derbyshire. Hurrah! But where can you go with a pushchair, albeit an all terrain off-roader? Well with Alison Southern's "All terrain pushchair walks" in hand we set off from Grindleford station and headed down into the Valley of the River Derwent but not before going over the bridge that spanned the Burbage Brook (1). Near Padley Chapel we were surrounded by the pleasant birdsong from robins, great tits and dunnocks (2). The Derwent (3) was quiet despite all the snow we have had recently. The banks of the river were extremely muddy and frequently crossed with large tree roots which made pushing the pushchair difficult. What really made it impossible were the tiny kissing gates that would be tight for most people, let alone pushchairs. The walk required lifting the pushchair to chest hight several times. Since the wheelchair was dripping with mud I ended up covered in mud myself. I wouldn't have been surprised if at the end of the walk we found a pile of guide book clutching skeletons. All in all a good day but a little bit nuts.

Hunting for the perfect snowdrop photo

Here it is. This photo required two weeks of preparation, about 10 miles of wandering and a big slice of good meteorological luck. "Snowdrops in the Snow". The first thing I needed was to find a snowdrop wood, monitor how quickly the flowers were coming on and go back on a day they would all be ready for their photo to be taken. Getting snow as well is asking rather allot! This photo is hard to get simply because settled snow in February is quite rare (despite the last two winters having snowy Februarys) and wild snowdrops are few and far between. Here are a couple more photos just because.

The location of these snowdrops can be seen as the camera icon on this map.

I was quite lucky to be back down in Leicester with these snowdrops during this snowfall despite being up at the in-laws in Nottinghamshire all week. Whilst there I did spot one group of snowdrops that could have potentially been the subjects of these photos but alas the few times it did snow it did not stay around long enough for me to get to them with the camera. I did get some good snowdrops in the sunshine shots however.

Here is a map showing where I found these. Again the camera symbol represents where the photos were taken.

Mushrooms in the forest

Whilst waiting for the snowdrops to flower in the woods I noticed the Velvet Shank (Flammulina velutipes) that are growing everywhere. This species of mushroom is stimulated to fruit by the cold weather. The weather has been perfect recently and it is now really common in the woods. The picture above shows a young mushroom growing out of the broken trunk of a willow. The more established fungus below was growing at the base of another willow.

This Fungus above below (and below that) is a real odd thing. It kind of looks like badger dung. Its name is Purple Jellydisc (Coryne dubia) and looks more alien than anything I have ever found in the forest. It is just a big blob of jelly! This is one weird creature. Unusually for a fungus it doesn't spore, rather it produces asexual conidiospores which it releases into the air. The benefit of this is that it can successfully spread without the need of other jellydiscs. Perhaps the most unusual thing is that the next step of evolution, the jellydisc that can have sex with other jellydiscs can also be found in the forest. It shows that for this species, asexual reproduction is just as effective as sexual reproduction. That is a rare occurrence. In most other species you either do or you don't.

This last one is weird because it grows high up in the willows. This is some more White Rot (Bjerkandera adusta) growing out of the branching point on a willow. Interestingly a separate nearby twig has gained a fruiting body. It makes you wonder if being high up gives them an advantage when sporing.

Springtails

What is the most numerous animal on Earth? Not counting microscopic animals it is reputed to be springtails like this one. This one is Vertagopus arboreus and lives on the trunks of trees and has a taste for rotting wood. I found this one on a broken tree in the snowdrop wood last Saturday. I don't know why but seeing some insects again felt good. With seeing so many beautiful creatures last year, many of them for the first time, I couldn't help but get excited about the year ahead. When the temperature increases the land will again be a giant zoo for these tiny animals. This one pushed the bigascope to the limit. From the tip of its antenna to the end of its abdomen the insect above is only as long as a single hair on a bumbleebee's head is wide. We are talking microns long. They were almost invisible to the naked eye.

And here is one in ultra slow motion.

This one is a Entomobrya albocincta and is distinctive because of its three yellow stripes. All of these animals have a pair of spring mounted appendages under their abdomens which can propel the insects away from threats.

To be a pilgrim

"Who would true valour see,

Let him come hither;

One here will constant be,

Come wind, come weather;

There's no discouragement

shall make him once relent

his first avowed intent

To be a pilgrim"

John Bunyan

Amongst a parliament of Owls

I never have had good luck when it comes to birds of prey but today I had four owls of two different species hunting around me. Initially I thought it was only a parliament of Short Eared Owls but on reviewing the footage there is also a Barn Owl in there as well. Whilst filming this I nearly lost my fingers to the cold but I really didn't want to leave. I'm sure though I will return in my camouflage to get some really close shots in the near future. Check out the video. It is my very best to-date.

Tufted ducks and swan videos

Sorry to all the folk that get this blog via facebook because the following videos will not show up. If you want to see them then you will have to follow the link at the bottom of the note.

What is it? Jaws? No this is the Tufted Duck showing off its diving abilities.

This second one is perhaps the most overly sentimental, romantically slushy film I have have ever shot.

Winter life on the forest floor

Before I forget I want to go back to Saturdays walk in the woods near Watermead bridge. I think that when you are in a new place you instinctively become more observant. It must be something about not having enough information to relax and so we look and listen and smell more than we do normally. Sometimes I try to force myself to take a sensory bath in my surroundings, especially if they are familiar to me. Even if it is somewhere completely new I try and absorb the feeling of being in that place. Then I try to focus on what individual elements are arriving in superposition to build the picture. What can I hear? What can I see? What have I overlooked? This is not pointless. I think we only understand a place when we have let it into our soul.

Tuning in often makes me walk slower and sometimes it makes me stop to think and see. In the woods I couldn't just see water everywhere but I could hear it and smell it. But it wasn't water that made me stop. Down near my foot was a tiny red mushroom. It was most likely a Galerina mniophila but it could have also been a young Tubaria furfuracea. Its always hard to tell when they are this small. From one side of its cap to the other it measured about 2mm. The Bigascope has really made it look big! It looked so vulnerable that I felt sorry for it. Its not really the type of fungi that you expect to see this time of year. A nearby tree stump provided a good variety of more hardy specimens for me to have a good look at.

This one is a Candle Stick Fungus (Xylaria hypoxylon) and it looks like it should be growing on a coral reef rather than the hardwood stump on which it was growing. The part you can see is the spore releasing fruitbody of the fungus. The rest of it is hidden from view in the wood itself.

Growing down the sides of the stump was this White Rot Fungus (Bjerkandera adusta). Again the part of the fungus we can see is the spore releasing fruitbody. I always think that there is something a little un-Earthly about fungi.

Anyhow, I was walking back towards the car when alas a flash of luminous green erupting from a small bush next to me made me realise that I had just scared off one of my all time favourite animals. Unfortunately it had now flown away before I could get my camera out. Undeterred I stalked around the corner and spotted it high in a tree. Ladies and gentlemen I bring you my best photo yet of a Green Woodpecker.

Housing estate building causes extreme environmental destruction

Just a quick note to mention that this morning we went for a walk around a place that looked really nice on Google Earth. On the map it appeared to be a series of lakes near the new Hamilton housing estate. When we got there we found the following list of environmental damage
1) Places where cars had obviously been burned
2) Milky pollution in the brook
3) Giant bags of building material floating in the lakes
4) Huge piles of dumped building material
5) Big piles of commercial refuse
6) A huge alluvial quagmire leaking from a huge hill of displaced topsoil
7) Unstable sticky topsoil

It was like Chernobyl! All of this damage had been created at the same time as the nearby housing estate was built. What looked like pristine agricultural land on Google Earth is now a wasteland. If the people that propose to build 5000 houses at Barkby and Thurmaston are the same people that have left this mess or those responsible for leaving access open to fly tippers then the council should refuse their application on environmental grounds.

Spring is on its way!

Nature has decided that spring is on its way! This morning I was wandering around the woods near Watermead Bridge and came across a vernal carpet of snowdrops on the verge of flowering.

Originally I was looking in the nearby pond for a Red Crested Pochard that I had heard about but on not finding it continued a little way into the woods just beyond. My attention was initially drawn upwards to a few magpies that chattered noisily in the trees. A falling drip of water drew my attention downwards. The mist was manifesting itself as a fine dew over every surface. Every leaf, twig and shoot was covered in thousands of tiny drops of water.

Down on the forest floor a thousand green shoots were silently heralding the rebirth of life. I got down on my knees and manouvred in really close with the bigascope. It makes a nice change to do some close up work rather than photograph unimpressive ducks on the horizon! I wonder what will happen to these snowdrops if the weather deteriorates this week? I'll probably go and check.

Here is a map of my meander.

Ptarmigans

Just for the sake of nostalgia here is a ptarmigan on the side of Ben Nevis taken way back in 2005. The first and only time I have seen these.