Mike Read is a wildlife photographer and he (and his wife) have spent many hours traversing the Somerset Levels recording the flora and fauna of this ancient land. For over 5,000 years, people have visited this area. Bordered by the sea at Bridgewater Bay, receiving the rain run-offs from the Mendips, Quantocks and Blackdown Hills, and being the flood plains of several low gradient rivers (the River Parrett, for example, declines by 11.5 inches over a stretch of 11 miles) the water levels are now more controlled than in ancient times and a variety of nature conservation organisations manage the land to support and encourage a wide and varied array of wildlife.
Having set out the parameters of the area, Mike introduced us to an ancient walkway, said to date from 3806 BCE precisely! This raised boardwalk was known to our ancestors as the Sweet Track and helped them to navigate their way through the reeds and vegetation, above the water while hunting and gathering their food and resources. Peat continues to be cut from the nutrient rich soils and reeds harvested for use in basket making and for thatch. Mike’s favourite product of the area is the apples used in cider making and having been drunk by everyone instead of the unclean water. Our talk started with a photograph of a telegraph pole with a curious carving of a bird on top. The bird was a dalmatian pelican. Remains of this species have been found preserved in the peat and so they must have lived there. We were treated to a selection of superb photographs of the Somerset Levels through the seasons, starting with spring and alder catkins, marsh marigold, lapwings, 6 species of heron, egrets, marsh harrier, peregrine, the heronry at Swale Wood (visited by several members last spring), the early nesting mistle thrush while it’s cousin, the song thrush, is still singing to attract a mate, and the first migrants, chiff chaff and blackcaps. Nestled down in the reeds, we saw images of bittern and then a series of shots of great crested grebe doing a cat display followed by a weed dance, all part of their courtship rituals. The number of curlews has increased since the nature bodies have had a say in the optimum level of the water. The first butterflies and dragonflies were photographed among the water lilies and iris while a hobby was captured with a dragonfly in its beak. In summer, the bees are swarming and the yellow and white flowers of spring are superseded by the darker, richer colours of great willowherb, purple loosestrife and tufted vetch. Swallows arrive and the great egret chicks fledge. Kingfisher, moorhens, mallards and others are hunted by buzzards and marsh harriers. Towards the end of the summer, apples ripen, ditches are cleared and migrants pass through including the whitethroat and osprey. Hops, hips, elderberries and blackberries glisten in the autumn sunshine and provide food for speckled wood and red admirals. Fungi appears including fairy ink caps and glistening ink caps. Flocks of lapwing grow in number day by day. Golden plover arrive from the northern UK and Iceland. Mike told us about the successful reintroduction programme of the common crane and how many pairs are now breeding on the levels and some pairs have moved away to South Wales. In winter, lapwings, golden plovers, black-tailed gobwits and cormorants can be seen and wetland fowl of all kinds will be displaying and wing flapping in order to attract a mate. During the winter months, it is the best time to see bearded tits, short-eared owls and barn owls and also the now world famous murmurations of starlings. All captured through Mike’s lens and accompanied by interesting and amusing anecdotes, we are eagerly anticipating our visit to the levels this summer. The society’s visit to Ham Wall is on Saturday June 8th, 2024. Emma Procter Our next meeting, at the Victoria Hall on Tisbury High Street on Thursday 14th March at 7:30pm (doors, and the bar will be open from 7:00) will hear from Mike Read who is going to share with us his view of ‘The land of the Somer people’.
Mike, who lives at Ringwood in Hampshire, has worked as a free-lance wildlife photographer for over 40 years. His pictures are often used as nature illustrations, including in books he has written or co-authored such as 'The Robin' & 'The Barn Owl' both published by Blandford Press and a number on aspects of the New Forest: 'New Forest Moods', 'Perfect New Forest', 'Spirit of the New Forest', 'Spirit of the New Forest Pony', and 'New Forest National Park' all published by Halsgrove Publishing and 'Red Kite Country' published by Wild Guides Ltd. The Land of the Somer People, is one of a number of talks Mike delivers to societies like ours, illustrated with pictures he has taken over the years. He will take us through a typical year on the Somerset Levels, a wonderful place to watch wildlife at any time of year. The Levels have changed greatly since Stone Age man first visited the area and laid bundles of hazel sticks to be able to cross the boggy ground. Over 5,000 years later, pollarded willows, pumping stations, drainage ditches or ‘rhynes’ and other man-made constructions, have created a very controlled landscape. But wildlife still thrives with birds, flowers and insects all enjoying the Levels’ landscapes and the nature reserves that have been established. In the spring and summer, flowers add colour to the place as do butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies. Birds include up to six species of the heron family, raptors such as marsh harriers, buzzards, peregrines and hobbies as well as huge flocks of wintering waders and wildfowl. There is the successful reintroduction of common cranes to the area and the marvellous spectacle of the weaving, ever-changing patterns of ‘murmurations’ as tens of thousands of starlings fly in to roost in the reedbeds at sunset, while hawks and harriers try to secure a final meal of the day. The People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) is running a pilot programme to monitor hedgehog populations (NHMP). For this programme, a large number of cameras are deployed at specific sites across the country at specific dates, with 5 sites having been selected in Wiltshire this spring/summer. Volunteers are needed to help deploy the trail cameras at the site and check the images obtained. The Tisbury and District Natural History Society has its own independent trail camera project (more info here) but we would like to assist two neighbouring areas with their participation in the PTES pilot project.
If you would like to take part in the camera deployment aspect, take note of the dates and get in touch with us so we can coordinate our participation with the organisers of the sites. Broadchalke Deployment day Thursday 4th April Collection day Saturday 4th May Barford St Martin Deployment day Saturday 20th July /Sunday 21st July (TBC) Collection day Monday 19th August/ Tuesday 20th August (TBC) If you would like to help with image checking (identifying animals in the pictures taken by the trail cameras), please follow these instructions: 1. Register in the portal MammalWeb first. 2. Following registration in MammalWeb, please fill in this PTES form, using the same email address that your MammalWeb account is linked to. This will register you as a PTES NHMP volunteer, and you will receive instructions on how to take part. For image checking, you don’t need to wait until the camera season is over, as there are already images from 12 previous sites across the country. Inés López-Dóriga Water vole (c) Steve Deeley The Wiltshire Mammal Group have sent us information about an event showcasing the projects in Wiltshire for controlling American mink, as part of a wider Water vole recovery strategy. The event is being held at the Wiltshire Scout Centre, Potterne Wick, Devizes on Wednesday 27th March. Doors open at 18:15 hrs for refreshments and 18:45 - 21:00 is the timing for the presentations. Professor Tony Martin of the Waterlife Recovery Trust will be their keynote speaker, sharing his experiences and successes. This will be followed by a series of rapid-fire presentations from projects within Wiltshire, providing a platform and route for potential volunteers to get involved, and for projects to learn from each other. Full details about reserving a free ticket can be found here The Peoples’ Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) collates and analyses any records sent in from many counties and sites which are part of the National Dormouse Monitoring Project (NDMP). The registered sites record any nests found in the boxes and the abundance, sex, weight and breeding condition of any dormice found in them, or the lack of them. The sites in the project are checked by people who hold a licence to do so, mainly volunteers. The licence is a requirement from Natural England, as dormice are classified as ‘Vulnerable’.
I started a dormouse monitoring site about 15 years ago in Oysters Coppice and Gutch Common, with new boxes being added progressively. We check the 173 boxes once a month from April to November and the records are sent to PTES. We had none in Oysters Coppice but a few in Gutch Common wood this year. On 11th November, I attended the 2023 Dormouse conference in Reading. Here are some of the notes I took. Ian White, from PTES, gave an up-to-date report about the state of Britain’s dormice (you can read the full report here). They have declined by 70% in monitoring sites since 2000 and are on the verge of being reclassified as ‘endangered’. However, they are known to live along roads and railways, in dense scrub and in conifer forests, so there may be more than are known. In the last century, there were dormice in all but two counties in England and Wales. In this century, they have become extinct in twenty counties. Some captive bred dormice have been reintroduced successfully in some of these. Reasons for the decline in dormice:
How to survey for dormice? Survey methods frequently used:
What can we do for dormice? Here is a list of some conservation efforts:
Most of these facts come from the Dormouse conference but some opinions are mine (Debbie Carter 2023). Ed.: Our society has two dormouse survey licence holders and are willing to assist any local prospective surveyors in starting out a new surveying or monitoring project. Dr Phil Baker, from Reading University, gave us a fascinating talk on hedgehogs recently. We learnt that there are 4 species of hedgehog in Europe, with slightly overlapping ranges in some areas, although there is only one native wild species in the UK (in addition to pet hedgehogs which are of a different species). Hedgehogs belong to the order Insectivora but are actually omnivorous and a highly adaptable species, which evolved in woodland edge habitats about 15 million years ago. They usually have 1 litter a year, although occasionally have two, and hibernate through the winter prompted by cold temperatures. Their main food sources are earthworms and insects, but they can also eat some terrestrial molluscs and eggs of ground-nesting birds. Their average life-span is 3 years although the record is of a 16-year-old hedgehog. It is very difficult to know exactly how many hedgehogs there are, the extent of their decline and the reasons for their decline but there are a few known facts known through different sources. However, Phil pointed out more research is needed on all aspects. Hedgehogs were abundant in the past, and were particularly favoured by the Enclosures Acts, which created lots of hedgerows, in the postmedieval period. Hedgehog populations started to fare badly with the popularisation of game shooting, and as possible predators of ground-nesting game bird eggs and chicks, they were routinely killed by gamekeepers. They could have gone extinct if it hadn’t been for WW1. Since WW2, numbers of hedgehogs have steadily decreased (estimates range between a 50 and a 90% reduction). A series of circumstances are liable to the decrease in the number of hedgehogs and their admittance to rescue centres (which on average have a 50% rehabilitation success): Human causes
Natural causes
Over the last few years, a series of charities and conservation organisations have promoted measures to promote hedgehogs, such as hedgehog houses and hedgehog tunnels. These have had mixed success, while it shows some people are really enthusiastic about hedgehog conservation, it is not enough people and significant achievements have not been obtained. Wildlife rehabilitation centres are increasing in number and capacity and there is evidence that they can be a factor in slowing down the rate of decline. Thus, hedgehogs may actually go extinct if we don’t change enough decline factors.
To end on a positive note, I want to highlight the following positive actions out of Phil’s talk:
Inés López-Dóriga As an ambassador for Dark Sky International, Steve Tonkin gave us a comprehensive talk on the importance of doing all we can to reduce nocturnal light pollution. Not only does it cause a disruption to the normal life of a wide range of animals, but it is having a long term effect on species numbers. Bright lights at night cause confusion, leading to death on roads, predation by larger animals and fewer opportunities to mate.
We heard examples about robins who get exhausted, mistaking artificial lights for daylight, as they sing through the night and migrating birds who are disoriented by lights and fly into buildings. There are parts of the world where already crops have to be pollinated by hand; for instance, in parts of Canada for their blueberry crops and in parts of China for their apples because insect colonies have vanished. Steve warned that we still have a way to go in further decreasing the light pollution across the AONB, otherwise we risk losing our dark skies designation. The light pollution over Tisbury was a particular concern to see when he showed us the satellite imaging of the AONB. So how can we help? https://darksky.org/ shows the way with guidance on how to assess your own home lighting, particularly in making sure that any outdoor light is appropriately placed with motion sensor activation and downward facing beams in warm not blue tones, to minimise disruption to wildlife. We can also look around our own community to see whether there is unnecessary lighting on public buildings and seek to persuade decision makers to implement changes. Steve Tonkin, Dark Sky Advisor to the Cranborne Chase AONB, will be talking to us at our next meeting, at 7:30pm in the Victoria Hall, High Street, Tisbury on Thursday 12 Oct 2023 about Why dark skies matter: the importance to wildlife of responsible lighting. Steve has a life-long passion for astronomy which, of course, has made him aware of the effects of light pollution, and he has been raising the issue with anyone who will listen for the last 30 years. After a first career as a telecommunications engineer, he took a degree in Environmental Studies, did postgraduate work in technology policy, and went on to teach physics, maths and astronomy before retiring to concentrate on astronomy and outreach activities.
Steve supported the Cranborne Chase bid to become a designated International Dark Sky Reserve and his primary task now, as the AONB’s Dark Skies Advisor, is to continue and consolidate the good work that has already been done, and strengthen the AONB Reserve’s standing. The bar opens at 7pm. There's no need to book. Members and those under 21 have free entry. Guests £2 on the door or please contact us for our BACs information as we do prefer online payments. This is a reminder for those already signed up for Debbie Carter's Field Trip on Wednesday 16th August to visit the beavers' habitat on the River Frome. This trip is fully booked and we are operating a waiting list for a space, so if you can no longer make it, please get in touch via the Contact form.
We will be met by local wildlife expert Eve Tigwell who will guide us to the nearby nature reserve to see the impact beavers are having and in the hope of seeing beavers. No dogs. Meet at the Nadder Centre car park at 7:30pm or at the Asda Shopping Centre car park on Castle Road BA11 5LA just off the A362, roughly an hour later. Distance, Difficulty and Footwear - We have no knowledge of the distance we shall cover, nor the state of the paths, so stout footwear or boots are recommended. We shall start the walk at dusk and continue into darkness, so a good torch is advised. Meet at the Nadder Centre car park on Sat 3rd June at 10.30am or approximately 1 hour 15 minutes later at the Westhay Moor Reserve BA6 9TX. The car park is at OS ST 456 437, just north of the junction between Westhay Moor Drove and Dagg’s Lane Drove, between the villages of Westhay and Godney.
Distance, Difficulty and Footwear: Approximately 5 km/3 miles on flat gravel paths which may be a bit muddy if there has been recent rain. Good stout shoes should suffice rather than wellingtons. Bring a packed lunch and refreshments. This Field Trip has limited numbers. There may still be places if you've not yet signed up and want to come. Equally please let us know if you're on the list, but can no longer make the date. We are now using the email address tisburynathist@gmail.com for organising lists for events, so please contact us there. |
Photo: Avocets (Izzy Fry)
The headers display photos taken by our members. Do get in touch via the Contact Form if you'd like to submit a photo for selection.
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