On 7th January our new season of talks opened with an entertaining talk given by Dominic Couzens entitled ‘The secret life of garden birds’.
Dominic is an award winning author of books about birds and conservation. He is particularly passionate about bird behaviour and began his talk with one of our favourite birds, the friendly Robin. It turns out that the males are so territorial that they kill 10 % of other males who intrude on their patch. They only suck up to us in the garden to get the worms we disturb when digging. The Coal Tits will mate with several males so that that their chosen male gets help in feeding their brood. 34% of their eggs are fertilised by other males. The Dunnocks are also highly promiscuous, the male having several wives. The charming Long Tailed Tits will cuddle up in a long line on a branch on cold nights. The female will build a beautiful nest of moss glued together with spider’s webs and lined with up to 3000 feathers. Another fascinating fact was about Blue Tits. A female will choose a male with the brightest yellow chest. He will get this by eating caterpillars that contain Carotinoid so the more caterpillars he can consume the brighter will his breast be and the more attractive to the female! These were some of the facts we learned about our garden birds and our friendly Robin is not what he seemed after all. Debbie Carter There is a new programme for 2025 and you can find the lists of our talks, films and field trips on the relevant pages of this website. We just need to complete the document which holds the details of the field trips and we'll let you know when it's ready.
![]() Our first indoor talk of 2025 will be at 7.30pm on Thursday January 9th at Victoria Hall. We are delighted to welcome Dominic Couzens to talk to us about his passion, birds, particularly our garden birds. Dominic describes himself as an award winning nature writer, with over 40 book titles to his name. He believes passionately in communicating greater understanding about the natural world and also about threats to nature and what we can do to help our planet. The doors to the Victoria Hall will be open from 7pm and the bar will be available then too. Members are free and guests £2 at the door. ![]() Don't forget we have our Christmas drinks and a talk from Georgina Starkie on Dormice ecology and conservation on Thurs 12 December at the Victoria Hall, Tisbury. Doors will open at the earlier time of 6:30pm for drinks and food, with the talk starting at 7:30pm. Georgie has extensive experience of dormice, having worked under the late Michael Woods and she delivers training for organisations such as The Mammal Society and the Wiltshire Mammal Group. She has worked as an Ecological Consultant since 2006 and has experience in ecological site appraisal, in particular for protected species and she holds Natural England licences to survey for bats, great crested newts and of course, dormice. (c) christmasstockimages.com, via Wikimedia Commons
We are so fortunate to live in this beautiful part of the world but also, we are incredibly lucky that so many people with expertise and interest in our natural environment live here too and are willing to share their knowledge with us too. On Thursday November 28th Dr Jolyon Medlock, Head of Medical Entomology, Porton Down, UK Health Security Agency talked to us about Ticks, mosquitoes and diseases.
An uneasy but fascinating listen for many of us, Jolyon took us on a tour of the world of ticks and then of mosquitoes and the diseases that they carry and transmit to us and other creatures. Ticks are arachnids and metamorphose. They lurk on plant stems as nymphs where they “quest” for a suitable host to feed from their blood. They latch onto their host – they do not run or jump or fly. They have two key requirements: a moist microclimate or high humidity for survival away from a host and available hosts for blood-feeding. They are found in habitats with suitable microclimates and hosts e.g. woodlands, heathland, grassland, parks and gardens. They are most active between March and July. The significant diseases they carry are Lyme borrelliosis, tick-borne encephalitis, babesiosis, anaplasmosis, rickettsial disease (spotted fever), relapsing fever and Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever. Jolyon’s message is – be aware, check yourself and your children’s and pets’ skin after being outdoors. Seek medical advice if you get a fever, rash or feel unwell after a tick bite. Mosquitoes are insects. There are 36 species in the UK. Some species cause nuisance biting. Most are associated with wetlands. Some are only in tree holes. Some species are very common in urban areas. They can fly approximately two hundred metres and so they are being transported in cars, trains, lorries and planes to reach further away from their origins. Jolyon and his team are surveying for ticks and mosquitoes to enable governments to prepare for future contingency plans as climate change warms our world giving better environments for ticks and mosquitoes to survive and thrive and as we travel further and faster taking these unpleasant companions with us. Mosquitoes are a food supply for many birds, fish and other creatures but ticks have no purpose but to make a pleasant day out turn into a potential medical emergency. You have been warned! Emma Procter We recently had a talk by Robin Leech on monitoring rivers (particularly, the Wylye). Robin is an ecologist employed by the Wylye farmer cluster and he spoke about some of the work he does with his farmers, involving monitoring river pollution (chemical and sedimentary) and also re-naturalisation. A lot of what he spoke about theoretically applies to our river, the Nadder.
Many of us who are interested in river pollution (to stop it!) have all probably heard by now a lot on eutrophication, nitrates and phosphates, and there was some debate at the talk on the representativity of these indicators of the extent of the chemical pollution in rivers and also on the randomness of establishing a “safe” level of pollution. But Robin also spoke about something a bit novel: colourimetric analysis to find out where the sediments in the river come from, to target sediment run-off at source. Colourimetric analysis involves taking samples of sediment from the river, putting them in an oven to burn the organic matter and dry the grains and then put the dry remaining sample in a machine that analyses the colour - this allows to compare it with a reference collection of sediment samples from the surrounding areas of a river. He also spoke about their new project to restore the natural floodplains in some of the Wylye and the renaturalisation of the river system, which is something that will hopefully occupy many conservation organisations in the future. The straightened courses of rivers, with high banks, not only is detrimental to wildlife (for example, water voles) but also, in heavy rain, sends high quantities of water downstream, producing flooding in towns, and also sediments due to the erosion of the banks. Restoring the natural course of rivers not only will promote wildlife and natural processes and reduce sedimentary pollution, but it will also have the added benefit of reducing flooding in sensitive areas (the flooding needs to happen whether we want it or not, but if the river is allowed to flood a floodplain, then it won’t flood a town further down!). Inés López-Dóriga ![]() This month we are fortunate to have a second talk and look forward to hearing from Dr Jolyon Medlock who will be telling us all about 'Ticks, Mosquitoes and their diseases' at 7.30pm in the Victoria Hall. Jolyon has 25 years extensive field experience of infectious disease ecology in UK, Europe, Africa and the Caribbean. He first worked in Africa on malaria control and lymphatic filariasis and since 2002 has been at Porton Down working for UK government health agencies. Jolyon leads the Medical Entomology group advising UK government on vector-borne disease risk and managing the UK-wide vector surveillance systems for diseases such as Lyme borreliosis, rickettsiosis, West Nile virus, Zika, chikungunya and dengue. With over 100 peer reviewed papers and book chapters, Jolyon's research includes focus on the impacts of environmental and climatic change and habitat management for the changing status of vector-borne disease. Everyone is welcome. The talk is free for members and £2 for visitors over 21. Doors and the bar will open at 7pm. A large crowd gathered for the first evening talk of the 2024/25 programme of events by Tisbury and District Natural History Society and, unusually, after the notices and a welcome to our speaker had been given, an audience member told an anecdote related to the subject. Many years ago, in a terraced house in London, Mike awoke in the middle of the night to find a hedgehog snuffling around his pillow! How did it get there? Mike hoped that Abi might enlighten him!
Dr Abi Gazzard has spent many years studying hedgehogs in Earley, Reading as the subject of her Masters and PHD. She now works for the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. Abi’s talk was divided into four sections: The hedgehog family Research: garden use Research: nest box studies Hedgehogs: research and you! Hedgehogs are members of the erinaceidae family. This makes them close relatives of moles and shrews. They are NOT rodents. Not all hedgehogs are spiny and there are nineteen types of hedgehog known today – the most recent was identified as recently as December 2023. Hedgehogs are: nocturnal, solitary, not territorial, weigh between 500g and 1500g, primarily insectivorous, build nests under cover and hibernate during the winter. Citizen science surveys have shown a steep and rapid decline in population sizes over the past twenty years in rural areas however, in urban areas, the population numbers appear to be stable. There is limited knowledge about the answers to why numbers are decreasing in rural areas or stabilising in urban areas. Abi’s research area was in Earley, Reading, a suburban area with mixed, high density housing and no badgers (badgers are the major predators of hedgehogs). She used GPS and radio tags to track the hedgehogs in the area. The surveys were nocturnal and also relied heavily on community engagement. Abi observed twenty-eight hedgehogs over nine nights each. A male hedgehog visited three front gardens and nine back gardens and covered a distance of 3.5 hectares per night while the female hedgehogs visited an average of five front gardens and seven back gardens and covered 0.7 hectares per night. Both sexes preferred the garden of terraced houses. Amenity grassland was less preferred to gardens. The factors which affected the time spent in gardens negatively were a lack of access between the front and back garden, foxes, rainfall and plentiful other gardens nearby. The positive factors were shorter nights (summer), supplementary feeding and compost heaps. Abi posed the question, does supplementary feeding result in the thriving urban population? We do not know the answer. More research is needed. Abi then turned to the question, what makes a good nest box? There were over five thousand responses to a hedgehog housing census. The use of hedgehog houses was found to be linked to garden factors, nest box placement and resource providing. A good hedgehog house depends on the design and also microclimates. There are significant research gaps in:- nest box efficiency, supplementary feeding, population parameters, urban hazards and rural hedgehogs. What can you do to help? If you are a garden owner you could consider any hazards, the connectivity between gardens, providing food and shelter; you could log sightings; look out for sick and injured hedgehogs and take them to a hedgehog rescue; take part in a questionnaire, survey and other citizen science project. Spread the message! Emma Procter Dr Abbi Gazzard will be with us at at the Victoria Hall on Tisbury High Street on Thursday 10th October at 7:30pm (doors, and the bar will be open from 7:00). ![]() Abi, who lives in Westbury, is a Programme Officer working as a member of the Species Survival Commission (SSC) Small Mammal Specialist Group for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). She is based at the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, an international charity headquartered at Jersey Zoo in the Channel Islands, that works to save species from extinction. As Abi says “I wanted to be able to help wildlife, so conservation was the direction for me. I was lucky to spend some time studying hedgehogs and this interest ultimately led me into the world of small mammal research. Small mammals are inspiring in their own right! They may be little, but creatures like moles, rats, squirrels and porcupines can play big roles in ecosystems.” As with all our events, this meeting is free if you’re a member of the Society or under 21, and you’ll be very welcome to come as a guest visitor for the payment of £2. We are pleased to announce that Jolyon Medlock will now be giving his talk "Ticks, mosquitoes and their diseases" on Thursday 28th November at 7:30pm. This has been re-scheduled from Sept. Please note that the Tisbury Natural History Society will now be having two talks during November and we'll send a reminder out nearer the date.
|
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.
Archives
February 2025
Categories
All
|