The Natural Stuff Diary

The lollipop bird is the long tailed tit.  Aegithalos caudatus, the tiny pink, black and white creature that twiddles around in the trees looking for tiny spiders and insects. I called them such name when I was a child and it has stuck. They are basically a little ball on a stick. In winter they roam in flocks often with other tit species and warblers and Gold-crests, the flocks can sometimes reach over one hundred individuals, but more often a dozen or so.

The Red kite, Milvus milvus, lives pretty easily these days with all the hand outs that people feed them with, without them they would not be so numerous in the English midlands and Wales. They are mainly scavengers but will hunt reptiles and amphibians if they are in the open. They will also take large insects and small fish in shallow water. The species nests colonially mainly in oak trees.

The black kite Milvus migrans, is very similar but has a shorter forked tail and is slightly smaller in size.as its name suggests, the bird is capable of long migrations and colonizes far off lands. A slow colonization of northern Europe has been happening over the last twenty years and many birds now resident and breed just across the English channel in France and Belgian. It will only be a matter of time before they are in southern England. I watch them every year cross through Dorset during May but they do not stay.

Note the short legs that both species have. They look out of proportion.

The hoards of wintering wildfowl have winged their way southwards from the cold north. Often migrants wait for weather systems to push them along and often some species do not move until cold weather prevails.some only fly south if the weather is bad and often stay in the north, while others instinctively migrate as the days shorten.Here,dark bellied Brent geese(Branta bernica) come in to Keyhaven , a great bird place on the edge of the New forest on the English south coast.These birds arrive in thousands from Northern Russia and the wild sound of their musical  flight call is emotional to me. Also are thousands of Black Tailed Godwits (limosa limosa).The pic below shows them in their summer plumage, a warm buff breast.

This specimen is in its winter plumage and was killed by a shotgun blast, with a severed leg and broken wing, it managed to get to the safe haven of Brownsea island, where it was found by a warden, unfortunately it did not survive the help from a bird hospital, its wounds were too severe.

Note how the lower mandible is shorter than the top and has a slight scoop on the end.The bill tip is also soft and pliable, a trait that many waders have.

There are still many spiders of the genus Araneus about.These are usually annual spiders dying off when the cold weather comes, leaving their hardy egg sacks to over winter and hatch early summer next year, but smaller juveniles continue to grow and some may make it to the spring, but will there be a mature male waiting ?

This Araneus diadematus is on the outside of my kitchen window.

The sika deer are in their gray winter coats, and look nice amongst the dead bracken and birch.

A sunset over Poole harbour is always a nice way to end the day.

Slime moulds are not fungi as once thought but completely different organism, they maybe should be among the protozoa group. They start life as a single celled ameaba type, they feed on bacteria and small fungi and often find other similar single bodies to mate with, then producing the slime mould collection, this is called the plasmodium stage. This group can move around feeding as it goes. There are a variety of differing types often bright coloured.The one below is Badhamia foliicola,it comprises of tiny bead-lets on a variety of dead plants or wood. not as common as fuligo septica with is also yellow but with fine spongy mass.

The pink type below is Tubulifera arachnoidea.

This species below is Lycogala terrestre.

Nematode worms are some of the most abundant organisms on earth.There are hundreds of thousands of different types and living in so many different types of habitat. Many are parasitic on all forms of animal or plant life, others just live in rotting vegetation.they are everywhere and sometimes all it takes is a slight brushing of damp leaves on the forest floor to reveal some of these odd creatures.here are a few I found up in a tree where a large cat had sat(Puma ,leopard or lynx)and eaten its meal in North Devon.

Lower down on a dead piece of tree were colourful lichens.

When I opened up a capsicum pepper to eat, I found a small caterpillar munching away inside.I could have just eaten it along with the fruit but decided not too and observe it. No doubt it would have been nourishing,I put the cut half back on and placed it on the window sill.

Whilst out doing big cat research I and other people came across a large regurgitated pellet, possible from a buzzard.It contained the bones of a mole. It was the largest mole I had ever encountered. Its skull and insectivorous teeth are obvious. Birds cannot pass solid waste in the same way as other animals, so it has to come out the same way as it went in.

If one looks on the trunks of trees especially oak and beech, one can find lovely little long shelled snails such as this bulin snail.  There are so many different species and can be very tricky to identify.A nasty smell like rotting flesh can often fool one(myself included)into thinking that there may be a dead animal near by, and frantic searching may prove fruitless. Look for the phallic looking fungus (phallus impudicus), it smells like rotting flesh to attract flies that visit the head and pick up spores to spread elsewhere.

The mild early winter has allowed many species of fungi to  fruit or re fruit creating an abundance of late variety.  This magpie ink cap (Coprinus picacea) was under beech amongst the leaf litter on a roadside verge.

The sika deer rut is over and the stags re join as male herds.  Some are worse for ware as they carry injuries from fights.  Here one animal has broken off an antler (the stag on the left side), not a real problem now as it will be cast in the springtime.  The stag on the right has an injured eye and he may have lost his sight, a much more serious handicap.  The stag in the middle has no visible handicaps.  They graze the reed beds in harmony with curlews behind them and Autumnal colours.

A few roe deer bucks have not yet shed their small antlers and here the young animals still sport them.  Roe are different from the larger deer species in the fact that they grow their antlers during the winter time as they are small and shed them late autumn or early winter.

The sika rut has reached its peak and the herds are reforming back into separate stag and hind groups. The annual rut of this species is the longest period for any known deer species , here in the UK it lasts from late September to the end of November,and peaks in mid October.The huge herds of this species have been a feature in Purbeck and south Dorset for decades. The species is Cervus nipon, the Japanese subspecies of Sika, slightly smaller than several mainland forms, one of which, the Manchurian sika, was also kept in captivity in Dorset and many individuals are said to have escaped and lived with the Japanese race.One cannot see the characteristics within the usual herds these days but there may be some throwbacks in some herds. The species escaped from Brownsea island in the beginning of the nineteen hundreds.it is good to have them here as they give naturalists and nature lovers alike another dimension to our wildlife and countryside. They live in large herds and love water, living in the Poole harbour reedbeds and surrounding forest. They also live away from this habitat and thrive in damp woodlands and fields. They are the main food for introduced large cat species such as leopard and puma. Both species have lived wild in Britain for perhaps up to a century.The deer also need to be controlled by trained deer management authorities. Many are also poached illegally and many are killed on roads every year. They are beautiful animals and the dawn and dusk bugling of mature stags is very similar to the call of the American Elk.The rutting calls are just as amazing to hear.The species is related to red deer but are smaller with smaller antlers but very stocky. They can interbreed with red deer( cervus Elaphus)but here in Dorset and the New forest they have not done so.

I had this albino hare passed to me, it was found in kent. Indeed a rare animal to behold. Its naturally dark fur is replaced with gray. Its eyes were purple, it was a doe and she was small and of a delicate nature.

Heteropteran bugs are members of the true bug order. This means that they do not possess jaws like most other forms of insects, but have a tube like rostrum for sucking the liquids from plants or animals.The well known cicadas, leaf hoppers, aphids and shield bugs are prime examples. The photo below shows a Picromerus bidens shield bug resting on a leaf tent made by a Dolomedes spider.

The bug below is a specimen of Corizus hyoscyami, a rather rare species to be found in dry sandy districts such as southern heathland.I found both bugs on a dry patch of heath by Bournemouth airport.

The dragonfly Aeshna cyania was also hunting for insects

Brownsea island(Branksea)is the largest of the sixteen small islands that nestle in Poole harbour. The area around the harbour as well as its waters and islands are jewels in the crown of Dorset environments,it boasts so many different habitats within and  great animals  from fish to mammals and birds . Brownsea island has an interesting history and is now in the hands of the National trust. Dorset wildlife trust has the lagoon,an important bird reserve renown for its breeding terns and gulls. Brownsea is the place from where the Japanese sika deer swam from on the first night of their release as  additions to the islands captive fauna.  Autumn is the best time to marvel at the many aspects of natural history the large area has to offer. A visit around the island ,and the harbour cruise can conjure up any species of bird,especially in the Autumn or spring as the migrants come in and out.

Thousands of oystercatchers, (Haematopus ostralegus),cormorants, black tailed godwits, avocets and wildfowl of many species can be seen at this time of year. Here a few oystercatchers rest in the safety of the lagoon. common cormorants are behind them.

the cormorants(Phalocrocorax carbo) are of continental stock and hunt together in large groups of up to two hundred, all chasing fish shoals together.

Spoonbills (Platalea leucorodia)preen all day long. The one with the yellow leg ring is from the Netherlands. They come and go when they please. Between ten and thirty can be seen at one time.

The delicate looking avocet(Recurvirostra avosetta)arrives in the late summer and over winters here. At the moment several hundred can be seen in the lagoon.

One of the islands best known inhabitants is the red squirrel(Sciurus vulgaris).They are easier to see in the autumn as they are busy preparing for winter by putting on fat and burying nuts .The species is to be found on several of the larger islands, and it was only as recently as the nineteen seventies that the red squirrel vanished from forests surrounding the harbour.The animals obviously need a larger gene pool to survive and so animals from northern Europe have been released onto Brownsea over the years to keep them healthy.  They look slightly different from the English race by being smaller, darker with dark instead of white tails during the summer.

The green elf cup fungus (Chlorosplenium aeruginascens)stains oak wood green but the fruits are uncommon. I was surprised to see a huge array of fruits on a large dead piece of wood under such dry conditions.

The green wood used to be used in Tunbridge ware boxes, but it usually exists on small fallen pieces of larger branches.

Back onto the larger heathland areas around the harbour, Thousands of little appendages adorn the  dead flower heads of the purple moor grass(Molinia caerulea) each flower head may have up to twenty fungal fruits of the Ergot fungus(Claviceps purpurea). This dangerous fungus was responsible for the ‘saint Anthony fire’ during the middle ages, and made people  mad as it was often harvested among the wheat and rye grasses unknowingly.

The Deadly Ergot.