What to look out for in our area in the months ahead:

by Bob Stockhausen

Most of our local bird population is now stationary, actively involved in rearing young. Males are still defining their territories with song and it is a great time to map the distribution of individual species by noting where song is being delivered. This is particularly useful for woodland birds this time of year when trees in full leaf make visual observation difficult.

It is probably the best way too to establish the distribution of migrants in our area. Chiffchaffs, Willow Warblers and Blackcaps are relatively easy to identify with a little help and are reasonably common to find in the right habitat. Contact me if you would like to learn and take part this month in migrant surveys. Willow Warblers seem more common than they were last year with Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps, everywhere. The Garden Warbler is more difficult to identify, even from his song, but at the end of May I was hearing several of these in many places in the survey area, from North Hill, to, North Petherwin and Lawhitton.

Yellowhammers are making a strong return to farmland. Look out for his song "little bit of bread and noooo cheese". Please make sure that you record where and when you see or hear this species.

Has anyone heard the cuckoo this year? They seem to ba around on the Moor in better numbers than normal. I heard my first on Priddacombe the end of May, but I have had reports from 'moor dwellers' that they have been around for some time. One recorder  reported hearing 3 cuckoos at the same time on Tolborough Downs.

This nice picture of a Tawny Owl came from one of our N. Petherwin observers, this month. Please send us all your great wildlife photos

Remember to record your sightings in your Wildlife Diary, recording What , Where, When and by Whom

by Brian Stringer








Moths

 

It has been a disappointing start to the year for butterflies in my Garden in Launceston.  In March and early April Speckled Wood was  seen regularly with Holly Blue not a very close second. Since then, there have been hardly any. Occasionally, I have seen large and small 'whites', but only in transit from other gardens, without being able to say which species. The two major species in my garden seem to be associated with trees - a south-facing laurel hedge, a petit-sporum bush and a leylandii hedge.

Surely sightings will imoprove this month.  In addition to the species we suggested for May (Small Copper, Small Tortoiseshell (see picture, right) , Wall and Green Veined White), also look out for:

Large Skipper,  Small Skipper, Dark Green Fritillary, Ringlet and Meadow Brown. It is worth looking out for the  Marbled White, although it is not common in Cornwall. (The links present photographs of each species provided by the Upper Thames Butterfly Conservation)

Please record all sightings. It is not too late to start a Garden Butterfly survey.

Moths. We have added some material on daytime Moths in the garden. Most should be flying in June.  Record any species you see. I have been seeing a very small and colourful moth in some numbers around my rockery this year flying in bright sunshine. It is only  as big as my fingernail, but is typical macro-moth shape. It only has a latin name - Pyrausta aurata Scopoli. See picture on the left

Alison Jewell is setting a moth trap, several times a week and is building up a picture of the moth population in the Rezare area. If anyone is interested in learning about moths, then get in touch
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by Brian Stringer

A selection of plants that will be flowering for the first time this month are shown below. Recordings made of where and in what sort of quantities you see these or any other plants that you feel are not common in your area, would be very useful.

Hedgehogs, Rabbits and Hares

by Alex Howie

Hedgehogs, Erinaceus europaeus become active in May searching for a mating partner and foraging for food after emerging from hibernation since November.  Being nocturnal, hedgehogs can mainly be observed at dusk and during the night when they may travel up to 2KM visiting gardens, woodlands and fields searching for insects and worms, their staple diet. 

Hedgehog Signs and tracks

• Hedgehogs have an acute sense of smell and although nocturnal, the noise of snuffling and grunting while looking for food is a dead give-away of their presence. At this time of year young may been seen venturing out of nests after about 6 weeks once they have been weaned. A litter usually consists of around 5 young however survival levels are usually low. 

• Often droppings can be found on lawns and fields, which have a black, shiny appearance, usually consist of insect remains but sometimes feathers, fur and bones depending on what they have been eating. The droppings are usually 8-10 mm thick and 3-4 cm in length, cylindrical and pointed at one end.

• If the ground is wet enough footprints can sometimes be seen. Although these creatures have 5 toes on each foot, the thumb usually doesn't make an imprint. The size of the footprints is the same for the fore and back, 2.5cm long, 2.8 cm wide. 

  Note: 

If you know there are hedgehogs in your garden, it is advisable not to put out bowls of milk as this causes diarrhoea, however dog or cat meat with water provides a nutritional meal and wont cause any ill effects! Hedgehogs love slugs so try to avoid slug pellets as this can kill hedgehogs that eat a slug that has been in contact with the pellets. 

Rabbits Oryctolagus cunniculus and Hares Lepus capensis

 Rabbit and Hares Signs and tracks

Hares: are mainly nocturnal hares but seen at this time of year courting in their preferred habitat - open areas of lowland grassland and arable farms.

• Although hares don't burrow they form small depressions in long grass, known as 'forms' where they spend most of the day, venturing out into the open at night to feed. At this time of year as the hare moults, fur can be found in the form. 

• Due to their habitat preference hares have highly acute senses and reach speeds of up to 70 km/hr

• Their droppings are lighter in colour, larger, flatter and more fibrous than a rabbit, depending on diet, which ranges from herbs and cereal crops in the summer, to mainly grasses in the winter

• Footprints can be identified as having four toes on each paw, the hind feet placed in front and the pads often not seen due to furry soles. Prints are larger than that of a rabbit. Worn tacks are often seen across open fields and though hedges

Rabbits: are found almost anywhere where they can burrow, including sand dunes and railway banks. They usually die in their first year of life as they are preyed on by a number of species and are often killed on the road, especially young.

• Rabbits avoid damper ground and are rarely found above the tree line and in coniferous woodlands. The burrows are often found on slopes and well-drained soil

• Droppings are the size of a large pea and black-brown in colour. They are usually visible as scent stations on dunghills or around burrows

• Small shallow scrapes are often seen in the ground where the rabbits have been looking for roots

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by Tony Atkinson


breeding colonies


what about the males?

bats in trees

Most species will be back in their breeding roosts now and breeding will start through the month. The females gather in their breeding roosts before they give birth, to maintain an active body temperature (as distinct from torpor) in order to keep their foetuses growing in the later stages of pregnancy. By cuddling together they save energy in maintaining their higher metabolic rate.

Because the females have stored sperm from an autumn/winter mating, we do not know how long their pregnancy is, as they will have initiated fertilisation unknown to us, Presumably this is in response to an increase in body weight as they start to feed in the spring. They will give birth to their single offspring (it is rare for bats to carry twins) in these clusters towards the end of the month, depending on weather and species. They may be two years old before they have their first baby, and will not necessarily breed regularly every year after that. But they may live up to 20 years, which is a long time for such a small animal.

Since they need the thermal mass of a cluster, it is likely that a minimum of about 15 to 20 bats is necessary to make a successful breeding colony, but some colonies, even in this country, can run up to a 1,000 bats. But the biggest I know in Cornwall, at a cottage in Gunnislake, is close to 400 Pipistrelles. (Since a Pip. is reckoned to eat 3,000 midges every night, that’s 1.2 million midges in a night that don’t get into the hair of the good citizens of Gunnislake!) Most Pip. colonies are between 50-100 bats, and Lesser Horseshoes between 30-60. But these are very rough averages.

And what of the males? Well, they are probably not tolerated within the breeding/nursing cluster, but they probably hang around (no pun intended) on the outside of the cluster or in loose association with it. Truth is, without disturbing the cluster it’s difficult to find out.

English Nature trains and then licences some bat workers to aid it in its legal obligation to protect bats. Most of that work involves potential conflict between bats and householders. But increasingly these E.N. Bat Wardens are called upon to survey and comment where bats may be using tree roosts. Most of us know little about bats in trees, because we come across them so little. But we were brought up to speed with a bump on a recent training day for the Devon and Cornwall bat Wardens. On of our number from Devon, John Kascanow, had caught a female Barbestelle bat in a mist net on the edge of the woods near Stoke Climsland the evening before the training day. So he glued a minute radio bleeper to its fur and released it.

We met in the woods about a mile away next day, and we were able to track this bat to its daytime roost, with the necessary radio tracking gear which John has, right to the crevice in a damaged oak tree another half mile further on. On looking around the surrounding trees we were astonished at the number of potential bat sites they afforded, and they were not the “veteran trees” we had imagined bats would need.

This raised two important points. There are potentially far more bats in our woodland than we realise, which has an important bearing on the advice we should be giving to the public authorities, foresters, tree surgeons, etc. And there are species there we didn’t know we had. We’ve had odd reports of Barbestelle in Cornwall, but as yet we haven’t found a breeding colony. So surely it won’t be long now before we do.
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by Mary Atkinson

Slime moulds

Slime Moulds – what a name – evoking gothic manifestations! They go un-noticed and unrecorded, but when found among leaf litter or in decomposing vegetation, close examination, especially under a hand lens, reveals fascinating and beautiful forms.

At first just blobs of jelly-like substance, greyish or even yellow or orange, they develop further, sometimes throwing up a forest of forms like tiny pins, bearing reproductive bodies. (One of the Watch Club youngsters found some on a tree trunk at Armstrong Woods - photo)

These primitive members of the fungus tribe fall into the mysterious world which spans plants and animals. They are sometimes grouped with the former, but the latest scientific thinking tends to place them, in part at any rate, with the Protozoa, single celled creatures which includes that old school favourite the Amoeba.

A very interesting article on these structures appeared in the latest British Wildlife, an excellent publication which comes out every two months.

It has been an unusual weather so far this year, so keep a look out for Field Mushrooms - have had two meals from them by the start of June!