Lappet Moth caterpillar

Wow, anyone who is interested in moths and their caterpillars will be impressed I think by a surprising sighting this morning. Walking round our local meadow , inspecting our one year old new hedge, my companion got quite excited and dived into the young hedge to collect a magnificent specimen of the Lappet moth caterpillar. I am including my photo of its discoverer to show its size. You can see the young hedge in the background. The caterpillar was on Blackthorn. I understand this in not fully grown.

I don't have photo of the moth but here is a link to the UK Moths web site.

Severn tidal power consultation

Trying to meet todays deadline for the phase one consultation I managed to send off an email yesterday. The views here are my own personal comments.

This is what I said:

I wish to make the following comments on the Severn Tidal Power consultation.

My comments are based on the following:

DECC Phase 1 Consultation Doc., and the SDC report, Turning the Tide. October 2007.

Attendance at the RSA public forum meeting on 7th March 2009, in Bristol.

Membership of the Somerset Wildlife Trust and the RSPB.

On the basis of these documents, meetings and the public statements of the above organisations which I support I am not in favour of the Cardiff to Weston barrage because it would cause unacceptable environmental damage to the Severn Estuary.

I support efforts to generate electricity from sustainable sources such as tidal energy but only after thorough testing and development.

I support the view that a greatly increased level of research is needed to explore alternative technologies which offer sustainable energy generation without major environmental destruction which would follow from the Cardiff/Western barrage.

I feel strongly that far more emphasis should be directed to reducing public, industrial and commercial demand for energy before we, as a community, massively change and damage our natural inheritance.

I do not accept the arguments that we must continue to generate ever increasing wealth and prosperity whatever the cost to the environment so that we may all maintain the life style we have become accustomed to.

I support the SDC statements (Section 5.3, page 139) that it is not advocating unquestioning Government support for a barrage and that there are serious challenges for current Government policy.

It is significant the SDC also states in Section 5.3 page 139 that:

“We do not take a position on the relative merits of the various barrage schemes but have instead considered the issues generically, with an inevitable focus on the larger Cardiff-Weston scheme due to the availability of more detailed evidence and the greater degree of impact it would have - environmentally, economically and socially.”

David German 22.04.09

Art and Wildlife

Art and Wildlife

You will see from our events diary that we have organised an art and wildlife workshop. We tried this for the first time last summer and a dozen, mainly members, all agreed that it was a success. That is everyone found it interesting and perhaps motivating. A few were already active in creating some form of art but others were just interested enough to come along to explore the possibilites of the day.I don't think any great works of art were produced but a lot of creative thinking was stimulated. I can vouch for that personally.
So we are trying again, still very much an experiment I think but we hope another group of willing experimenters will join us for a day,this time spread over two Saturday mornings in Compton Dundon.
This blog has been sparked off by arrangements I am involved in to run a different kind of workshop for the Trusts, Private Nature Reserve Network.
I have been discussing with a local botanist and member of the Trust a contribution I hope she will be able to make to a day spent exploring the creation and management of ponds with wildlife in mind. Anne has worked for the Field Studies Council and to find out more about them I visited their web site. It was a great surprise to find they run courses more or less exactly the same. You might find their work of interest in many ways other than in art.

Here is a link to their web site. Click here.

Here is a brief extract from their art page:

Individuals & Families 2009 | Arts


Painting, Drawing and the Arts

The courses within this section offer the opportunity
to concentrate on the more artistic elements of the natural world.
There is a wide range of courses on offer in 2009 to help you to
explore and develop painting, drawing and creative writing skills.
Courses are based in and around the stunning locations of our Centres. Find out which course is suitable for you.

Local wildlife news

This post shows a note I expect to publish in our local parish magazine. Comments welcome and my email address is shown elsewhere on the page.

Somerset Wildlife Trust, Local Wildlife News.

Wild Orchids will be showing again soon on a field near the village.

The old Rugby Field is publicly owned and open to all to visit and enjoy. The Parish council is responsible for its management. That is important because most other green areas round the village are privately owned and farmed and not dedicated to supporting wildlife. We know some farmers do a great deal to encourage wild life but they do have to produce our food. The Parish Council has both an opportunity and a responsibility to conserve the natural value of the field and by doing so protect its biodiversity.

Round the Rugby Field, old blackthorn hedges are in full bloom in mid April and the field is coming to life again after a winter rest. Soon we will see the rich mixture of flowering plants and some 15 different species of grasses. There will be numerous butterflies including the lovely Marbled White.

.

Last year we mapped the areas where the wild orchids grow and other flowering plants such as Broomrape and we can share this with you.

The field has been surveyed by a number of qualified experts including the Ecologist working for the District Council who all agree that it is of significant flora and fauna interest. The field has been registered as a County Wildlife Site and local nature reserve.

Members of the Wildlife Trust will know we organise guided walks to local sites of special interest and this local field is no exception. To join a walk email me.

Evolution

A visitor to this blog has asked a straight forward question and I have tried to find an answer of sorts. I'm not a zoologist or biologist so I looked on the Internet for some ideas. I typed into Google the simple statement , evolution of wings.The first reference which appeared instantly was to a National Geographic magazine article which I think is a good starting point giving food for thought and which could lead on to a wider investigation on the question posed. So here are the first few paragraphs which develop into seven pages. I found it interesting enough to read it all and so I recommend it to anyone who is curious about how a fin can become a limb and can become a wing.

Here is a link to the full article:


A Fin is a Limb is a Wing
How Evolution Fashioned its Masterworks
By Carl Zimmer
Photograph by Rosamond Purcell

The father of evolution was a nervous parent. Few things worried Charles Darwin more than the challenge of explaining how nature's most complex structures, such as the eye, came to be. "The eye to this day gives me a cold shudder," he wrote to a friend in 1860.

Today biologists are beginning to understand the origins of life's complexity—the exquisite optical mechanism of the eye, the masterly engineering of the arm, the architecture of a flower or a feather, the choreography that allows trillions of cells to cooperate in a single organism.

The fundamental answer is clear: In one way or another, all these wonders evolved. "The basic idea of evolution is so elegant, so beautiful, so simple," says Howard Berg, a Harvard researcher who has spent much of the past 40 years studying one of the humbler examples of nature's complexity, the spinning tail of common bacteria. "The idea is simply that you fiddle around and you change something and then you ask, Does it improve my survival or not? And if it doesn't, then those individuals die and that idea goes away. And if it does, then those individuals succeed, and you keep fiddling around, improving. It's an enormously powerful technique."

Wildflower meadow campaign

I took this photo in a local wildflower meadow. I think this is a Field Scabious being mobbed by Six Spot Burnet moths. It shows clearly just what we will lose if we don't protect our local meadows.



You might find it of interest to see what we offer for inclusion in the next issue of our Somerset Wildlife Trust magazine which is issued three times a year.

Heart of the Levels Group.

Last time I wrote: Our local Council is to be congratulated on agreeing to keep part of a wildflower meadow as a nature reserve. It turned out I was too optimistic and now it is not clear how it will look after this local County Wildlife Site.

We have 18 Parishes in our area and we would encourage all members to take an interest in how their own Council meets its responsibilities to protect wildlife and biodiversity. The County Council and District Councils can give plenty of advice if asked. Our 500 local members can make a difference.

At our last public meeting we were treated to a wonderful presentation of photographs of moths and butterflies and the fascinating range of caterpillars which exist everywhere but usually escape our notice. John Bebbington, Secretary of the Somerset Moth Group and a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society combined detailed photography with his extensive technical knowledge.

Offers of help in running our group are always welcome, that includes acting as our eyes and ears!

Darwin

You may have seen some of the TV programmes on BBC on the subject of Charles Darwin.

If like me you are interested in learning more about the work of Darwin it may be a help to use this link to the OU / BBC series of programmes. You will be able to order the poster of The Tree of Life and register for emails to let you know about future events. It links in to the OU/ BBC even wider range of events and OU courses.

It includes programmes exploring the debate between the scientific and religious points of view on this subject.

Tomorrow , Sunday 8th, is this programme , see below, which looks at the work done on evolution in England and France at about the same time in history.

The Origins of The Origin
(Sunday Feature)

8 February, 9.30pm Radio 3

Starlings in Gloucestershire

Here is a link to a BBC news item and video clip.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7860322.stm

Starlings

According to the counter on this blog most visitors recently have been searching for info on the starling roosting display. I also get telephone calls usually from members of the Wildlife Trust or via the Trusts web site.

All these photographs are provided by Lynne Newton, www.foxybiddy.com




At present all I can do is to say that starlings continue to fly over our house on route to the Westhay area and we also see them return in the morning, regular as clockwork. They fly in groups of various sizes , perhaps a dozen and sometimes hundreds. But in the last few days two pairs of starlings have started visiting our roof space. Two pairs have been nesting under the eves for some years now. Last year we noticed they were pulling out lumps of loft insulation which we find in the garden and they have just started again this week. I'm not sure whether they stay here at night but it is an interesting observation. I must try to check it further.

Photographs of the display can be seen here: Lynne Newton, www.foxybiddy.com

The Somerset Wildlife Trust has a page with advice about the occurrence. Link here.

The RSPB has a telephone hotline number at 07866 554142.

Lyn Newtons photos are quite remarkable and should show you just how dramatic the sight can be.

You need to go on a fine day and there is no guarantee that these wild birds will perform every time.
Its the same with wildlife photography, you need a lot of patience and I wish you luck.

Lynne Newton www.foxybiddy.com

Butterflies and Moths. Public meeting. The use of colour in butterflies and moths

On Thursday 22nd January we have our first public meeting of 2009.

John Bebbington, Secretary of the Somerset Moth Group will be presenting a talk on how butterflies and moths use colour to give themselves protection from predators.John will be illustrating his talk with some of his wonderful photographs.

Despite the flooding in December we will be meeting in the Curry Rivel Primary School hall at 7 pm.

The school is in School Lane in the centre of Curry Rivel with car parking near by.

As a result of this very successful event with wonderful photos ( as you would expect from a Member of the Royal Photographic Society) and an appreciative audience, I can give two links to sites you can see even more of Johns photographic work in wildlife.
Nature Photographers Portfolio. Link here.
Somerset Moth Group. Link here.

The display of these photos on a large screen together with a very informative talk was even more impressive than just viewing the pictures you will see at the links given.