August...

Just a quick summary of how the month has un-folded (or for a full breakdown of all species recorded click here). The dry conditions remained into August allowing the continued recovery of the site following last year’s flooding. Increasing numbers of sheep and cattle were present in the meadows, grazing the re-growth and hopefully helping to keep the coarser grasses, sedges and rushes in check, as well as producing good swards for the returning wintering waterfowl. The first such returning waterfowl included a build up of up to 145 Teal by the end of the month, and the first five returning Wigeon arrived back at Wheldrake Ings on the 24^th. A Goosander on 14^th represented an unusual mid-summer record.

View from Pool Hide, Wheldrake Ings

Large numbers of Grey Herons were feeding on the pool at Wheldrake Ings throughout the month, attracting the company of up to two Little Egrets and yet another Great White Egret (the third of the year and the sixth for the reserve). It proved a popular attraction for local birders, drawing a steady crowd of early morning admirers during its visits to the pool between the 14^th-22^nd and again on the 26^th/27^th. The resulting increased observations over this period produced some good coverage during the wader passage which was largely concentrated to the same site given the lack of water elsewhere. Green Sandpipers were, as to be expected, the commonest wader with up to 14 birds present in the valley, but a noticeable and concentrated passage of Common Sandpipers brought at least 12 into the valley from the 25^th-28^th. A flyover Grey Plover at North Duffield on the 24^th was a good autumn record, whilst small numbers of Golden Plover started moving from the 25^th - rather more typical. 

Great White Egret - Wheldrake - Robert Dawson

Up to four Marsh Harriers were present in the valley most days, with regular sightings of Hobby's around the site. The first returning Osprey of the autumn passed over Wheldrake and Bank Island on the 19^th.  A single passage Tree Pipit was at Wheldrake Ings on the 17^th, a late Cuckoo was on Skipwith Common on the 22^nd, and a Wood Warbler with a mixed warbler and tit flock was at Wheldrake on the 24^th. 

2013 is proving to be a real bumper year for butterflies, and August continued this welcome upturn in numbers. One of the highlights was a small yet obvious influx of Painted Ladys (from the 22^nd) and yet another three Marbled Whites (1^st, 3^rd and 19^th) making 2013 a record breaking year. It was however the sheer number of common species appearing in and around the NNR Base Garden at Bank Island throughout that stole the show with large numbers of Small Tortoiseshells, Peacocks and Whites. On the reserve itself large stands of flowering Purple Loosestrife attracted high numbers of Peacocks and Small Tortoiseshells early in the month, this being eclipsed by the huge numbers attracted later in the month to the flowering Corn and Water Mint. These areas attracted counts of 251 Peacocks and 725 Small Tortoiseshells on the 27^th. 

Peacocks & Small Tortoiseshells out in force - Wheldrake

For the full breakdown of the main wildlife species recorded throughout the month go to the August tab on the homepage, which includes the birds, mammals, butterflies, moths, dragonflies, reptiles and plants recorded. Many thanks again to those who have contributed records throughout August and sent photographs.

19/08/13 - Still ringing....? Just!

Long term followers of our blog will be aware that the summer months tend to be the time when we try to ring some of our locally bred ducklings. The Lower Derwent Valley NNR is one of the few places in the country where regular numbers of such ducklings are caught and ringed, and the totals from here make up a significant proportion, and in the case of Shoveler, virtually all those ringed in the UK. Last year proved to be one of our most successful seasons in this respect with both a successful breeding season and the late summer floods which further provided ideal catching opportunities. This year however, it appears to have been a rather poor breeding season across the board, presumably as a result of the prolonged cold winter and late spring preventing many species getting into good breeding conditions. This has affected the waterfowl, waders, the local owl population and many of our resident passerines. Furthermore, the much needed drier conditions throughout the late spring and summer which have been great in getting the hay meadows cut, and allowing us to catch up on management works, have also limited the success for breeding waterfowl. 

That said, the success of this type of ringing depends on dogged determination and persistence, so despite many early starts and failed attempts, dedicated members of the LDV Team kept pushing the corale trap at Wheldrake Ings (which was so successful in rounding up our geese in May). Low numbers of moulting drake Mallards were caught and despite continuous blank sessions throughout the majority of July the spirit of never giving up finally paid off with a brood of four Shoveler and two Gadwall ducklings caught on the last day of the month. 

 

 Shoveler brood - Wheldrake - 31/07/13

Gadwall duckling - Wheldrake - 31/07/13

Various broods of Gadwall, Shoveler and a crèche of 14 Tufted Ducks on the top pond at North Duffield Carrs also meant several hard, hot and tiring sessions in chest waders in the searing heat fighting against the bulrush’s to drive the birds towards the nets. A lot of effort per bird but very successful in adding six Gadwall and four Tufted Ducks to the annual totals in three short sessions during the first week of August.

 

 Tufted Duck brood - North Duffield - 07/08/13

 Gadwall ducklings - North Duffield - 01/08/13

Gadwall duckling - North Duffield - 01/08/13

Whilst there we also took the opportunity to catch the only cygnet the Mute Swan pair on the top pond raised this year - again reflecting the small clutch sizes and subsequent brood sizes we have seen this year.  

 

 

Mute Swan cygnet - North Duffield Carrs - 01/08/13 

We have also just received news of one of our Grey Herons (yellow darvic 28) that was colour-ringed on the 17^th May this year at the local heronry - 1 of a brood of two. It is presently residing at Nosterfield Nature Reserve near Ripon and again (following our other two recoveries) suggests a fairly rapid post breeding dispersal to the north. Many thanks to Jill Warwick from the East Dales Ringing Group for passing on the information and sending us the following photograph.

 

Grey Heron '28' - Nosterfield NR

Surprisingly given the large numbers of young Grey Herons we’ve had on the reserve this year (and checked for rings) we’ve not had any local re-sightings and so it’s maybe that the young Grey Herons that are now present in the valley have dispersed from elsewhere and are not the previously assumed local population. We’ve certainly had one visitor with the herons that’s come from a more southerly location. Many thanks to Robert Dawson for allowing us to reproduce his photographs taken below from Pool Hide, Wheldrake Ings on the 16^th August.

 

Great White Egret - Wheldrake Ings - 16/08/13

20/07/13 - LTMN continued...

Following on from our week with the Long Term Monitoring Network, we spent the last week of June finishing the remaining seven vegetation quadrats around Bank Island and Thorganby Ings. In contrast to the quadrats we'd been surveying at North Duffield and East Cottingwith (which were a mix between drier hay meadow communities - NDI, EC and at NDC a largely wetter community with a matt of rank grass due to the flooding) Bank Island was mainly dominated by the plants of a wet habitat. This is largely due to its improved nature and the fact that the water levels are 'managed' at this site for breeding and wintering bird interest, thus developing more wetland vegetation types - this was also probably reinforced in 2012 as it never really dried out. Thus lots of new plant and grass species to get to grips with.........

Bank Island

 

Expert botanist and trainer, Judith, came back for another day to help us i.d the numerous grasses that were residing in each of our quadrats, half the day was spent in the classroom getting to grips with ligules, oricles, sheaths, anthers and so on......

 

Sam took the lead eagerly sifting through the quadrats picking out a number of grass species, Meadow Foxtail, Marsh Foxtail, Cock's Foot, Tufted hair-grass, Rough-meadow Grass, Common Bent, Creeping Bent, Timothy, Couch Grass and Meadow Barley to name a few.

Meadow Foxtail

 

Meadow Foxtail (above) can be separated quite easily from the similarly named Marsh Foxtail (below). Meadow Foxtail grows much taller (upto 110cm) and it has more of what you might describe as a bushy tail compared with the very thin and narrow Marsh Foxtail flower head. Marsh Foxtail is more of a slender plant overall and bears much shorter spikes and spikelets, the whole plant grows only upto 45cm, and often forms dense carpets in wet meadows and moist areas.

Marsh Foxtail

 

Timothy is the next similar grass species especially when only the leaves can be seen, but once in flower it has a rather distinctive head, when bent in half some say it resembles 'batmans ear's. Timothy also appears to be more upright and rigid compared to the rather soft and 'feathery' Meadow Foxtail. It grows much taller, on average upto 150cm but in particularly rich soils upto 5ft! It also flowers much later, often well into August as opposed to May-July for Meadow Foxtail.

Timothy

 

The first quadrat (below) was in the field below the NNR base with the small scrape, this consisted of a number of species from Prickly Sow-thistle, Soft Sow-thistle, Marsh Yellow-cress, Meadow Foxtail, Marsh Foxtail, Creeping Bent, Meadow Barley, Broad-leaved Dock, Curled Dock and Common Sorrel.

 

A number of quadrats were then surveyed in the field adjacent to Cheesecake Hide, here we found the majority of species to be similar but each quadrat turned up a few new ones, albeit in small numbers, largely marked down as <1%!

Judith helped us make a start on the first quadrat in this field (below), together we sifted through the vegetation first making a species list from the obvious ones before delving in, here we came across Tufted Forget-me-not (noticeable by the very small flower compared to Water and Field). Along with Creeping Yellow-cress, Marsh Bedstraw, Water-starwort, however it was largely dominated by Phalaris and Glyceria. We finished this one the next day with the help of Jackie & John from the Friends of Skipwith Common.

 

From then we made our way across to the otherside, where it was much wetter and dominated by sedges, rushes, Glyceria and Phalaris with plenty of horseflies making the day even more enjoyable...... Here we became familiar with Brown Sedge (second below) and Common Spike Rush (third below), with other species such as Creeping Jenny, Marsh Stitchwort, Silverweed and Marsh Speedwell making appearances.

 

As we made our way to the last flag a sea of dock and sorrel was before us, resulting in the presumption that it was going to be an exciting one.....as expected the dock and sorrel dominated this one which was on much drier ground, but it also supported other drier species such as Cuckoo Flower, White Clover and small amounts of Greater Burnet, suggesting this area could revert to a nicer herb rich community given suitable climatic conditions. To break up the excitement and the dominace of plants a Common Frog was seen leaping through the long grass and Common Blue and Azure Damselflies zipped across the nearby water. A Buzzard and two Red Kites zoared overhead and the first returning Green Sandpiper of the 'autumn' flew in calling - providing a welcome distraction for some!

The following plants didn't quite fall into our quadrats but were present on Bank Island - including a few new ones for the year.

Sand Leek

Meadow Cranesbill

Flowering Rush

24/06/13 - Exotic surprise

Following our successful goose catch in the Wheldrake corale, it’s been rather quiet with very few broods appearing in what appears to be a rather late season. However, following large numbers of Mallards breeding throughout the valley (up to 500 pairs), numbers of drakes are now starting to build up on the pool at Wheldrake to moult.

This resulted in a catch of six drakes in complete moult on Sunday, followed by six mallards (including two ducklings) and three Greylags today. However, it also turned up somewhat of a surprise - a female Mandarin!

Which is a surprise because Mandarin’s are a rather scarce visitor to the Lower Derwent Valley NNR, partly because the habitat isn’t quite right and what they would normally select, and secondly the nearest and rather small breeding population occurs about 60 km away to both the east and west. A total of 13 records exist for the Lower Derwent Valley NNR detailing 21 individuals, 18 of which are males, with the last, a male at Wheldrake Ings on the 27^th May this year. Therefore, any Mandarin in the valley is notable, particularly so a female.

The second surprise is that this bird was in complete wing moult - and looking at the stage of it, it must have been present and flightless for a couple of weeks at least. It is remarkable that it’s gone undetected on the site for this long, only to show up in one of the traps. How many other birds must slip through the valley (relatively well watched as it is) and it will be interesting to see if it is seen again over the next three or four weeks that it is likely to be present with us.

This is only the second Mandarin to be ringed in the valley following the first on 24^th April 2008 - an adult drake. Unsurprisingly there have been no recoveries of the species, although one well tracked drake in the York area did give some idea of its movements in 1983 when it was seen at Wheldrake Ings on the 27^th October and 12^th November, followed by Castle Howard lake on the 23^rd November before ‘being shot in error’ near Haxby, York, on the 26^th December.

08/06/13 - LTMN hits the road

Last week saw a flurry of activity in the Lower Derwent Valley with an influx of 30 Natural England staff and volunteers over the course of the week. This was all part of setting up the LDV as a Long Term Monitoring Network (LTMN) site. The LTMN is part of Natural England’s Integrated Monitoring Programme, which aims to provide evidence to improve our understanding of environmental change, particularly climate change, air pollution and changes in land management policy and practice. 

Rob (LTMN leader) addressing the team

A better understanding of the long-term changes will allow Natural England to advise others and to adapt our own strategies and interventions. There are currently 20 core sites in the network, which will be increased to 40 sites by the end of 2014. Most of these will be NNR's, a significant proportion of which will be those managed by Natural England.

Heading into the meadows for a long day...

 

Our task this week was to survey the 50 2x2metre permanent quadrats present on NE owned land in the valley on a host of individual sites and trying to record each species in every quadrat in addition to sward height, the amount of bare ground and extent of litter. This is the first full vegetation survey for the LDV site which will be subsequently repeated every four years to see what has changed and compare it with other information we are collecting on site such as weather, air pollution, bird and butterfly records and how the land has been managed.

LDV Team - NDC Quadrat#1 - dominated by Amphibious Bistort, Redshank, Marsh Bedstraw, Creeping Jenny and Common Bent, with the occasional Cuckoo Flower and Marsh Stitchwort.

All of those taking part in the surveys were given a half day training session on survey methods and more specific plant/grasses identification training. Obviously the Lower Derwent Valley has been chosen as an example of a lowland wet grassland site and monitoring here is likely to pick up on changes to climate in relation to flooding events, many of which featured on here strongly in the past 12 months!

LDV Team - NDC Quadrat#2 - dominated by Meadow Foxtail, Meadow Buttercup, Common Sorrel, Curled Dock and Autumn Hawkbit. 

Whilst the impacts on breeding birds have also been shown on this blog in recent posts and particularly over last summer, the LDV is also important for its range of grassland communities, ranging from the drier wet grassland types (MG4 in the National Vegetation Classification) through to swamp and reedbed (S1 in the NVC). Whilst the extent and species composition of the wetter communities appear to have remained largely unchanged over recent years, it is clear that the MG4 grassland (Meadow Foxtail and Greater Burnet communities) have been really squeezed back to the boundaries of the reserve. Hopefully the LTMN data will allow us to compare national trends on grasslands like this, as well as climatic variation elsewhere, to help unpick the real causes of any such change – national/global variation in climate or local river catchment changes, long term or just short term sporadic effects. 
 

LDV Team - NDI Quadrat#1 - dominated by Meadow Buttercup, Greater Burnet, Red Fescue, Common Bent, Red Clover, Tufted Vetch and Meadow Vetchling

Long Term Monitoring provides the baseline against which the future state of the environment can be assessed in a reliable historical context and it allows the unanticipated changes to be identified. It was also a great opportunity for a range of NE staff and volunteers to experience this NNR, share skills and get some time spent in the field with expert botanists.

 LDV Team - NDI Quadrat#2 - dominated by Glyceria and Phalaris with the occasional Marsh Horsetail and Redshank - with a Common Frog providing a welcome distraction!

It was certainly an enjoyable, if not very hot and long week, and nicely summed up by Rob Keane, Environmental Monitoring Specialist of the Integrated Monitoring Team who said ‘many thanks for allowing us to bring enjoyment and real science together on a wonderful site for all involved’.

LDV Team - East Cottingwith Quadrat#1 - dominated by Lesser Pond Sedge, Meadow Sweet, Meadow Buttercup and Marsh Bedstraw. 

Below are a selection of wildflowers taken throughout the week from various locations around the Lower Derwent Valley.   

Common Bistort

Cotton Grass

 Marsh Orchid

Ragged Robin

Cuckoo Flower

Yellow Rattle

Quaking Grass

Greater Burnet