Train spotting

I have lost my youthful enthusiasm for exotic travel and fabulous wildlife. The more I see of the British Isles, the more captivated I become. Why spend hours stuck on airport floors waiting for volcano-proof planes when there is so much to see here?

For once, I decided that I would not spend my train journey to London poring over papers and this laptop, but to watch the natural world instead. My laziness was rewarded by a terrific view of a large (probably dog) Red Fox sitting at the side of the track on the outskirts of Swindon station. Taking this as a challenge, I decided what else the London up line would provide.

Following the colour theme, my next mammal was the first of two Brown Hares that I saw lolloping through young wheat crops. The Mad March phase seemed to have given way to a leisurely amble. I failed to see any Roe Deer, possibly because bad habits broke through, and I tried and failed to speak to several colleagues by mobile phone instead of watching properly. However, at the edge of Didcot station a lovely Muntjac was enjoying a feast of trackside vegetation.

The Didcot to Reading stretch is becoming a great Red Kite zone and I saw four birds, one only feet above the railway bank, on this stretch. The Red Kite reintroduction programme has been a great success and the Chiltern colony is growing stronger every year.

The Thames beyond Maidenhead revealed two glorious Mute Swans that looked to me as if they were an ornithological item. Without straying into the dubious realms occupied by some political parties, these lovely native birds had a bigger wow factor than the raft of Canada Geese that were drifting along the Thames a few hundred yards downstream.

The irony of my morning wildlife "wows" is of course that I have spent the journey back from London typing sundry blogs about badgers, kite and muntjac! Not much to grumble about really, more a special privilege. But that is the joy of working for wildlife every day, especially in a county as beautiful as Gloucestershire.

In Memory of Nature

Ketford Banks by Peter WakleyNatural England

Over the past weeks I have found myself celebrating the achievements of four people who, in different ways, have made an impact on nature conservation. Each of them has left a different legacy that will benefit us all in subtle ways.

The most public ceremony was the memorial service for Lady Scott held at Berkeley Church. A congregation of conservation figures and modest volunteers remembered Phillipa’s enormous contributions to the Wildlfowl and Wetlands Trust and many other bodies. Lady Scott was a warm, vibrant and engaging ambassador for the natural world. Her late husband, Sir Peter Scott could not have had a better soul mate to continue his pioneering work. Phillipa was the Patron of Gloucestershire WIldife Trust and will be missed.

Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s latest nature reserve became a place of commemoration for two ardent naturalists, Sonia Holland and John Hughes. Sonia had purchased the Ketford daffodil bank to safeguard its future. John Hughes was the first Farming with Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) advisor and he used to visit sites with Sonia. They both loved Ketford and it was doubly fitting that FWAG had passed the site to the Trust for its future safekeeping. Both Sonia and John were ardent members of the Gloucestershire Naturalists' Society. All three organisations were present at the official opening. Ketford will act as a public reminded that people like John and Sonia have made a lasting impression on the farmed landscape of Glocuestershire.

Margaret and I travelled straight from Ketford to the beautiful village of Duntisbourne Abbots to attend a ceremony celebrating the life of Bill Darling. Bill was a modest man who had also dedicated his life to promoting wildlife and farming. He had won the top FWAG award for his farm in Hertfordshire before retiring. In Gloucestershire, Bill was Secretary and Treasurer of the local Royal Forestry Society branch and a dedicated Friend of Westonbirt. Bill was also Chairman of Gloucesterhire Wildlife Trust’s Daneway Banks Nature Reserve Management Committee.

These four people, whom I had the pleasure to know, work with and learn from, represent the essence of wildlife conservation. Each person was pragmatic, knowledgeable, hugely enthusiastic and very modest. Their legacy has been a nature that is richer and more enjoyable as a result of their dedication.

The natural world is all around us, and we can all make a lasting impact in our own way. Legacies for nature are long lasting and give value beyond any financial figure that could be placed on them.

A Long Road

The elusive prize for both farmers and badger lovers is the prevention of bovine TB (bTB) in cattle and badgers. The current policy of improved bTB cattle testing, tighter cattle movement regulation, on farm bio-security (separating badgers and cattle) and some farmer compensation for infected cattle is showing results. However, the development of a vaccine for badgers and cattle would make a real and lasting difference.

That prospect is beginning to become real with the Badger Vaccine Deployment Programme that DEFRA is commencing this year. Two study areas in Gloucestershire will see the first field trials of an injected vaccine for badgers. Subsequently, another four areas will be receiving badger vaccines. A skilled group of badger innoculators will be trained during the trials.

Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust has been involved with the testing phase of the badger vaccine by permitting its usage on badgers within one of its nature reserves. The Trust is now registered as part of the vaccine trials and will actively support the vaccination of badgers on selected nature reserves. Full details of this programme are still becoming available (more information on this subject is available here) but the eventual outcome should be badger social groups that have significant immunity to bTB following five consecutive years of vaccination. The fully developed vaccine will not be cheap, for farmers or wildlife conservation groups, but the results should be worthy of the outlay.

Eventually the badger vaccine may become available as an oral treatment; badgers find peanuts an irresistible treat! The development of an injectable vaccine for cattle will take longer but the first trials might be possible by 2016. This is a very big prize at the end of a long and difficult path; not quite the yellow brick road, but equally mysterious.

Badger by Wildstock

The Golden Hoof

Fluffy lambs are one of the popular images of spring and I saw some very cuddly examples on my visit to the Trust’s Daneway Banks Nature Reserve. The importance of lambs to wildlife is that grassland is not the natural vegetation for most of England and without efficient munching machines flower-rich sites like Daneway rapidly turn from grassland to scrub to woodland.

Sheep are very fine graziers, referred to by my mum-in-law as the ‘golden hoof’. Daneway Banks is a very important site for orchids and butterflies and our new lamb recruits will bring the flock up to 40. By grazing carefully at the right times of year we will be able to sustain the wildlife interest without loosing the wildflowers.

We are particularly lucky to have a partner for our Daneway flock. Grazing livestock is expensive and needs constant attention. Richard Goodfellow, the landlord of the wonderful Daneway Inn, is our perfect ally. He lives next door to the nature reserve, owns and cares for the rare Norfolk Horn sheep and keeps a very fine beer cellar.

Richard has made all the difference to helping us achieve our ovine ambitions. The reserve is already looking much better for the attention that it has received and providing we have a warm and sunny summer, the rare and exquisite Large Blue Butterfly will benefit enormously from the short sweet Cotswold turf that Richard’s sheep are maintaining.

I heartily recommend a visit to the Daneway Inn. Great food, good ales, safe parking and three of the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s nature reserves all within safe walking distance. May and June are the best times for the flowers and butterflies. But at any time of year this has to be one of Gloucestershire’s gems.

Sleepy natives and waking aliens

The allotment that Margaret and I have looked after in Cam for the last 18 years is beginning to look very promising after the long cold winter. Our broad beans are just showing their heads and promise a good crop, voles and pigeons permitting. Margaret’s narcissi are blooming profusely, and a particularly early rhubarb given to us by neighbor Roy Chinn is threatening numerous crumbles.

However, it is the emergence of my ‘big fat female’ which has given me my biggest thrill. Each year one particular carpet proves to be the sun lounger of choice for our slow worm matriarch and for a couple of weeks she can be found hiding beneath this cover every day, warming gently in the spring sun. She has been there now for 10 days and it will not be long before her fabulous brazen babies spread quietly across our plots. Sheer magic!

Not quite so magical are the forty or more harlequin ladybirds that I have just seen basking in the sun here at Robinswood Hill. It was only in 2006 that Margaret saw the first adult ever recorded in Gloucestershire in our garden (her picture is above). Now they are widespread and the colony that I have been watching has passed the winter sheltering beneath an information sign.

Harlequins are attractive, but they are not native and are as partial to dining on our native ladybirds as they are on any other insect of the right size. The spread of this insect is a text book example of an animal invader and is a frightening indicator of what might be in store for our native wildlife beset by climate change and isolated on shrinking habitats.

The systematic recording of this alien is extremely well recorded in www.harlequin-survey.org I recommend this site as an example of how just how good species recording can be when the power of the web is properly utilized.

Read last year's slow worm post here.