Science & Nature

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MISTLE THRUSH

Alex Hennessy, Marketing and Communications Officer, Dorset Wildlife Trust

Henri Lehtola/Shutterstock

The mistle thrush Turdus viscivorus is a large songbird, commonly found in parks, gardens, woodland and scrub. The mistle thrush is also known as the ‘rain bird’ and ‘stormcock’ as it can often be heard singing loudly from the top of tall trees after heavy rain - typical weather for this time of year.

Visually, the mistle thrush is easily mistaken for the common song thrush, whose song is somewhat ‘squeakier’ and includes repeating ‘phrases’. The mistle thrush is pale greyish-brown above, with a white belly covered in round, black spots. It is larger and greyer than the song thrush.

The common name ‘mistle thrush’ is likely inspired by this bird’s love of mistletoe. It enjoys the sticky berries found on that and other plants and, once it has found a berry-laden tree, an individual mistle thrush will guard it from any would-be thieves such as other mistle thrushes, and species such as fieldfares who also feed on berries. In turn, this songbird helps mistletoe to thrive by accidentally ‘planting’ its seeds while wiping its bill on the tree bark to remove sticky residue. It also helpfully disperses the seeds in its droppings.

A mistle thrush’s diet isn’t confined to its favourite berries, however, and they will happily devour worms and other insects, as well as seeds and fallen fruit. Adding seeds and fruit to your bird-feeding selection may help attract these birds to your patch.

The mistle thrush is one of the earliest songbirds to breed and may lay a clutch of three to six eggs as soon as February. It’s normal for a mistle thrush to breed twice in a year and while the male and female share the burden of feeding, the task of building the nest in a fork of a tree, from moss, roots, grass and mud, is the sole responsibility of the female.

To find out more about this fascinating species and what you can do to help the county’s wildlife, visit dorsetwildlifetrust.org.uk

Mistle Thrush Facts:

• The mistle thrush is Britain’s largest songbird, at around 28cm in length. • Mistle thrush numbers in the UK have been in decline since the 1970s, which is thought to be due to increased mortality in the bird’s young. • Predators of the mistle thrush include foxes, birds of prey and domestic cats.

DRAWN TO THE LIGHT

Small Eggar Moth, Eriogaster lanestris Gillian Nash

Image: Gillian Nash

Acold weather moth, the Small Eggar is on the wing from January to March. It is a nationally scarce resident species, most frequently recorded in Dorset and Somerset, with scattered erratic sightings elsewhere in Britain and Ireland. Diminishing numbers over the past 50 years is thought to be a result of hedgerow management changes together with increased mowing, particularly along roadside verges where eggs are often laid. The adult moth’s attractive thickset form with rich brown and cream spotted colouration combined with a winter flight season makes identification clear. In common with other species within the family of Eggar moths, the adults are unable to feed.

The male, with its deeply feathered antennae, is easily distinguishable from the larger female that has a thick tuft of grey scales on the abdomen. These scales are shed to cover batches of eggs which are laid on twigs in open situations on a wide variety of hedgerow species, including blackthorn, hawthorn, spindle, dogrose and fruit trees. In the following April to July the tiny, newly hatched larvae spin a suspended communal web, increasing its size and making necessary repairs as they grow to accommodate them until their near-final stage when they leave the safety of this hammocklike structure. There are considerable advantages to these large larval ‘nests’. If the temperature falls, heat is generated by what may amount to two or three hundred individuals and if there is too much heat some will move to the outside. Leaving the web often to feed communally by day or night, a moving mass of colours that appears to change shape can prove confusing to predators. Within a few weeks the by now smart velvet-black, orange and white patterned larvae leave the safety of the strongly woven nursery web to continue feeding independently, attaining a length of up to 50mm. By late July a pupa is formed, usually at ground level where it may remain for at least two and sometimes several winters, before the emergence of the adult moth early in the year.

Paula Carnell, Beekeeping Consultant, Writer and Speaker

My watchword for 2021 was ‘love’, after a New Year’s Day message from the bees. The word served me well throughout the year, and whenever I was challenged in work or personally I reminded myself to make a decision based on love and mostly it worked. This year I didn’t gain such a clear insight and needed to meditate on the thought for a few days. The words that bubbled up were ‘faith’, ‘clarity’ and most frequently ‘truth’.The following night I dreamt I had a single bee settle on my lips; I was with a group of people and unable to speak, aware that if I opened my mouth the bee may crawl in and sting me. Determined not to ruin my image of a ‘Bee Guardian’, I walked away catching my reflection in various windows, still seeing and feeling the bee on my lips. Impatient that I couldn’t open my mouth I decided to carefully scoop her onto my right hand, at which point she stung me on my ring finger. I woke up irritated with myself for not being patient or even brave enough to see if she would sting my mouth if I opened it. The dream caused me to consider its meaning and how that could relate to my life and my 2022 word. Much of my work is speaking, and hopefully my truth. With that thought I have decided that ‘truth’ is my word for 2022. (I’m not ready for patience!)

The bees have been inspiring me with many insights to what truth is, from their perspective. Humans also have many ‘truths’, depending on our perspectives. Truth is described in the Cambridge dictionary as ‘the real facts about a situation, event or person’. It can also be ‘a fact or principle that is thought to be true by most people’. The latter could already be seen as something that could later be proven not to be true, when previously hidden facts come to light. In beekeeping it has been true for many years that using miticides protects bees from varroa mites. Now, as more facts have come to light, it is true using such miticides have a negative effect on the fertility of bees. Remember the old advertisements for cigarettes which even in the 1970s claimed to protect your throat from coughs? And the ‘Luckies are less irritating’ quote was verified by Lybrand Ross Bros & Montgomery accountants and auditors, so it ‘must be true’!

When I first started keeping bees and began questioning the conventional thoughts of many established beekeeping practices, I was considered ‘crazy’, ignorant’ and ‘uninformed’. Being true to myself, despite what those around me thought, encouraged me to learn more to help resolve my inner conflict and whether what I believed to be true really was. I accept many may hold a truth very different to mine, based on their information and facts. After all, with the events of the past two years, truths are being fired at us from all directions. Some prefer to trust others’ measurement of truth and accept the consequences, others need proof of a truth. I trust my intuition, my ‘gut instinct’ and the more I learn about bees and nature, the more I realise we have an underused muscle, an in-built guiding compass for truth which needs to be strengthened. Plants evolved to communicate with bees and other pollinators to let them know when they need pollinating. They use their innate electrical field to send messages out into nature – a massive whisper, or song that calls the bees to the flower. Trees communicate with each other using electrical pulses through their mycelium-coated roots. The Native Americans, and many other indigenous people who have retained their connection with nature and their environment, receive messages from plants, trees, animals and birds. Records of the first European settlers in North America recount when asking the Natives how they knew which plants were medicinal, replied that the ‘plants told them’. I believe this to be a representation of intuition sharing a natural truth, using an ancient natural method of communication, lost by many modern ‘civilisations’. Humans surely can’t be the only beings in nature that are not connected through the true world wide communication web? 2022 sees us begin a year following two extraordinary years, where so many past truths have been unravelled, and many foundations of society exposed, revealing new truths. A way to navigate and survive this new world is to revert to our own inner guidance system, listening to our own inner truths. Nostradamous predicted for this year, ‘No abbots, monks, no novices to learn; honey shall cost far more than candle-wax. So high the price of wheat, that man is stirred. His fellow man to eat in his despair.’ My instinct tells me to stick with producing and selling honey, and hopefully that will prevent us from having to ‘eat the rich’.

MAKE A DIFFERENCE

Peter Littlewood, Director, Young People’s Trust for the Environment

Image: Susan White/USFWS

For 2022, YPTE will be sharing some simple ways that parents can help their children learn about our world and the things they can do to help make it a better place. We’ll start by looking at how you can make your own biodegradable plastic using some simple household ingredients.

About Plastic Plastic is a really useful material. There are about 50 types of plastic in common use every day, from PVC, which can be used to make transparent and very flexible cling film, through to Kevlar, which is used to make body armour. Look around your home and you’ll find plastic everywhere, from your phone to your computer, to your TV, to your kitchen appliances and food packaging and even maybe some of your furniture.

But there’s a big problem with plastic. What

happens when we don’t need it any more? Well, it can be recycled, but you need all of the plastic you recycle to be of the same type and ideally the same colour. And with so many types of plastic out there, sorting them at a recycling facility can be really tricky!

So, more often, plastic is buried in the ground at a landfill site, or it stays where people drop it, or it ends up in the sea. Plastic doesn’t rot away naturally in the environment, like fruit or vegetables do. It can ‘photodegrade’ - that is, it gradually becomes more brittle when exposed to sunlight for long periods, so when it’s floating in the ocean and it gets knocked together by the waves and currents, small bits gradually break off into smaller and smaller fragments, eventually becoming ‘microplastics’. Some beaches in the Pacific Ocean are covered in little plastic fragments and you can even find lots of plastic bits on UK beaches if you look carefully.

A Possible Solution: Bioplastic New plastics are being created that use natural materials like corn or chicken feathers, which will break down much more quickly in the environment. Many of them are experimental at the moment and there’s still a long way to go. For example, many dissolve in water, so they’re not great for holding liquids! But we’re getting better at making plastic that breaks down naturally in the environment, so it should eventually become commonplace.

You can try making your own biodegradable plastic made from natural materials, or ‘bioplastic’ at home, using a few simple ingredients…

You Will Need Corn flour Water Cooking oil A measuring spoon A microwave A microwavable container An adult (essential! – to help with the microwaving)

Instructions 1 You can make as much as you like, but the proportions of ingredients to use are 1 tablespoon of cornflour to 1.5 tablespoons of water to 4 drops of cooking oil. 2 Mix the ingredients well in your microwaveable container until you have a milky liquid. 3 Put the mixture in the microwave and give it about 30 seconds on high. It should start to bubble and become slightly transparent. If you have made a larger amount of mixture, you may have to heat it for longer to get it to bubble. Keep watching and don’t let the mixture start to burn! 4 When the mixture is looking slightly transparent, a grown-up needs to take it out of the microwave very carefully. It will be hot, so use an oven glove!

Make sure you let the plastic cool down until you are able to handle it safely. This will take five minutes or more. 5 Knead the plastic until it feels like play dough. You can now cut or mould it into the shape you want. 6 Leave it to cure for 24 - 48 hours. It should then be solid and maintain its shape. If you’d like to make coloured bioplastic, try adding food colouring to your mixture before microwaving.

We made a model with ours, but you could choose to make whatever you can shape the plastic into.

Why not try making a biodegradable pot for planting a seedling? You can plant the seedling in its pot and it will gradually dissolve into the soil!

Sherborne Science Cafe Lectures Rob Bygrave, Chair, Sherborne Science Cafe

WILD ABUNDANCE IN A TIME OF DECLINE

Speaker: Wren Franklin, Manager, Ryewater Farm, Corscombe

November 2021

Munfarid/Shutterstock

In the 1980s, Clive Farrell, a property tycoon with a keen interest in the natural world, sought a new project to provide an absorbing interest. He purchased Ryewater Farm, near Sherborne, an estate of 100 acres, with an aim to re-wild the land and bring back diversity. Science Café welcomed Ryewater’s manager Wren Franklin to showcase the pushback against modern monoculture and countryside degradation.

Published in 1962, Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ started the global grassroots environmental movement, highlighting the use of pesticides in agriculture. Many of its themes still echo in our management of the environment today. And according to the ‘UK State of Nature Report’ there has been a relentless decrease in wildlife – of 24 biodiversity indicators reflecting ecological health, 14 are in long-term decline. Current research suggests the steep species downturn can be viewed as the ‘sixth extinction’, with five previous very notable ones in the fossil record since the start of the Cambrian period (545Ma); an extinction being defined as the disappearance of more than 75% of the world’s species in a short amount of geological time.

For Wren the most detrimental influences on the land come from agriculture and housing, and in all cases habitat features have been stripped out and ecological niches lost. Most significantly intensive farming’s legacy is nitrogen and ammonium pollution. And all the while there’s climate change, nudging temperatures ever higher at rates greater than most species can adapt. Globalisation, as author Oliver Rackham points out, brings fauna and flora into contact with novel diseases for which they have no immunity. The most obvious cases being Dutch Elm Disease (1980s) and Ash

Dieback (now), noted by last month’s speaker on plant diseases. For Wren, 1971 was the peak of landscape denudation. The question is, are we bound by these trends or can they be reversed? Governments push policy decisions in the search of beneficial outcomes. Individuals have also made their own attempts; creating gardens, planting trees or re-wilding large tracts of land, as is the case at Ryewater.

Creating new habitats Initial planning involved working with artists and locals for development ideas. In preparing the site, the top 12 inches of dark, acidic, intensively farmed soil was removed, revealing the original nutrient-poor Oxford Clay soil. This later supported a widely diverse range of calcareous-loving plants. Different environments were created. Ephemeral pools, good for amphibians soon became home to Great Crested Newts. Ant colonies were established, encouraged by newly prepared mounds of soil, and a newly constructed hop-walk supplied food for butterflies.

Another activity of importance, at summer’s end, is seed harvesting. Seeds with local provenance are a powerful tool in wildlife planting. Once collected, they can be mixed with a carrier and broadcast by hand. During the first summer, annuals flowered in abundance and perennials started their first year of growth. Bare ground specialists, such as grasshoppers were in evidence and orchids were notable incomers. Also, linkage with suitable soil fungus (another positive indicator) is needed for healthy germination and growth. Importantly, nutrients are not added to soils, which reduces biomass but increases diversity.

Data collection is vital to discover how well the project is proceeding. Butterfly numbers, for example, are surveyed with a walking observational survey carried out weekly in summer. The abundance of various species can be compared with international data sets.

What have we learnt? The farm is bucking national diversity trends. 19 species show increasing numbers whilst only five (one example being the Cabbage White butterfly) indicate a decline. 120 species of birds have been noted at Ryewater; 48 regularly breeding on the estate (e.g. hobby, kingfisher). Nightingales, in steep decline nationally, also breed at Ryewater. Ringed birds are frequently recaptured, suggesting Ryewater is a migratory stop-off point. A previously wooded area has been re-seeded to hazel, willow and ash coppice and is now harvested.

The farm has many different habitats and for Wren, an important part of the project is its spiritual dimension, connecting humans to nature. Observational skills, once well-developed amongst young people, have been largely lost (so-called ‘ecological illiteracy’). Visiting sites such as Ryewater can reawaken those skills. The whole estate is designated an SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest) and SAC (Special Area of Conservation).

The future Whilst 11% of UK land is urban and 35% protected (good for diversity), the remaining 54% has everything to play for with regard to re-wilding. The natural world can be considered a ‘great tapestry’ but whilst our tapestry looks somewhat worn and thin in places, re-wilding brings a story of hope, suggesting we do have answers to environmental problems, even if we don’t always implement them in practice. The year 2024 will see the enactment of the ELMS (Environmental Land Management Scheme) which may offer better opportunity for those seeking more in the way of landscape recovery.

For individuals interested in re-wilding their own garden, Wren recommended not keeping things too tidy, having lots of environmental niches with piles of dead leaves, meadow rather than lawn and avoiding persecuting flora and fauna. When collecting seeds, pick when you see they have matured. In sourcing seeds commercially (where local sources are not apparent), seek local provenance and avoid cheap mixes.

For Wren, the conclusion of decades of work at Ryewater Farm is ‘create valuable new habits, and new species will establish themselves’. If Rachel Carson was still with us, she might nod approvingly in the direction of Ryewater Farm.

A visit to Ryewater Farm is planned for summer 2022. Please check website for details.

sherbornesciencecafe.com

___________________________________________ Wednesday 23rd February 7.30pm Climate Change and its Denial – with Professor Peter Stott of Exeter University The Church Hall, Digby Road, Sherborne Copies of Professor Stott’s new book Hot Air will also be available to purchase on the night. sherborne.scafe@gmail.com

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