Notes and Observations 17 Part 3

NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS This scheme to record the occurrence of all British mammals on a 10 km. Square basis started in 1965, and members of this Society contributed a number of records for the maps covering the ten years 1960-1969 and published in Mammal Review 1. 4/5 1971, and maps 'showing the distribution of some Suffolk mammals' were published in Suffolk Natural History 15. 46-54 1969. With the latter were published notes on how to obtain records and those are reprinted below.

Maps covering the ten years 1970-1979 will be published in due course and records for Suffolk covering that decade are now wanted, even the most common ones.

M A M M A L SOCIETY'S SURVEY.

MOLES

show their presence by runs and molehills.

HEDGEHOGS

are often seen dead on roads.

GAMEKEEPERS will know of stoats, weasels, hedgehogs, rats, badgers and foxes.

FISHERMEN sitting still with rod and float may see Otters, water voles, water shrews, coypu, mink and if fishing a reed fringed river or pond, harvest mice climbing amongst the reeds.

BIRD WATCHERS, like fishermen, will see many mammals, adding squirrels, bank and field voles to the above list.

RATS and M I C E plague everybody, RABBITS and HARES plague farmers and foresters, but few of these victims have so far recorded the occurrence of their enemies as the maps show.

Those who hunt with FOXHOUNDS, HARRIERS, BEAGLES or OTTER will obviously know of the distribution of foxes, hares and Otters.

HOUNDS

Nearly all the animals mentioned above are easily recognized and most of them often seen. All that is wanted are postcards reporting them. The smaller mammals—field mice, voles and shrews are seldom seen and can in general only be identified with accuracy as corpses in the hand. All are very common, most are destructive and no compunction need be feit about killing them. All can be caught in ordinary 'breakback' mouse traps baited with cheese, chocolate or a piece of fish and set in the runs which can be found in long grass or hedgerow. The household cat will bring in many bodies and any gardener whose peas or lettuces are being eaten or whose apple störe is being raided will catch many too.

O W L PELLETS give a good cross section of the small mammals of a district, usually consisting mainly of the für, bones and skulls of their prey.

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241

The identification of these small animals, even the identification of skulls and teeth in owl pellets is not as difficult as many people think and can very easily be done with the help of ' The identification of British Mammals' by G. B. Corbet, which can be got from the Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, S.W.7.

The two recorders will happily identify bodies of small mammals but these should always be sent by First Class, 8 | p post and in the summer should not be posted on Saturday. Indeed in warm weather they should be paunched like a rabbit before being sent off, shrews in particular stink to high heaven after a day or so in the post in high summer.

All records and if necessary bodies for identification should be sent to one or other of the two recorders: S U F F O L K — T h e Earl of Cranbrook, Red House Great Glemham, Saxmundham.

EAST

WEST SUFFOLK—W.

Farm,

H. Payn, Härtest Place, Bury St. Edmunds.

All that is required is the species found or seen and the locality.

If the 10 km. Square is not known the parish or e.g. 'four miles from Saxmundham on Framlingham road' would suffice.

T H E EARL OF CRANBROOK.

1 9 7 7 M U T E S W A N SURVEY. This year, 1 9 7 7 , the Suffolk Ornithologist Group is organising a Mute Swan Survey which is mainly concemed with nesting reports in an attempt to assess the breeding population of this species in Suffolk. The Information requested is: 1. Location of nest (map reference if possible).

2. Nest site, e.g. river wall, island on gravel pit, etc.

3. Number of eggs laid. \ not 4. Number of young hatched.

J essential.

If anyone finds a mute swan's nest in 1977, I would be very grateful if you would send me details. I will be glad to hear of any nest including those on private lakes and stretches of river which might easily be overlooked. It is hoped that the results of the survey will be published in a booklet in the near future.

M . C . MARSH, 7 5

Foxhall Road, Ipswich, IP3

SUFFOLK BIOLOGICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL

RECORDS

8JX.

CENTRE.

At a Naturalists' Council Meeting in 1974 the decision was taken to follow the example of many other counties in establishing an Environmental Records Centre. The functions of these centres are:

242 (a)

(b) (c)

Suffolk Natural History, Vol. 17, Part 3 to collect and record in easily accessible form, data on the environmental features of the area, to be made available to naturalists, research workers and others interested; to contribute to national recording schemes; to supply relevant information to Local Authorities and Government bodies on particular sites.

A grant was made to the Society by the East Suffolk County Council so that essential equipment, filing cabinets, stationery and the like could be bought. T h e County Planning Officer was helpful in finding temporary accommodation, finding basic furniture and providing copies of large Scale maps. By the efforts of Miss Fitzjohn a beginning was made early in 1975; a small committee was assembled including representatives of the Nature Conservancy, Planning and Education Departments of the County Council, Ipswich Museum and our own Society, to advise on the development of the centre. Visits were made to the Norfolk and Norwich B.R.C. in the Castle Museum to seek advice on ways of organizing data collection and storage. A very considerable amount of material was obtained from the Biological Records Centre of the old Nature Conservancy at Monkswood comprising, site maps and some details of the various Nature Reserves, and sites of special scientific interest in the county and photocopies of some hundreds of completed species list cards, mainly of flowering plants and lepidoptera. Site files were opened to accommodate the former and a register of sites was begun to facilitate cross-reference. Copies of the relevant species lists were made for site files and the species lists were filed on a grid-reference basis for easy retrieval of information. A cardindex system for recording distribution of individual species is being started and will eventually, it is hoped, be augmented by the many hundreds of cards prepared by Mr. Simpson for inclusion in the Suffolk Flora, after publication.

A photocopier has recently been added to the equipment of the Centre which will enable duplicates to be made for cross reference and, it is hoped, to produce copies of records submitted by members for our files and card index.

Miss Fitzjohn, who had undertaken the establishment of the Centre, handed over to Mr. Kerr in 1976 and when accommodation was offered at the Museum in the autumn the equipment was moved from the temporary base in St. Helens Street.

A great deal of material published over the years in the Society's Proceedings and Transactions is now being collated for filing and appeals are being made to County Societies, naturalists and research workers who have records appertaining to the county, for data collected in recent years. 'Species list cards,' published by the B.R.C. can be supplied to field workers who are prepared

NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

243

to complete them for particular sites. These include flowering plants, lepidoptera, mammals and several insect and other invertebrate groups. Application should be made to the Centre, c/o Ipswich Museum for the required cards.

In the long term it is hoped that the Records Centre may be taken over by full-time museum staff; in the meanwhile Mr. Kerr and Mr. Beaufoy work on Thursday mornings. Offers of uccasional assistance from volunteer members would be welcomed so that the Centre could be opened more frequently.

Now that the Centre is in operation it is to be hoped that comprehensive records may be submitted by the many naturalists and others who can assist and that increasing reference to the data bank may be made by those seeking detailed information on sites and species in our county.

NORMAN KERR. GALLANT SOLDIER, Galinosa parviflora reported in Mrs. H. Barrett's garden in Wethersett and suggests that it came in soil around some plants given her. It was first noticed in 1860 near Kew and for that reason was called Kew Weed and it was seldom found away from Kew until the last war, when it may have been more widely spread by bombing. It has been Seen in Suffolk before, where it may have been introduced in shoddy wool manure. T h e name Kew Weed has never caught on as an English name and now the corruption of its generic name to Gallant Soldier has been widely used.

NIGHTSHADE FAMILY, Datura stramonium has occurred at Gt. Glenham this year. It is a fairly common plant of cultivated land.

It seems to flourish especially in hot dry summers. The commoner variety has white trumpet-shaped flowers, but one with purple flowers has also been reported. It has a particularly bad reputation as being very poisonous, but this is probably an exaggeration though its seeds are poisonous as indeed are others of the same Nightshade family to which Atropa belladonna and Hyoscyamus niger also belong.

DERRICK

J.

MARTIN,

Balton's Close, Ixworth, Bury St. Edmunds.

1975.

H O G ' S FENNEL (Peucedanum officinale L . ) .

A very local British plant shown to members of the Society attending the Field Meeting of the 25th September, was first found by Gerard in 1597 at Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex. It is known only from an area of north-east Essex, around Hamford Water and at Faversham, Kent. This species, restricted to a few sites, favours old salt pastures, the sides of brackish ditches, ancient embankments and road verges. On Skippers Island it is still plentiful and protected by the Essex Trust.

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Suffolk Natural History, Vol. 17, Part 3

I have been acquainted with Hog's Fennel from August, 1926.

I saw it at Beaumont Quay, where it still survives. A few years later I found it at the Naze, Walton, Kirby-le-Soken, Little Oakley and Dovercourt (a locality not recorded in the Flora of Essex, 1974). I found three colonies at Dovercourt which have now been destroyed. Two of the colonies were on the grassy sides of old brackish ditches excavated and widened after the 1953 floods. The third site was an old embankment. One Thursday afternoon in July, 1970, I arrived at this site and to my horror and dismay a bulldozer was destroying this very bank.

For several years previously I collected seeds from this site and scattered and planted them in a number of areas, but so far, with no apparent success.

Botanists consider the Hog's Fennel to be indigenous or native and to be restricted to very limited areas due to certain climatic, soil and other factors. However I suggest that it was introduced, either accidentally or deliberately (for medicinal use), by the early settlers from the Continent. Several of its sites around Hamford Water are on, or very close, to Settlements where worked flints and pottery have been found. T h e land was much higher than it is today. Fishing and hunting were the chief occupations. The Naze site (where only one plant survives) is adjacent to a neolithic flint 'Workshop', and the Dovercourt site (destroyed in 1970) was also at a place where I have collected several worked flints.

There is a possibility that Hog's Fennel may occur in Suffolk, in the Estuaries of the Stour, Orwell and Deben. On the Continent it is found in Central and Southern Europe.

F. W. SIMPSON, The Museum, Ipswich.

A CHRISTMAS BUTTERFLY. Baron de Worms writes that Mr. A. R. J. Paine of 22 Spriteshall Lane, Walton near Felixstowe, has reported seeing a Small Tortoiseshell in his garden there on December 26th, 1975, at about 12.30 p.m., no doubt tempted out from hibernation by the mild conditions prevailing over the Christmas period.

C O M M O N SEAL, Phoca vitulina.

One swimming in Easton Broad January, 1977, B. Mitchell Cotts. Fourteen single sightings between Hopton and Covehithe, cow and pup at Covehithe in September.

LOWESTOFT F I E L D CLUB.

1975.

NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS

245

GREY AND RED SQUIRRELS, Sciurus carolinensis, C. vulgaris.

Thirty-four grey and six red 'squirrel days' Kings Forest October 30th-December 19th, 1975. A. J. Last. First grey squirrel seen at Haddon, Woodbridge 1976 but still a few red ones. J. Penn. Many dead red squirrels in Dunwich Woods 1976, most of the dozen or so picked up being males. Live ones seen D u n wich, Westleton, Bungay.

LOWESTOFT FIELD C L U B .

1975.

HEDGEHOG, Erinaceus europaeus.

Mr. R. Coleby of Ixworth teils me that he watched a hedgehog Standing beside a wasps' nest seizing and eating eight or ten of them as they landed at or left the entrance.

W . H . PAYN. LONG TAILED FIELD MOUSE, Apodemus sylvaticus.

A jar, Standing in a garden shed and containing about 1} lbs. of acorns was completely emptied during a single night. It was refilled, traps set by it and two long tailed field mice caught.

W. H. PAYN, Härtest.

SEROTINE, Eptesicus serotinus reported from Carlton Colville and Wangford.

LOWESTOFT FIELD C L U B .