Mother’s Day - Mother Nature - Natur Cymru!

Mother Nature C17th Wiki

I just received a wonderful phone call from a daughter buying a Natur Cymru subscription for her Mum to arrive by Mother’s Day. What a thoughtful and enduring gift. Maybe for this time next year we should commission a Mother Nature work of art for the front cover?

  

After the Storm

During the coastal flood events of December 2013 to February 2014, Natural Resources Wales (NRW) staff were in the front line helping to keep the people of Wales safe from flooding. The peak sea level experienced in December 2013 was the highest recorded in Liverpool Bay during the 21 years since the tidal gauge was established, and the peak levels on January 3rd 2014 were the highest on the south and west coast of Wales for at least 16 years. The impacts on the coastline and defences have been compounded by the successive and sustained nature of the storm conditions and powerful waves over a number of tides and days.

Morfa Madryn by John Ratcliffe

At the same time as working to help affected communities, we have begun to assess the wider environmental implications of the storms. In particular we decided to carry out a simple audit of the impact on wildlife and Wales’s nature conservation sites, and to compare our findings with reports from England.

It quickly became evident that a wide range of coastal habitats were impacted by the storms, especially beaches, sand dunes, vegetated shingle and to a lesser extent saltmarsh and soft cliff. In a conservation context they included habitats of principal importance for conservation in Wales (under the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006). Huge amounts of sand were removed or moved around on our beaches, shingle ridges were driven inshore, and dunes, saltmarsh and cliff were eroded. However, our findings suggest that coastal grazing marsh in Wales was not seriously inundated, with only three reports submitted. This contrasts with the experience in England where extensive areas were submerged in the tidal surge event of 5th and 6th December 2013.

Sea Cucumber at Dinas Dinlle by D Bryn Jones

Nationally and internationally important conservation sites and their features have been affected. Records to date have identified change at 37 Sites of Special Scientific Interest and 10 Special Areas of Conservation.

A quarter of Wales’s nationally important geodiversity sites include sections of coast. Features include active processes, static landforms and stratigraphical or fossil interest exposed in coastal cliffs. The recent storms have led to large scale changes to the morphology of the coastline in some areas, and have also cleaned or ‘freshened’ many of the coastal cliffs through the removal of debris and vegetation. These fresh exposures, and new archaeological discoveries such as ancient submerged forest and peat cuttings, will require longer term scientific recording and monitoring.

Borth exposed forest by Ian Medcalf

Fortunately important coastal freshwater habitats (such as the Bosherston Lakes, Pembs) were not impacted by saltwater intrusions which could alter their ecosystems. In contrast, natural coastal lagoon environments have evolved to cope with increases in salinity. The damage to the infrastructure of the Wales Coast Path highlights the challenge of maintaining the route in dynamic environments.

The true extent of the wildlife impact will become apparent when surveys are carried out later in the year. Dormant animals may have been drowned in their hibernation sites, while amphibians could be extremely vulnerable to physiological shock from seawater. In particular, NRW staff have concerns about some rare coastal invertebrate species.

Dead Palmate Newts at Rhosneigr by Rachel Stroud

Our exposed coastal areas tend to accumulate relatively large amounts of marine litter, due to topography, and prevailing winds and currents. The storm and nature have done us a favour by collecting this material on to the land but the challenge will be to find a way to remove this litter from the marine ecosystem.

It is predicted that extreme weather events will become more frequent in future. We need to appreciate the degree of change which can occur during these events, both for people and their environment. In particular, the significant morphological change highlights the importance of ongoing coastal monitoring to inform management of not just built assets but also our natural biodiversity and geodiversity resources.

We are very grateful to all the Natural Resources Wales staff and our partner organisations who contributed to this environmental audit. Catherine Duigan, Nicola Rimington, Paul Brazier and Raymond Roberts, Natural Resources Wales. (This article appeared in edition 50 of Natur Cymru but there was not enough space for the photos.)

At Pembrey by Anne Bunker

Litter at Dwyfor by Paul Brazier

Starfish by Rhodri Dafydd

A Pearlside Maurolicus muelleri by Rowland Sharp.
Only the second record in Wales?

Glamorgan heritage coast - fall at Summerhouse Point by Paul Dunn

Aberystwyth by Paul Brazier

Peat cuttings at Fairbourne by Dave Thorpe

Rejoice! Twin kids

For the first time in many years our gang of goats below the railway line has had kids. In 2005 there were 6 adults and 1 kid – I don’t recall them having a kid since then, certainly not one that survived.

In 2011 there were 3 males and 3 females but this year we started with just 1 male and 2 females. On Monday, as I drove up the drive, there was just the male and the older female. Had something bad happened? Or something very good? 

Driving up on Wednesday I could hardly believe my eyes, not 1 but 2 kids. Here’s hoping they survive the next few weeks and get our family back on its feet. For the moment their home is Pen y Clogwyn, the cliff top residence by the bottom hairpin bend.

This time last year there were 2 kids born to the gang above the railway line. Every evening they could be seen in the steep bank of gorse. But then came the late and harsh winter. I remember seeing the 2 adult females, bleating as they searched for their lost babes. A while later I found the body of one of the kids; had it been separated in a blizzard and pounced on by a fox? Or was it the Moelwyn Mountain Lion?

Conger snatched from grey seal

Point Lynas - a hotspot for cetaceans

This week I joined a group of volunteers organised by Katrin for the Sea Watch Foundation. Our arduous task was to sit in the warm spring sunshine at Point Lynas to watch and record any porpoise, dolphins or whales. There was hardly a breath of wind with visibility up to 10Km.

We’d only been there a minute when the first harbour porpoise was spotted. Later on we saw a further three and watched them as they dived for a few minutes then rose several times in quick succession to fill their lungs before diving down again; must be something tasty for them to eat off Lynas Point.

Harbour porpoise photo by Laurence

A couple of grey seals, bobbing up and down like bottles, watched us watching them. One surfaced right by the rocks with an enormous conger eel in its mouth, wriggling but with no chance of escape. I ran down to the rocks to see if I could film it but by the time I arrived there was a sad looking seal without any conger; the others think the conger might have been pinched by the other seal.

Seal with conger - photo by Laurence

Amongst our group was Laurence Clark from Castle Vision with an impressive lens – the photos of the eel with conger and the porpoise fin were taken by him.

Sea Watch is looking for more volunteers, so if you would like to get involved, please make contact with Katrin via the website. Lots of events planned.

You will be able to hear Katrin on the Country Focus programme on Sunday 16th March.

Natur Cymru 50th edition - a freshwater theme

'Standing in it' by Gerald Dewsbury.
Trapped in Tre'r Ddol by floodwater, Gerald took
  the chance to sketch the effects of the floods on wildlife.
His work can be seen at Ffin y Parc, Betws y Coed;
the Royal Cambrian Academy, Conwy;
the Kooywood Gallery, Cardiff; and the
Twenty Twenty Gallery, Much Wenlock.

Natural history – Marilyn Lewis. Bridging the gap between the historic and natural environment

Hydro-electric schemes – Kyle Young. Producing renewable energy without destroying ecosystems

Weather extremes in Wales – an historical perspective. Sarah Davies and Cerys Jones. What can we learn from the weather of the past?

Pearls in Peril – Elain Gwilym.  
Afon Eden and the ongoing battle to save the freshwater pearl mussel

Monitoring Wales's only Marine Nature Reserve – Blaise Bullimore. The value of long term monitoring

Y Tywyddiadur – Duncan Brown a Twm Elias. Yn cofnodi tywydd a ffenoleg yng Nghymru

"The Professionals" – the rise of the modern ecologist. Fred Slater. The journey from the eccentric amateur to the Chartered Ecologist

People and pine martens – David Bavin. The feasibility of reintroduction

In pine marten footsteps – gathering the evidence. Tom Fairfield. Tunnels and tracking boards, papers and prints

Woods and forests – Rebecca Good and Kylie Jones. Bryophytes in ancient woodland

Nature at large – Ivy Denham. Habitat management at Pistyll Gwyn

Discoveries in science – Cindy Howells. New species of fossil crinoid discovered in south Wales

Plants at large – Simon Goodenough. Daffodils

Teyrnged i Morgan Parry/Tribute to Morgan Parry – Duncan Brown a Jane Davidson

Islands round-up – Geoff Gibbs. News from Flat Holm, Ramsey, Skokholm and Skomer

Life lines - Catherine Duigan, Nicola Rimington, Paul Brazier and Raymond Roberts.
After the storm – counting the wildlife cost

First queen bumblebee of the year

On a mild almost spring-like day this week I saw my first queen bumblebee of the year. It whizzed by, giving me no chance to practice my identification skills. Later that day I found myself transcribing the phrase ‘Saw a big wild bee’ from a diary entry dated 4th February 1882. I could be no more accurate than a diarist living well over a century ago, who did not have access to the huge array of bumblebee identification material now available to the interested observer of nature.

‘Bees’ have been much in the news in recent years. Everyone likes them, no one likes the idea that modern life is eliminating them and we know we really need them. Politicians and environmental charities have come up with a variety of initiatives to help them, which usually involve planting bee-friendly plants; places where bees of different kinds can come together to share in a feast of nectar or gather basket-loads of pollen.

A story on Inside Science (Radio 4) this week raised the terrifying spectre that these banquets for bees might prove to be bonanzas for two species of bee parasite, which appear to be able to spread from honeybees to our wild bumblebees. We can’t prove that the diseases are spread from honeybees to bumblebees, the scientist interviewed said, but this is likely.

The project had established that the parasites could spread from honey bees to bumblebees in the laboratory. To find out if this was happening in the field, honeybees and bumblebees were collected at the same flower-rich sites across the country, and tested for parasites. High infestations of parasites in honey bees, along with lower levels in bumblebees, were thought to indicate spread from the former to the latter.
I find it surprising that the researchers did not look at parasite numbers in different species of bumblebees. Some bumblebees sip nectar from the same flowers that honeybees use, but others, for reasons of morphology, such as extremely long tongues, or adaptation, do not. The latter should therefore not be exposed to the same opportunities for infection as the former. Would this not be a simple way to test the theory?

My diarist from 1882 well knew the difference between honeybees – he describes going ‘after dark to see a big skep of bees put down’ – and wild bees. The former were the now extinct western black bee which is these days often described as ‘native’, although that is a moot point.  Bumblebees are now part of the bee fraternity which we are encouraged to conserve. I hope it won’t be long before natural pollinator bees like lawn bees, and other pollinators like hoverflies, join the club of insects with initiatives to conserve them.

This blogpost was contributed by James Robertson, editor of Natur Cymru.

Seabird Wrecks

From time to time abnormal numbers of dead or dying seabirds are washed ashore. Such events get referred to as ‘Wrecks’, particularly when adverse weather rather than pollution is the likely cause. After the prolonged series of severe gales experienced on western coasts since mid December, more than the usual numbers of seabirds may be expected to be recorded on Welsh beaches during the annual Beached Bird Survey organised by the RSPB. This exercise was started a couple of decades ago primarily to monitor chronic levels of oil pollution that were then often coming from tank washing or still leaking from the bunkers of vessels sunk in wartime. Nowadays, except when there has been an accident, it is unusual to find oiled seabirds. However, those of us old enough to remember walking beaches in the 1950s may recall that it was unusual not to encounter the remains of oiled auks.

Razorbill wreck

The 2014 Beached Bird Survey now underway is centred on 22-23 February, but records a week either side of this weekend will be included. The survey simply involves walking a length of shoreline between grid referenced locations and recording the numbers of each species that may be found, noting if any happen to be oiled and checking for rings. By pooling data from many beaches in a region it is then possible to derive comparable figures for numbers per kilometre of shoreline.

As might be expected, the numbers washing up on particular coasts vary somewhat from year to year, not just to changing mortality rates in the near shore waters but also on wind directions prevailing in the weeks prior to the count. This year there are already indications that the numbers of Razorbills and Guillemots are going to be higher than normal. The weather is the likely cause, with gales reducing food availability and extra stress while trying to avoid being carried too far down wind. Often in such wrecks the birds are found with flight muscles wasted away as well as having burned up their fat reserves. For the two auks (Razorbill and Guillemot) there are records going back to the 19th century of occasional early autumn wrecks as well as mid winter ones. In the Irish Sea auk wreck of 1969, the primary cause of fatal stress was shown to be problems during the post-breeding moult. After breeding these auks become flightless for at least six weeks while growing a new set of flight feathers. Other species vulnerable to winter wrecks round the British Isles have been Kittiwake (Cardigan Bay, Feb 1959) and Shag.

If early indications from personal observations are borne out by the full survey it seems likely that the species most affected in the waters from which birds have drifted to Anglesey this time is Razorbill. Taking estimates of breeding populations in the British Isles as a rough approximation of expected ratios if Guillemots and Razorbills were equally vulnerable, the expected ratio in body count would be 5 Guillemot to 1 Razorbill. From just the small and statistically inadequate sample I have seen so far the ratio here is reversed. It will be interesting to see if this is borne out when more data is available.

While the number of birds involved may be relatively large, past indications are that this sort of winter mortality will not have much effect on the auk breeding populations in the longer term. Both Razorbill and Guillemot are quite long lived, they do not breed until several years old and there tends to be a pool of non-breeders waiting to take places on the better ledges.

This article posted by Ivor Rees.