Article for village newspaper, April 2010

The New Black

Red, grey – and now black. Just exactly what is going on with our squirrels?

I’m sure that many people are aware that here in Cambridgeshire our native red squirrel was replaced long ago by the grey squirrel, an American species (grey squirrels were introduced from America in 1892 and quickly spread; by 1958 there were no longer any red squirrels in Cambridgeshire). However, in the woods and gardens around Histon and Impington there is another shade of squirrel to be seen: black. And they may be taking over.

You may be forgiven for thinking that the black squirrel is a new species – it certainly looks strikingly different from our ‘normal’ squirrels. However, that is not the case: the black squirrels are actually a colour variant of the grey. The normal grey colour is a result of a balance between two versions of the pigment melanin, a darker one and a lighter one. In the black squirrels, a genetic mutation causes overproduction of the darker pigment, resulting in the black coat colour. This mutation is dominant, which means that any squirrel that inherits a copy of the mutated gene from either parent will be black, with squirrels inheriting a copy from both parents being a particularly deep, glossy black.

There has been some speculation about the origin of the black squirrels here in the UK. The first black squirrels were spotted on the outskirts of Letchworth as long ago as 1912, and since then they have spread northwards and eastwards, reaching Cambridge in the 1990s. Initially scientists thought that the black mutation had occurred here in the UK; however, more recently, examination of the gene involved has shown that the mutation matches that found in black squirrels in the United States. This suggests that the black mutation was introduced into the UK population by American black squirrels that escaped from zoos.

Whatever the origin of the colouring, the black squirrel is here to stay, and it’s spreading. Again, it’s somewhat unclear why this is so. It’s hard to see how the black colour gives any survival advantage over being grey, unless perhaps their dark colour allows them to absorb more sunlight in winter and therefore stay warmer and thus need less food. There are also many reports of black squirrels being more aggressive than grey ones, perhaps because their genetic mutation also means that they produce more testosterone than greys, and are therefore able to out-compete them for resources such as food.

Perhaps one day all our squirrels will be black, but until then, keep an eye out for them (Girton is a hotspot, and I’ve seen them many times in Histon wood and the Coppice) – they are, after all, an interesting local speciality!

Details about the resource used in compiling this article are available on request from pennyjreeves@gmail.com.

Insects

A quick round up of the insects that the milder weather has brought out and about in my garden.

Article for village newspaper, March 2010

Nature Begins At Home

Imagine a bright afternoon in early Spring. Outside my garden gate, parents are gathering to collect their children from school. Cars are pulling up. Younger brothers and sisters are racing around and yelling loudly. I’m in my kitchen, pottering around whilst waiting for my own children to come in from school, when I suddenly hear a loud ‘thump’ at my kitchen window. Rushing to look out, I see the most amazing and surprising sight: a female sparrowhawk, plump blackbird in her talons, looking up at me from the patio just outside the window. For a few breathtaking seconds she stares at me, fierce yellow eye glaring, and then she’s off across the lawn, fast and low, carrying her prey. She settles under the bushes by the barbeque and starts tearing into her meal, seemingly oblivious to the shrieking children just the other side of the garden wall. When my children come chattering up the drive she picks up the blackbird and slips away over the garden wall to continue her dinner somewhere more peaceful.

Imagine another scene, a few years ago, in Saffron Road. It’s about 10 o’clock on a Saturday morning and broad daylight, with a thin layer of snow on the ground, and two men working under the bonnet of a car in the British Legion car park. Glancing out of the window I spot a big dog fox emerging from under a garden fence. He trots nonchalantly round the front of the Legion, ignoring the two mechanics completely, slips through a gap in the hedge, and saunters up the garden. He’s clearly on his way somewhere but is in no particular hurry. When I follow his tracks later I see that he stopped for a sniff around the pond edge before continuing on his leisurely way through into our neighbour’s garden.

These were two truly wild encounters in the very heart of the village, and two reminders that this isn’t just our place. We share our village with some amazing wild creatures who make their way alongside us, fitting themselves into the spaces we leave around us, and carrying on their daily business at the edges of our lives. Often they go unnoticed - these were two occasions when I had the good fortune to be in the right place, looking the right way, at the right moment, but how often had these things happened when I wasn’t looking? The fox was clearly on familiar and comfortable ground, and mine isn’t the only garden with a good supply of plump and tasty blackbirds attractive to a sparrowhawk, so it’s unlikely that the two events I witnessed were in any way unique or even particularly unusual.

It’s all too easy to sit and watch wildlife programmes on the television that have been made in exotic locations, and to forget that this stuff is happening right here, too, in our own neighbourhood, on our own streets and in our own gardens. If you stay alert, be aware, and keep looking, then who knows what you might spot on your own front doorstep?


Photo by Christopher Hall.

First signs of Spring

My mother-in-law and I do this thing where we count how many species of wildflower we see when we go on walks throughout the year. Yesterday's total was two - speedwell and dandelion - and I had to search pretty hard for those. However there are catkins now - both alder and hazel - and the pussy willow is starting to break out, so things are starting to move.

Interesting to note that the blackthorn blossom-to-be is still tiny hard buds. Looking back at my photos from previous years, I see that on the 8th March two years ago the blackthorn by the 'new' wood was a riot of blossom, whereas this year the same bushes still look almost like bare twigs at the moment.

A different neighbourhood

One of the best things about travelling is getting a glimpse of somebody else's neighbourhood nature. We spent the last week in Val Thorens, in the French Alps, and these guys were daily visitors to our balcony (encouraged by a few kitchen scraps). They're Alpine Choughs, talkative characters who are master aeronauts, and some of my favourite birds. Over the past few years I've spent literally hours watching them while the rest of the family ski, and they still amaze and entertain me. Well worth the journey.

Article for village newspaper, February 2010

A Chilly Welcome For Our Winter Visitors

Beautiful as a snow-covered Histon and Impington might be, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's had enough of the white stuff for the time being - the snow has certainly had a big effect on all our lives. But what effect has the snow had on our local wildlife?

One of the most noticeable - and notable - effects of the hard weather has been to bring some interesting new visitors into our gardens here in the village, in the shape of fieldfares and redwings. These two species, relatives of our blackbirds and thrushes, are winter visitors to the UK, flying in from the north at the same time as our summer visitors take their leave and head south to warmer countries. Although these are not uncommon birds - an estimated 680 000 fieldfares and 650 000 redwings visit the UK every winter - they rarely visit gardens, preferring to forage in woodland or in farmland fields and hedgerows.

However, this winter has been different. Figures from the ongoing British Trust for Ornithology Garden Birdwatch project show that, compared with the previous four winters, January 2010 saw a substantial increase in the occurrence of these birds in the gardens surveyed. Difficulties in finding food under the snow and ice drove the birds to seek food in places they would normally avoid, and as a result fieldfares and redwings were recorded in about one third of gardens instead of the more usual one in ten. The hard weather brought them into closer proximity than normal with human beings, giving us a chance to see these beautiful birds in our own backyards.

So have you spotted them? The fieldfare is a large and striking bird, about the size of a mistle thrush, with a bright yellow bill, boldly spotted breast, and a slate-gray head and back. They've been particularly noticeable this winter in crab apple trees around the village, where they've even been holding territories and seeing off the blackbirds who more usually exploit this food source. Windfall apples have also been a popular fieldfare food source in gardens.

The redwing is a smaller bird, about the size of a song thrush, with a spotted breast, a marked eye-stripe, and bright red patches visible under the wings. I personally saw them throughout the village during the snowy weather, and enjoyed some particularly good views of a small group feeding in the rowan trees outside the Histon library one morning - a reminder that you never know what you'll see when you head out of the door on even the most mundane shopping trip.

These are birds that spend their summers in Scandinavia and Northern Europe, who travel south to us to escape the harsh, cold conditions of winter in their breeding areas. One has to wonder what they make of the snowy and icy conditions we've been experiencing here!

Details about the resource used in compiling this article are available on request.

The garden pond

When I went looking for signs of life in the woods last week it seems I was looking in totally the wrong place. I should have been looking in my own back garden, in our pond where the marsh marigold has pushed its first green arrows up through the ice.

We put the pond in in 2007. It was always intended to be a wildlife pond, but our choice of location was governed by the need to put it somewhere where it wouldn't continually swallow footballs. Hence it ended up in the vegetable garden, restricted to quite a small diameter by the space available.

We really weren't sure what it would attract, given its site and size, but received wisdom is that any pond is good for wildlife, so we gave it a go. We planted it with native pond plants - marsh marigold, water mint, spearwort, veronica, yellow flag and some oxygenators - and a non-wild water lily that is too big for the pond but was bought from a garden gate plant stall for 50p by my son on his way home from the swimming pool one day. Then we waited to see what happened.

The pond has been truly amazing. It has attracted a wide variety of invertebrate life, including a crazy number of breeding damselflies, and we've had frogs and even toadpoles in it. In the summer it's a major distraction - always something interesting to look at. A fantastic addition to the garden.

The photos below show the progress of the pond from when we started to dig it in 2007 to last year when it really began to need a good clearout - a job for this Spring, I think.