So it turns out my Great-Grandmother wrote a book about bee-keeping.

More Bat Bothering

More bat bothering, or 'bat box checks' which, as described last week, involves walking around a wood with a ladder, then using said ladder to peer into bat boxes where bats will (hopefully) be in there sleeping. In some cases, a bat is hauled out for further examination. This, I should add,  is done by a trained and experienced bat ecologist and the bat, though probably quite annoyed, is unharmed by the experience.

The bat pictured above is a Soprano Pipistrelle, which is Britain's commonest bat and so, as you'd expect, appears the most often in our checks. We also saw a Barbastelle, which is most definitely not Britain's commonest bat and therefore is quite a good bat spot. Sadly no pic of that, as they're quite nervous and probably wouldn't have appreciated being taken out and poked around.

The woods themselves are Holt Wood, which are National Trust owned by the Kingston Lacy estate. On a freezing cold day back in 2013, when I was working as a gardener on the estate, we went for a tour of the woods with Laura Baker, who was then the ranger for this site. She explained their policy of 'haloing', which meant cutting back the understory of the woods, which was mostly holly. Holly, as I'm sure you're aware, is a very thick evergreen plant, which blocks out a lot of sunlight from getting to the forest floor. As well as this, when it's left unchecked and has grown quite high, blocks out light to the trunks of the canopy trees.

These trees, which are mostly oak and beech, start their lives by growing high, reaching their full height fairly quickly (for a tree at least) and then spreading outwards as it matures. However, if the lower parts of the tree is shaded out by holly, then the tree will remain tall and spindly. By cutting back this holly surrounding the bigger trees - or 'haloing' - light will get to trunk and the trunk will start producing little branches with leaves. This is called 'epicormic growth'. In time, these little branches will develop into big branches and the tree will mature into the squatter, fatter trunked shape of a veteran tree. This makes it less top heavy and therefore less vulnerable to high winds and the like.

Well that was the theory, as explained by Laura three years ago. And now, on this visit, you couldn't move for epicormic growth.

Here's a good example, above. This is all very new growth that, before the haloing, would have been completely shaded out by holly. Hanging from the left hand branch is the bat box that we were there to check. Ironically, the bats seem not to like these recently cleared areas, preferring a bit more clutter! But that's the whole thing about ecology, you improve something for one species but mess it up for another.

Not that the bats are too worried. The woods do not lack crevices for bats to hide in. In fact, given the choice you'd be a bit mental to choose a bat box, seeing as their's a fair chance some bunch of herberts are going to come along every month and disturb their day's kip.

Games For May

Out with the dogs and the missus again, this time on the road running past Bradbury Rings. Bradbury  is an iron-age hill fort and, running past it is the main road between Wimborne and Blandford, which runs through an avenue of beech trees. It's a Dorset landmark and looks kinda like the road to King's Landing would if it was a 60mph A road.

The road, the avenue of trees and the broad grass verges are all National Trust owned and looked after by my old work colleague Paul. 

Here's the whole family in one shot. Mrs Zoom to the left, Maeve the Irish bog whippet in the foreground, Emerson the galgo or Spanish Greyhound ahead of Maeve and Mochi the Podenco on the right.

There's a lot of cow parsley about. Or Queen Anne's Lace if you want to be posh. Anthriscus sylvestnis if you want to be really posh.

Some Devil's Bit Scabious (Succisa pratensis) and some cuckoo flower (Cardamine pratensis). And some grass, obvs.

Some hawk's beard, or possibly buttercups or - even posssiblyer - both.

DIY Ecology

 No rhodo bashing this week. I'm a bit over rhodo bashing. So, instead, here's a pretty little bit of meadow grass. Lovely, isn't it? Some brome, a few cuckoo flowers...

......Aaaand pull back and reveal that it is in fact, the side of my town's bypass. To the left of this pic is a bridge with the River Stour running through it while, over the top runs the A31. Over the other side of the road is an industrial estate.

To the best of my knowledge, no one ever planned or planted this up, it just sprang up as it's own little nature reserve. Rewilding in action, before your very eyes.

Further on is this field, which is managed to some extent. It's grazed by sheep through the winter and right now is awash with buttercups and silverweed.

It all just goes to show, it's not just about the big, showy reserves. Nature is right there all around you. Sometimes you have to give it a helping hand, sometimes it just gets on and does it itself.

Bat Bothering

Bat bothering was a term I coined when explaining to the missus what I was doing at the weekend. Little did know how accurate it would turn out to be.

The official term was a bat box check, with some bat ecologists. This involves tramping over Rempstone estate in the Purbecks with a ladder, then using that ladder to inspect a bat box nailed about 3m up in a tree. The side of this bat box would be prized open, and then a torch would be shone in and, hopefully, the beedy eyes of a bat would be seen staying back at us.

In a couple of instances, the bat was be brought out and inspected to fully judge it's breed and sex - the sex bit being pretty bloody obvious, as the gentleman's part of a bat are of impressive proportion in relation to the size of their body. This, now mildly traumatised, bat would then be returned to it's hidey-hole and the amount of poo on the bottom of the box recorded and then shovelled out. Which is fair I s'pose as, having just rattled the bat's house, removed the front of it, grabbed hold of the bat, shown him to your friends, had a good laugh at the size of his cock and then put him back again, the least you could do was tidy the place up a bit.

This was all in the name of conservation, rather than just plain hooliganism. Bat sex and species and the afore mentioned amount of poop (showing how often the bat box was used) was all noted, in the name of science or something. I did take pictures of the numerous teeny little soprano pipistrelles that we found, plus the one, massive, toad-sized, noctule. Sadly, for complicated legal reasons, I can't post any of them up here.

However, I can offer a suggestion as to what these complicated legal reasons might be. One, none or several of the following reasons may be true:

-The bats refused to sign a waiver allowing their image to be used in public

-This wasn't an official an organised site visit by professional bat ecologists but just a bunch of hooligans going round ruining some bat's quality nap time

-We didn't want to give away the exact location of the bat boxes

-The landowner is unaware that conservation efforts are being carried out on their land

-Bats are highly litigious

I am able to post other pictures, just not ones of bats:

 A rhinocerous beetle Sinodendron cylindricum

Oak apples, or oak gall, caused by a parasitic wasp laying it's eggs in an oak twig. It causes the twig to grow in this crazy way, giving food and shelter for the wasp larvae

More purple sprouting orchids. A little late in the season for these.

Some moss. While I was taking this picture, a tawny owl, spooked by our bat-bothering, took off from a nearby tree, knocking off a rotten branch that hit the ground a few feet away from me. Quite a way to go if you think about it: killed by an owl.

So there you go. Hopefully, there will be further bat bothering expeditions in the future, with photos that I will be allowed to upload!

Rhododendron - The Truth

Back once again with the renegade master. Or rhododendron again. The same woods that would take about twenty minutes to amble through, that we have been working in for a good eight days now.

Not that I'm complaining, I am getting paid for those eight days after all so, from a very self-centred point of view, the more the merrier. However I feel I should add some more detail about the rhododendrons themselves, after doing a little research on them.

You see, previously, my source material had been mostly hearsay, with the bit about rhodos coming from Nepal being sourced from reading Tintin In Tibet when I was twelve. 

Now Tintin is great as I'm sure you'll agree but, a source of cutting-edge botanical knowledge it is not. In fact, it turns out that Rhododendron ponticum is a native to Spain and Portugal,  and it was from there that it was introduced to Britain in the 19th century. 

The problems with Rhodo are twofold - firstly, it spreads. It branches out from a central core, and then, wherever it touches the ground, a new bush sets root. This is a thing called asexual reproduction and is definitely not confined to Rhododendrons. As an aside, this means that, when you see a wood thick with rhododendron, it is probably all the same plant, i.e. the same plant making genetically identical clones of itself. Annoyingly, as well as this, the plant can reproduce sexually, with the large pink flowers that are in bloom this time of year being fertilised by bees and then producing seeds, which are blown on the wind and sprout from where they settle. I have seen a garden in the outer Hebrides in Scotland - which is just the sort of poor, acidic soil that rhodos love - with a single rhododendron bush in the garden and then a perfectly tear drop-shaped bloom of windblown rhodo saplings growing in the moorland, downwind. 

This in itself is not such a problem. There are plenty of species that are a pest - or a complete thug from a gardening point of view - but still part of a healthy ecosystem. Brambles and nettles spring to mind. However, wherever rhodo establishes itself, it will shade out the ground underneath, meaning no light will penetrate to the ground layer and allow anything else to grow. As well as this, the leaves contain a poison that prevents them from being eaten by anything and, when the leaf falls off the plant, drops to the ground and forms a poisonous leaf litter that prevents anything else from growing.

Going back to nettles and brambles, both of these plants are food species for caterpillars but, as we just mentioned, rhodo is a food plant for nothing at all. 

All great so far for the rhododendron. Then, along we come with our chainsaws and glyphosate and our attempts to redress the matter. The first stage is the fun bit - getting out their with chainsaws and cutting the living heck out of the stuff. However, as mentioned, this in itself is not enough. This is not a thing peculiar to rhododendrons. Many plants can be cut down to the base and will bounce back repeatedly, as any gardener knows. Grass is a fairly obvious example of this phenomena. Plants are a complicated system, involving water being sucked from the ground up to the leaves, where they use sunlight to combine the water with carbon dioxide in the air and produce sugar. Or starch, which is a more complicated sugar molecule. This sugar is stored in the roots so that when some guy or gal with a chainsaw chops the plant down to the root, the stored sugar gives enough energy to start sprouting leaves again. 

The deal, as mentioned a couple of weeks ago, involves us chopping down the rhodo and then leaving it for a few years (literally one or two years) and then zapping the new growth with weedkiller. We were using glyphosate. According to the blurb: "Plants absorb glyphosate through their leaves and other green parts. From here, the glyphosate moves to the growing points of shoots and roots, where it interferes with the enzymatic production of certain amino acids that are essential for plant growth."

So there you go. It's bad news if you photosynthesise but generally fine if you're anything else. But still, we do have to hit everything hard as, if you miss a bit, it'll still be there, laughing at you for years to come.  Which is bad from an ecological point of view although, arguably, good if you're a contractor, specialising in it's removal.

Brownsea island recently announced the complete eradication of rhododendron on the island. By my reckoning, it won't be eradicated from cannon hill woods for a good while to come...

For your further reading:

Precisely why rhodos are evil:

http://www.countrysideinfo.co.uk/rhododen.htm

How glyphosate works:

http://www.glyphosate.eu/glyphosate-basics/how-glyphosate-works

Eradicating rhododendron from Brownsea Island

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-14931327

Broad Bodied Chaser

No updates for the minute, due to lack of time and generally feeling bleugh. However, he is a very good picture of a broad leafed chaser (no, I'd never heard of them either), taken by the missus yesterday. Pretty, isn't it?
Hopefully soon will be some bat bothering and an explanation of just why rhododendron is so darn hard to kill.

Bob The Spider

Sorry for not updating in a while but it's getting to the end of term and I've got assignments to write.

In the meantime, here's a picture of Bob, our new lodger, who is paying his rent by sitting by the back door and catching any flies that venture in. He (probably a she, actually) is a garden spider, Araneus diadematus.

Rhododendrons And Me Part 3

Day six of our rhodo bashing - or day four of the weed-killing part of it. And, after nearly being destroyed by two days of actual work after eight months of lounging around at college, this week was considerably kinder on my shoulders. The spray tank hadn't gotten any lighter, but a weekend spent mostly lying around and eating (recovery, in sporting parlance) had allowed some muscles to grow back on my shoulders.

There was still the getting covered in blue dye part of the activity, which is getting to be a bit of a pain in the arse. The tank is full of a mix of round up weedkiller, 'formula b', which is to help the roundup stick to the rhododendron's waxy leaves, water and a blue dye. The dye is so that you can tell what you've hit and what you haven't which, in the middle of a a very dense bit of woodland, comes in very handy indeed. However, despite wearing a white pesticides boiler suit and rubber gloves, manages to get all over you. At the end of the day, we were joking that, by the end of next week's session, we'll be looking like a pair of smurfs.

Getting back to the 'dense woodland' part of proceedings, the area we are zapping was once plantation woodland. I'm making an educated guess about the history of the place but I reckon that, having previously been heathland, it ploughed up and planted up with conifers, with drainage ditches being dug. Those conifers have since been cleared and birch woodland was then either planted of allowed to grow up of it's own accord, which is what is now on the site. As well as the rhododendron, obvs.

If the picture below, we see exhibit A, which is a latex glove that has been placed over a sapling some years ago and that sapling has since grown into a tree with a latex glove still wrapped around it.

Kinda like one of those environmental memes about pollution only a bit more slapstick. I also found a very old jumper that had used to belong to an employee of the forestry commission. I didn't find the remains of it's owner anywhere nearby, so have to assume that he left it there.

In years to come, the next bunch of mugs contractors sent in to zap the next sprouting of rhododendron will probably find ripped arms and legs from our spray suits, which did not stand up very well to a day's tramping through the undergrowth. That's kind of why we're all blue now but I digress.

Cows In The Rain

Stag Beetles Fighting

Stag beetles fighting. Not, sadly, from the ultimate stag beetle wrestling league but something I found on YouTube while researching an assignment.
I love how, when the bigger one picks up the smaller one, the smaller one's legs waggle about as if to say 'ooooh, this is gonna hurt!'

Here's some more on stag beetles, which are due to emerge and start doing this sort of thing about now.
https://ptes.org/campaigns/stag-beetles/

More pics from Powerstock Common. Nice, isn't it?

Lark Ascending

More pics from yesterday's expedition, these taken by my very talented wife, Mrs Zoom, with her fancy big camera with it's telephoto lens. The two below are of a skylark, hovering on the wing in full song above us while we were photographing the cows that I posted yesterday.

The bottom pic is two Peacock butterflies, which were either two males fighting over territory or a male pursuing a female in a courtship dance. I'm not enough of a lepidoptera expert to be able to tell but it's one of those, definitely!

The great one-that-got-away was an adder sunning itself on a path that we were walking down that we came very close to actually treading on, but had flounced (and I do mean flounced) into the undergrowth before we'd got our various cameras into focus. 

This was all at (or very close to) Powerstock Common, which is a Dorset Wildlife Trust nature reserve in West Dorset. A bit of a hidden gem by all accounts - impossible to find but well worth the visit.

Apocalypse Cow

Today's expedition was a nature photography trip to West Dorset with Mrs Zoom, of which there will be ALOT more to follow. She took 17 pictures of one skylark alone. These pics are my own, taken with my trusty iPhone 4 and put through some Instagram filters. Not strictly nature as such but when you pass a field of heiffers as lovely as these, you just have to stop and say hello. In the back ground is Eggardon hill fort, which is probably bronze age or something.

Rhododendrons And Me Part 2

After last week's complete annihilation of a large patch of rhododendron via various loud and dangerous tools, we return for another bash. As I mentioned last week, rhododendron is basically raw evil in plant form and, unfortunately, going through the woods and cutting every single little bit of rhodo is not enough to actually kill it. Oh, no. Cut it all to the ground and it will start to sprout again.

However, the good news is that, when it starts sprouting again, you can hit it with weed killer. Cover fully grown rhododendron with weed killer and it will pretty much laugh at you, then carry on spreading. It's leaves have a waxy coating, almost as if it evolved specifically to defend itself against a back pack sprayer. However, when it is young, it is still vulnerable and so the plan is: cut, then hit.

We'd cut it last week, which is a bit early to start regrowing, even for rhodo. Luckily, we had one that we'd prepared earlier, or at least had been cut a few years before and was now regrown up to about waist height. This made for a nice bed of spiky sticks to walk on, which wasn't ideal if you're carrying 15 litres on your back.

The pesticide in question was roundup, which works by screwing up the plant's ability to photosynthesise, which is mixed with a sticky liquid to make it stay on the leaves and a wonderful blue dye that was there so that you could tell which bits you'd hit and which you hadn't, and which, despite wearing white overalls, gloves and boots, still managed to get all over your face and body. All of this was mixed with water in a big 15l tank, that you hauled onto your back and then proceeded to crash round the woods, on the thick matt of dead rhododendron, creating what we hoped to be new patches of dead rhododendron.

This job is in no way finished, there is a lot more to do. Hopefully, coming back to the same woods in another week's time, the fruits of our efforts will be more obvious. Hopefully, the damn stuff will be actually dead by the time we're finished, and the woods will be able to flourish to their full.

Same ____, Different Day

The same pics from last Saturday but with a nice filter, curtosey of Instagram. I'm on there as zoomgordo.

Alien Ant Farm

Moving paving slabs in my in-law's garden, we discovered this!

A Short Whinge

A short, slightly rambling, college assignment-related whinge: back when I were a gardener, I always use to be a little sniffy about the whole concept of garden design, which seemed to me to be a way of making something very simple complicated in order to justify your consultant's fee. There were three important things: what do you want there, will it grow there and does it look nice and the rest is all just guff to make you sound like you know what you're talking about.

Currently, I am writing about 'landscape character' which, similarly, seems to be about thinking up the correct adjectives and crowbarring a landscape into an arbitrary set of values decided by somebody else. Generally speaking, the longer ago a landscape was shaped, the more value it has and therefore the more worth it has. Quaint and pastoral is 'good', anything else is bad.

Personally, I have my own, slightly eclectic, views on landscape beauty. I quite like post-industrial wasteland, for example. As well as this, I have a very pragmatic 'well, this is what we've got' attitude to dealing with it. Make what you have beautiful and biodiverse. Preserve by all means but everything changes with time and you can never be sure that our attempts to correct the mistakes of our recent ancestors will not also be condemned by future generations.