Great Crested Newt Training

This weekend I am attending a course at FSC Preston Montford called “Working towards a GCN licence” … and the title pretty much sums it up. Whilst I’ve been gaining experience by working with various people for the last couple of years, it is good to get formal training. There is also a short test at the end of the course, and upon successful completion I'll get an attendance certificate that equates to one of the two references needed to gain my own licence. At the moment, I am either working with other qualified/licensed people, or am limited to the sites and activities for the PondNet project. By doing this course, I will be able to do bottle-trapping on my sites, but will still be limited to my official PondNet sites to be under the remit of that licence.

The course started at 4:30pm and we had a session before dinner to cover off some of the laws and regulations. We also got stuck in straight away making bottle traps, with the handy hint to use a soldering iron to make the holes that the bamboo cane goes through, and then the plastic does not split.  

After dinner, we were straight out in the field and setting out our bottle traps.  Working in groups of four, we set out ten bottles per group around a medium-large pond on site.  We will be going back early in the morning to empty them.  We also had a look at some options for setting traps in more difficult circumstances, such as when ponds are lined.  This involved putting two rubber bands around the bottle, and then putting the cane through the rubber bands so that it was held horizontally against rather than going through the bottle. The cane can then be fixed into the bank of the pond rather than the base.

We finished off with a classroom session which was a slide-show of newt identification.  This involved lots of photographs and it was useful to see the finer details of the species, which can look similar in some circumstances.

I’m not sure I will learn lots of new things on this course, but it will be really good to embed my existing knowledge, share best practices and become more proficient in my skills.

NFBR/BES Joint Conference

The National Forum for Biological Recorders is an independent group who aim to promote biological recording in the UK.

At the end of the week they held a joint conference with the British Ecological Society.  It was quite relevant to me, both through my studies with Manchester Metropolitan University, and through my volunteering with the Local Records Centre.  As it was being held in my region, I thought I would go along but I was only able to attend the first day of the conference due to other commitments.

The drive to Sheffield took about an hour, and I made my way slowly through the rush hour traffic to “The Edge”, a conference facility at Endcliffe Village which is part of the university.  After negotiating my way down a narrow cobbled street and finally finding somewhere to park, I arrived in time to grab a cup of tea and meet a few people before moving into the conference room.

The morning’s sessions were all concerned with technology. It was really interesting to hear about the various systems that can support biological recording.  Indicia, who have developed the INNS Mapper for Yorkshire Wildlife Trust as well as many other recording group schemes were present. I was particularly interested to learn about QGIS – free GIS software – and some relevant plugins that have been developed specifically for ecological and biological recording. These include grid systems are a range of resolutions, and colour codings such as may be used in a recording atlas. It is definitely something that I will explore when I have a few spare minutes.  The other thing was Scratchpad which provides free webpages for species and taxanomic projects, and there is also an option to publish scientific data – an option for my dissertation project I think as it would be good to share some of the photographs I have taken and some of the conclusions (in due course).

At lunchtime I sat outside enjoying the sunshine and chatting with other delegates over a sandwich.

In the afternoon, there were a series of workshops discussing various themes and issues in biological recording. I sat in on a session concerned with the verification process – who are verifiers, what do they need to do the job effectively, and how can new people be encouraged?  Whilst there was some interesting discussion, there are clearly a lot of people that take the traditional approach of one person being the county recorder for xyz species. There seemed little interest, in my group at least, about trying to get other people involved, making more use of online systems, and perhaps having multiple verifiers with a lower level of specialisation to ensure records are confirmed quickly but without losing any of the accuracy (similar to i-Spot verification, which uses peer group users to review and agree/amend identifications).
 

In all, it was a good conference and refreshing to see people from quite different backgrounds coming together to discuss a common theme.

When is a bee not a bee?

This week I am on a field trip organised through my latest Open University module: S295 The Biology of Survival. Our final topic is on pollination, and an optional course is being run to support us in running a short project that is submitted as our final course assignment and also contributes to the overall module grade.  The aim of this week is to give us confidence in identifying plants and insects and recording their interactions, so that we can formulate and test a hypothesis in our project.

Arriving last night, we had a brief introduction to the subject in an evening lecture and looked at the different parts of a flower. Today we concentrated more on insects, and spent two long sessions outdoors. This morning we walked around the site and caught various insects for identification. We learned that if it looks like a bee it probably isn't, as hoverflies also look rather bee-like! Once you learn a bit more though, it's fairly easy to distinguish them by the eyes, wings (with a U-shape and 'false' veins - photo to the right is a hoverfly) and behaviour. Some samples were taken back to the lab where we got the chance to look at diagnostic features more closely and worked through a key. There were also some specimens that we could look at with a hand lens or microscope.

This afternoon we spent more time looking at the interactions of the insects - were they visiting flowers at different life stages, how long were they there for, etc.  This evening the class came together to pool our ideas and start to think about ideas for a practical investigation.  One of these will be taken forward tomorrow when we get the chance to trial some field work.

The weather has been absolutely stunning for early April, and I'm wishing I packed a sun hat rather than waterproofs! The warm weather has been great for our work too though, as it means the insects are active despite it still being quite early in the season. An interesting course so far, with a great bunch of people and hopefully it will enable me to produce a better quality project at the end of it.

Tadpole Liberation!

My tadpole experiment is going really well so far. The guys are now a few weeks old and growing fast! The average hatching time was less than two weeks. They are now eating well, and as a result there is a lot of - erm - detritus on the floor of the tank. A handy hint I got off the internet was to use a turkey baster to 'hoover' out the bottom of the tank. I'm currently doing this twice a day, and changing water every two to three days, but as soon as I turn my back they make a mess again!  It is quite a time consuming project - caring for tadpoles isn't easy!

My initial methodology was to study 50 eggs/tadpoles in different tanks. As soon as I collected the spawn I realised this was impractical, as spawn is tightly stuck together and it was impossible to count off 50 eggs without damaging them, which would affect the impact of acidity on the embryo.  So instead I split the clumps into smaller lumps, and when they hatched I randomly selected 50 tadpoles to keep and liberated the rest back to the garden pond. I did this by gradually introducing pond water to the tank to bring the acidity level back to the same neutral level as the pond. I also let the tank float in the pond for several hours so that the water was the same temperature. Once released, I kept checking on the tadpoles and they survived, so this seems to have worked well and the change in environment wasn't too much of a shock to the system. 

I managed to collect more spawn so have three replicates of the experiment running. I have good results so far, with the most acidic treatment not hatching at all, but the intermediate and least acidic treatments have little difference between them. I also took a control group sample, which is reared in untreated rain water which is neutral pH.  There are slight differences in the hatching time within the replicates, but no evident difference in hatching success. 

I have continued to run the experiment and monitor the tapoles as they grow.  I am measuring a sample of them at certain ages. By photographing them and comparing them to a known distance (in this case, 10mm graph paper stuck to the bottom of the container), it's possible to measure their length accurately using some software called Image J which is free and easy to use.  I do have a significant difference in length at three weeks old, with the tadpoles in the more acidic water being shorter.  I have had relatively few deformities and this does not seem to be related to acid.  The results aren't exactly what I was expecting, but I have plenty to talk about when I do write the experiment up.

I have taken lots of photographs and video of the tadpoles and have also started a Flickr album. It seems a shame that I won't be able to use much of this in my final report, but hopefully it will be useful to refer back to.

Toad Counts

I've now complete the first week of 'proper' surveying when we were looking for amphibian signs rather than concentrating on collecting environmental data.  Unfortunately the first survey had to be cancelled - the weather on the day was really bad with very strong winds and bursts of heavy rain. I was actually out on another reserve that day and the surface of the water was very disturbed so it would have been difficult to see anything, even by torchlight. The temperature also dropped below 5 Celcius overnight which makes amphibians less active.

Our second survey was on Thursday night at Rothwell Country Park and this was much more successful. A group of four of us arrived and we managed to survey most of the ponds I had planned. We started about an hour before sunset and carried out a visual search for adults and eggs. I think it is a little early in the season for newt eggs, but we did see toads and newts in the ponds.  By the time we had reached the north east corner of the park it was getting dark so we switched to torching and made our way back to the cars, checking the ponds as we went.  The toads were out in large numbers, not just in the focal pond which is ideal for them to bask in, but there were quite high numbers in several of the other ponds as well.  We also saw a few smooth newts, and were blessed by a barn owl hunting overhead.

On Saturday a happy band of two turned up to survey Letchmire Pastures, which has a smaller number of ponds but they are larger in size. The initial search was not very productive, but again we saw toads that hinted at what was to come later in the evening. Once we began torching, we could hardly keep count, and it was actually quite difficult to walk anywhere as they were still arriving at the ponds.

I was conscious that once frogs and toads arrive at a pond they can breed rather quickly and then disappear. With this in mind, having missed out our survey at Ledston Luck due to bad weather I was concerned that we may miss seeing the toads there.  As the site is on the way home, we quickly pulled into Ledston Luck after completing the ponds at Letchmire Pastures, and had a quick walk around the focal pond. Again, this was awash with toads and I am pleased we managed to capture that information as well. Across the three sites, well over a thousand toads were counted so it was a great start to the season.

To finish off the week, I had an extra, informal visit to a different site with some colleagues. This looked a bit of an uninspiring site, but did have some great crested newts relocated there a few years ago. We arrived just as it was getting dark so I probably didn't see the surrounding countryside to its best effect, but it was surrounded on one side by arable fields and the M1 motorway on the other. Despite this, the first pond was fairly healthy with lots of suitable aquatic vegetation ... but all we saw were a lot more toads! There was the odd flash of silver that was probably the tail of a great crested newt, but they were very elusive and kept disappearing into the weeds. Picking our way carefully to the next pond, this time we did see a couple of newts but there were the more common smooth newts. The third and finally pond was very disappointing to look at, with little vegetation and the water was extremely turbid. However, there was a rather nice female great crested newt sitting on the surface that obligingly let us have a close look, so it was a worthwhile trip out after all.

PS. A return visit to Rothwell Country Park this week revealed that the toads have successfully bred. Spawn is much more difficult to find as it is laid in strings, often at depth, and intertwined around vegetation as shown in the photograph.