Gloucestershire Naturalists' Society

What's new on our web site?
A range of colourful pictures of mosses, liverworts, fungi and lichens from the Midger Wood, joint GNS-Bristol Naturalists' moss meeting is in the news page for 30 March.

An otter on the River Coln

This is late "news", but is included here to draw attention to an interesting way in which the presence of an otter could be determined. On the 29th Febuary 2007, while searching for Dippers and Grey Wagtials on the last day of the first BTO winter atlas period, Ian Ralphs noted this otter spraint along River Coln upstream of Fairford. Note the prominent position on a large flat stone - the pen gives a sense of scale.

Otter Spraint, River Coln, Ian Ralphs.

The Cotswold Water Park Dragonfly Atlas Project Launch Event

Sunday 4th May 2008, Lower Moor Farm (Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve), near Oaksey. (In partnership with the British Dragonfly Society’s National Dragonfly Atlas Project - 2008 to 2013.)

The CWP Dragonfly Atlas Project is being launched in 2008, in partnership with the Gloucestershire and Wiltshire County recorders, and with the National Dragonfly Atlas Project (NDAP). A launch event will be held on Sunday 4th May 2008 at Lower Moor Farm (Wiltshire Wildlife Trust Reserve), near Oaksey in the CWP.

The CWP supports over 20 species of dragonfly, including breeding species such as Downy Emerald, White-legged Damselfly and Lesser Emperor. Comprising 40 square miles of wetland within the Upper Thames Valley and including 147 lakes, plus reed beds, willow carr and over 200km of rivers & streams, the area undoubtedly supports large populations of many species.

Downy Emeralds, Cotswold Water Park, Ingrid Twissell.

The project will run for 5 years; at the end of the project, all data will be published as the first ever Cotswold Water Park Dragonfly Atlas, the first time that our dragonfly fauna has been systematically studied in such depth.

We are looking for competent dragonfly observers to assist with these surveys, to take responsibility for surveys within a tetrad. Help and guidance will be given and landowners will be contacted for you. We will be organising some training events during the spring for interested observers. The first surveys will begin during April and May, so its not too late to sign up!

For further details on the CWP Dragonfly Atlas Project and the launch event in May, please see the website http://www.waterpark.org/society/dragonfly_atlas.html or contact Gareth Harris, Biodiversity Officer, Cotswold Water Park Society, Gareth.harris@waterpark.org, tel: 01793 752413.

Letter from the Chair

Here we are, at the sixtieth anniversary year of the founding of our Society. Sixty years ago, a group of very active, very committed volunteer field naturalists in Cheltenham felt the need to set up what they first called the Cheltenham and District Naturalists’ Society until it morphed into the North Gloucestershire Naturalist’s Society and finally became today’s body, the Gloucestershire Naturalists’ Society. In the winter they organised indoor meetings that took place in the old Cheltenham Grammar School building in the High Street (next door to what was then a real brewery in the town centre, not a shopping mall called “the Brewery”); there was no David Attenborough on the telly in those days, so if you wanted to hear about wildlife you went out to evening lectures. If you wanted to learn about wildlife directly, you could take part in the varied programme of field meetings: one every Saturday in summer, and a shorter one most Wednesday evenings as well; all of them using public transport of course, as not everybody had a car then, so we departed from Royal Well bus station using the local bus services (which in those days still covered the whole county at all times of day). And on high days and holidays, a coach trip to some site of particular interest: I remember my first ever visits to Blagdon Reservoir to Chew, and to Nottingham Sewage Farm (where we spent anxious minutes discussing the identification of that incredibly rare bird, the Ruff, since the books then available didn’t tell us the species could have red legs; could it have been the even rarer Spotted Redshank??).

The Society from the outset kept records of natural history, with the monthly (yes, monthly!) “Journal”, run off on a duplicating machine and distributed to many members by hand, to save postage; in addition the series of annual reports began in the 1950s, a general report produced every other year included items on all aspects of natural history, while a bird report appeared in the intervening years: yes, even then, there were an awful lot of bird watchers.

I wonder what those founding members would think if they could see the Society now? I am sure that the GNS spirit is the same: a group of keen and inquisitive people, interested in their surroundings, and anxious to record them. Meetings of the Executive Committee repeatedly emphasize that we are above all a society of record (as they used to say of “The Times”); in the last few days, thanks to the efforts of the team who organize the distribution, members have received a number of documents that prove this: not only GNS News (I thought the January 2008 issue was particularly relevant, timely and well illustrated), but also the now annual Gloucestershire Bird Report for 2006 (produced in collaboration with other bird watching bodies in the county), and the latest issue of “The Gloucestershire Naturalist”, this one the second volume of the late Stephen Bishop’s Flora of Gloucestershire, incorporating the distribution maps of the plants described in the first volume. This recording work is supported by the team of Recorders for all aspects of natural history, and by the work of the Scientific and Publications Committee; and of course we now have a very active website.

The field meetings continue, though perhaps with smaller numbers of participants – not necessarily a bad thing, since a smaller group can gather round the leader and discuss everything seen or heard, so that nobody misses anything, a danger with a larger group. As to the indoor meetings, the Committee has accepted that in these days of such high quality wildlife on television, the attraction of turning out on cold dark nights in winter has decreased. The meetings in Cirencester will continue, but we shall not continue the regular series of talks at Shurdington (though nothing need prevent us from organizing indoor meetings for special occasions).

Another long-standing aspect of GNS activities also continues, the Library, now housed at Hartpury College within the college library; we continue to purchase relevant volumes so it’s entirely up to date (though somewhat under-used; do go along and take a look!). There is of course some pressure on space in a vigorously expanding facility like Hartpury, so we have to choose new volumes carefully, and neither GNS nor Hartpury is any longer able to accept gifts of books, without a review of their importance and relevance to the collection.

The founders would certainly recognise the need to maintain membership numbers – we hover around the 500 mark nowadays, which is a welcome improvement, but not enough; and we are short of younger members (when I joined there was a Junior Section, and a Junior Representative on the Committee!). We need to have more visibility and a higher profile on the local environmental scene; (perhaps should call ourselves environmentalists, to avoid the mistaken perception that we are the Gloucestershire Naturists’ Society?).

Thanks to the generosity of precisely those founder members who have left legacies to GNS, we are in the fortunate position of being able to maintain the annual subscription at an extremely low level, a mere £8.00 (where else will you such good value? but every little helps), and indeed to give grants for projects relating to natural history in the county. That would have been a source of great satisfaction to all those who set up GNS back in 1948.

At the Annual General Meeting at Shurdington on Thursday 27 March, we shall be looking back over the last sixty years, and looking forward to the future; there will be a presentation by a local Ph. D student who has received a grant from GNS to carry on her Pied Flycatcher studies in the Forest of Dean. I do encourage you all to come along and take part, with your thoughts and comments. Alternatively, if you would like to write to me or the Editor of GNS News (snail mail, email, or via the website!) to share memories of GNS in the past or suggest new opening s for the future, we should be delighted to hear from you.

Best wishes

Mike Smart

Marching for Mammals; National and Local Mammal Conservation

Monday 12th May 2008 at the Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel, South Cerney, Cirencester>

From March to October 2008, Adam Grogan of The Mammal Society, will be Marching for Mammals across the UK, to promote The Mammal Society and mammal conservation. This gruelling march will include walking all of the National Trails, ranging from the South Downs Way, the Thames National Trail, South West Coastal Path, to Hadrian’s Wall! This is a total of 2352 miles!!!

To support Adams walk and to raise the profile of mammal conservation in the UK and in the Cotswold Water Park, we will be presenting an evening of short talks on national and local mammal conservation efforts, to raise funds for mammal conservation.

This is a fund raising event; thanks to the sponsorship from the Cotswold Water Park Four Pillars Hotel and Strutt & Parker, all money raised through entry and donations will support mammal conservation at national and local levels, through support of The Mammal Society- and Cotswold Water Park Society-led mammal-related projects.

For further information, please contact Gareth Harris (gareth.harris@waterpark.org) or Jill Bewley (jill.bewley@waterpark.org) at the Cotswold Water Park Society on 01793 752413.

Publications

Two important publications will be distributed free of charge to members in the near future: one is the second volume of the late Stephen Bishop’s New Flora of Gloucestershire, completed by Mark and Clare Kitchen and David Scott-Langley, and published by GNS as number 14 of The Gloucestershire Naturalist. The other is the 2006 Gloucestershire Bird Report, published by GOCC with much input from GNS.
Non-members can purchase them (GBR is £7.50 including p&p; the price of the flora has yet to be announced), or can obtain them free by joining the Society for the modest sum of £8.

News of recent recording

GNS recorders have been carrying out surveys in order to assess the impact of last summer's floods. David Scott-Langley has provided two reports on discoveries that have arisen from that recording work. In addition, he reports on two new species of barkfly found in the county:

Amara strenua Zimmermann (Coleoptera: Carabidae) RDB3 new to Gloucestershire.

Alien Shrimps.

Two species of Psocoptera (Barkflies) new to Gloucestershire.

Field Meetings

Details of field meetings arranged for 2008 are on the diary page.

To give a taste of what is on offer, here is a report of the meeting held on Saturday 16th February with the aim of installing Dormouse boxes in the May Hill Area.

        

A group of eight of us met in Tibberton to drive in two cars up to the woods where the boxes where to be installed. A ninth member met us on the hill. Following introductions we shared the gear out amongst us and set off.

The objective of the afternoon was to install 14 dormouse boxes into the sweet chestnut coppice on Castle Hill, just below Glasshouse village on May Hill. Our walk to the site took us past a fishing lake and it’s two feeder streams, one of which has interesting calcareous deposits in it.

Upon reaching the coppice, we identified a tree in the corner of the plantation that was an obvious starting place, which would always be found. From there we proceeded to measure 20 metres into the coppice, to erect the first box. This was put at eye height on to one of the stems of a coppice stool. The box was held in place by a loop of wire around the stem and box. This means there is no damage to the tree. No nails left to damage forestry equipment, and the box can be easily lifted off for inspection. The compass bearing from the start tree was recorded, the box numbered and a matching numbered label with contact phone number attached to the box.

We then moved on another twenty metres, and repeated the process. The fourteen boxes were put in in two lines through the coppice. Each member of the group got to put up at least one box, and most had a go at taking the compass bearings, that will hopefully enable us to find the boxes again when inspection time comes.

A small amount of botanizing was done and a stroll around the hill was undertaken on completion of our task. I would like to record my thanks to those members who helped, to the GNS for sponsoring the project, and to Mrs Freeman of the Huntley Estate who gave permission for the project on her land.

I have another thirty boxes to go up in other coppices, so if anyone wants to come and help put them up, give me a ring. We will be checking the contents of the boxes at monthly intervals, around the second weekend of each month from April. If you wish to join me on an inspection visit, phone in the week before the second weekend of a month.

Mervyn Greening. Contact number 01452 790492

Spring Recording

The next phase of the BTO's Bird Atlas is underway, with the focus now on breeding birds . In Gloucestershire there is the additional incentive of recording in order to produce the county's first ever bird atlas. There are more details about the BTO scheme here.

GNS Grants

The Society is pleased to announce that small grants are available to help finance projects concerned with biological recording, education, public awareness and environmental or nature conservation within the county.

The terms and conditions for payment of grants are available here.

A copy of the grant application form is here .

Amara strenua Zimmermann (Coleoptera: Carabidae) RDB3 new to Gloucestershire

July 2007 will be remembered in Gloucestershire for the major flooding event in the Severn Vale, among other places. Some of the worst affected places were some of the county’s nature reserves adjacent to the River Severn. About a month before the major flood, Andrew Stanbury from the RSPB carried out an invertebrate survey at Coombe Hill Meadows in connection with birds. His survey was only concerned with family level identification and size classes. As part of the follow-up work I obtained his samples as there might be a useful comparison of species before and after.

Among the samples were two specimens of a ground beetle (Carabidae) which, when keyed out could only be one of two species, one considered to be widespread and very abundant in the UK and the other consisting only of some sixteen records nationally and most of those around Essex and the Thames estuary. The latter is Amara strenua (see picture below) and is listed as Red Data Book Category 3, i.e. rare, and the two specimens were of this species, confirmed by Mark Telfer, the organiser of the Carabid Recording Scheme. It is considered to be a species of both coastal and floodplain grazing marsh. Most of the British records are coastal but over its European range it is found on non-tidal floodplains and river banks.

Strangely the species has just been removed from the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (UKBAP) although it is believed to be declining over its whole range due to drainage and reclamation of its habitat. The UKBAP definition of Coastal and Floodplain Grazing Marsh is “periodically inundated pasture or meadow, with ditches that maintain the water levels, containing brackish or fresh water”. Under the Gloucestershire Nature Map project some 11500 hectares of this habitat have been identified in the Severn Vale so – does this species occur elsewhere in the county?

The other main question is this – has the species survived the major flooding at Coombe Hill in July 2007 as this was rather more than “periodic inundation”? Hopefully we will find out this coming summer.

David Scott-Langley

Top of this page

Alien Shrimps

On 17th October I was carrying out a preliminary survey of the aquatic fauna in the ditches and pools at Ashleworth Ham Nature Reserve to see what effects the floods of July 2007 had on the reserve. The water level had risen during this event to a depth of around 2.5 metres over the whole reserve and surrounding fields after the River Severn overtopped the flood defences. Using a long-handled net, two species of diving beetle were recorded along with four or five species of water boatmen, none of them of any rarity. Among them were what appeared to be immature gammarid shrimps, common in freshwater and brackish situations nationwide.

Subsequent checking under the microscope showed them to be Crangonyx pseudogracilis, an alien species originally from North America that was introduced and first seen in London in the 1930s. It was then found in the Midlands from whence it has been steadily spreading northwards and southwards. All the species of Gammarus, the usual animals encountered in fresh and brackish waters, live in slow- to fast-flowing waters such as rivers and streams, but not still waters. There are no native species that filled this latter niche and when Crangonyx was introduced into the country there was a ready-made vacant slot for it. Crangonyx is able to live in all kinds of waters including rivers, canals, ponds, lakes and reservoirs, and is able to tolerate saline and polluted water. It is herbivorous, grazing on algae as well as living and decomposing plant materials. All this makes Crangonyx an ideal species to colonise an area such as Ashleworth Ham after the 2007 floods but it is equally possible that it colonised the reserve during a previous flooding event; we will never know. This is the first record in the county for over ten years.

The National Biodiversity Network website shows only one record of this species from the county, from the Thames-Severn canal in Stonehouse. GCER has two records for the county, one from Purton Timber Ponds and also from a ditch adjacent to Coombe Canal just across the River Severn from Ashleworth dated 1995 so Ashleworth and Coombe Canal are likely to have been colonised at the same time prior to that (Alexander & Scott-Langley, in prep.).There are also two other records from the county, from Slimbridge and Hidcote Manor.

Reference: Alexander, K.N.A. & Scott-Langley, D.A., in prep. The Larger Freshwater Crustacea of Gloucestershire.

David Scott-Langley

Top of this page

Two species of Psocoptera (Barkflies) new to Gloucestershire

During 2007 two species of the genus Trichopsocus (Psocoptera: Trichopsocidae) have been recorded in the county. T. clarus (Banks) has been recorded from three widespread sites across Gloucestershire, Lancaut, Coombe Canal and Lineover Wood. This species is very similar to the more common T. dalii and its apparent rarity may be due to confusion between the species. New (2005) stated that the species is usually found in hothouses and similar environments but if that was the case it has clearly become well established outdoors across the southern half of Britain recently.

The other species, which is quite distinct from the two mentioned above, is Trichopsocus brincki Badonnel. According to New (2005) the only British record of this species, originally believed to have been endemic to Madeira, came from Devon in 2003 as reported by Saville et al. (2005). Since then it has been found across southern England (Saville, pers. comm.) and was recorded from three widespread sites in Gloucestershire in 2007, Lancaut, Condicote and Lineover Wood. References:

New, T. R., 2005. Psocoptera. RES Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects Vol. 1, Part 7, 2nd edition. Field Studies Council.
Saville, B., Alexander, K.N.A., Dolling, W.R. & Kirby, P. 2005. Some notable British barkfly (Psocoptera) observations. Entomologist’s Record 117: 35-39.

David Scott-Langley

Top of this page

Gloucestershire Naturalists' Society is the natural history recording organisation for Gloucestershire, UK, recording all of the wildlife in the county. The society is membership based and organises lectures and field meetings.

President: Mrs Anna Jones

Chairman: Mike Smart

Registered Charity No. 252710

Contact the society

Copyright © Gloucestershire Naturalists' Society:  2007. All rights reserved.

If you have any comments on or experience any problems with this page please contact R Homan