Category Archives: Education

The Big Butterfly Count 2016

Conservation, Education, Plants and Animals, Volunteering

ButterflyPoster2016

From the Big Butterfly Count web site:

“The big butterfly count is a nationwide survey aimed at helping us assess the health of our environment. It was launched in 2010 and has rapidly become the world’s biggest survey of butterflies. Over 52,000 people took part in 2015, counting over 580,000 individual butterflies and day-flying moths across the UK (see the 2015 results).  

Join in with big butterfly count 2016 from 15 July – 7 August.

Why count butterflies?

Butterflies react very quickly to change in their environment which makes them excellent biodiversity indicators. Butterfly declines are an early warning for other wildlife losses.

That’s why counting butterflies can be described as taking the pulse of nature.

The count will also assist us in identifying trends in species that will help us plan how to protect butterflies from extinction, as well as understand the effect of climate change on wildlife.

How to take part

Simply count butterflies for 15 minutes during bright (preferably sunny) weather during the big butterfly count. We have chosen this time of year because most butterflies are at the adult stage of their lifecycle, so more likely to be seen. Records are welcome from anywhere: from parks, school grounds and gardens, to fields and forests.”

Why not give it a go?

Here are some interesting and informative articles on butterflies that can be seen at Fleet Pond:

What a Difference a Day Makes – The Water Blitz

Conservation, Education

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Terry Austin of FPS taking and testing water samples at Fleet Pond

John Sutton, who previously worked for the EA (and is now a professional photographer), writes:

“Last year on 14th September, Wild Oxfordshire, the Freshwater Habitats Trust and Thames Water, amongst others launched what was probably the first ‘WaterBlitz’ across the River Thames catchment. The intention was to collect as many nitrate and phosphate measurements within a 24 hour period with the help of citizen scientists.

In all, 645 measurements were sampled by individual members of the public, school and community groups and experts alike! In keeping with citizen science this was far more than any single scientist or team of scientists could collect in a day. Find out more about the data through the FreshWater Watch Water Hub.

The benefit of collecting this amount of data within a 24 hour period is that you get a temporally comparable result whether you are on a small tributary of the Lea or on the Thames at Lechlade. At the same time, water quality differences between sites are less likely to represent seasonal or climatic changes that occur throughout the year.

Importantly, they are more likely to highlight underlying issues such as pollution sources. Aside from contributing to the wider FreshWater Watch initiative, data collected in this manner directly compliments regular monitoring carried out by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology and could help elucidate particularly problematic still and flowing waters (taken from Dr Ian Thornhill’s blog, see here).

Members of Fleet Pond Society (FPS) took part in the April 2016 Water Blitz, sampling a series of waterbodies associated with Fleet Pond. The survey will be repeated in October 2016. See the results in the table below:

Water Blitz Fleet Pond

Click to enlarge (* measured in parts per million)

These values are expected to vary throughout the year as a result of weather patterns and changes in land use.

What are nitrates and why are they important?

Nitrate (NO3) is a form of nitrogen that is highly soluble in water. It is used in fertilisers and can move readily with surface runoff into rivers. Studies indicate that more than half of the nitrate fertilisers applied to fields can end up accumulating in the soil or running off into surface water and ground water. Other sources of excess nitrates can be traced to human wastes and industrial pollution.

Algae and other plants use nitrates as a source of food and elevated concentrations can create conditions that make it difficult for aquatic fauna, including fish and invertebrates, to survive. This occurs when large amounts of algae cause extreme fluctuations in dissolved oxygen. Photosynthesis by algae and other plants can generate oxygen during the day. However, at night, dissolved oxygen may decrease to dangerously low levels as a result of oxygen consuming bacteria feeding on dead or decaying algae and other plants.

Why is phosphate important?

Phosphates (PO4) can enter aquatic environments from the natural weathering of rocks, from the decomposition of plants, or from human activity such as fertilizer runoff and improperly treated waste-water. Phosphorus is an essential element for plant life, but in high concentrations favours the excessive growth of algae, with negative impacts on the fish and the health of our rivers and lakes.

The input of phosphorus from sewage treatment works to rivers is relatively constant through the year while agricultural inputs are much more closely linked to rainfall events and more seasonal. Efforts to reduce phosphorus coming from wastewater-treatment facilities and the use of phosphorus detergents has led to reductions in phosphate concentrations in European waterbodies, but 45% of rivers in England fail the EU Water Framework Directive for phosphorus standards.”

Ed. Many thanks to John for setting up the project and for providing the illuminating article. You can see his current work here (including some nature photography).

For completeness, here’s a nice video on the Water Blitz project showing how children can get involved as part of citizen science:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLClFGvyKvo&w=560&h=315]

 

The Great Nature Watch Campaign

Conservation, Education, Plants and Animals

As mentioned on the BBC Breakfast news yesterday, and from the Canal & River Trust:

Take a trip to your local canal, river, reservoir or lake and record what you see there. It’s a fun activity to do with the family and will help us to monitor and protect the wide variety of precious wildlife that the waterways are home to.

This year we’re calling on everyone to ‘Stop, Look and Listen’ to what’s happening around them, following our own survey results which show surprising gaps in people’s nature knowledge.

We’ve been working with with the renowned Wildlife Sound Recording Society to create a series of nature noises and challenge people to identify them as part of our Wildlife Ear and Eye Q test. Surveying toddlers to OAPs, the results showed that 25% of parents and 30% of children could not identify the sound a duck makes.

We also found that 23% of parents and nearly a third of children thought that ducks have yellow feathers, perhaps the result of children’s TV programmes such as Peppa Pig.

Findings also show that 76% of parents believe that they are less knowledgeable about nature than the previous generation with 68% of parents also believing that their children are less knowledgeable about nature than they were at their age.

When put to the test the gap in wildlife knowledge between parents and their children is actually surprisingly close, however the gap between grandparents and their adult children and grandchildren is much bigger.

They’ve developed free apps for Apple and Android smartphones to take part in their survey, details are here.

They also have a fun Ultimate Wildlife Sounds Quiz eg ‘Which naughty bird is mimicking a police car siren?’

Why not try a survey at Fleet Pond Nature Reserve?

Day Flying Moths

Education, Plants and Animals

Cinnabar_moth_(Tyria_jacobaeae) s

Cinnabar Moth (credit: Wikipedia)

Peter Martin, President of Fleet Pond Society, writes:

“Although moths are often thought of as dull and uninteresting, there are some moths that fly during the day and they are usually the more colourful ones. One of these, the Cinnabar Moth, was given its name by a Mr. M. Wilkes in 1773 because of its vermillion colouration.

In the field which borders Fleet Pond Nature Reserve, Ragwort plants can normally be found in June and July. The moth lays some 30 – 40 yellow eggs on the underside of the leaves and when the caterpillars emerge they can easily be spotted, as they are often in clusters and have very distinct bright orange and yellow black bands around their bodies. They are very voracious eaters and can totally consume the Ragwort plants.

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Flowering Ragwort with Cinnabar moth caterpillars (credit: Wikipedia)

Ragwort contains alkaloid poison and it can kill cattle and horses if consumed. At one time, the Cinnabar caterpillars were exported to Australia and New Zealand to eat the Ragwort plants there before they died and could be eaten by the animals. It is surprising that the poisons do not kill the caterpillars, but these are passed on to the moths as cyanide derivatives which deter birds from eating them.

The moths, which have greyish-black forewings with a vermillion line along the leading edges and two spots on the outer-edges, have hind wings that are all vermillion apart from a greyish-black border. If you are walking round the Pond between late May and July, do go into the part of the field nearest the Reserve and you may see these beautiful slow-flying moths or even the very showy caterpillars.“