St James' Park

St James' Park in London, at first glance, looks pretty standard; but once you get to the lake, there are some really interesting ornamental ducks. In the 1930's, oriental ducks were introduced to St James' Park; today there are over 250 waterfowl on the lake. The most exotic of these are certainly the famous great white pelicans that once ate a pigeon (not for the faint hearted). There are 4 pelicans in the park today; clipped on one wing to stop them from escaping into London and causing chaos- which they used to do quite regularly, flying over to London Zoo to steal fish from the birds there! We were lucky enough to come across all four pelicans on our London adventures.

It's not just the pelicans that are awesome about St James' Park though. There are loads of smaller ducks that aren't found very frequently, and are really very cool. On an island in the middle of the main lake there's a bird breeding sanctuary. Visitors can't go and see the birds breeding there, but on the water it's easy to spot red-crested pochard, wigeon, mandarins (ducks, not small oranges), egyptian geese and possibly my new favourite, the fulvous whistling duck. The park also has booming populations of canada goose, swan (black as well as white), shag, heron, coot, moorhen, mallard and heron. Despite being in the middle of London, there's a huge range of birdlife! There's about 114 species annually, with around 90 extra rarer birds on top of that that sometimes visit.

 

The squirrels are well known for being some of the boldest, tamest around in this park as well. Bring peanuts at your peril, because they're absolutely everywhere, and won't hesitate to come and mob you for free food. They don't care at all if you creep up to get some close photos, although they are very curious! Too close, and they'll swipe at your camera lens.

 

It then leapt on my arm before skittering away when it found it had made a mistake

The pigeons are very tame too, and always on the lookout for food. We didn't even have anything to feed them, and they were all over our feet!

The best time to see the waterfowl is between November and April, because the drakes (male ducks) are in their breeding plumage, so are really brightly coloured. There are a couple of small cafes in the park to go and warm up in afterwards if it's a chilly day, so it's definitely something awesome to go and check out if you're ever in London for the day!

Britain's Larger Moths...

This week I've moved back up to London, and an extremely messy room. I shan't put pictures, because it's somewhat horrifying the amount of stuff I've accumulated over 3 years, from uni and also all the things I left behind in the first place. Anyway, long story short, with all the tidying I've been doing, I found a few interesting bits and pieces amidst the carnage of old toys, university notes, books and god-knows-what-else.

The thing that caught my eye the most was a publication from the Butterfly Conservation on "The State of Britain's Larger Moths 2013". Okay, so it's a year out of date, but still fairly recent and very relevant in ecology.

 

Image from UKButterflies.co.uk

In the past couple of years, I've started to get much better at lepidoptera identification (moths, not so much, but I can do some of the basic ones), so this is a pretty interesting read. I haven't actually gotten through it all yet, but it's not too long; 30 pages. First off, its focus is larger, macro, moths, rather than micro-moths- there are more species of micro-moth in the UK, but they're much harder to identify, and a lot less striking than some of the big macros we get like Tiger, Silver Y and Burnet moths. 

Sadly, like a lot of reports I've read over the past year (mostly for my dissertation or ecology modules at university), numbers of many species are declining. 2/3 of 337 species of larger moths declined over the 40-year study recorded in this report, which is a pretty dire situation, given the usefulness of moths in the environment, playing a key role for plant pollination, and insectivores that rely on moths as a food source. It's quite evident that habitat loss and reductions in biodiversity of many areas are not doing moths any favours at all. Agricultural intensification and changing woodland management largely seem to have negative impacts on moths, with fragmentation of habitats causing declines in species numbers.

     

Dusky Thorn, Spinach, Lackey, Garden Tiger, Grass Rivulet and Autumnal Rustic species all have declined by over 90% in the past 40 years. Images from UKmoths.org.uk

It's not all doom and gloom though; the report also shows that the 1/3 of moths that aren't declining in numbers are actually increasing. Homogenization of the moth species pool of the UK isn't great, but at least it's good news for some species, and not all are becoming rarer. As well as these moths on the increase becoming more abundant, their territories are also expanding, with species such as the Dingy Footman having a more widespread range.

I need to give this paper a bit more of a read (I'm still only halfway through clearing the piles of stuff all over the place), but a quick skim through shows it's not all bad for Britain's moths. I'll be interested to see what they suggest in the last couple of pages as ways to conserve moths, as a lot of public friendly leaflets tend to focus on small-scale changes you can make in your own back garden, rather than a larger impact that, from a glance, seems to be the focus of this paper.

Dingy Footman, Image from Suffolkmoths.org.uk

You can read the full report here.