Fossorial Voles II

On the Wednesday night of Site A trapping I received a message from Robyn saying that she had arrived to check the traps and found many of the metal Shermans stolen and others thrown around the site. Luckily we had previously clipped open the tube traps and left the Shermans unset so that there would have been no animals inside when this act of vandalism occurred. This is one of the many risks when conducting fieldwork in an urban area, some people do not have any respect for the work that is being done, or for some reason have an issue with the water voles in the area (who know why anyone wouldn't mind these lovely creatures in their neighborhood!). Signs were posted at the site explaining what was going on but a lot of the time we arrived to find them stolen or kicked over by kids. On the other hand if you do not post signs and inform the public, they may happen across the traps by accident and assume that something untoward was going on and interfere anyway.

Burrow with feeding signs at entrance

The reason for not setting the traps the night before was because trapping was a bit too successful! At the previous night check every trap had an animal and Robyn was understandably a bit overwhelmed - every animal has to be measured, weighed and microchipped with all the details taken down, no easy task when dog walkers are coming up to see what you are doing!

The second week the traps were moved to Site B, a different habitat, this time more of a sloping bank like you would expect of the voles but still nowhere near water. The bank is artificial disturbed soil, colonised by a variety of grasses such as Yorkshire Fog, Cocksfoot, Bent Grass and Holcus mollis. The site is opposite a row of houses with an area of grass in front that is cut by the council, dogs are walked there but it is generally a lot quieter than Site A. Perhaps surprisingly the population of water voles there seems to be a lot lower, this may be because of fox predation, where the foxes are not deterred by the amount of dogs and people passing through. Despite lower trapping numbers we managed to capture a couple of juveniles including this guy:

Black Juvenile Water Vole

Me preparing our youngster for body measurements

We also landed a large breeding female, who was probably the mum of one of these kids! I had the fantastic opportunity to handle a few animals, with proper precautions I add as these guys can be fiesty and give a hard bite if you are not careful. When I first read up about water voles I thought that the English population were brown in colour and the Scottish black coated, however during this week I found that there were some lovely brindle and brown coated animals here too.

One of the mums

The field signs were a lot harder to see compared with Site A, the runs were less visible and you had to lift up the tussocks of grass to see many of the tunnels and tumuli (mounds of earth dug out of burrows). Where at Site A there were latrines clearly visible at almost circular points around the periphery of the burrows, you would struggle to find one or two at Site B. The spread of the burrows and territories also seems to differ in that they are strung in a horizontal line, following the ridge of the earth.

There were also signs to be found under discarded wood and a mattress amongst the grass...

 

What's under the board?

I'm off on holiday for 3 weeks around Vancouver Island in Canada, hopefully when I return I'll have few photos of fauna to share!

Glasgow's Fossorial Water Voles

One of the survey sites in a urban park in Glasgow's East End, surprisingly stuffed with water voles!

Water voles. It's in the name right? They typically live near streams and rivers, burrowing into the bank, eating vegetation and having a bit of a swim. Well, not so for Glasgow's East End populations of fossorial water voles! Fossorial animals such as badgers and moles, are adapted to digging underground, but more recently Scottish water voles have been taking to this lifestyle.

Water voles are the largest of the British voles (between 200 - 350g) and usually dark brown in colour, although the Scottish ones are mostly all black. Despite their name they are not that well adapted to swimming as they do not have webbed feet or use their tail to steer themselves. They seem to get by with a doggy paddle well enough, especially when escaping from predators!

They are herbivorous animals, eating grasses and waterside plants, and during the winter; bulbs, roots and rhizomes are nibbled. They live in colonies and breeding females are very territorial, marking out their areas with latrine sites (toilets) where they leave piles of poop, rubbing their hind feet on their scent glands and stamping down the droppings and then leaving some more on top to advertise their presence. Obvious field signs include burrows in the ground, tube-like runs through long grass, feeding stations with little piles of cut vegetation, and of course the latrines.

Fossorial water voles are also known on islands in the Sound of Jura. Interestingly the Scottish and English populations of water voles are genetically different from each other, having resulted from two separate colonization events during the last period of glaciation.

Prototype watervole tube trap concealed along a vole run with some tempting apple.

Sherman trap

I am lucky enough to be helping out Robyn Stewart from Glasgow uni in collecting more information about Glasgow's fossorial water vole populations. She is hoping to get an idea of population numbers in different areas by using the mark and recapture method. The animals are trapped humanely with Sherman traps and plastic tube traps baited with yummy carrot and apple, and some snuggly hay to keep the animals warm. The traps are checked 3 times a day and any caught animals are measured, weighed, microchipped and sent on their way unharmed.

We caught a wee girl who was remarkably co-operative.

Yesterday we baited the traps but left them unset so that the voles could check them out and not feel threatened by them. When we checked them today about 92% of the traps had signs of vole activity inside them which bodes well for trapping success the rest of this week!

In a Pringles tube :)

Measured, micro-chipped and set back on her way

Water voles are protected in Scotland by law and deliberately or recklessly damaging or destroying water vole burrows and access or disturbing the animals while they are using them is an offence. If you observe anyone doing such a thing please contact the police or SNH

Riverfly Monitoring: Month 1!

Me kick sampling in the Allander today

Back in May I attended a River Invertebrate Monitoring Workshop hosted by Clyde River Foundation at Brannock High School. The Riverfly Partnership are the brains behind this citizen science  monitoring scheme which aims to protect the quality of rivers, and add to the understanding of invertebrate ecology. It is mostly aimed at anglers, as they spend a lot of their time on or in rivers (as you might expect!) and already have knowledge of the different families of flies and how changes in their numbers can be an indicator of changing water quality. When a survey is carried out, the data is submitted online and is forwarded onto the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA). This is happening all over the country with the aim to act quickly when issues arise and hopefully deter incidental polluters.

By regularly monitoring sites for 8 key species, any declines can quickly be seen and act as an indicator of a pollution event on the river. As well as anglers, schools have also been taking part in riverfly surveys via CRF as part of their education and have been inputting results online along with other volunteers like me!

A striped ladybird joined us for lunch!

Today we found my site on the outskirts of Glasgow on the Allander water. It was a bit of an adventure trying to get down to the river itself but we found a decent spot and I strode out in my wellies with the pond net and kicked around for 3 minutes, zig-zagging across the water. We washed the net out into the large white tray and started poking around the murk with the turkey basters and teaspoons, transferring any wiggly mayflies, stoneflies, freshwater shrimps, caddisfly or olives to the sorting tray for counting. In the end we had:

• 1 cased Caddisfly
• 1 caseless Caddisfly
• 21 Blue Winged Olives
• 4 Flat bodied upwings
• 1 Olive
• 11 Stoneflies
• 2 Gammarus (Freshwater Shrimp)

It will be interesting to see the numbers next month, and for the rest of the year.
I apologise for the lack of pictures, we were too engrossed in the finding and sorting to remember to take more - next time I promise!

Freshwater mite (top) and a stonefly nymph (bottom)

London Museums

A jar of moles

 
Last weekend R and I went on an action packed weekend to London. On our last visit we were unable to visit the Grant Museum of Zoology and I completely forgot about the Natural History Museum at Tring, so that's where we spent some of our time on this trip!

The Grant Museum of Zoology was founded in 1828 by Robert Edmond Grant, the first professor of zoology and comparative anatomy in England. He was from Edinburgh and is credited with establishing that sponges were animals and giving them the name Porifera. The collection contains around 67,000 specimens of taxidermy, wet preservations and skeletons packed into glorious wood and glass cabinets upon cabinets. It was once, and still is, used as a teaching collection - a haven of education and inspiration for the likes of me!

Beautiful glass nudibranch (sea slug) models made by the Blaschka family in the late 1800s

How often do you see fin whale foetuses?

Surrounded by slides!

Relatives and ancestors looking down

There are also a few examples of extinct species in the museum such as the Quagga skeleton (member of the zebra family), Dodo bones, Thylacine (Tasmanian wolf) and a giant deer skull with huge antlers.

We also spent a couple of hours at NHM Tring, the collection by Lionel Walter Rothschild (who has lent his name to hundreds of species!) opened to the public in 1892. The galleries are impressive large glass case displays providing corridors around a central atrium. Some have old wooden entomology cabinets, opening the wooden doors carefully to find out what beautiful inverts are lurking underneath!

Giant ground sloth skeleton

A variety of longhorn beetles

Saiga - a type of antelope

Mexican hairy dwarf porcupine

There is a an impressive taxidermy collection of domestic dogs

Including this tiny dude

I ran

Lady Isle from the boat

Today I joined Nina (who is doing her PhD on sea bird ecology) as a volunteer on a trip to Lady Isle, a small island with breeding colonies of herring gull and shag in the Firth of Clyde. Up and ready at 7.30am a glorious day awaited us via a smooth boat trip and quick outboard to the shore. I was posted on 3-hour Nest-Watch with Maureen (a masters student studying tagging related to stress). I had a comfy camping chair with self-contained hide that pulled over the top, and set to work trying to identify nests on the rocky shore. It's harder than it seems as the grey speckled chicks blend into the rocks and often disappear behind them! During the watch I logged the number of adults at chicks at each nest at the beginning and then at 5 minute intervals how many adults were present and any provisioning (feeding) or disturbance events. It's very tricky trying to work out which chicks belong to what parents but I used my best judgement so hopefully the data will be useful.

Spot the chick!

 I did see a few provisioning events but working out what kind of food was being offered is another matter altogether - orange stuff could have been crab. Mmm crab :P

Making our way the relatively short distance between the lighthouse and the shore was complicated by there being hidden gulls nests in the long grass, forcing us to pick our way slowly through. On the way there were a fair few dead chicks, the coastal survival rate is less than that of urban gulls, generally about 0.82 (data from Skomer in South Wales).

The view from the hide

:(

 

Shag Pile

There are also Shags breeding on Lady Isle but this time we didn't collect any data for them, only listen to their throaty calls. After a quick lunch we spent some time searching for gulls that were ringed last year. I had photographed a couple on my watch but we found about 3 more in the afternoon. Some of them have GPS loggers attached to them to track where they are foraging for food. I think there have been some problems with with the antennae picking up the data and possible with the scapular feathers covering the solar panel that is used to charge the device. Lessons learned!

Ringed Herring Gull

Taking measurements

While I was watching the nests Dave and Nina were catching, measuring, weighing and ringing 25 chicks! I got to get my grabby hands on one as well :)

Gull chick freshly tagged!

Ullo!

There's not much love for gulls generally but when you spend some time observing them they can be quite charismatic.

 The noise and the smell of the gulls is literally intoxicating, but you do get used to it fairly quickly. I was surprised I wasn't covered in shit by the end of the day with the amount that was getting sprayed around, guess I'm lucky this time. I did have shower when I got home though :)

Tripping over nests!

Oor wee boat

The lightouse and warden's hut

I'm keeping my ears open for the next seabird opportunity, maybe I'll get to catch some chicks!

Glasgow Museum Resource Centre

Today was a pretty exciting day. R and I went on a tour of the Glasgow Museum Resource Centre in Nitshill.

  

Because Glasgow City Council has around 1.4 million objects, they can't all be displayed all the time, in fact only 2% of the collection is on show so this is where the rest live! There are 17 purpose built 'pods' split into categories such as Archaeology, Art and Painting, Arms and Armour, Natural History, Transport and Technology and World Cultures.

It's open to public viewing as long as you book a tour in advance, you can also specify what you are interested in seeing and they'll accommodate you as best they can. Of course when I booked the tour I might have mentioned my love of taxidermy...

The first pod was Art & Painting, and let me tell you, it was almost akin to walking into the storage room at the end of Indiana Jones Raider of the Lost Ark:

Hundreds of original paintings and prints are contained within the racks, and we were party to a Lowry, Warhol, Degas and Cezanne as well as some others I forget before being led through a maze of grey corridors and an seemingly unnecessary amount of doors to the next pod. On the way we could see into rooms where the conservation of art works was taking place. We also visited the World Cultures pod which was crammed full of curious and beautiful objects from far flung places, including a huge intricately carved elephant tusk with gilt silver end.

When we stepped through the next door I could barely contain my squee...

So much taxidermy! I mean wall-to-wall stuffage, I was like a kid in a sweet shop (of the skins of dead animals). As well as the mountains of whole taxidermy there was also a collection of illegal/restricted goods seized at Glasgow Airport customs such as ivory and marine turtle shells. 

It was interesting to find out that the curator uses plaster cast moulding of the carcass along with fibreglass and woodchips to sculpt the forms. Here's a half-n-half example:

Owls!

Pheasants! (and a great bustard on the bottom left)

Gulls

Baby Giraffe

Very old cheetah

Need a rabbit, hare or badger?

Wombat and cat with kitten

There's also some mighty fine crappy taxidermy examples

Tapir

Handsome Walrus

Lifelike dog

Lynx with with odd and even toed ungulates!

We're definitely going back to look more closely and see some of the pods we missed :D

If you'd like to book a tour check out the website