Welcome to the Tweet Seats

Tomorrow is my 5 year tweetiversary.  Not a rite-of-passage moment, or a seminal turning point in my life by any means, but certainly something to make me stop for a moment, take a slug of wine, and look back on 5 years of life and tweeting.

I look back through my photo archives and 2008 is a bit of a lost year (or, more accurately, I lost my camera early in the year on a canoe trip after capsizing and going down Jackfield Rapids without the canoe.  My camera is probably on Lundy Island by now.)  One high point of the year, though, was abseiling down Dudley Castle in the rain to raise money for the Stroke Association after my Dad’s stroke earlier that year. (Very few things are worse than a parent having a stroke – one of them is a parent having a stroke 3,000 miles away.)

This day 5 years ago, I was about to be interviewed for what turned out to be the worst career decision in my life, a job working for a local Environmental Consultancy.  A soul destroying job that lasted only 20 months – I left as soon as I could find other work.

In May of 2008 I had no idea that within 18 months, I would have had the best day of my life – my incredible wedding day, but also no idea that Sarcoidosis would have begun the slow and savage process of breaking down my life.  On the day I was diagnosed, you would think that I would have been devastated, but after 2 years of doctors telling me there was nothing wrong, and genuinely thinking I was dying, being told I had sarcoid was the best bad news I’d ever had.  It has presented me (eventually) with the opportunity to take my health into my own hands, and to become aware of everything that I eat or come into contact with.  It has also brought other ‘sarkies’ into my life, that I wouldn’t be without.

In the last 5 years, I have seen my nephew brought into the world – a bright and shining package of hope contained in a human body.  I have seen my youngest brother married, and when I see them together I believe in soul mates.

I have also held an alligator, a tarantula (named Raptor), and a Florida Bonneted Bat.  I have learned to bake bread, and to knit things that are not square; I have saved bats; I have bred Peruvian Stick Insects; I have learned lots about bees; I have climbed a mountain (a small one) and failed to climb another (but learned the humility to know my own limits – a hard lesson)…

…and I have tweeted 9116 times (@TheReremouse and @WalsallWildlife).

Dr Phil McGraw (I lufs him!) maintains that there are 5 Pivotal Moments in each person’s life.  I wonder if diving head-first into social media was one for me…  Its weird (some might say a bit sad!) that social media is such a huge part of my life that it is difficult to visualise a future without it (that is, until I buy my island and start my own country with no electricity, but with lots of bats and bees and stick insects, and knitting, and cake.)

Without a doubt, the twitter highlight (twilight?) of the last 5 years was watching STS135 live on TV, with tweetdeck streaming on my laptop.  That last ever space shuttle launch brought a lump to my throat, and twitter made that moment all the more present and real.  The power of twitter to enable strangers to connect and watch history as it happens is simply (so far) unequaled.

So, in my 5-year mission, have I boldly gone where no one has gone before?  Nah, don’t be daft.  But I’ve had a lot of fun, and shared small moments with other people who cherish the same small moments. Its about living in the present for me, and sharing present moments with other people sharing theirs in turn.  Its one of those things, like Star Trek, it makes you think how cool humans are, and how connected we can all be.  Until I get my island, anyway…

Meals on Wheels III: Spring Greens

Its been a while since we did a Meals on Wheels event, what with not knowing if we were going to have jobs or not.  But as soon as we found out that we had dodged the redundancy bullet, Nige & I planned two more of our foraging bike rides around Walsall’s countryside.  We took in Hayhead Wood and Park Lime Pits this time, returning with our loot to Top Hangar at the Airport for a campfire / lunch.

It was a fantastic day – nice and cool, but dry – just perfect for a bike ride, so 9 of us set off on an expedition to take in the best that Spring has to offer from nature’s larder.  

Not edible, but great for us as we knew we needed to light a fire later, we gathered some King Alfred’s Cakes off a fallen ash tree.  This is one of the bushcrafter’s favourite finds, as they enable you to light fires more easily, and can hold an ember from a fire too.

We found a young Chicken of the Woods, and took just enough so that everyone could have a taste (its far better to leave it at this time of year and increase your bounty later on when it has grown more – I once had 3 kilos from one fungus!).

We gathered Wild Garlic, Garlic Mustard and more, tasting the flowers of Ribwort Plantain (mushroomy!), the young, bright leaves of hawthorn and the tart delight of Wood Sorrell (sour apple, anyone?).  

Finding some Water Mint growing under the boardwalk in Hay Head Pasture, we gathered some to take back to make mint tea as we sat around the campfire back at the Airport.

Lunch was made up of cheesy garlic bread (made with wild garlic pesto), toasted over the fire, followed by Dandelion fritters and sauteed Chicken of the Woods.

Everyone left with a bit more foraging knowledge, and left Nige & I chatting in the fire circle about how we can expand on the event, put on more foraging activities (both walks and bike rides) and perhaps even facilitate the formation of a Walsall Foraging Club, so watch this space.  In the mean time, there’s still plenty of time to get outside and forage for Wild Garlic – you can wilt & use the leaves like spinach, put the punchy little flowers in salad, or make pesto and try your own cheesy garlic bread!  And if the above looks like your kind of thing, you can book for the next Meals on Wheels event through the booking office.  If you’d be interested in membership of a foraging club, drop me an email and I’ll add your details to the list, or use the form below:

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If you go down in the woods today…

I spend the whole day at Merrions Wood today, hunting for minibeasts with Year 4 from Delves Junior School.  Apart from generally being a pinch-yourself (i-cant-believe-this-is-my-job) day, two pretty cool species turned up.  The first (Above and Below) is  Cychrus caraboides – or for we small folk: The Snail Hunter!  See the narrow thorax and that long, stretched-looking head?  It has evolved that way in order to allow the species to reach its head far into snail shells to eat the flesh.   Amazing! This was a first for me, and the NBN Gateway lists no records for the Black Country, so could be a first for Walsall too!

Some of you may remember the wasp awareness week that I did last year, highlighting a different social wasp species each day.  I’m actually working on a new project – the Passive Monitoring of Social Wasps at Merrions Wood and Rough Wood (Part of the Walsall Aculeates Survey Project).  I’ve recorded the Median Wasp at both sites, as well as Common Wasp, so I was very keen to find out what other social wasp species were there.  

Whilst waiting in the car park for the Delves Junior School posse to arrive, I caught this little beauty – a German Wasp.  She has all the characteristics that show you what species she is:  1) the ‘malar space’ – the gap between her eye and her jaw is narrow – making her a ‘Vespula’ species   2) she has blonde hairs on the top of her abdomen – which narrows it down to ‘common’ and ‘german’ – and the stripe on her shoulder broadens in the midde – German Wasp! – she might as well be eating a bratwurst and listening to Bach!

If you fancy having a go at identifying wasps, you can give this ID key a try – you will need a hand lens to see some of the features, and of course a bug pot (small glass jars work fine) too.

 

Postcards from the Hedge

If you’ve noticed its been a bit quiet around here, its because I’ve been on holiday in Norfolk, doing some fishing (1 flounder, 1 dab) and birding (72 species including snipe, marsh harrier, barn owl and 2,500 brent geese – blog post to follow!).  As it turns out, you just can’t get away from your job sometimes, as I was minding my own business thumbing through a book sale on Blakeney Quay, when I ran across a collection of post cards of Walsall!  There were quite a few there of sites in and around town, and they were priced from £2-£4 each so I restricted myself to just buying ones of green spaces, of which there were four:  Three of the Arboretum and one of Park Lime Pits.  A bit of trawling through google & ebay turned up this card which appears to be of an age with the one I bought above.

All of the cards are made by T. Kirby & Sons Ltd., Walsall (who were publishers in Walsall operating from at least 1882 to around 1939 [please correct my dates if anyone knows more!] publishing the Walsall Red Books, Saddlery & Harness Magazine and much more).  They were printed in Germany and all have a Edward VII halfpenny stamp (which it appears were printed in 1905). The postmark for ALL of these is identical – they say WALSALL 915.pm JA 15 05, which I think is a bit peculiar – is it the done thing to post-date cards to estimate their authentic date?

I know that Linda Mason posted some images of Park Lime Pits on her blog not too long ago, and I’m wondering if they are contemporary with those?

Anyway, it appears that spring has happened while I’ve been away, and I have some bees to identify and generally being busy – working EVERY night next week doing meetings and bat & newt surveys, so expect batty-newtiness very soon!

Patch me if you can!

I don’t know what it is about natural history, but it does seem to bring out the competitive streak in its enthusiasts.  Its no secret that birders are often obsessive list-makers, with any number of lists (ie Patch List, County List, Year List, British List, Holiday Lists and the all important Life List) of species they have seen.  I’m currently half way through ‘The Big Year‘, a book (also a film) about twitching (lent to me by our own county bird recorder, CountrysideKev) and it explores the appeal of obsessive bird ‘collecting’ to people of different backgrounds.  I’d like to think that I’m immune to these things, but alas I am not.

I think that with biological recorders of any taxonomic group, there is an element of Train Spotting to it, and although we see and appreciate the loftier impetus of conservation, secretly we’re all itching to chase the thrill of recording ‘a new species for the site’ whether its fungi, lichens, birds or bees. 

Last year I was made aware of a phenomenon called ‘Pan-Species Listing’ – taking the birder’s ‘life list’ to a new level by including all taxonomic groups of animals and plants, including the microscopic (fungi, springtails, tardigrades, lichens, mites, you name it).  I confess I started a list, but was a bit disheartened by the scope of the project, and never really got going. (Unlike some people – check out Mark Telfer’s page – he’s on around 6,500 species!)

This week I’ve found something a bit more achievable – the Patch League.  In a nutshell, it is competitive biological recording on a chosen site <100 acres.  So I started yesterday, deciding that I needed to choose a site close enough to home that I could go regularly.  My local reserve is Fibbersley, about 10 mins walk from my flat, and it seemed a likely site as I knew I was likely to get a few of the rarer species like Great Crested Newts.  Fibbersley is around 75 acres of a mosaic of habitats comprising ponds, grassland, scrub, woodland, hedgerow and derelict buildings, all of which will attract various wildlife.  But also it is a post-industrial site, relatively isolated, and generally under-recorded, particularly in lesser known taxonomic groups like invertebrates.

My first visit to start ‘patch-listing’ turned up this little beauty!  A juvenile Great Crested Newt!  Plus signs of badger, a buzzard, a glimpse of a very large and scruffy fox, and lots of centipedes!  My plan is to record flowering plants as they come into flower, so that I have stuff to record all year long.  I’ll keep you posted!

If you’re thinking about patch listing your local green space (and you don’t need to do it competitively!) I can’t recommend iSpot highly enough for confirming (or correcting!) your identifications! (Its basically dial-a-nerd for all things natural history!)

Bats and other birds…

What did Shakespeare know that Moses didn’t?

Been doing my usual weekend stuff, cleaning out bats, playing with hamsters, and surfing the net for interesting stuff about bats, bees and knitting.  I was already familiar with the fact that Shakespeare mentioned bats in some of his plays:  The minion elves of Titania, queen of the fairies in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ used bat-wings to make their coats!

“Some war with rere-mice [bats - from 'hrere-mus' - meaning 'agitated mouse'] for their leathern wings, to make my small elves coats.” – A Midsummer Night’s Dream

While the witches of MacBeth were partial to a bit of bat in their broth:

“Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg, and owlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.” – Macbeth

…from which one could deduce that Shakespeare knew that bats were ‘wooly’ – he knew that they were mammals.

Interesting fact of the day, however, is that in the Bible (Leviticus and Deuteronomy, both widely accepted to have been written by Moses), bats are included in a list of ‘unclean birds’ that should not be eaten:

“And these you shall regard as an abomination among the birds; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, the vulture, the buzzard, the kite, and the falcon after its kind; every raven after its kind, the ostrich, the short-eared owl, the sea gull, and the hawk after its kind; the little owl, the fisher owl, and the screech owl; the white owl, the jackdaw, and the carrion vulture; the stork, the heron after its kind, the hoopoe, [the King James version says 'Lapwing' rather than Hoopoe] and the bat” - Leviticus 2:13-19

Someone should have told that to complete PILLOCK and all-round irresponsible maniac and bad example to scouts everywhere Bear “for-gods-sake-eat-with-your-mouth-closed” Grylls before he ate a bat on TV as part of his ‘man vs wild’ bollocks series. *don’t get me started!

Anyway, so fab fact.  God thinks bats are birds.  Weird, eh?

Mad Skills Monday: Centipede or Millipede?

This (above) is a flat-backed millipede.  Problem is that rather than looking like a ‘normal’ millipede, it does look an awful lot like a centipede.  Flattened body, undulating movement.  Both centipedes and millipedes are arthropods (they are invertebrates but they are not insects) – and many people probably assume that ‘centi’ (meaning hundred) and ‘milli’ (meaning thousand) relate to the number of legs of each creature but the numbers of legs actualy vary greatly from species to species, and while there are centipedes with more than 100 legs, there are no millipedes with as many as a thousand.

So what’s the REAL difference?  The clue is in their scientific names – Centipedes are Chilopods (meaning lip-foot) and millipedes are Diplopods (meaning double-foot), and this ‘double-foot’ name comes from the number of pairs of legs on each body segment.  It sounds a bit complicated, but is easily visible to the naked eye, and obvious with a hand lens.  Take a look:

Centipedes and millipedes’ bodies are divided into many segments.  You can see these in colour in the photos above.  Centipedes (on the left) have one pair of legs on each segment – one leg on each side of the body, while millipedes (on the right) have two pairs of legs on each segment (ergo ‘double foot’!).  You can see it best when you view the creatures from below: 

There are several other differences:  Centipedes tend to have long antennae while millipedes have short ones.  Centipedes are predators while millipedes are scavengers.  But by far the most important difference is that you can safely pick up millipedes, but a centipede is quite able (and usually willing!) to give you a nasty bite!