Sarah West's blog

A recent post on iSpot got me doing a bit of research on hoverflies. They are mimics of bees and wasps; they pretend to look like them to protect themselves from would-be predators. They are completely harmless and fascinating creatures.

I came across this very informative webpage called "All About Hoverflies". The website has lots of photos of hoverflies, and some nice comparison photos with wasps and bees, so you can learn to tell the difference.

The webpage also tells you how to tell the sex of a hoverfly by how far apart it's eyes are, with female eyes being far apart so they don't touch, and male eyes being much closer together so that they touch. We saw lots of hoverflies at the weekend, Chris managed to get a photo of one in flight, I think it is the Marmalade Hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus).

So, from the info above, can you tell me if it is a male or a female?

The new OPAL survey, Bugs Count, is proving to be very popular. We've just had over 200,000 bug sightings to our website, which is a great start! A lot of teachers, both formal and informal, are using the surveys to encourage their students to look closer at the natural world around them. The survey pack (download from http://www.opalexplorenature.org/bugscount or contact your regional OPAL team to see if they've got any physical packs left to send out) is brilliant and contains everything you need to do the survey, but it's sometimes useful to give pupils some background information about minibeasts before they do the survey, or to do some work afterwards to reinforce their learning. So, I thought I'd share with you a fantastic resource I've found on the internet. It's ClipArtETC: Florida's Educational Technology Clearinghouse (long name, great website). The images below are taken from it:

There are also pictures of plants, architecture, mythology, maths etc etc. They are mainly from out of print books. They can be downloaded and used free of charge, although they do limit it to 50 per project and it has to be for educational purposes.

Anyway, I think it's a great resource, hope you find it useful.

Sorry for the large gap in posts, Chris (webmaster) and I have entered the world of twitter, follow us @OPALnature if you're into that kind of thing. Anyway, I went out with the Yorkshire Naturalists Union on Saturday to Spurn Point, a reserve managed by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust . It's a spit, a long stretch of sandy beach created by the action of waves pushing sand along the beach and out into an estuary (in this case, the Humber). Anyway, I was following around Tom and Ian of the British Plant Gall Society and they opened my eyes up to a whole new world!

So, what's a gall? Well, here's an example of some galls we saw on Saturday.

The red furry looking blobs on this rose are called Robin's Pin Cushion, or Diplolepis rosae. These amazing growths are the rose's reaction to an external influence, in this case, it's caused by a tiny wasp. The rose forms a gall to protect itself, it's a bit like you getting a scab.

Although this is fairly common, look out for it next time you see a wild rose bush, Ian and Tom had never seen so many on one plant, so I was pretty happy with this find!

For more information on these amazing things, see www.british-galls.org.uk/publications.htm

 Bees are amazing little insects and are totally fascinating to watch go about their daily routines. Last week in the glorious sunshine I saw lots of little Mining Bees feeding up on the wonderfully bright yellow Dandelions at Upton Country Park. There are lots of opportunities for bees to nest here in the exposed soil on the embankments. I even found a Bee which is thought not to be very common in Yorkshire. This little Bee is possibly making a comeback appearance after hiding away for lots of years….so watch this space!

A mining bee, Lasioglossum morio (Photo: Tristan Bantock)

Try looking for these Bees in your garden and you may be surprised what you find. It is possible to make your own bee hotel if you don’t find Bees in your garden or backyard, they need your help! OPAL has produced a guide that can be downloaded from here. www.opalexplorenature.org/Beehotels

Happy Bee Watching

Kevin Rich

Last week I decided it was time to bite the bullet and get OPAL on twitter. This means that people can keep up to date with what OPAL are doing via their mobile phones. It's a weird concept but a lot of people are using it, so we're trying to get used to the completely new language of tweets, @mentions and hashtags.... anyway, if you've got a twitter account and you'd like to see what we're up to, follow us at http://twitter.com/OPALnature - it would be great to 'see you' in the twittersphere!

The plight of Sid the slow worm came to my attention on a Sunday afternoon when Jen from Hull City Council Parks Department rang me with his unusual tale. She had been approached by a local family who, when doing a bit of gardening, were surprised to find a slow worm in the bag of compost. Not so unusual – only that this bag of compost had been collected from a garden all the way up in Scotland!

Unlike down in the south of England, slow worms are not widespread up here in the north, and Jen was unaware of any known populations over in East Riding. So she contacted the York OPAL team to see if we could help. Luckily I had heard that slow worms had been recorded on Allerthorpe Common, so rang Natural England’s Senior Reserve Manager, Craig Ralston, to see if he could help.  Craig and his colleague Steve are doing a lot of work for wildlife on the National Nature Reserves in the area, specifically the Lower Derwent Valley and Skipwith Common. They were happy for Sid to be released into a site right next to Allerthorpe, where they will be monitoring reptile populations over the coming years.

Although slow worms look like snakes, they are actually a member of the lizard family, despite having no legs! Like lizards, they can drop their tails as a way of escaping from predators. They are often found in gardens where they eat slugs and other invertebrates. Find out more about British reptiles at the Arc-Trust website

Many thanks to Natural England for all their help with this happy tale. Find out more about what’s on at our regional National Nature Reserves at www.naturalengland.org.uk/ourwork/conservation/designatedareas/nnr/events/yorkshireandthehumber/default.aspx

 Last week I visited the beautiful Strensall Common to set up a project with Natural England who run the site. It's a SSSI, a Site of Special Scientific Interest, which means that it has rare plants or animals on it so it gets special protection. Julian from Natural England showed us around the site. It's a lowland heath, a rare type of habitat (see OPAL East Midlands pages for more information as they're doing research on these habitats)

Here's a picture I took on the site, you can see where the birch trees have been cut down in the foreground. If these types of sites were left alone, they are likely to become completely wooded - you can see the white bark of the birch trees in the woodland at the back of the picture.

This occurs due to a process known as succession. Starting from bare ground, the first things to arrive in an area (known as colonists) are often lichens or bryophytes (mosses and liverworts) which cn thrive in bare, low nutrient environments. Once these are in place, they create a little sheltered area out of the wind, so soil and water can start to build up, allowing other species like grasses to gain a foothold. Then, larger species like heather move in, and eventually trees like the birch here are able to grow.

So why is this a problem, aren't trees great? Well, they are, but lowland heath itself is a very important habitat. Plants like petty whin (Genista angelica) (see Encylopaeida of Life photo below) aren't able to compete with the birch trees, so if the birch trees were allowed to grow up then plants like this wouldn't be able to survive there.

And the habitats provided by the lowland heath, with its heather, grasses, sedges and many other plants are great places for invertebrates to live. The problem in a relatively small area like the UK is that if we just let everything carry on naturally, we'd end up with only trees and then all the plant and animal species that need lowland heaths for example would become locally extinct.

It's a complicated issue, and I'm not sure how well I've explained it, but if you want more info then the Offwell Woodland and Wildlife Trust site on succession is a good place to start.

Last week the Stockholm Environment Institute where I work had our annual seminar, with Jonathan Porrit and Kate Pickett talking about social justice, fairness and equality in societies. Kate has written a book called the Spirit Level, which basically says that more equal societies (where the wealth gap between the richest and poorest people in society is small) are better off as a whole in many ways. For example, the researchers found that more equal societies have longer life expectancy, donate more money to international aid, do more recycling. See The Equality Trust for more information. What's this got to do with OPAL? Well, not much really, I just thought you might find it interesting

I've just seen a treecreeper (Certhia familiaris) from my office window! I've not seen one for at least 10 years so I'm pretty excited. These are fantastic little birds that climb up vertical tree trunks, using stiffened tail feathers for support. 

Here's a lovely photo from Arkive (which if you haven't seen it before is a collection of wonderful photographs of (mainly) endangered species). For more information about these birds, see the RSPB page

Well it's feeling almost spring-like here in York, thank goodness, and according to the University weather station it is 9 degrees today. The primroses in an old pot in my yard have got new leaves and I'm hoping for the first flowers soon. Yesterday I took some students out to Wakefield and the buds on the trees were definietely swelling.

All this got me thinking about phenology. Now, phenology is the study of the timings of natural phenomena, for example, the first fully opened oak leaf, first sighting of a butterfly, first leaf dropping off a particular species of tree etc. People have been recording such phenomena for centuries in the UK, and looking back over these records we can see any long-term trends that may be occuring. If you'd like to take part in this kind of recording, then you can do so at the fabulous nature's calendar website, which is run by the Woodland Trust. The website allows you to track the "movement" of spring up the UK and is well worth a visit!

Here's a picture of a common blue butterfly taken by Kevin Hicks at Upton Country Park in Wakefield last spring- just to brighten this blog post up!