April 2025

We have a new welcome sign for the site.

Spring has now properly sprung and, as shown by this stop motion video (comprised from 3 photos taken each day in April) the bluebells have come and, almost, gone.

The woodland animals have been getting increasingly active:

This buzzard visited every few days for its regular wash.

A male roe deer (a Buck) showing a deep interest in the camera.

A female (doe) roe deer

We often hear the woodpeckers in the woodland. Don’t often see them drinking though.

In this Mandarin Duck video you can see one of our licensed Artificial Refuge Traps (ARTs) which we use to monitor crayfish (it’s the tubular item under the brick just beneath the surface).

This month I started undertaking detailed surveys of the crayfish. This involves using callipers to measure various parts of their carapace, sexing them, assessing for disease, etc. I carefully record the data and then, if I am confident it’s an invasive specie, cull it humanely. Sadly we are now 99% certain that the crayfish species we have are the invasive Red Swamp crayfish. I have not yet completely given up on finding a native White Claw though…

This is almost certainly a Red Swamp Crayfish. Sadly its an Invasive.

As part of the survey I measure various dimensions across the carapace

Its a male. Trust me.

Moving now to rodents, we captured this intriguing video of a Pygmy Shrew bumping into a Wood Mouse. We think it was just an accidental bump rather than a territorial battle as they both appear to be completely surprised by the event (and shrews have notoriously bad eyesight).

Pygmy Shrews (Sorex minutus) are incredible. They are the smallest land mammal in Britain in winter weighing just 2g (ie the weight of a chocolate Malteser), and their young can be just 0.25g (the weight of a sewing pin).

Three amazing Pygmy Shrew facts are:

·       They can lose up to 28% of their body mass in winter. They don’t just lose fat, they actually shrink their organs (including brain, skeleton etc). This ability is called the Dehnel’s Phenomenon.

·       Pygmy shrews are solitary (except during breeding season) and are aggressive towards other shrews. They maintain home ranges of between 500 to 2000 square metres in an area. That’s pretty impressive for something so small

·       The pygmy shrew is the most ancient species of European shrew, with a fossil record dating back as far as the Pliocene, 5.3 million years ago.

Apparently the way to identify them from the Common Shrew is because their tails are hairy and about 70% the length of the body (Common Shrews tails are 50% of body length). Good luck spotting that in the video.

We also captured these two videos of a (big fat) Water Shrew. Water Shrews (Neomys fodiens) are different to the Common Shrew. They are Britain's largest shrew (ie we have living in the same burrow both Britain’s smallest mammal and the largest shrew!) and is recognised by its dense black fur on its top, and an off-white fur underneath. It is much heavier than the Pygmy (at 15g) and lives for 19months (ie 50% longer than the Pygmy). Water Shrews have the unusual feature of venomous saliva, which has a mild toxin they use to help stun prey.

Water Shrews do not hibernate; they remain active all through the year, diving for aquatic prey even in mid-winter. There is a small pond near this burrow which had a huge population of tadpoles at the start of the month, all of which got eaten before they could become frogs. I thought this might be down to the crayfish but looking at the size of his belly I think it might have been our water shrew!

In the exact same location we also captured this lovely video of a Vole.

Perhaps not surprisingly (because they eat Shrews, Voles and Mice) at the same location we also captured this fleeting image of a weasel.

Talk about fast.

And here is a Rat (over 100 times the weight of a pygmy shrew) having a swim in the stream.

On April 9th two swarms of bees were delivered to our new Bee Hive area, just in time to pollinate the 66 orchard trees which are nicely coming out in blossom. Our team of volunteers planted these in January and it looks like we have had a 100% survival rate.

Other new arrivals at the reserve this month include some lambs

Initially our protective brash fences around the roundels were working well...

...but by the end of the month one of the sheep (clearly more intelligent and adventurous than the rest of the flock) had mastered leaping the brash. I like to believe she had had enough of the other sheep and their constant bleating and just needed some space of her own.

To resolve this we added more brash. However within minutes of finishing we watched her brazenly return and effortlessly scale the newly-raised barrier. She had her baby lamb with her who diligently watched mom and then copied, scaling the fence in a single bound. From now on we are calling them Yaro and Javier (after Yaroslava Mahuchikh and Javier Sotomayor the Ukrainian and Cuban high jumpers).  

Staying with the sheep, I had the wonderful experience of working with our shepherd as he ‘dyed and tarred’ some of the recent new-borns. I am certain he found my childlike exuberance difficult to comprehend, but it beat doing my usual desk job. To drive this point home, the following day I attended a 4 hour business meeting in Nuneaton and found myself gazing longingly out the office block window recalling that just 24 hours previously I had been handling a 1 hour old lamb. I currently live two very different lives and I have a clear favourite.

This month we have completed a number of projects to make the site ready for schools and community groups, including installing a toilet block. We bought off eBay some (very tired) second hand toilets from a Welsh camp site and my son Angus and his friend Brady worked tirelessly to bring them up to scratch.

Just before Easter we had a small group of children visit and stay overnight. They helped me with the crayfish surveying, and learnt how a bee-hive works...

. . . and cooked a meal over an open fire.

 I suspect the highlight however was playing 40/40 block in the pitch dark with my Infra Red binoculars (usually used to spot animals in the dark).

I also gave a community talk about ANR to 25 OAPs as part of a scheme called ‘Senior Moments’. The eldest attendee was 94. As an audience they were just as engaged, amused and mesmerised by the videos as a class of 6 year olds. The lady in green just in front of me in this photo is blind but commented how much she had loved the talk, especially the owl hooting videos. 😊

Returning from an overseas trip I flew into Gatwick at the start of the month and managed to get this shot of Aspect Nature Reserve

 Talking of planes, one of our regular plane-spotter visitors shared this rather excellent photo, which demonstrates just how close we are to the airport

Finally, we are now on Google Maps. If you are able to add a review that would be greatly appreciated. The link is here: Aspect Nature Reserve - Google Maps