May 2025

A baby badger exploring outside his sett

Mum and Baby (baby is at the top of the shot, on top of the sett)

I found this grass snake curled up asleep under one of the refugia mats. I replaced the mat and got my camera out, but by the time I re-lifted the mat it had uncoiled itself and was ready to slither away. Still a beauty to behold though

A Sparrowhawk enjoying a drink (see bottom right hand corner)

And 2 minutes later the Sparrowhawk kindly shows us its magnificent plumage

River Rat enjoying a nut

A mother Mandarin duck (female Mandarins have that characteristic white stripe behind their eyes) with her 8 ducklings

Knowing that baby duckings are often predated upon I was worried when a few days later this video seemed to show just one duckling left. But then, with glorious comic  timing,  another 6 come rushing in. Worth watching to the end.

And two minutes later the mother and final ducking appear. As of May 22nd (the date of this video) we still had the full original 8 duckling flock!

You will note that the male Mandarin was conspicuously absent from the previous videos. He did eventually turn up. Alone.

The previous duckling videos were from Mans Brook, at Aspect Nature Reserve. The pond at Mount Wood (500m away, on our sister site) also has ducks, but they are Mallards not Mandarins (2 males and a female). No chicks have appeared yet, but surely it should be any day now

We know from the videos captured last year that the local Buzzard likes to prey upon young chicks. Sure enough it visits the same place at the pond every day. I sense it is just bidding its time, waiting for the Mallard duckings to arrive.

Bottoms Up!

Multiple crayfish have been captured and surveyed this month. Here are two of them. They are very disgruntled after having been removed from their traps to be measured.

Predators of this particular specie are, apparently, the red fox, otter, common genet (an African wild cat...don't think we have these in West Sussex!) and Egyptian mongoose, but not the weasel, polecat, stone marten or badger. This is unfortunate because from this list we have weasels, badgers and foxes. Looks like our foxes have a big task ahead of them.

We are now 99% certain we have the Red Swamp Crayfish specie, also known as the Louisiana Crawfish (or Crawdads, as in from the book/film ‘Where the Crawdads Sing). They have the Latin name Procambarus clarkii (which is a little ironic since my surname is Clark).

Since 2016 the Procambarus clarkii crayfish has been on Europe’s list of Invasive Alien Species of Concern. This means it cannot be ‘imported, bred, transported, commercialized, or intentionally released into the environment’ anywhere across the EU. We are therefore culling all species captured if we are certain they are P.clarkii

Further research revealed that P. clarkii is actually considered as an ideal food source because of its delicious taste, high protein content, relatively low-fat content, ideal fatty acid composition, and low cholesterol content. Having barbequed a couple of the specimens we captured I can confirm this to be true.

Final interesting fact on Procambarus clarkii is that they normally reproduce sexually, but recent research suggests they may now also be able to reproduce by parthenogenesis (ie asexually, with the embryo developing directly from an egg without it needing to be fertilized).

This feature clearly doesn’t help us as we try to control this invasive specie at Aspect Nature Reserve!

Here is a stop-motion video of the bluebells coming and going during April and May.

The 'peak blossom' date was 20th April. Be interesting to see over the coming years how this peak date shifts.  

My plan to protect each tree individually with a triangle of posts and some wire netting had clearly failed. The temptation of juicy fresh fruit leaves gave the deer sufficient incentive to just push through the wire.

ORCHARD UPDATE: It has been a very tough month for our newly planted orchard. At the start of the month it looked spectacular, with every tree producing blossom.

I was bracing myself for a glorious autumn of fruit.

However we have had two challenges this month – a severe lack of rain and marauding deer.

Sadly by the end of the first week of May any leaves or blossom below 5ft (the height of a deer) had been stripped away. Since a great number of the trees were significantly shorter than 5 ft this meant they were reduced to bare sticks.

In what may yet prove to be a vain attempt to enable at least some of the trees to recover we protected what was left with a mix of rabbit guards. It wasn’t pretty but the idea was that this would buy me some time to get a proper deer fence installed around the whole orchard.

Three weeks later when the fence was installed we removed the temporary tree protection and, encouragingly, most of the trees seemed to be showing signs of resprouting. We have lost the fruit harvest from this year, but hopefully some of the trees will survive.

E-DNA RESULTS

Earlier this year we had some e-DNA samples taken in both the pond at Mount Wood and Mans Brook at Aspect Nature Reserve. The results give a detailed picture of the plants, mammals, molluscs, amphibians, fish, birds, insects and crustaceans that were present at the time of sampling.

The Mount Wood pond feeds into Mans Brook, although the sample points used were about 0.5km apart. Interestingly we found no traces of fish in the pond, but 10 species in the brook (including Koi carp, pike and perch). The pond however had newts alongside the frogs and toads, but the brook was newt-less. The results also confirmed that the rat seen earlier in the stream is a Norway Rat (Rattus norvegicus).

These initial e-DNA results provide a good base-line. Our plan is to repeat the analysis on a regular basis. Hopefully we will see the number of species increase as our efforts to enhance the biodiversity get traction.

Our thanks goes to Lewis Campbell from Trace Biomonitoring Ltd for doing the eDNA sample analysis.

Merlin Bird Identification App

This is the logo for the Merlin Bird Identification App. It has been developed by Cornell University, is free to download and is really good. Best of all, it provides a perfect way to learn bird calls. We did a test run with it and identified 20 different bird species.

My plan for the coming month is to do a couple of early (ie 6am) site surveys to see (hear?) what we record during the dawn chorus. If you want to join me let me know and we can coordinate dates. (I will also do some night time bat surveys and you are welcome to join those too).

Finally, whilst trying to identify this beetle I came across a spectacular website, courtesy of Natural History Museum, entitled UK beetles: 17 of the most spectacular and beautiful Definitely worth a visit.