UK Nature Blog

White puffin spotted in the Isles or Scilly

A very rare white Atlantic Puffin has been spotted along with its common black cousins off the Isles of Scilly. The white puffin was once considered to be a mythical bird, but the latests photograph confirms that this is not the case. 

This puffin's strange colouring is caused by something called leucism, where the colour pigments are formed, but are diluted. This differs from the more commonly known albinism where the strong black pigment is not formed at all. Other leucistic birds have been spotted in the UK before and it seems that seeing a white, or partially white, blackbird can be most confusing for a bird spotter.  

So, just when you thought you'd got the hang of what your common garden birds look like bear in mind that nature can still fool us.

Heater Bees

The Telegraph reports on new realisations about the workings of a bee hive. Special 'heater bees' raise their body temperatures by 10c more than usual and actively transmit this heat to developing pupae. The temperature of each pupa determines what role it develops into so the heater bees control the makeup of the hive, as well as providing central heating.

This news apparently comes out of TV programme Richard Hammond's Invisible World, to be aired on the BBC from March 16th.

The eagle-eyed amongst you will no doubt have noticed that the bee pictured above is not the sort that lives in a large hive community, being a bumble bee. I'm afraid I just could find a picture of a honey bee in stock. That said, who's to say that bumble bees don't also have heating tricks that just haven't been figured out yet.

Magpies: not evil

Magpies eat other birds' eggs, and it had been speculated that this had led to a recent major decline in songbird numbers. However the Telegraph reports that a recent study lets them off the hook. It seems that there is a correlation between Magpie and songbird numbers, but not a significant causality - at least not in the direction that people feared. So if numbers of songbirds decline then Magpies may decline also because there are less eggs to eat, but Magpies are not increasing in numbers to the detriment of songbirds - their numbers rise and fall in parallel.

An end to Japanese knotweed?

It's rare that plants make headline news, but that's exactly what Japanese knotweed has managed today here in the UK.

There are very few gardeners that have not had their own personal battle with Japanese knotweed and bearing in mind that it can grow up to a meter a month that's no surprise. Its strength means that it can break through concrete and tarmac though and as a result it is estimated that £150 million a year that goes into repairing the damage that it does to roads, pavements and buildings. A large cost like this has meant that people are keen to find a solution to the problem, especially since it manages to grow in its native Japan without this kind of problem.

Japanese knotweed was originally brought to the UK by the Victorians as an ornamental plant, but the problem seems to be that it has no natural predators here. Researchers at CABI have been looking into knotweed's predators back in Japan (both insect and fungi) and have been testing them on over 90 UK plant types to try to find one that would have no harmful effects on other plants. 

It has today been announced by Defra that the go-ahead has been given for an insect called a psyllid (aphalara itadori) to be released in England to fight knotweed. No bigger than a grain of sand, the psyllid lay eggs on the weed and the hatched larvae suck out the sap to kill it. 

The release of the psyllid is the first time that biocontrol has been used in Europe to fight a weed. Initially the insects will be released at a couple of isolated sites where there is a known knotweed problem. Careful monitoring will take place to ensure that the insects only impact on the knotweed and countermeasures are in place in case it is found that this is not the case.

Frogspawn

If the buzz on Twitter is to be believed, the last couple of sunny days have got frogs in the mood and frogspawn is appearing in ponds across the UK. The link is a live search for "frogspawn" so will pick up whatever's most recently been tweeted.

Mating Kingfishers

For most people a glimpse of one Kingfisher is quite special, but two, together, very together in fact, is extremely unusual. So the Telegraph's report and photograph of Kingfishers mating is quite something.

I saw a Kingfisher just yesterday as it happens, which reassures me that the harsh winter hasn't killed them all off. Apparently (and I've now read this in several places, including the article above) very harsh winters past have decimated populations by 90%, and it then takes a long while for them to recover.

Confused weather, confused birds

Another bout of snow for the UK, but head south by a few thousand miles and it's warmer than usual, so birds have been migrating north from Southern Europe and Africa earlier than usual. The linked article mentions this phenomenon in its last couple of paragraphs.

It also states that Bitterns are calling ('booming') for mates and Willow warblers are warbling - both months early. As far as I'm aware Bitterns don't migrate north to the UK for the summer so I don't quite understand that link, or why they reckon that snow means it's April. If you see one be sure to ask it.

Scottish red squirrels increasing territories

The BBC reports that red squirrels have been returning to parts of Scotland where they had been missing for many years. This is put down to the pro-active controls on grey squirrel populations. We've previously reported on similar measures and successes in North Wales.

The squirrels pictured are actually Northumbrian, but that's fairly close to Scotland.

Crabzilla

According to the BBC, Birmingham's National Sea Life Centre is set to be the home for 'Crabzilla', a Japanese spider crab with limbs more than five feet long - at least until the end of March. You really have to click through to the article to see the picture of a chap holding it. More frightening pictures are available on the Wikipedia page on Japanese spider crabs.

Bin cleaning sucks

Not a nature sighting exactly, but our parks wouldn't be much good for the nature if they were swamped with litter. This truck with robot suction arm was seen emptying the bins on Hampstead Heath. Very clever, but ultimately amusing.