The appearance of bumblebees is one of the hallmarks of Spring, and their buzzing can be heard in gardens throughout the summer months.  They are important pollinators in our gardens, but also for some crop species that use buzz pollination (like tomatoes). Like other bees, indeed insects in general,  bumblebees face a number of threats - one of which is a fungal parasite (Nosema bombi). This fungus reduces the lifespan of worker bees in the bumblebee colonies and also the production of new queens; it has been associated with the decline in population numbers of North American bumblebees. Read more...

Monks Wood is an area of woodland in Cambridgeshire.   It has been subject to extensive and intensive ecological studies for many years.  The site is described by Natural England as one of our essential lowland woods with ash and field maple trees; also to be found is the rather rare wild service tree.  The ground flora is typical of that of ancient woodland, within the wood there are also ponds and streams.  Monks Wood is a National Nature Reserve. Next to the reserve there is former agricultural land.  Two fields have been studied to understand the process of natural woodland development.  One field was formerly two acres of grassland that was ‘abandoned’ (in 1996), the other was a four acre barley field (that was left to stand in 1961).  For natural regeneration of woodland to occur there needs to be existing woodland nearby.  The transition of these fields to ‘new’ woodland has been monitored over the intervening years - through field surveys of trees, measurement of vegetation height, remote sensing via LIDAR.  Read more...

Across the globe, insects are in decline.  There are several (over-lapping) causes of the decline, ranging from habitat loss, the effect of artificial lighting, the use of agrochemicals (e.g. the neonicotinoids) and herbicides,  such as glyphosate.  The latter is one of the most commonly used weedkillers and might not be expected to affect insects.  However, recent research has shown that it can affect the formation of the hard exoskeleton of beetles.  It does this  by affecting their symbiotic bacteria; these contribute an essential building block (an amino acid) for the exoskeleton. Early summer should be ‘peak beetle time’ Read more...

Recent years have seen periods of very hot temperatures, often resulting in forest or moorland fires.  Such extreme weather events have been seen not only in the UK but across the globe (Arizona , Victoria Australia, Indonesia).    Whilst spells of extreme heat (and drought) have been known throughout history,  it would seem that such events have become more common in recent years.   The first years of the 21st century are among the warmest on record  and this warming is associated with increasing levels of greenhouse gases (due to human activity).   Prolonged heat is not without its effects on us.  The very young and the elderly are most at risk from ‘heat waves’.  The 2003 heatwave across Europe is said to have caused several thousand  'excess' deaths’, mainly of the elderly].  However, heat affects nearly every living organism,  several of the woodlands blogs have written about the effects of drought, one of the effects of prolonged or intense temperatures.  Now research by Wageningen University has looked at some of the effects of rising temperatures on insects.  Concern about the decline of insect populations has resulted in headlines like ‘insect apocalypse or insect armageddon’. Read more...

I grew up in the woods in New England. My parents were South Africans who replanted themselves several times, first in Zimbabwe, then London (where I was born), and finally, and quite accidentally, Connecticut. We didn’t really fit in there, and people often treated us as strange and exotic.  However, amongst the trees that surrounded our house, there was no judgment or expectation. There was no need to explain myself. The woods offered the joy of exploration, the comfort of sheltering branches, and a sense of having entered into another, quite separate, self-sufficient world. I’d dam tiny streams, spy on wildlife, discover endangered flowers, find out which trees were prone to caterpillar infestation and which had bark that tasted like spearmint that was good to chew. And I always felt that I was amongst friends. I was very lucky. Read more...

In a month characterised by fruits and flowers, we turn our focus to a fairly commonplace fungi whose own fruitbodies are invisible throughout its life cycle. In fact, you never truly see the fungi itself, just the dramatic effect is has on the fruits of its host.  Taphrina pruni is more commonly known as the Pocket Plum, or rather, the symptoms of this fungi are called the Pocket Plum. It is a biotrophic fungi, like the rusts mentioned last month, meaning it uses living plants as a source of nutrients, and while it won’t kill its host, its effects are hardly benevolent. Read more...

Last year Tawny Owls nested successfully in one of two boxes sited close together in the quietest part of our wood. They are traditionalists by habit, and will continue to use the same nesting site year after year unless they are disturbed.   The pair will re-bond during autumn around their nest site, and eggs will be laid early to late March. We were expecting to see them use one of the boxes again this spring, and our trail camera frequently showed them inspecting the box. We captured the shots below in October, and were confident they would nest there again this year. It’s during these early stages of nesting that Tawny Owls are most sensitive to disturbance, and inevitably the owls were given a lot of competition by the squirrels for their rights to the box.   Also, regrettably, on a couple of occasions we disturbed the female owl which prompted her to leave the box in daylight.  Read more...

The western honey bee (Apis mellifera) is the most common of the various honey bee species world-wide.  Like the other honeybee species, it is described as eusocial.  That is, thousands of sterile female worker bees live in colonies with one fertile queen, and a small number of males (drones).  The western honey bee is often described as a ‘domesticated’ insect. Whilst it is true the honey bees have been ‘managed’ by humans for thousands of years (through the provision of hives), their behaviour is essentiallysimilar to that of  their 'wild cousins’.  Read more...