For many of our birds these are hard times, with conditions particularly serious for tiny species such as the Long-tailed Tit. If this cold weather is prolonged the mortality rate could be high. Our garden pond is frozen but the stream is still flowing well so water is not a problem.
Holly leaves bore long whiskers of frost and the carpet of dead leaves under my feet crunched as I made my way through the Pocket Park. In these conditions tiny invertebrates tend to go deeper and deeper into the leaf litter so, scraping away the icy top layer, I brought home a bag of unfrozen material for examination. Among the species found was the extremely common woodlouse Philoscia muscorum and the equally common Carabid Notiophilus biguttatus. The latter - a ground beetle with bulging eyes - has surprisingly not been previously recorded for the Pocket Park so the invertebrate total creeps up to 432 species.
No comments:
Post a Comment