The Mandarins of Kent

Much has been said about the damaging impacts of non-native species in the British Isles, and this publicity has been largely negative, from Canada Geese causing eutrophication of lakes with their droppings, to invasions of Japanese Knotweed and Giant Hogweed. The potential ecological risks posed by the now-familiar Ring Necked Parakeet (Psittacula krameri), noisy, shy and gorgeous, is currently However, it is worth approaching any conversation about invasive species with a degree of caution, as many species are now long-established in Britain, including the charismatic and declining Little Owl (Athene noctua), friend of farmers and nemesis of a range of agricultural pests, and the stunningly beautiful Mandarin Duck (Aix galericulata) and do not have any appreciable negative impacts.

Mandarins at Keston Ponds, Greater London. Note the enormous carp in the foreground, which scared the apparently previously oblivious ducks skyward a second later!

 

The Mandarin Duck originates from far Eastern Asia, occurring in Eastern Russia,  Japan, and most notably China. It was relentlessly collected in the latter and exported to ponds all over the World, all the while suffering reductions in its unique habitat, and is now a relatively scarce bird there, although newly discovered wild populations have bolstered its conservation status. Among the birds torn from their natural habit, were small numbers brought to ornamental lakes in Britain. They were first recorded breeding wild in the UK in London in 1946, although breeding populations were probably established much earlier.  They are now found at a small number of sites, largely concentrated in South Eastern England, although a few individuals occur at Mere Sands Wood, a wonderful woodland and wetland reserve somewhere between Preston and Liverpool, and managed by Lancashire Wildlife Trust.  Prior to the discovery of new populations in China, the British population of Mandarins in the 1990s was thought to exceed that in its native range, although in reality it may represent  10-20% of it (LNHS 2002).  This non-native population remains, far from a parochial conservation threat, a global conservation asset. Their UK strongholds are in Greater London, Berkshire and Surrey.

Among the abandoned bread. Bread is not good for birds, and incidentally, Keston Ponds was covered in floating bits of it. Please, if you can refrain from bread-throwing without upsetting yourself or your kids, do so.

Mandarin Ducks have been under-recorded in the UK due to their secretive, tree-nesting habits. Unusually for the typically chauvinistic duck family, males and females share the incubation of the eggs. Perhaps as hole nesters the male’s incredibly bold plumage represents less of a liability in terms of predation risk. The males have distinctive orange feathers on their faces, red bills, and large, orange sail-like plumage on their backs. Electric blue flashes can be seen on their backs and flanks.  While the female is less gaudy, smart in a uniform grey-brown with white underside markings and a white stripe around her big, dark eyes, she may command the prize for cutest-looking female duck, perhaps competing with the scarce, and also introduced, Carolina Wood Duck from the USA.

The rather lovely couple.

I had the good fortune to spend a couple of happy hours hanging around with the charming Mandarin Duck at Keston Ponds, in greater London, near the town of Orpington, where they live alongside the native Tufted Duck and Mallard.  They would take bread thrown to them off the water’s surface but always remained warier than the Mallards or Geese, sticking a few metres from the nearest human, of which, on a sunny day, a green oasis in metropolitan Kent attracts many.  Here they find the small, wood-fringed pools they favour in their native range, and old trees in which to nest.  They suit the place well, it represents their habitat, a similar climate to their native range, and hardly seem out of place, especially as green parakeets from Himalayan India fly squawking overhead.  Mandarin Ducks seem to me a very welcome addition to our fauna, exotic, beautiful, and here to stay.

The Mandarin Duck's habitat at Keston Ponds.

Male Mandarin Duck.

 

Turnstones

Just a very brief blog post to enthuse about Turnstones. You have probably seen them, in the winter, brown, unassuming and very confiding little birds, often happily tucking in to left-over fishing bait on wind and rain soaked piers, which sea anglers are often happy to provide. They can also be found on the beach, turning over stones as the name suggests, hunting for invertebrates and whatever has been washed up by the sea.

Arenaria interpres, seaside ghoul and fisherman's companion.

These angler’s companions tastes are not limited to fishing bait, and are not always so benign, historically they have been recorded feeding on the remains of deceased seafarers who became washed up on beaches. They need to retain cosmopolitan tastes, however, to survive in the harsh environments in which they spend the winter, and resourcefully will dine on almost anything it can find on the strandline, from small crustacea and shellfish to decomposing cetacea.  Birds which winter in Britain can come from as far afield as Greenland and Canada, as well as Scandinavia, and the winter can find them all around the British coast, though summer is short in many of their breeding areas, meaning in reality they can be found for most of the year, birds arriving in August and typically remaining until May. Small numbers of non-breeding individuals, resplendent nevertheless in the plumage that gives Arenaria interpres its international common name, Ruddy Turnstone.

handsome and summery looking Turnstone, Herne Bay, Kent, 6th May 2014

It is not clear whether this little crowd of Turnstone, found on a gorgeous day in May during a trip to the seaside at Herne Bay, in Kent, represents a non-breeding flock, indeed many of the individuals appear to retain juvenile plumage, or just some stragglers getting ready to head back to some remote, sub-arctic or arctic rock for their brief and frantic breeding season.   They balanced unassumingly cute and splendid very convincingly, especially those which had moulted into their summer plumage, and were confiding enough to permit photography. Indeed, they were so charming, they warranted their own blog post.

Turnstone, Herne Bay, May 2014

Turnstone in non-breeding plumage, Herne Bay, May 2014

Lydd Airport Expansion

Finding time to blog is sometimes a bit of a challenge.  This is why I am blogging about an announcement made now several weeks ago. On the 10^th of April the news broke that permission had been granted for Lydd airport to be expanded, a measure which will may conclude the story of Dungeness’ National Nature Reserve’s “Death from a thousand cuts” to quote the expression once used by the botanist Brian Ferry, who has worked extensively on the site.

Dungeness Old Lighthouse from the RH&DR narrow-guage railway.

Dungeness, announced as “the other lands end” by a sign welcoming visitors to the expansive National Nature Reserve and ramshackle fishing community, is a totally unique habitat, with no parallel existing anywhere in the world. It consists of miles of shingle, bound by a community of lichen and bryophytes, grazed by a few hardy rabbits and hares.  It shows a complete succession from a maritime flora of rare Sea Kale, a curious, salt-tolerant member of the cabbage family, up to scrub, established on soils left behind by lichen and bryophyte pioneers, an example of life finding a way on a stony desert of rounded pebbles deposited by the sea. Wild flowers grow among the simpler plants and lichens, and in high summer these are visited by a range of butterflies, small tortoiseshell, small heath, small copper.  A single road winds across the foreshore, past the two lighthouses, historic and modern, past the Pilot Inn, serving local fish and chips, past the old coastguard cottages housing the Dungeness Bird Observatory, my home for five weeks in the Autumn of 2010, toward the dual towering, steam emitting monstrosities of Dungeness A and B nuclear power stations. A small footpath cuts north in a straight line across the shingle, past a memorial two a couple of brave Polish lads who died in their Spitfires defending the English coast, a threadbare polish flag flying over the wild, flat shingle country. A series of lakes,  traces of the gravel extraction workings which dot Romney Marsh are attended by herons, and in Autumn, swallows and martins gather over them in their thousands, surround an old cart track, where the lichen flora is barer, and where one can experience jelly legs after hours spent walking over the unstable shingle, which leads up to the famous RSPB reserve, home to the most obliging birds of prey in the country, a population of Marsh Harriers, a bird described by the lands custodians as rarer than a Golden Eagle. Yellow wagtails and meadow pipits breed here, and the reserve hosts black redstarts, specialists in these extreme habitats, and a rare colony of Tree Sparrows.  The gravel workings present an opportunity for migratory birds passing through the area from Great Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia, and even Iceland and Greenland, through the migration bottleneck the peninsula presents, on their way to the Mediterranean and beyond. From the lighthouse the ridges and troughs, landforms typical of an apposition beach, can still be seen, creating interest for Geomorphologists as well as Ecologists.

Rare Lapland Bunting at Dungeness.

Lydd airport as it is now is fairly inoffensive. Light aircraft fly out of it, pleasure flights take in the beauty of the channel coast and the Kent countryside. But the news of impending airport improvements threaten all of this, and, wooed by the promise of a meagre 200 new jobs (according to the Guardian’s transport columnist) local opinion is spilt, although a poll suggested 2/3 people would still rather not see their treasured NNR disappear, and are opposed to the airport expansion.  More concerningly, the scheme has been approved by government who claim, despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary,  that the airport scheme will not damage local wildlife.  This is a clear falsehood, as the RSPB, and Professor Ferry, of whose teaching I had the honour when I was an undergraduate at the University of London, would testify. The Sulphur dioxide pollution associated with jet propulsion causes increased nitrogen deposition to the soil, to which lichens, complex symbioses of algae and fungi, specialists in nutrient-poor environments, in which the two organisms depend on each other to survive, are particularly vulnerable.  The increased nutrient levels will destroy the unique plant communities and the succession.  The RSPB manages its reserve for birds, and flight safety legislation may prevent them from managing in such a way as to encourage them. The Wildlife and Countryside act protecting wild birds from hunting does not apply where there are flight safety issues, and any birds perceived as presenting a danger to flights will probably be shot.  Lydd Airport expansion, for Dungeness and its wildlife, means death.  The RSPB has been campaigning hard against airport expansion, with petition after petition, and even calling in the initial approval of the scheme to judicial review.  Their case was that the nature conservation value of the area was overlooked by the planners, which is clearly true. Nevertheless the judiciary sided with the business cartel.  The airport is owned by the charming Sheikh Fahad el Athel, who was once in court over millions of pounds of commissions involved in weapons deals between BAe and his native Saudi Arabia, who complains the runway.

Cricket among the shingle at Dungeness.

The government seems intent to force upon us some new airport building in the near future, despite widespread campaigns to the contrary. They support their war on Ecology through the use of academic stooges such as the Ecosystems Markets Task Force, a group, tellingly composed of economists, who claim it is possible to offset damage caused by commercial building projects simply by directing conservation effort, funded by developers, to other sites, equivalent to licensing an individual to destroy the Mona Lisa and replace it with a picture of a smiley face. Dungeness is irreplaceable, as the barren shingle “habitat creation” projects at Sussex Wildlife Trust’s Rye Harbour reserve demonstrates. Such habitats, and the landforms which accompany them, cannot be created artificially. This deserves another blog, but ridiculous exercises in market-based approaches will sound the death knell of the British conservation movement if they are permitted to get any further. Nevertheless they will try and fall back on such guidance notes.  Meanwhile Hundreds of loyal, Tory-voting West Londoners have succeeded in convincing the government not to expand Heathrow, with the help of well meaning green campaigners. Few of us see the need for increased airport capacity, and much as I love aeroplanes, and the opportunities for travel they provide, I acknowledge we need to reduce, not increase our capacity if we are to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and minimise the coming climate disaster. Campaigners, including those at the climate camp in 2005 I had the honour of attending, have done well, but using Heathrow as a focal point for protest is problematic, as it risks diverting development to places they can do much more damage, places like the Thames Estuary, and Cliffe. Places like Lydd.  The truth seems to be, although many West Londoners appear curiously reluctant to adjust to the jet noise which has been going on above their heads, usually since before they were born, Heathrow may just be the least worst place for this environmental tragedy to play out. Not Dungeness. We would all rather it didn’t happen anywhere, but so called green campaigners who talk of airports “in unpopulated areas” are really doing biodiversity no favours at all.

View across Dungeness to the Nuclear Power Station.

Now it seems the campaign against the airport, and to save Dungeness, could have found a pair of very unlikely friends. When it is next in court, as the RSPB will, with widespread support, ensure it will be, the main focus may be in the area of Nuclear safety.  Large aeroplanes and nuclear power stations present a fairly obvious safety risk and security challenge, and, especially in these days of paranoia, the risk of aeroplane-reactor collision, and all the associated fallout, are a real concern.  A blight on the beautiful landscape may yet, ironically, save it.  If not, one can hope that the legal fees will eventually build up sufficiently that the business interests whose endless greed would see this green, windswept paradise of bird life and lichen erased forever, will be put off by the mounting cost. The possibility remains that the cost of building the airport at Lydd will eventually prove prohibitive. We must not be complacent, campaigns continue to prevent it. It is not over, and it may yet go to court in Europe, where, as a designated SPA site, UK equivalent of the Natura 2000 network, the planning authorities will have to demonstrate that the airport, is in the vital national interest.

Small Copper butterfly and Cladonia lichen

What is in the vital national interest is preserving this unique, and incredibly fragile and vulnerable wildlife habitat.

View across Romney Marsh from the RSPB reserve.