Inside James Bond's Birds, Hairy Ice, Parc Slip's Moth Year and Much
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Snippets News from the Bridgend Group of the Wildlife Trust of South & West Wales - March 2016 Issue 4 Inside James Bond’s Birds, Hairy Ice, Parc Slip’s Moth Year and Much Much More 1 Caterpillar Clearance Sunday the 20th March saw the last of Butterfly Conservation's 2016 winter work parties at Oldcastle Down. Cut scrub was burnt beneath the blue sky and many splinters were removed from palms. Lets hope the High Brown’s appreciate it! Mike Bright Magical Hair Ice Hair-ice is created by a fungus Exidiopsis efussa and is generally found on fallen branches that have bark missing exposing bare wood. It forms when the air tempera- ture is just below freezing but the ground remains just above and it always forms only when this fungus is present. All living, metabolising fungi produce car- bon dioxide. This acts to push water out of wood which would then normally just freeze as a simple crust of ice, but E. effusa causes this water to freeze into thin hair- like strands. It is thought that it produces some kind of "re-crystallisation inhibitor" which some- how acts to create and stabilise the deli- cate hair-ice whilst also acting to prolong its life. I found these examples nearly a year ago but the link with E. effusa has only recently been discovered and was brought to my attention by the Glamorgan Fungus Group who have an excellent, friendly and most informative Facebook group. By the way, why not join today? (Plug, plug) 2 James Bond’s Birds James Bond (1900-1989) was a leading American ornithologist who specialized in Caribbean birds. His book “ was first published in 1936 and is still in print today, available in the UK as a volume in the “Collins Field Guide” series. Although this book remains as arguably the standard work on its subject, the author is probably better known nowadays as the man who allowed author Ian Fleming to appropriate his name for the fictional espionage agent - the dashing hero of the best-selling series of 14 books. The books were published annually between 1953 and 1966 (the final two volumes were published posthumously-Fleming died in 1964). We know that Ian Fleming was a keen bird-watcher who built a house, Goldeneye, in Jamaica where he would have used James Bond’s book as an identification- guide to the 300-odd bird-species of the region. At this point, we leave discussion of the real-life James Bond to focus –in lighter vein - on the derring-do of Fleming’s famous secret agent. It is probable that most readers do not approve of the killing of wild birds. Neither-it seems- did Fleming’s intrepid hero, James Bond. can now reveal a little-known statistical fact, viz. in every instance in the Bond novels where the “bad guys” kill wild birds, they are themselves eventually exterminated. Four examples follow:- Firstly, in , the eponymous arch-villain boasts to Bond that he caused the death of thousands of Roseate Spoonbills on the island Crab Key off the coast of Jamaica. His eventual-and appropriate- fate was to be buried alive in a mound of yellow bird-dung deposited on him by James Bond (now a crane-driver). 3 Secondly, in Bond is an onlooker when the venomous assassin Francisco Scaramanga shoots a pair of Jamaican(Antillean) Grackles in the window of a Jamaican brothel. Later in the book, Scaramanga also shoots a Turkey vulture(Turkey buzzard) in a cane field. Eventually in a gunfight between the two men in a mangrove swamp, a wounded Bond kills Scaramanga. Thirdly, in The Robber- a henchman of Harlem gangster Mr Big- shoots a pelican in a Florida harbour in front of Bond and his American associate Felix Leiter. Later in the book, in a confrontation between Bond and The Robber in a fish-bait warehouse, the “bad guy” meets a grisly end when Bond kicks him through a floor hatch into an underground shark tank. Finally,in , we go to Echo Lake resort in the Green Mountains of Vermont,USA, near the the Canadian border, where Bond has tracked down a vicious killer called von Hammerstein, an ex- Gestapo agent naturalized by Cuba. Reluctantly, Bond has to share his mission with Judy Havelock, a beautiful but vengeful girl with pale gold hair. They see von Hammerstein shoot a kingfisher over the lake. Shortly afterwards, Judy dispatches him, using a bow and arrow. With somewhat heavy humour, Bond gives her the nickname of Robina Hood. 4 Ian Fleming’s genuine interest in birds has already been mentioned. Not surprisingly therefore and apart from the birds previously mentioned, there are descriptions of bird behaviour throughout the James Bond books:- --a courtship display of a pair of Herring gulls on the chalk cliffs of the Kent coast (in ). --Temminck’s cormorant and Copper pheasants on the Japanese island of Kuroshima (in ). --Guanay cormorant in Jamaica (in ). --Mockingbird and Frigatebird, also in Jamaica (in ). The most striking of all of the descriptions of bird behaviour,however, is Fleming’s portrayal of the Red-billed streamertail (the national bird of Jamaica - see left) in This short story starts with a superbly-written 300-word description which opens with:- The most beautiful bird in Jamaica, and some say the most beautiful bird in the world, is the streamer-tail or Doctor humming-bird… It should come as no surprise that the multi- award-winning author, Anthony Burgess describes Fleming as a distinguished writer of English prose, whilst condemning the Bond films as disgraceful distortions and grotesque parodies. 5 Weaselpecker My favourite wildlife moment of 2015 was something that erupted across the Internet and became a worldwide talking point for everyone, even those who pay little or no attention to the natural world that surrounds them. This has nothing to do with the usual wildlife showstoppers (Panda, Lion, Rhino etc) and was all down to a chance picture taken by an amateur wildlife photographer in Hornchurch Country Park in East London. The picture was taken by Martin Le May and he was on the verge of getting more than his 15 minutes of fame! If you missed it (and I would be surprised if there was anyone in the civilised world who did) it was a Weasel ‘riding’ a Green Woodpecker. The Weasel was literally flying on what he thought would be his lunch! AMAZING! My favourite thing about the whole escapade was that it got everyone talking about wildlife. Even people who barely pay attention to the great outdoors were talking about it. I even overheard people saying that they did not know that we had Weasels and Woodpeckers in Britain! The press were all over the picture and it even had its own name ‘Weaselpecker!’. So, to the Weasel, the Woodpecker and Martin Le May for bringing British Wildlife to the attention of the world, I salute you! Mike Bright Glow-worms are always happy 6 Walking, Stalking & Talking Fungi So, is watching wildlife becoming tedious for you? Have you realised there are simply not enough flowers…..birds….butterflies etc for you? You want a whole kingdom to study? You have finally realised that the fungi are calling you! You have splashed some cash and ‘tooled up’ with a shiny new guidebook, hand-lens, knife and the all-important basket. You look the part but what do you do next? Well, the obvious answer is ‘go outside’ but it’s a big world out there, where should you go? It’s all very well poring over a map looking for different habitats to go in search of new finds but, when you are starting out, the sheer number of fungal possibilities can be overwhelming and you run the risk of giving up before you start, abandoning your new hobby and just leaving your guidebook to gather dust on the shelf. If you want to learn quickly and keep your interest throughout the year, you need to focus down, do what many birders do and pick a patch! Fungi I have known - 2015 You are going to want to visit your patch as often as possible (I usually visit mine at least once a week) so somewhere within a short walk of home or work is ideal. Keep it small, we all lead busy lives and if it takes you too long to have a weekly nose around, you run the danger of skipping a visit - and we all know when you skip a visit that is when the really interesting stuff will be out. Try and choose somewhere with a mixture of habitats, your main concern being to pick somewhere that will have interest throughout the year, which means that a certain degree of woodland is needed. It helps if your patch has definite boundaries; mine is a small woodland surrounded by a wall which conveniently stops me wandering off into the distance. Right, now it’s time to get out there! Before you start, be conscious of your speed, the adult world is fast-paced but that’s no good if you want to find tiny tiny things in a big dark wood. You need to go at toddler-speed, as toddlers take forever to walk the smallest of distances because they are totally absorbed in their immediate surroundings. This is exactly the frame of mind you need to be in to find fungi! If you are having trouble slowing down and have access to a toddler (or child), I would highly recommend taking them along with you to slow you down (with the parent’s permission of course).