December 2013 Volume 138 Number 1084 Yorkshire Union The Naturalist Vol. 138 No. 1084 December 2013 Contents Page Terry Whitaker, President of the YNU 2013-2014 - an informal biography 161 River Aire Fish Populations 2012 Kevin Sunderland 163 Yorkshire Ichneumons: Part 1 W.A.Ely 180 Gains and losses of the Andrena and Panurgus mining bees (Hym., Andrenidae) 188 in Watsonian Yorkshire* M. E. Archer Robert Wynne Owen (1924-1985) and his parasitological collections at Leeds: 192 1. Microscope slides and fish parasites R. A Baker, C. Bradley and P. J. Mill A provisional vascular plant red data list for VC63 (S.W. Yorkshire) 203 The first season’s fieldwork - a review G.T.D. Wilmore Field Note: Guinea Pig in the North York Moors Chris and Helen Pellant 206 Field Note: A new colony of Heath Snail Helicella itala David Lindley, 207 Terry Crawford and Adrian Norris The millipede Chordeuma proximum in Yorkshire: a new county record 208 A. A. Wardhaugh Cross Hills Naturalists’ Society Tom Clinton 209 Ox Close Wood and the East Keswick Wildlife Trust Melanie Smith 212 and Margaret Moseley Yorkshire Naturalists’ Union Excursions in 2013 Compiled by Albert 221 Henderson and Adrian Norris YNU Calendar 2014 240 Erratum: p191 Book review: p220 YNU Notices: p219, 239 Letters: p219 An asterisk* indicates a peer-reviewed paper Front cover: Detail from the Light of Creation window, St. Chad’s Church, Far Headingley, showing various animals and plants (see p220). Photo: Jill Lucas Back cover: Thistle Broomrape Orobanche reticulata growing in the Ox Close Wood Nature Reserve (see p212). Photo: Margaret Moseley December 2013 Volume 138 Number 1084 Terry Whitaker, President of the YNU 2013-2014 - an informal biography I was born in Leeds in September 1947 but as my parents moved around the country I lived in Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Warwickshire and Aberystwyth. My interest in natural history started in Hillmorton, then a rural village on the outskirts of Rugby, where I developed an early interest in wild flowers, raised Grass Snakes and, though now ashamed to admit it, indulged in minor birds’ egg collecting. Moving to Aberystwyth I explored the then unspoiled countryside and mountains of West Wales. The seashore was a new and fascinating experience. I fished the rivers and shot in the woods, often in the company of much older countrymen who were great observers of the natural world. As a teenager I bicycled into the hills to observe the nests of the remaining six pairs of UK Red Kites, down to Aberaeron to see the first Collared Doves and explored the many local lead mines with my bike lamp. On field meetings with members of the West Wales Naturalists I met William (Bill) Condry who became a natural history rôle model for me. At this time he was warden of Ynys-hir RSPB Reserve and writing his book on the Snowdonia National Park which became a classic in the Collins New Naturalist series. My obsession with butterflies and moths developed, raising caterpillars of the then common Garden Tiger, Oak Eggar and Lackey moths. As a grammar school boy I bought a mercury vapour light moth trap and also ran a RIS trap for two years. The Naturalist 138 (2013) 161 Returning to Yorkshire to take Zoology at Leeds University, I spent more time in running the caving club and walking in the Yorkshire Dales than in academic endeavour. At this time I met and became firm friends with a then junior lecturer, Stephen Sutton, who fostered my interest in entomology and expeditions. On leaving Leeds with a mediocre degree and after a spell as a machinist in an engineering works, I went to Wolverhampton Polytechnic to do MIBiol in entomology. My work experience for the course was in the Entomology Department at Rothamsted Experimental Station. This was an inspiring experience. At that time C B Williams was departmental head and the numerical ecologists Roy Taylor and Trevor Lewis were working just down the corridor. Ian Woiwod was then a junior assistant and drinking companion. Having once said I had no interest in marine biology and wanted to work on crop pests, I logically found employment with the British Antarctic Survey as a marine biologist in a fisheries research group where I worked on marine phytoplankton ecology and seawater chemistry and had eleven splendid years seeing most of the interesting animals of the Falkland Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula. During this time I made good academically by writing up my researches for a PhD in Botany at the University of London. The pull of ‘God’s own county’ eventually overcame the delights of the agricultural desert that is the countryside around Cambridge and I moved to the borders of the Yorkshire Dales where I needed to earn my living as a builder. However, I was able to indulge in caving and walking and get paid for my natural history interests by doing occasional work for English Nature and the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Imagine my surprise at finding that my once junior lecturer, Stephen Sutton, was living just up the road. He was now a senior academic and a President of the YNU and writing Sutton & Beaumont's Moths and Butterflies of Yorkshire. He set my feet firmly back into Lepidopteran studies, mainly in Southeast Asia. Since then I have been exploring the natural history delights of the Dales, interspersed with sporadic caving expeditions world-wide and more regular visits to the Cantabrian Mountains. In the last ten years I became involved full time in biological consultancy and started a project to produce a definitive pictorial guide to the pyralid and thyridid moths of Borneo. Recently I have been involved with Australian, Malaysian and Chinese colleagues in the lepidopteran components of major biodiversity studies in Borneo and China. Currently I am still avoiding becoming formally retired due to the syndrome of the ‘rolling stone having gathered no moss’ and I am still working on conservation and survey projects, some paid and some voluntary, in the Dales and around my midwinter home at Matienzo in the Cantabrian Mountains. Like all true biological organisms the Bornean pyralid moth project is now evolving into a web-based identification and taxonomy site (http://www.pyralidsofborneo.org/) which will enable me to while away my dotage in front of a hot computer, happily uploading new descriptions. The Naturalist 138 (2013) 162 River Aire Fish Populations 2012 Kevin Sunderland Bingley [email protected] Introduction The last list of fish in the River Aire was The Fishes of Upper Airedale by Wm H Whitaker of Utley (Whitaker 1910). It was far easier to compile an accurate list at that time as there were thought to be no fish populations downstream of Shipley where the grossly polluted Bradford Beck entered the river. The information shown below has been mainly derived from recent Environment Agency (EA) reports, press articles, records in libraries, conversations with anglers and personal observations. A great source of historical information has been the Pollution Commission Report (Pollution Commission, 1867). A number of the paragraphs of this report are referred to in this article. Many stretches of the Aire are relatively inaccessible and remain seldom fished and little surveyed by the EA. This leads to information being biased towards other areas which can then result in omissions of some fish populations. However, it is hoped that the information given here will help to give a reasonable view of the position in 2013. The typical zonation of Yorkshire rivers, with trout in the higher reaches and Roach Rutilus rutilus in the lower reaches is disrupted in the Aire by the presence of thirty or so weirs. These have a big effect on the fish populations due to their pooling effect. The species of fish in the slow deep water above a weir may be completely different to those in the shallow fast water below it. Current Position As recently as 1974, Dr D J Shilcock, the then Fisheries Officer for the Yorkshire Water Authority, stated that the fishery on the Aire ended at Esholt (Bradford) and below that there were only sticklebacks (Shilcock, 1974). Since that time, particularly over the last twenty years, there has been a huge improvement in the water quality and there are now fish populations all the way down the river and in most of the tributary becks which flow into it. Investment in sewage treatment, work on combined sewer overflows, regulation of industrial discharges and the collapse of the textile and other polluting industries have all accounted for this improvement. Two major developments have recently taken place which will have great bearing on future fish populations. One of these is the upgrading of the sewage treatment works at Esholt, Bradford, and Knostrop, Leeds. This work was brought about by the European Freshwater Fish Directive and the primary purpose was to reduce ammonia levels in the effluent from the works. The £75 million scheme at Esholt was completed in late summer 2009 and the staged improvements at Knostrop shortly afterwards. The Naturalist 138 (2013) 163 The other major development is the Humber District Plan of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD), which was signed off by the Secretary of State for the Environment in December 2009. The WFD addresses many problems in Europe’s rivers. The EA’s commitments in the Humber District Plan include the removal of all artificial barriers to fish migration and the return to all the Humber Region rivers of self-sustaining spawning populations of migratory fish by 2021. Weirs, hydros and fish passes Although corn milling weirs have been present on the River Aire since Norman times, it was the Aire and Calder Navigation, founded in 1699, and the Industrial Revolution which followed it, that led to additional and better-maintained weirs being built.