Local May - August 2015 A news and events diary from wildlife and conservation groups in Wildlife the Ipswich area News Enthusing young people to enjoy wildlife - see page 6 Produced by the Local Wildlife News Snippets The doggy bag tree. Visiting Shrike on show As seen in Bourne Park Ipswich. So sad to see that some dog owners still refuse to dispose of their doggy bags responsibly. This splendid male Great Grey Shrike was a visitor to Hollesley Upper Common during February and March this year. A regular but scarce visitor from Scandinavia, this bird certainly attracted plenty of birders who enjoyed fine views throughout its stay with us. On one visit I was fortunate enough to watch it drop down from its perch at the top of a small conifer and come up with a lizard which it impaled onto a thorn and devoured piece by Swans galore piece until I saw the tail disappear into its throat. This impaling is normal behaviour for shrikes who feed on beetles, other insects, small mammals and birds as they often store their prey in these thorn larders. No wonder shrikes are often ‘mobbed’ by other birds which recognise them as dangerous predators. Colin Hullis Senseless vandalism strikes again It is so disappointing after much effort has been put in to help improve our environment, to see scenes like this. Our local resident mute swans were joined by some interesting cousins during the winter. Their regular visitors from Siberia, the Ipswich Borough Council Rangers had put in great effort to Bewick swans and the whooper swans from Iceland (above) plant these young trees alongside the reedbed in Bourne Park were joined by a couple of American Trumpeter swans (below). only to find a few weeks later that virtually every one had been broken down or uprooted. These two trumpeters were seen throughout the winter, grazing the fields from Boyton Marsh to Kings Fleet near Can anyone make any sense of this? Felixstowe. They certainly looked quite at home in close company with the local mutes. However, beware, it is thought highly unlikely, if not impossible, that they flew to us across the Atlantic. Much more likely they escaped from a private collection, although so far no-one has claimed them! 2 Welcome Welcome to the summer edition of Local Wildlife News, produced by the Greenways Countryside Project to help promote the activities and news of local conservation and community groups around the Ipswich area. With all the winter habitat management work done for another year, the work of conservation 6 volunteers turns mostly to looking after the nature reserves and green spaces for people to enjoy © Margaret Regnault – cutting back paths, repairing seats, signs, bridges and boardwalks, surfacing new paths and clearing the inevitable litter! Although picking up other people’s litter seems a pretty thankless task, it is actually one of our most popular activities! Perhaps it’s because it’s a simple job you don’t have to think too much about, or perhaps it’s the thanks you get from passing walkers, or most likely the fact that along with a group of like-minded, dedicated volunteers, you can make a dramatic visual difference in a relatively short time. We all dream of the day when everyone will take their litter home or dispose of it properly, but it seems this is still rather a long way off, so for now at least, it’s a part 10 of the conservation volunteer’s life! (see article on River Clean Up on the Greenways pages of this edition). We hope you will enjoy some of the events on offer over the summer months – as well as all those in the events listing at the back, there will be a series of our Wildlife Homes events, jointly with Ipswich Borough Council Rangers and Ipswich Wildlife Group, where you can come along and build insect homes, hedgehog houses, bird boxes of various types or simply take wildflower seed or a log pile home for your garden. Details of these events will be advertised locally to each event and on the Greenways website: www.greenlivingcentre.org.uk/greenways © Paul Sherman 14 Contributions We are always happy to receive articles of anything up to 600 words, photographs of local wildlife or conservation work and local sightings or wildlife ‘snippets’ – so please do send in anything which may be of interest to: Greenways Project, Scout Headquarters, Stoke Park Drive, Ipswich, IP2 9TH. 01473 433995. [email protected] Mailing lists – Please note We are aware that some who are members of several conservation organisations may well receive more than one copy of the newsletter. If this is the case we would be very grateful if you could pass © Rab King 17 on the spare copy to someone who will appreciate it and contact the Greenways Project on 01473 433995 or [email protected], stating which organisations you are a member of, so that we can ensure that you receive just one in the future. If on the other hand you don’t currently receive LWN regularly, but would like to, please consider joining one of the groups that distributes LWN to its members (i.e. Suffolk Wildlife Trust, Ipswich Wildlife Group, RSPB etc). Remember, for those who don’t receive a copy, LWN is available online at www.greenlivingcentre. 17 org.uk/greenways/ © Chris Courtney 20 James Baker Contents Page Local Wildlife News Snippets 2 © Chris Courtney 21 Suffolk Wildlife Trust 4 Local Wildlife News is published by Ipswich Wildlife Group 8 Greenways Countryside Project. Friends of the Dales 9 Editor: James Baker [email protected] Greenways Countryside Project 10 Tel 01473 433995 Production Editor: Colin Hullis Ipswich Borough Council Wildlife Rangers 13 [email protected] Tel 01473 728674 Friends of Christchurch Park 14 Artwork production: Chris Saunders Portal Woodlands Conservation Group 15 [email protected] Tel 01473 721550 Landguard Partnership 16 Printed by PJ Print [email protected] Friends of Holywells Park 17 Tel 01473 276010 Friends of Belstead Brook Park 18 Printed on recycled paper Suffolk Ornithologists’ Group 19 The opinions expressed in Local Wildlife News are not necessarily RSPB Ipswich Local Group 20 those of the Greenways Project. Events Diary 22 3 Ipswich Group Newsletter Chairman: David Munday 01473 217310 [email protected] Secretary: Wendy Brown 01473 259674 [email protected] Treasurer: Tony Clarke 01473 741083 [email protected] Newsletter Editor: John Ireland 01473 723179 [email protected] Group contact: [email protected] We are the Ipswich Group of the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. We offer an interesting range of monthly meetings with guest speakers which take place usually on the third Wednesday of the month at 7.30 p.m. in the hall of St Margaret’s Primary School, Bolton Lane, Ipswich. Trust members and non-members are equally welcome. During the summer months we offer a variety of trips, some local, others by coach. Details of these and our monthly meetings can be found in our ‘Diary’ section which follows, or on the SWT website, www.suffolkwildlifetrust.org. Chairman’s Letter Thirty Letters Summer Activities Yes, for ten years I have been writing the Chairman’s Letter By the time you read this we will have had Grant Lahoar telling three times a year, some informative, some thought provoking us all about Orford Ness, its history and wildlife, but now I and some light hearted, and usually written at the last minute am delighted to say he has kindly offered to be our guide on with our Editor begging for copy. But now I have the dreaded a full day trip by trailer around the Ness, so do book now as writer’s block! so John is helping out with the following piece. spaces are limited, and these trips are very popular. We also have a chance to uncover Secret Ipswich and be guided round Our River Redgrave and Lopham Fen. Full details in diary section. The River Action Group is a small group of lay members working with the relevant local authority officers to monitor New Season 2015-2016 and advise on the river and its environment between Stoke We start our new programme with a splash when John Bridge and Sproughton. Biglin tells us all about the Life of Ponds. This meeting is on Wednesday 16th September, and I look forward to seeing you Anyone who remembers the Gipping of say, twenty years there. ago, will be aware of what enormous improvements have been made to the riverside, with a hard-surfaced, well lit path along much of its length to encourage people to enjoy its features, including its heritage and wildlife. A lot of this has been achieved with the active encouragement of the River Action Group. If you have any interest in the river – as an angler, walker, commuter, cyclist or wildlife enthusiast - you will be most welcome to join us. We meet every two months throughout the year, although of course we do other things in the meantime, for instance joining the Ipswich Wildlife Group once a month for practical work along the river. Have a good summer. © Dave Fincham We are in urgent need of secretarial help - someone who could take and distribute the minutes and perhaps keep an eye on the website. If any of this takes your Dave Munday interest, please contact John Ireland on 01473 723179 or (Chairman) [email protected], who will be pleased to tell you more about what we do. 4 Ipswich Group Newsletter Return to Costa Rica © Vearl Brown © Vearl Our fourth visit to Costa Rica was in January 2015 and we decided on a personal itinerary so we could control where we went and what we did each day.