So Where Have I Been?

Well most recently, between 14th –21st May, I have been to Norway on a SAGA cruise. Actually i’m not quite eligible to officially join as a cruise guest just yet but I managed to get a place as part of an Organisation Cetacea (ORCA), survey team on the lookout for cetaceans. In fact SAGA and ORCA have built up a good relationship that allows ORCA survey teams aboard providing a welcome additional wildlife aspect to their cruises and giving ORCA much needed extra survey data. So both parties benefit.
The ship is called the Quest For Adventure and a good size vessel she is too.

Whilst we are there to survey for marine wildlife it is an important part of the role to get involved in other aspects of the cruise and ensure we engage with the other guests. So with best formal frocks and suits on, I’ll introduce the survey team. Me, Cheryl, Debbie and Steve, what a fine bunch.

So off to Norway but the weather conditions are not that good for cetaceans but we do manage to see a couple of harbour porpoises and a few puffins.

The first stop was Bergen , a major port for the support of the oil industry.

This ship looks like a seismic survey vessel, used for finding gas and oil fields, potentially not good news for cetaceans. In fact it’s an anchor handling tug, still looks very odd though.
Part of our role is to also help out being additional guides on excursions, which is good fun and allows us to see some of the local colour. The funicular railway gets you on your way to Mount Floyen .

The view from the top.

During World War II Bergen being occupied by the Germans hosted U-boats and you can still see the formidable old concrete pens in the harbour.

Next day saw us further north at the more picturesque village of Flam.




Certainly a more pastoral feel to the local farming practice leading to fields full of wild flowers, these being ladies smock.

Some of the more common garden birds

Marsh Tit

Pied Flycatcher

Whinchat

White Wagtail
There were also some cute local residents.




Some of the team got a bit stuck trying to get up close to a local waterfall.


The next day we were at Skjolden, the scenic Sognefjell Mountain pass and the Sognelfjord.

Some of the local reindeer.

The trip along the Sognelfjord gave us our first chance to see harbour porpoise in good calm conditions.

That days sunset was particularly special.

Our last day in Norway was at Stavangar, once again we were able to join in as additional escorts on some of the excursions. One of which went through the old part of the town which still has 130 preserved buildings from the late 1700s and mid 1800s.

The impressive Hafrsfjord monument ‘Swords in the Stone’ is thought to be where the viking king Harald I defeated the last of regional princes and started the unification of Norway.

Our last day at sea travelling back to Dover actually gave us an incredible sea state 1 which allowed us to record over 30 harbour porpoises and 7 minke whales. The sunset was superb and a fitting end to the trip.

A great trip and team, the crew of the Quest looked after us very well.

Adding Up and Keeping Count!

Recently I’ve been reading a book by Rodger McPhail called ‘The Private Life Of Adders’. To be honest it doesn’t take long to read but for someone like me that doesn’t know a lot about the life history of adders it is full of very useful information and a good introduction and I would recommend it as it is also full of great and surprising photos. One aspect of adder watching is trying to work out just how many individual adders you might be looking at and a study in the Wyre Forest in Worcestershire showed that adders posses unique head-patterns that can be broken down into 3 components. Eye lines, inverted V and the apex of the zig-zag.
So far I have made 3 trips to the adder site and I think I’ve seen 7 different male adders, which if true is the most I’ve ever seen in one area and quite exciting and the females aren’t even out yet!
The challenge is to try and get a photo of the back of the head which is easier said than done given that your average adder doesn’t want to be noticed let alone photographed and bits of grass and bees get in the way but that is all part of the challenge.
What do you think, there are certainly 4 different males below but do you reckon there are 7 different males here? Answers on a postcard.
March 18th.
Male 1 

Male 2 

This one will be easy to identify as long as the spring flower bee stays put!
Male 3 


Male 4

March 8th
Male 5

26th February
Male 6
Male 7

Tree Bee

For the past couple of weeks I have been setting my 40W actinic light trap on a Friday night as part of the garden moth scheme. It is a constant effort moth trapping survey to determine moth population trends for the commoner species. Well my tally so far is a total of 4 moths and 2 species with Friday nights new species being a chestnut and a worn individual at that.

A beautiful warm and sunny day today, the local 7-spot ladybirds were catching a few rays as they started to emerge from their overnight roosts, if you can call them that?

There are 11 in the picture above and nearby there were another 15. So far I haven’t seen a single harlequin ladybird in the garden, which I think is good.
Bumblebees were also very much in evidence today with queen buff-tailed bumblebees visiting the flowering hellebores. Then Lisa pointed out a bee that had landed on an ornamental butterfly and luckily I managed to get a shot.


This is Bombus hypnorum or the tree bee. First recorded in the UK in Hampshire in  2001, it has rapidly been spreading across the south and south east and even starting to spread north. In fact amongst our UK bumble bees it is bucking the trend in that it is increasing and expanding it’s range and becoming more common. This is a queen and mighty fine she is too and needless to say the first one I have recorded in Longfield.

Something New For The Area…

Well for me anyway. The day started well enough with an unexpected peregrine falcon flying over the garden whilst I was eating my breakfast. I then waited for the sun to break out and headed back up to the adder site in the hope of finding more adders this time in the company of Neil Tew.
Several blackthorns were in blossom but no accompanying butterflies in the sunshine.
Oddly I also saw a peregrine here as well. I assume it was the same bird although there was a good two hours between the separate sightings.
We managed to see two males, one of which was in a different area than on the 26th Feb so a total of 3 males thus far.

Under one of the refugia we came across a pygmy shrew which was quickly scurried away and that brings me on to the fact that I'm now the Kent mammal recorder as part of the Kent Mammal Group. So if you are reading this post and record your mammal sightings in Kent please send them onto me. At the moment the Kent Mammal Group is planning to create a new mammal atlas so we need all the records we can of both live and dead, marine and terrestrial mammals to get as complete a picture on status as possible. You may be surprised to read that rabbit and rat records are amongst the fewest we have!!
This afternoon Neil showed me a pond nearby where toads have been occurring in good numbers and it was to good an opportunity to miss for a couple of photos. In fact these are the first toad photos I have ever had the opportunity to take and the first toads I have seen in the Longfield area.

An Exciting Day

We’ll I have adders 3 miles from my front door, for some people that would be horrific for me that is very exciting. A visit to the site and I find 2 male adders basking in the glorious sunshine today.
Tricky, how much do I give away as most people, and I don’t understand why, don’t like snakes. Okay maybe I do understand why but fear of snakes is a bit like fear of sharks, you have more chance of being hit on the head by a coconut than being bitten by a shark….I think it’s the press that have a fear of snakes and sharks and people that read newspapers get drawn into the unnecessary and overblown hype.
Anyway the site is a tangle of bramble, dogwood, hawthorn and silver birch.

This lovely brown and black male was coiled up taking in a few rays near to some refugia.

I was concentrating on this male so much that I nearly missed another male doing the same i.e. basking, not concentrating on the other male, in the dead grass about 5 feet from me.

After increasing their body temperatures, both snakes moved off and i managed to get a back of the head shot of the first male, useful for future id’s of individuals.
Thanks must go to Greenie for pointing out my id error with regard to the first adder which I thought was a female but is in fact a male. A rule of thumb which is generally about 90% true is that the zigzag pattern in a male is black and in a female is brown.

Don’t be afraid of snakes, certainly in the UK. Adders just want to get on with their lives, just like you and me. They will not hurt you as long as you respect them and don’t go doing something silly like trying to get too close or attempting to pick them up. I’m hoping that having adders in the area also means a healthy population of small mammals which are a preferred prey item.