Tag Archives: British wildlife

Object of the Month – June 2023

This is the cast skin / exoskeleton (exuvia) of a dragonfly larva, found in Elsenham in August 2005. The shape of the eyes and the length (40mm) suggest it’s a hawker dragonfly, while the finder’s description of the adult dragonfly being green and yellow means it is probably a southern hawker, which are common in July and August.

Dragonfly exuvia © Saffron Walden Museum

These dragonflies spend 2 or 3 years as a larva, or nymph, living underwater, before coming above water to shed their skin and emerge as an adult.

Southern hawker dragonfly by Tom Wiersma, via Wikimedia Commons.

Dragonflies, like all insects, have a hard exoskeleton which does not grow with them. After hatching from an egg, dragonfly nymphs gradually grow into adults through a series of moults to shed their skin, which allows it to grow in size each time, emerging as an adult directly from the last moult.
The nymphs look similar to the adult, with a long body and six legs. Nymphs in the last stages of growth have wing buds that you can see on this specimen.
This method of growth, through nymphs with wings developing on the outside, is called incomplete metamorphosis.

This is different from other insects including flies and butterflies, which hatch as maggots or caterpillars. This is the larva of the insect, and it looks very different from the adult. The larva in these insects also has to moult to increase in size, but the final moult is different. It creates an inactive pupa (called a chrysalis in butterflies) where the final radical transformation into the adult takes place. This method of growth from larva to pupa to adult is called complete metamorphosis.

Visit the Museum to learn more about the two types of metamorphosis in the Discovery Centre, and take a closer look at two exuviae from our Malaysian stick insects.

Exuvia of female Malaysian stick insect © Saffron Walden Museum

Exuvia of male Malaysian stick insect © Saffron Walden Museum

Image credit:
Female Southern Hawker – Tom Wiersma, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 25.5.2023.

Object of the Month – February 2023

A picture of a taxidermy common eider duck. It has a black cap to its head, a yellow beak, white head, neck and back and a black underside, with yellow legs and feet. Against a painted backdrop of a rocky mountain and hazy clouds.

This month we’re celebrating the Lost Language of Nature project, putting the finishing touches to this common eider. James and Charlotte have cleaned its plumage, repainted its beak and feet, and refreshed its base to help preserve it for future exhibitions.

Common eider mounted skin

Eider ducks are famous for their soft downy feathers which help keep them warm in freezing conditions. ‘Down’ comes from the Old Norse word ‘dúnn’, the word for the fluffy feathers of young birds and the same feathers which insulate adult birds. In adults, the down is hidden beneath the larger contour feathers which give birds their colour, patterns and shape.

A fluffy white feather on a black bacground

Down feather © Wouter Hagens, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

These wild ducks can be ‘farmed’ sustainably for their down feathers, which are taken from the nests once chicks have fledged. This down is used to make traditional eiderdown pillows and quilts. In the UK, eider ducks are sometime called St Cuthbert’s duck or Cuddy duck, according to the belief that St Cuthbert’s holiness protected Farne island and its population of eider ducks.

Grassy and muddy ground wiht a grey nest of fluffy eider down. Three eggs are in the middle of the nest.

Eider nest © Paul Gierszewski (Gierszep), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Saffron Walden Museum wants to hear your stories about wildlife and nature in your life, or that you know from parents and grandparents, to help create more interesting, relevant and diverse displays in the future. Fill in a postcard in the Museum to join in or search online for ‘Lost Language Saffron Walden Museum’.

Learn more about this Object of the Month in the Museum throughout February.

Object of the Month – June 2022

June’s object of the month celebrates the Lost Language of Nature project, with repair work to this hen harrier. With Lost Language of Nature, we want to hear your stories about wildlife and nature in your life, or rhymes, songs and sayings for all kinds of animals that you might have heard from parents or grandparents. For example, different old names across the country for hen harriers include Blue sleeves, Vuzz kitt, Grey gled, Furze kite and Goss harrier; or Ringtail for females, like this fragile mounted skin. Head to our website for more information https://www.swmuseumlearning.com/the-lost-language-project

This bird came to the Museum in the 1800s, and was taken from the area around Saffron Walden. Today, hen harriers only live in the north of England, north Wales, in Scotland and on Scottish islands, including Arran and Orkney.

Hen harrier on temporary base during conservation work.

Hen harriers today

Hen harriers are one of the UK’s most endangered birds of prey, with only an estimated 545 breeding pairs left in the country. They are on the RSPB’s Red List of endangered species in Britain, but listed as ‘Least Concern’ globally by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Work carried out by the RSPB suggests that over 2,500 pairs could survive in the UK. They live in open areas with low vegetation, like heather moors.

Between 2014 and 2019, the RSPB ran the LIFE project to learn more about hen harriers in Britain, their movements throughout the year and to understand why their numbers are so low. They tagged over 100 birds that they tracked using satellites, and found that some fly 1000 miles to spend the winter in Spain and Portugal. Not all birds do this though – the brother of one of these wandering birds always stayed within 50 miles of where he hatched.

In the UK, hen harriers are protected under Schedule 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act, meaning it is illegal to kill, injure or capture the birds, their eggs or nests, or even disturb the birds and their young while they are nesting. Despite this, the study showed that the numbers of breeding hen harriers fell by 24% (about one-quarter) between 2004 and 2016. In particular, the project monitored seven Special Protected Areas in parts of the country where land is managed for driven grouse shooting. In these seven areas, hen harrier numbers fell by over 80%, which suggests that there is deliberate human action to reduce their numbers in these areas.

References

https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/hen-harrier/

https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/conservation/projects/hen-harrier-life/about-the-project/

https://community.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/skydancer/b/skydancer

https://community.rspb.org.uk/ourwork/skydancer/b/skydancer/posts/hen-harrier-apollo-bomber-migrate-1000-miles-to-spain

https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/conservation/projects/hen-harrier-life/best-places-to-see-hen-harriersnew-page/

Object of the Month – February 2021

Water voles are probably best known from the character ‘Ratty’ from The Wind in the Willows. Recently described as “Britain’s fastest, declining mammal”, they are making a comeback thanks to careful wildlife management and the return of a locally extinct predator – the polecat.

Water vole © Saffron Walden Museum.

Water voles are about the same size as a brown rat, but with a furry, much shorter tail, and small ears. Today, they are a semi-aquatic mammal, relying heavily on streams and rivers for food and shelter – they use their teeth to dig burrows into steep banks to shelter and raise their young.

Do water voles need water?

But it wasn’t always this way. They don’t show any of the usual adaptations for a water-based mammal, such as webbed feet and a ‘keeled’ tail (flattened sideways but taller top-to-bottom), both of which make otters very strong swimmers.
In the 1500s, rewards for hunting ‘rats’ may actually have referred to ‘water voles’ that lived entirely on land. Their burrowing habits and herbivorous diet would have made them an agricultural pest, which would explain the rewards paid for hunting them. Modern water voles are always found on waterways, so any hunting must have succeeded in wiping out fully-terrestrial water voles.

A population vole-ercoaster

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the number of water voles in the UK plummeted, making them Britain’s fastest-declining mammal. Surveys of water vole territories in Essex showed that 81% of recent territories were still occupied in 1990, but by 2005, only 7.5% of territories were still occupied in certain areas.
Such a drastic decline couldn’t just be down to habitat loss, and they are resistant to pollution – water vole colonies live in the banks of streams which run from landfill sites along the Thames estuary, and on rubbish-choked streams near Rainham.

Studies by Essex Wildlife Trust showed that crashes in water vole numbers closely followed local increases in the number the invasive American mink. These animals are not native to the UK, and became established after escaping or being released from fur farms from the 1950s onwards. Mink will hunt water voles in their burrows and in water, and a female can destroy a water vole colony in one breeding season. The water vole’s usual predators only hunt on land, and are too big to fit in their burrows.

American mink. © Saffron Walden Museum.

Essex Wildlife Trust began work in 2007 to control mink numbers in key water vole strongholds, allowing water voles to recover, and spread. In 2012, more areas were put under mink control, and water vole colonies were relocated from sites destroyed by development along the Thames and M25. Surveys in 2013 showed that these colonies had survived and spread, with several new colonies established along the river Colne and its tributaries.

Ratty’s new best friends

Since 2000, wildlife surveys have found an ever-increasing number of polecats, a native predator which had been extinct in Essex for over 100 years. Polecats were hunted to near extinction across the UK by gamekeepers, who treated them as dangerous vermin, and they were also easily caught and killed in rabbit traps, which fell out of use in the 1950s. Polecats have probably spread into Essex from a targeted release in Hertfordshire in 1982-3.

Natural Sciences Officer, James Lumbard, with the skin of a recenltly-mounted polecat. The polecat was brought to the Museum after being found dead at the roadside. Image © Saffron Walden Museum.

Otter © Saffron Waledn Museum. This otter is on view in the Victorian Museum Workroom display when the Musuem is open.

Informal tracking and recording also suggests that the return of polecats may be helping water voles spread and recover more quickly, by reducing mink numbers. The same is true for otters, which are now returning to Essex, after being declared locally extinct in 1986. Both of these animals are native predators that rarely hunt water voles, but will compete with the American mink for food and territory, and are also big enough to hunt or kill mink. There are no studies to confirm it yet, but it could be very good news for water voles, and wildlife-lovers across Essex.

References

Are the otter and polecat combining to reduce mink numbers? East Anglian Daily Times, first published 31 March, 2019. Accessed 29.1.2021: https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/business/rise-in-polecats-and-otters-hit-mink-2562736

Mammals of Essex by John Dobson and Darren Tansley, 2014.

Identification – cattle hock bone

Cattle right-side calcaneus (heel bone)

The calcaneus in humans is the heel bone, and is the first point of contact with the floor when we walk. However, cattle are ‘nail-walkers’ – walking on the very tips of their toes with the rest of the foot held off the ground. This means the first joint from the ground on the hind leg is the ankle (hock), not the knee, which is why it bends in the opposite direction to our knee. The knee is further up the leg, almost hidden by the leg muscles, while the hip is very high up, just below the base of the tail.

Diagrom to show position of hock in cattle leg

The hock bone (calcaneus) is shown by no. 32 (bottom right). 31 shows the ankle joint and 30 shows the knuckles of the toes. 27 shows the knee joint (bottom middle). Image credit: reference 1.

The bovine foot has 15 bones, grouped into 7 tarsals (talus, calcaneus, and five others), 2 metatarsals (running from the tarsals to thethe two toes). These correspond to the 3^rd and 4^th metatarsals in human feet The big toe has the first metatarsal). The cow has 6 phalanges (three in each toe).
For comparison, humans have 26 foot bones, comprising 7 tarsals, 5 metatarsals (one leading to each toe) and 14 phalanges (two for the big toe and three for every other toe).

Diagrams showing skeletons of the cattle and human foot.

15-21 are the ankle bones, 23 and 24 are the metatarsals, and 26-28 show the three phalanges in each toe. The same bones are labelled in the human foot on the right. Image credits: references 2 and 3.

(The image above actually shows the front leg of a cow, with the wrist and not the ankle bones, but the other bones are generally the same.)

The original bone I was asked to ID. © Saffron Walden Museum.

In life, this cattle calcaneus is from the right hock and has the smooth side faces outward to the right, as in the photo above. The shaft of the bone is then pointing up and back, toward the tail of the animal, to form the distinctive point of the hock in the cow’s leg (no. 32 in the first diagram). The top of the bone is the attachment point for the large muscles of the lower leg. These are the gastrocnemius and soleus, (the ‘calf muscles’ in humans).

Some of the more fragile edges of this calcaneus are missing, but you can still see the main features.

This photo is pretty much a close-up of the photo above, from the bottom end. © Saffron Walden Museum.

In the photo, the letter A shows a smooth articular surface for the 3^rd and 4^th metatarsals, and B is one of the articular surfaces with the talus. C is a dome-shaped articular surface for the lateral malleolus, a bone on the outer edge of the hock. The roughened depression (D) in the centre of the plate is called the tarsal sinus, and is mirrored by a similar area on the talus. This cavity houses blood vessels, fat, nerves, and a series of ligaments which hold the tarsal bones together.
The talar shelf (E), is at the near end of the shaft, and helps support the talus bone which sits above it. There is also a groove (F) for the tendon of the flexor digitorum lateralis muscle, which bends the toes.

The calf muscles which attach to the top of the bone help straighten the leg when walking and running, while the length of the bone acts as a lever to amplify their effect and increase make the movement more efficient This is especially important in animals such as cattle, whose ancestors and wild relatives migrate across continents and run to escape predators.

– James Lumbard, Natural Sciences Officer.

References

1. Domestic_animals;_ _history_and_description_of_the_horse,_mule,_cattle,_sheep,_swine,_poultry,_and_farm_dogs,_(1858)_(14598393827)
By Internet Archive Book Images – https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/14598393827/Source book page: https://archive.org/stream/domesticanimalsh00alle/domesticanimalsh00alle#page/n51/mode/1up, No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44520464

2. Cattle hock skeleton diagram © https://www.dcfirst.com/cow_skeletal_anatomy_poster.html Accessed 31.3.2020.

3. BruceBlaus. :Blausen.com staff (2014). “Medical gallery of Blausen Medical 201”. WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 2002-4436. / CC BY 3.0

Identification – Ammonite in sandstone

One of the most interesting parts of working in museums is helping people discover something new (and I usually learn something new myself). A really important way for museums to do their job as a welcoming public source of information is by identifying mystery objects that you might find on a walk, on a seaside holiday or even in your garden or attic.
Anyone can bring in an item for us to identify, for free, and you should have an answer within a few weeks. It might look a bit like this:

Ammonite in sandstone

[Show slideshow]

This piece of stone is a Jurassic fine-grained sandstone or sandy limestone, which may be from the Lias Group rock unit found on the Dorset coast, although it has a sandier appearance and rougher texture than the rocks usually found in this formation. If it is from the Dorset Lias formation, the rock is roughly 195 to 200 million years old, and the fossils it contains would be a species of Promicroceras ammonite, which are common along the Dorset coast.

Fossil of a Promicroceras ammonite.
Image: Ammojoe CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

The bristleworm, Polydora ciliata. Image: Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History [CC0] (Wikimedia Commons)

The surface pattern of pores in the rock was made much more recently. They were probably made by a species of Polydora worm, probably Polydora ciliata. P. ciliata is a small, rock- or shell-boring worm which can grow up to 30mm (1 1/8 in.) long, and is also known as a bristleworm.

P. ciliata burrows in stone. Image: Rosser1954 CC BY-SA 3.0 (Wikimedia Commons)

Bristleworms are thought to burrow into rock or shell by scraping away at the surface using specialised bristles on the fifth segment of its body, although it may also secrete chemicals such as weak acid to help. It digs a U-shaped burrow, which appears on rocks as distinctive small slots or a ‘sunglasses’ shape.

– James Lumbard, Natural Sciences Officer.

Object of the Month – October 2019

This case is arranged to show which butterflies live in the Saffron Walden area today (left), and which are extinct (right).

These butterflies died off mainly because of changing land use in the 19^th & 20^th centuries. Butterflies such as the Adonis blue (1) and chalk-hill blue (2) prefer large areas of chalk wildflower meadow, grazed by sheep and cattle. However, much of this land was converted to crop farming in the 1800s and these specialist insects died off. Other changes, such as the end of coppicing in woodlands, removed the open wooded habitat that butterflies such as the grizzled skipper (3) thrive in.

Species like the purple emperor (4) and white admiral (5) feed on the sugary waste products from aphids (honeydew). Pollution from coal burning may have contributed to these butterflies’ extinction as the toxins could dissolve into the honeydew on the leaf surface.

However, 2019 has been a very good year for some impressive larger butterflies too, with lots of painted ladies (6) arriving in Britain from the Mediterranean as they migrate north. Protected roadside verges in Uttlesford also provide good chalk grassland habitat for species such as the small copper (7).

There is also some very good news for three ‘extinct’ species (green boxes in main image). The purple emperor (4) returned to Uttlesford about two years ago and has been seen in Shadwell Wood and Rowney Wood, two local Essex Wildlife Trust nature reserves. The silver-washed fritillary (8) was first seen again about five years ago and is now known from Shadwell Wood, Rowney Wood and Hatfield Forest. The marbled white (9) has also been spotted at Harrison Sayer and Noakes Grove nature reserves and along some protected roadside verges over the last two years. The return of these three species in protected areas of countryside and special habitats show just how important effective conservation efforts are in supporting our native wildlife.

You can learn more about how humans have affected local environments and wildlife, for bad and for good, in the Take Away the Walls exhibition until 3 November.
Find out how you can help local wildlife groups on the Discovery Centre noticeboard next to the stick insects, and in the Take Away the Walls exhibition.

Object of the Month – June 2019

Did You Know?

The ‘cabbage white’ butterfly is actually two closely related species – the large white (Pieris brassicae) and the small white (Pieris rapae). Apart from the size difference, the large white has darker black wing spots, and a dark black band at the front of its wings. Both lay their eggs on cabbages in gardens, allotments and farms, as it is the preferred food of their caterpillars. The large white takes the outer leaves, while the small white prefers the soft inner leaves. The adult (imago) of both species often feeds on nectar from buddleia flowers.

The display has a male and female of each species, with the male at the top and female below. There is also a caterpillar of the large white butterfly, which is yellow and hairy, with black bumps on its skin. The small white’s caterpillar is pale green and hairless with a narrow yellow stripe on either side. The cabbage leaf in the box has some caterpillar feeding damage.

Caterpillar of the small white. CC BY-SA 3.0, Harald Süpfle.

Chrysalis of the small white. CC BY-SA 2.5, James Lindsey at Ecology of Commanster.

Life cycle

These butterflies have two ‘broods’ per year, and three in a good year. In the spring, butterflies which survived the winter as a chrysalis emerge as adults in April and May. They lay eggs in May and June (spring brood), which hatch into caterpillars in June and July. The caterpillars feed and grow quickly, and shed their skin 4 times as they grow. After about a month, the caterpillar finds a sheltered spot to transform into a butterfly in a process called metamorphosis. The caterpillar spins a pad of silk against the surface of its shelter, and sheds it skin again to reveal a hard skin (chrysalis), which has a small hook to keep it attached to the silk.

Adults emerge from the chrysalis about two weeks later, in July and August. They then lay eggs which develop into caterpillars through September and form chrysalises into October. The caterpillars go through a very slow metamorphosis to survive the winter, and emerge as adults the following April and May to start the process again.

Butterfly survival

On the right of the leaf are some cocoons and adults of a parasitic wasp which lays its eggs inside the caterpillars. After hatching, the wasp larvae feed on the caterpillar and eventually kill it, helping to control cabbage white numbers in a natural way. The adult wasp feeds on nectar.

Like many insects, these butterflies have declined in number recently. Currently, the large white and small white are not the focus of conservation efforts, but many other more specialist butterflies have declined severely or have gone extinct in Essex since 1900.
You can find out more about local butterflies in the Take Away the Walls exhibition at the Museum.

June’s Object of the Month was chosen by James Lumbard, Natural Sciences Officer.

Image credits

Pieris rapae caterpillar: James Lindsey at Ecology of Commanster [CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)]. Accessed 11/06/2019.

Pieris rapae chrysalis: Harald Süpfle [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]. Accessed 11/06/2019

The polecat comeback

Object of the Month – February 2019

The European polecat, Mustela putorius, was thought to be extinct in Essex since 1880 thanks to persecution from gamekeepers. The first modern sighting was in 1999 near Wendens Ambo and there are now numerous records from north-west Essex, though only from roadkill specimens.

A mounted polecat skin from 1842 and a polecat skull, also from the 1800s.

Continue reading →

Image credit: Female Southern Hawker – Tom Wiersma, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons. Accessed 25.5.2023.