Blackbird Fishing
I was looking
towards my small garden pond today and saw a male blackbird approaching. I
thought he was coming for a drink or a bath, as often before, but this time he
flipped something out of the water and began to feed with much thrashing of the
object. Binoculars revealed it to be a large newt. After about ten minutes it
was all eaten. I thought he would surely be full up but he returned to the pond
and flipped out a smaller newt and ate it in the same way. Then he flew off. I
went to the place for a good look round but apart from bird droppings there was
no evidence. The bird had eaten everything: skin, bones and toes!
Are blackbirds known to fish in this way?
Sheila Jennings, Bury St Edmunds
Orwell Country Park
Fellow members of Suffolk Naturalists’ Society will doubtless wish to know about a recent proposal to build a new road from the Eastern end of the Orwell Bridge towards Ipswich docks. The proposal, known as the East Bank Link Road, will cut through the Orwell Country Park, damaging a local nature reserve and two county wildlife sites. This area is a mosaic of habitats including our vanishing heath, a beautiful piece of alder carr, and Ipswich’s only ancient woodland.
It is important that local naturalists are made aware of this proposal, so that they may add their voice to the growing chorus of protest. There is a good chance of averting this very serious threat to Suffolk wildlife – but the sooner we act the better. The Save Orwell Park campaign has just been launched, supported by numerous organisations including Suffolk Wildlife Trust and Ipswich Wildlife Group.
Please help by signing the petition, or writing to your local councillors.
More information may be obtained from Geoff Sinclair on 01473 327720, or from www.irene.org.uk/save
Anna Cordon
(Ed – a similar letter from Geoff Sinclair was discussed by Council in May. The consensus was that the SNS constitution does not allow for lobbying activities. However, there was unanimous sympathy with the campaign. It was suggested that the SNS could help by providing records of wildlife in the park and would be pleased to hold field meetings there to gather more data that could be used to support opposition to the proposal.)
Strange diet for a pheasant
Earlier this year, Mr and Mrs Hyde of Woolverstone reported the strange behaviour of a pheasant seen in their garden. Pheasants usually feed on shoots, seeds and berries, but this bird had taken and threequarters swallowed an adult male chaffinch.
Whether the pheasant was scavenging or the chaffinch was taken alive is unknown, as the initial part of the ‘feeding’ was not seen. Is this behaviour uncommon, or do pheasants make a habit of taking small birds?
Colin Hawes
Oil beetle
I am enclosing
two slides of the oil beetle, Meloe proscarabaeus, which has recently been
discovered at Thorpeness. The RSPB put up two temporary notices asking the
public not to step on these rare beetles, as this is the only site in East
Anglia where they are found.
The slides are of a female, which is larger than the male. Martin Sanford tells me an article is to appear in a future SNS Transactions, so perhaps you could include the photos in White Admiral as a taste of things to come!
Neil Mahler
Why do they do it?
A cluster of
baby spiders was first noticed on a Rosa rugosa hedge early on 11 May (photo.
p.?), enmeshed in a fine web that had been spun between leaves. They were
tightly packed together, each animal drawing its legs up over its thorax and
head (photo. p.?). When viewed from the side, several ‘layers’ could be seen.
They remained for two days, occasionally dispersing to the edges of the web and
then regrouping. On 13 May there were high winds and rain (12 mm on 13/14 May)
and the cluster vanished, presumably spinning a new web somewhere out of sight,
and then reappeared in a new position nearby on 14 May. Finally on 16 May the
cluster became more dispersed with a small satellite cluster; the number of
spiders declined throughout the day. At 9am on 17 May none could be seen. 
The
baby spiders were too small to be examined for morphological features but their
behaviour and colour identified them as garden spiders, Aranea diadema (Savory,
1945, p131 and plate73) which after hatching and leaving the cocoon stay
together until the first moult.
Perhaps araneologists know what benefits this behaviour confers on these spiders? In general spiders have a bad reputation for eating their mates, each other and in some species the progeny consume their mother. Mutual protection does not seem to explain their behaviour for the cluster formed in places exposed to both weather and predators. Perhaps like bees in a swarm a cluster of spiders conserves heat which speeds maturation to the first moult?
Savory, T. H., 1945. The spiders and allied orders of the British Isles, Warne, London.
E. J. M. Kirby Saxmundham
