Congratulations to Nick Oliver!  Nick has won first prize in the  ‘Animal Behaviour: (Birds)’category of the BBC Wildlife Magazine & The Natural History Museum  Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2003  competition. His superb action photograph of   ‘Barn Owl, a vole’s eye view’ and technical details can be viewed on the Natural History Museum website at www.nhm.ac.uk/.

    Terrestrial Bugs Recorder appointed. Nigel Cuming has been appointed as the SNS Recorder of terrestrial Heteroptera. His address is 33 Holly Road, Stanway, Colchester, CO3 5QL. Welcome Nigel!

    Thank you Dave Thurlow and Lee Woods. Both have retired as SOG Bird Recorders.

    Welcome Dave Fairhurst and Keith Bennett. They are replacing Dave and Lee as SOG Bird Recorders.

    Suggestions of topics for Conference 2005 are invited. Please send them to any member of Council.

    New cases of Sudden Oak Death (SOD) have been confirmed in Cornwall. Nine trees at three sites in Cornwall have now been found to be infected with Phytophthora ramorum, DEFRA and the Forestry Commission reported in early February. The trees affected are four holm-oaks, a turkey oak, two beech trees, one sweet chestnut and a horse chestnut. In the case of the sweet chestnut and the holm-oak trees, the damage was only on leaves.

Recent cases, found on beech trees, a turkey oak and a horse chestnut, exhibit infected bark in the form of conspicuous  “bleeding cankers”. There are two other trees in Europe known to be infected - one in Sussex and one in the Netherlands. They are of two different American species of oak.

At one of the sites in Cornwall, a second new species of Phytophthora, which has not yet been identified, is causing disease on rhododendrons and a nearby beech tree. DEFRA and the Forestry Commission are assessing this new type of pathogen and whether the risk differs in any way from that posed by P. ramorum. In the majority of the 300 other outbreaks in the UK, which have mostly been confined to rhododendrons in nurseries and garden centres, eradication has been achieved by immediate destruction of affected plants. Imports from Dutch horticulturalists are thought to be responsible for the outbreaks in the UK and Defra is under pressure to ban imports from the Netherlands.

    Extract from biodiversity group’s annual stock take. “ The status of farmland Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) priority speciesand habitats is improving but plant diversity in fields and field margins continues to decline. It is too soon to say  whether  the  apparent  stabilisation  shown  by  the  latest  farmland  bird population figures reflects a long-term trend.”

(From  ‘Working with the grain of nature: The England Biodiversity Group’s annual stock take 2002-3’ to be found on www.defra.gov.uk)

    GM could worsen plight of farmland birds. Dr Roger Clarke of the Hawk and Owl Trust has been investigating the diet of Hen Harriers by analysing their pellets, collected from roosts in Wicken Fen. The pellets contain feathers and other undigested parts, such as bill parts and claws, of the songbirds on which the harrier feeds. They also contain the seed grains on which the prey had been feeding which  the harrier cannot digest. The analyses enable a correlation to be established between the prey and its food. They show that the most common foods of the songbirds are the common weeds of cultivated land, such as knotgrass, fat-hen, pale persicaria and black-grass. All of them are annual arable weeds of the modern farm that would be killed off by the herbicides proposed for use in association with GM crops.

    Naturalists aren’t always right!  DNA analysis of faecal samples believed to be pine marten‘scats’ has shown that 18% were actually from foxes and foxes, pine martens and otters are largely nocturnal, so they often monitored by faecal surveys.

    Autumn 2003 saw a major influx of Pallas’s Warblers at many seaside locations in Britain, including Suffolk. This tiny song bird normally winters in China, India and south-east Asia.

    Indications of a decline in numbers of adders, Vipera berus, are shown by a status assessment carried out in 2003 by Froglife  in partnership with English Nature. In contrast, the common frog, Rana temporaria, showed no sign of a status change despite concerns over mass mortality events.

    A second species of elm bark beetle has been reported in Kent, Middlesex and Essex. The pygmy elm bark beetle,Scolytus pygmaeus,is much smaller than the elm bark beetle, Scolytus multistriatus, and can infect much younger elm trees, which currently survive in hedges.

    First Brecks record of soldierfly.The fourth British record of the soldierfly Oxycera leonina, was made by members of the Dipterists Forum summer field meeting 2003 on alders in the brecks beside the lake at Lynford Arboretum, Thetford Forest. The snipe fly  Chrysopilus laetus, an even more remarkable record, was seen in the grounds of Hengrave Hall.

© 2004   Suffolk Naturalists' Society