LETTERS, NOTES AND QUERIES

Containing this month: 
Crow takes mole out for a meal by Colin Hawes
Beachcombing by Colin Jacobs
Correspondence from Australia by Patrick Armstrong
Wrens fostering nestlings of other species by Patrick Armstrong
Swimming hare by Nick Carter

In late May, Edward Baker and I were chatting about wildlife and conservation relating to his farm in Bentley, when he mentioned an interesting observation that he had made a week or so earlier whilst harrowing one of his fields. “I watched a mole tunnelling just beneath the field's surface, pushing up a ridge of soil as it went along”, he said, “thinking that at any moment the animal was doomed to fall victim to the machinery”. “Then,” he continued, “I was astounded to see a crow following the tunneller’s progress, and even more surprised when it stabbed its beak into the moving ridge, plucked out the unfortunate mole and flew off with it”.

Is this unusual behaviour for a crow?

Colin Hawes, Bentley

Beachcombing

How many coastal naturalists are like me, guilty of not visiting our shorelines looking for records? I for one rarely venture onto the high tide line but considering the amount of wildlife there I am beginning to feel I am missing out on some great finds. One morning in May I walked along the North Beach in Lowestoft to seek out any treasures and came away with a few records.

Seaweeds are prevalent along this stretch of coastline. One often comes across the common spiral or flat wrack Fucus spiralis. The little knobbly sacks at the end of the fronds are the fruiting bodies, and make a good addition to my photographic reference collection.

On the groynes bladder wrack F. vesiculosus is to be found hanging from the cross members. It is easily identified by the bags beside the mid rib. On the tide line I found a small male masked crab Corystes cassivelaunus - long dead but photogenic nevertheless. This is a sand burrowing crab, 2-2.5 cm wide, recognized by its oval shell and very long stout antennae. It has some sharp points to the edge of the shell and long salmon coloured claws. I have never seen this crab before but expect it is a common strandline find. The only molluscs I found were limpet shells Patella vulgata, which is a good sign as we have had no rough tides to displace any others.

I plan to walk beaches without groynes next time as I believe the tide line will be much better there. I hope that by the time I return to this subject I will have produced a fine list of records.

Colin A Jacobs

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Correspondence from Australia

Over thirty years of residence "down under" has not diminished the interest with which I read the publications of the Suffolk Naturalists; White Admiral 62, the Bird Report for 2004, and the Suffolk Natural History issue for 2005 arrived all together in a packet yesterday. Hence my delay in forwarding a brief response to a note in White Admiral (below). I might add that I have been visiting and bird-watching in Suffolk since I was four years old; I first visited Southwold and Walberswick in spring 1946, I think. I wrote my PhD on the ecology and land-use history of the Sandlings in the 1970s, and have managed to contribute, from afar, to Suffolk Natural History within the last couple of years. My last visit to the county was in the early summer of 2004, when I visited Hitcham churchyard to photograph the grave of that great Suffolk parson-naturalist, John Stevens Henslow.

Wrens fostering nestlings of other species

In White Admiral 62 (Autumn 2005) Colin Hawes records an instance of a wren feeding young great tits in a nest box. He asked whether “it is unusual for a wren to help like this?”

My father, Edward Armstrong, published what is still a definitive monograph on this species in 1955 (The Wren, Collins New Naturalist Series, London). He wrote as follows:

A wren fed two spotted flycatchers that had left the nest close to that of the wrens, and a male busied himself with nestling great tits while his mate was sitting, bringing food every five minutes while the pair of tits averaged a visit only once in nine minutes. … Another wren, after entering a hide and perching on the camera with which (a photographer) was photographing a young willow warbler, went away and returned with food for the chick. A pair of wrens fed in turn their own young and linnet chicks in a nest six yards away… (pages 233-234)

Full references are given in the original. A little later it is observed: So many instances of the feeding of chicks of one species by a bird of another species have been put on record that it cannot be regarded as surprising. The drive to feed young sometimes matures before it can be expressed in the normal way. In such circumstances a bird, catching sight of a gaping chick, may feed it to satisfy itself psychologically and the chick physiologically. It is well known that the threshold of release of many behaviour patterns may become so low that they are activated by an inadequate object, and are manifested as “overflow activities”… (page 234)

My father (1900-1978) was a frequent bird-watcher in Suffolk, although many of his studies of the wren were undertaken in neighbouring Cambridgeshire. He often said, “Anything a wren does is likely to be of interest.” He would be delighted that some folk still find it thus.

Patrick Armstrong
University of Western Australia,
Nedlands, Western Australia

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Swimming hare

On the 11 June 2006 at 21.10 just as I finished a bird census on Castle Marshes (SWT reserve near Barnby in northeast Suffolk) I flushed a young hare. It ran back- wards and forwards a few times before jumping into the dyke alongside one of the entrance tracks. It swam about 10m (disturbing a pair of moorhens) before climbing back onto the track and running away. I flushed it on the track twice more but, each time it ran further along the track and did not go back into the dyke. Whether it had meant to jump into the dyke or it was an accident is uncertain but it certainly appeared to swim quite easily and had no problems regaining the track.
I thought the above observation was of some interest.

Nick Carter

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