Headline news

A long term project on willow tits within the Forest of Dean by Robin Husbands and Nick Christian is now well underway thanks to support from local groups, including a financial grant from GNS. The study’s aim was to discover how many breeding pairs of willow tits were present in the Dean and to then use that information to monitor breeding success and identify the specific habitat requirements of this species.

So far the study has revealed a good deal of information, particularly with regards to nesting requirements, breeding behaviour and threats from predators. To help record the breeding status of willow tits within the Dean, Robin and Nick would be grateful for any information of known locations for this species (particularly whether they are present within the West Dean, Wye Valley and outlying woods to the north and east) and can be contacted on 01594 542185 (Robin) and 01989 567122 (Nick).

Full information on the project will be presented within the next issue of GNS News (March 2013) so look out for the details.

The proposed field meeting at Lower Lode at 11.00 a.m. on Sunday 6 January had had to be cancelled because the river banks are inaccessible as a result of flooding.  The level of the Severn has been very high since Christmas, and though the Severn has dropped a little, most of the riverside meadows are still deeply flooded.  Thus the main B4213 is still closed at Haw Bridge, and minor roads like the road from Tirley to Forthampton, and the road leading to Lower Lode are still under deep water. In the Coombe Hill area, the whole of the meadows are under water, and the course of the River Chelt is invisible, so deep is the water.

We will hope to re-arrange the meeting at a drier date!

Simon Lawton, Curator of the John Moore Museum in Tewkesbury, has asked me to let you know of this event.

Saturday 26 January 2013 – 7.30 pm

The John Moore Museum – Church Street, Tewkesbury

‘What makes British wildlife special?’ – a talk by British Naturalist Stephen Moss

For full details please see here: 20130126 John Moore Museum 26th January Event Poster (Word document).

Note that it is essential to buy your ticket in advance.

Dear Fellow GNS Members

GNS was established in 1948, as a Society to encourage an interest in natural history; in the last ten years, the emphasis has been on recording of natural history in Gloucestershire, and in encouraging greater interest and expertise in recording, particularly among young people.  Our Society has never aimed to own or manage nature reserves, which is why many GNS members were involved in the establishment of the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust in 1961, and have supported GWT over the last 50 years.

For over 30 years, Dr Gordon McGlone has been the Chief Executive Officer of GWT, and has led it from being a small local initiative, to its present status as a body with 27,000 members, a highly qualified staff of 40, an annual budget of two million pounds, a portfolio of over 60 reserves, and the major voice in the county for nature conservation.  He was awarded a well-merited OBE for his services to conservation.  As Chairman of GNS, I have always felt that it is essential for GNS to be in close contact with GWT, which is why I have been a member of the Board of Trustees of GWT for the last ten years.  From this privileged position, I have been able to see at close quarters Gordon’s immense achievements: among them (though there are many others!) I would highlight:

• greatly improved management of GWT reserves in the county through recruitment of committed and highly effective staff;
• promotion of conservation through the wider countryside, through development of “Living Landscape” projects in the Severn Vale, Forest of Dean, and Cotswold Rivers (with more in the pipeline);
• continuous increase in numbers of members, and hence a greater awareness of environmental issues among the public;
• a concern not only for nature reserves, but for people’s involvement with wildlife;
• much greater influence among public bodies in the county, through advocacy of environmental issues with local MPs, County and District Councils, and local business leaders; thus Gordon has been the first leader of the county’s new Local Nature Partnership;
• a constant concern for the effect of climate change on the county’s flora and fauna, and a concern to look forward at GWT’s tasks in the next 50 years;
• specifically in the last few months, active and balanced involvement in the issue of the proposed badger cull, and a decision to test badger vaccines on GWT reserves; moreover, Gordon has often been the spokesman on badgers for The Wildlife Trusts at national and European levels;
• at national level too, Gordon has been one of the leading lights in developing a national strategy among the other 46 county Wildlife Trusts.

Gordon has recently announced that he is standing down as CEO of the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, though – happily – he will continue in a personal capacity to be involved in local and national conservation issues.  At the Annual General Meeting of the GWT in mid-November, the Chief Executive of The Wildlife Trusts, Stephanie Hilborne, and Professor Adrian Phillips (former Director of the Countryside Commission) paid moving tributes to Gordon and his work.

I am sure that members of the Gloucestershire Naturalists’ Society would wish to join me in paying tribute to Gordon, and wishing him well in his future activities.  GNS has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with GWT, pledging our cooperation in providing data on the county’s wildlife.  Those of us who attended the GWT 50^th anniversary event at Stanway House in 2011 will recall that Gordon explicitly singled out GNS in his review of bodies that had cooperated with GWT in the previous half century.  I am sure members will wish GNS to continue along these lines, and to work with the new CEO (and also with the new Chairman of the GWT Board of Trustees) when they take up their positions.  I shall make it a priority to contact them both on your behalf at the first opportunity.

Yours sincerely

Mike Smart

Hon Chairman

P.S.  I haven’t written the usual piece on the weather in the last three months, as it’s been so complicated, that it needs a bit more reflection and data collection.  An account of the Gloucestershire monsoon in the second half of 2012 will therefore appear in the first GNS NEWS of 2013.  Let’s hope 2013 will be a bit drier!

Six members attended the Farmland in Autumn meeting. Because of heavy rain, the walk was shortened to a quick tour of the new orchard where there are nearly 90 varieties of Gloucestershire apple. Despite stories to the contrary in the press about the fruit harvest in Britain this year, there is a reasonable crop here, though it is ripening several weeks later than usual.

The catalogue of the GNS Library, which is held at Hartpury College, is now online at http://library.hartpury.ac.uk/liberty/opac/search.do

Include gns in the search. Only the first 200 results are returned for any search, so be specific, for example search for gns beetles.

Thanks from GNS to Emma Stevens, manager of the Learning Resource Centre at Hartpury.

Dear Members

The members of the GNS Executive Committee are largely active field naturalists, who like to be out and about recording natural history in the summer months; so there is a general agreement not to have summer Committee meetings – though you may be sure that we keep in touch by email and other methods.  As a result, there is little to report on formal business in the last few weeks, other than the news that the application to establish a Local Nature Partnership (LNP) for Gloucestershire has been formally approved by the government; this was not a foregone conclusion, as only a limited number of such partnerships were intended.  Much of the groundwork was carried out by staff of the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust, to whom great credit is due.  It is intended that the new LNP will be made up of a small number of influential organizations and members, who will play a major role in promoting conservation of nature: so we shall all be following the future activities of this body with interest.

It never rains but it pours!  After two dry winters, the heavens finally opened in late April, and it has barely stopped raining since.  The area where I spend most of my recording time is the Severn Vale, which has seen a very wet summer indeed: not a summer of dangerous flooding threatening life and property, as in 2007, when exceptional local rainfall in July was followed by an onrush of rain coming down the Severn from higher up the catchment, but a constant succession of very wet days, which provoked very high water levels and meant that much of the Vale has been subjected to a series of moderate floods.  Even now in early August, many Vale farmers have been unable to make hay in their lower-lying fields, and some of them despair of ever doing so, with standing water still remaining in many places.  One concern, expressed by the Floodplain Partnership, which keeps a close watch on the botany of the Vale and of similar sites in other part of the country, is that failure to cut hay will produce added nutrients in the meadows (on top of all the organic material and fertilisers carried by the floodwater), thus affecting and altering the vegetation; even so, some key plants are well adapted to the occasional summer wetting, notably my own particular favourite, Great Burnet, which seems to my very amateur botanical eye, to have prospered in many areas.

These wet conditions have of course affected the birdlife: it is clear (not only from general observations, but also from more intensive ringing studies), that small birds have had a poor time of it, with many species that nest in thick vegetation near the ground being washed out by repeated rises in water level.  Birds like Reed and Sedge Warblers, Willow Warblers and Chiffchaffs, even Reed Buntings which do not undertake such long migrations, have clearly produced very few young, partly because many of their nests were washed away, but also because the damp conditions must have reduced available insect food.  Species which nest directly on the ground, including many waders – notably Lapwings, Curlews and Redshanks, all of them in national decline – have registered almost zero productivity.   The onset of the season in late March and early April looked promising, with Lapwing chicks already hatched, and Curlew and Redshank preparing to breed by the middle of April; but many clutches of eggs and most of the chicks were overcome by rising floodwater in early May; when the first floods dropped in late May, several Lapwings and even a few Curlews laid replacement clutches (unusually for Curlew, it would seem, as they have a very long incubation and fledging period, and repeat clutches would continue very late into the summer).  Many of these replacement clutches came to grief however in the second period of flooding in July, though one or two Curlews (perhaps nesting on slightly higher ground) were successful, and young fledged Curlews were seen at relatively late dates in late July and early August.

On the other hand, some birds which favour deeper water provided a pleasant surprise by successfully bringing off young.  Every year, small numbers of Shelducks, familiar from the estuary but much less numerous in the Vale, occur in spring; they nest in holes, either rabbit holes or cavities under hollow trees or the boles of pollarded willows, but rarely seem to breed successfully.  This year several pairs succeeded in bringing off broods of ducklings, a rare event.  Similarly Tufted Ducks and Little Grebes, not to mention hordes of Coots, have done well and an unusually large number of family parties have been seen.  Perhaps the extensive floodwater meant that their nesting sites were less accessible, and hence less disturbed, so they were able to raise their families without intrusion from external factors?

Thus differing conditions produce variable outcomes.  Recording the subtle variations in the reaction of flora and fauna to weather conditions remains an ever rewarding and interesting occupation.  I’m glad to note that more and more members are noting their observations in the “Sightings” section of the GNS website www.glosnats.org .  All these observations from people with different interests and specialities contribute to the overall picture.  Please continue to post your sightings, even the smallest note is of interest.  Keep up the good work!

With best wishes

Mike Smart

Hon Chairman

Dear Fellow Members of GNS

In recent Letters from the Chair, I have referred to the lack of rainfall, and expressed the hope, the prayer even, that it might rain.  You may remember – it seems a long time ago now – that a drought was officially announced in early April 2012, but in the second half of the month my prayer was answered: it never rains but it pours (see the separate note on the weather in the last three months in the June issue of GNS NEWS).  Those wetlands in the Severn Vale that were suffering from lack of rain in the early months of the year have been flooded throughout late April and early May.  This has clearly caused havoc among birds that nest on or near the ground: we know that nesting Lapwings at Coombe Hill and Ashleworth (some of which had started nesting in mid-March and already had chicks by mid-April) have lost eggs and young, as have Redshank and Oystercatcher; it looks as though passerines like Sedge and Grasshopper Warblers have suffered too, while Whitethroat and Reed Bunting have had to build new nests and lay replacement clutches.  But the water levels were nowhere near as high as in the midsummer floods of 2007, and water levels have already dropped; undoubtedly, plants like Great Burnet (which seem to be adapted to sudden spring and summer floods) will come back strongly.

Since the previous issue of GNS NEWS, the Annual General Meeting has taken place, and the Minutes, published in draft in the June 2012 issue of GNS NEWS (with many thanks to our valiant minute taker, Andy Bluett) will give those of you unable to be present a flavour of the content of the meeting.  I would like to highlight issues raised there, notably our grants programme, our subscriptions, and our role in local conservation campaigns.

The speaker after the AGM was Dr Rachel Taylor, from the British Trust for Ornithology, who presented a brilliant overview of the results of bird-ringing and other BTO surveys; as one who has taken parts in some of these surveys, I found it fascinating to see just how my own observations made a contribution to the larger national picture.  One of the reasons we had invited her to speak was that the first of the GNS larger grants (mentioned in a previous Letter from the Chair) had aimed to kick-start a BTO programme that will enable observers to submit sightings of colour-ringed birds online; we understand that our initial grant has persuaded others to make contributions, so that the project will definitely be brought to fruition.  Since that first larger grant, two others have been approved by your Executive Committee, one relating to the purchase of a first rate butterfly site by Butterfly Conservation, the other to the production  of the first ever Red Data Book on bryophytes in Gloucestershire.

The butterfly site is Rough Banks, covering 18 hectares on the scarp of the Cotswolds four miles north-east of Stroud.  It is part of the Cotswolds Commons and Beechwoods National Nature Reserve/ Site of Special Scientific Interest, and is well known for holding four species of blue butterflies; it is a proposed site for re-introduction of Large Blue.  The Society’s policy on grants says that grants will normally be given for projects related to the Society’s principal aims: biological recording, environmental education and public awareness of natural history; thus we would not normally give grants for land purchase.  In this case however the Committee felt that the site was of very high significance in the Gloucestershire context, and that there was an opportunity to improve relations with Butterfly Conservation and thus improve recording of butterflies in the county; a contribution towards the purchase price of £200,000 was therefore approved.  We understand that the purchase has gone ahead and that contracts have been exchanged, but that Butterfly Conservation would still be grateful for any further contributions.  If anyone would like to contribute on a personal basis, they can do so via http://www.justgiving.com/roughbanks .

The other GNS grant approved is for the publication of a Red Data Book on Bryophytes (or mosses) of Gloucestershire by the county bryophyte recorder, Peter Martin, in close collaboration with Richard Lansdown.  The project will involve collation of existing records, collection of new records and some training in identification of mosses; the final document will be of major importance in conservation of sites for bryophytes in the county; it will be published as a special issue of “The Gloucestershire Naturalist”, and will therefore be distributed to all GNS members.  If anyone is interested in taking part in the training programmes, please look out for notices in GNS NEWS or on the GNS website.  Mention of the GNS website leads me to remind you (as I noted at the AGM), that we have an improved website, thanks to Richard Beal who has put in a great deal of work in developing it.  One section of the website which allows anyone to post their own recent sightings of natural history observations: it’s very easy to do and often gives fascinating updates on local natural history issues; I hope any member will feel free to enter observations, and to draw the attention of other members (as well as anyone out there in cyberspace) to all the interesting natural sights to be seen in our county: just contact Richard for a login name, and you can start posting now.

The AGM also discussed the possibility, to which I have referred in previous Letters, of an increase in members’ annual subscriptions to GNS.  The Executive Committee has felt that the subscription rate (which has not changed for about twenty years) should be increased to keep the Society on a healthy financial footing, and so a proposal on an increase will be put to a Special General Meeting, to be held in conjunction with next year’s AGM in March 2013.

As regards local conservation issues, the AGM concluded with a lively discussion of the Society’s role in local habitat and species conservation issues, particularly relevant in the light of the new National Planning Policy Framework, about which the current GNS NEWS carries an article.  The general conclusion, further discussed by the Executive Committee at its latest meeting, is that GNS on its own is unlikely to have the weight and authority to carry out campaigns on these issues but that, through its network of recorders and experienced naturalists, it could very well feed basic information into such campaigns – “provide the ammunition”, as one speaker commented.  We shall certainly aim to collaborate with other like-minded bodies, such perhaps as the planned Local Nature Partnership.  We look to members to keep us informed of any issues that merit such treatment.

With best wishes

Yours sincerely

Mike Smart

Hon. Chairman, GNS

Dear Fellow GNS Members

In the last Chairman’s letter of 2011, I referred to the dry conditions that had prevailed through most of that year, and hoped that winter might bring more rain.  Well, the results have been disappointing so far: some rain in the second half of December and early January, just enough to fill the ditches and scrapes in Severn Vale wetlands like Ashleworth Ham, Coombe Hill Meadows and Walmore Common, and to generate a little surface water in late December and again in early January.  But the cold snap in late January and early February was a cold and dry snap, so there is still a distinct water deficit everywhere, which does not bode well for the coming spring: even the national newspapers have noticed it!  So, I’ll repeat the prayer for rain from my last message.

Come rain or shine however, the GNS Annual General Meeting will take place on Friday 23 March at Shurdington, and I look forward to seeing many members there to review the Society’s past year and look forward to the coming year.  The speaker after the meeting will be from the British Trust for Ornithology, and will report on progress on the BTO’s project to develop a national website for reporting colour-ringed birds, for which GNS provided the initial funding.

Two other items which will no doubt figure on the agenda of the AGM (and at meetings of the Executive Committee and of the Scientific and Publications Sub-committee) are the Gloucestershire Biodiversity Action Plan (“BAP”) and the current state of biological recording at county and national levels.  GNS, under the leadership of its preceding Chairman, John McLellan, played a very active role in the preparation and finalizing of the county BAP, which derived from the national biodiversity plan drawn up in the wake of the Rio Earth Summit back in 1992.  Priorities were defined for all the major habitat types in the county, and targets set for restoration and conservation.  The document is by common consent a magnificent one and serves as a reference and blueprint for conservation action by government and non-government bodies: “Thank heavens it exists!” seems to be the general attitude.  On the other hand, no-one has given a decisive lead in achieving these goals and aims, and there has been inadequate financial support for proper implementation.  So, while the Government’s recent White Paper proclaims that the national BAP objectives are maintained, the county BAP has led to little action on the ground; it is now to be superseded by a new set of initials, LNP (Local Nature Partnerships).  We shall need to watch carefully how LNPs develop, and hope that they produce more real action on the ground.

As everyone recognises, the Internet has produced dramatic changes in every aspect of life; and recording of natural history is no exception.  GNS has long played a major role in the recording of natural history in the county, through its system of county recorders in many different taxa, who know the county intimately, and help check and validate the records, before they are fed into the data bases of the Gloucestershire Centre for Environmental Records Centre.  With the development of the internet and digital recording however, it has become much easier for national recording systems to call for direct submission of records to a central point, sometimes bypassing the essential process of local checking and validation.  Thus we find appeals for records of birds, butterflies, moths (and many other groups besides) to be submitted directly to national data bases; in itself this is an excellent thing, the more so as it is likely to catch the imagination of all those computer-savvy youngsters and potential young naturalists out there, whom we are so anxious to encourage and support.  But, on the other hand, there is a danger of inaccurate, unchecked records being submitted, which county recorders would notice and correct.  So there is a need for the new systems to engage with the old model, to make sure that there is no decrease in accuracy: a task for GNS in the coming years.

With best wishes

Mike Smart

Hon. Chairman

BTO Berks and Oxfordshire have organised a “Birdwatchers’ Forum” conference which will take place on Saturday March 3, 2012 at Benson Parish Hall, Sunnyside, Benson, Oxfordshire OX10.

The fifth of its kind, this exciting conference hosts the broadcaster, Stephen Moss, discusses issues in agri-environment schemes, unravels mysteries behind one of our most iconic African migrants and much more! This event represents a great way of meeting BTO Staff, members and volunteers and there will also be stalls and displays from local bird clubs, conservation and commercial organisations, and a free raffle – how can you afford to not to come?

Conference tickets are great value, at only £14.00 per person which includes ea, coffee and a buffet lunch, so book soon to avoid disappointment.

A link to our Events page on the BTO website where you can find the programme and booking form for the conference is www.bto.org/new-events/events.
Please have a look and we hope to see you there!
Ellen Walford
Membership Promotions Officer, BTO
Phone : 01842 750050