Oct 24th Strumpshaw Fen

Blue Tit

It was a pretty strange start to the day this morning. With the trains not running today for some reason, I had to catch a bus to Brundal instead. Despite this change of transport, I still arrived at Strumpshaw just as dawn completed its thing. The sun was still rising low and brightly over the horizon. Flock after flock of redwing with a few fieldfare mingling in their numbers could be seen flying overhead throughout the reserve during these early couple of hours before my shift with their distinctive yet subtle calls alerting me to them each time they passed by.

Goldfinch

Mute Swan

A family of preening mute swans and two grazing Chinese water deer were the only highlights from Fen Hide. A female hen harrier was apparently about as reported to me by a pair of visitors. So I decided to move on in the hope of seeing it. However, there was no sign of it. I had a quick walk down to the sluices to check out the conditions of the river trail path. There was a fair amount of bird activity here. Not only were there more redwings, but there was also a large flock of long-tailed tits and a few bullfinches, not to mention a Cetti's warbler that shouted its loud song right into my ear!

Chinese Water Deer

Pheasants

Long-tailed Tit

Marsh Tit

Carrion Crow

Teal

Reception Hide was an extremely busy place to be this morning. With it being half term and Halloween next week, so many families were arriving to do the special Halloween themed trail set up in the woods to get their kids interacting with nature while having fun in the process. Many children were wearing costumes. From witches to vampires. There was even one boy dressed as Harry Potter, wand and all. Despite all the noisy children and the hide's door constantly slamming, there were some birds to see outside, not as many as usual, but still enough to interest the children and anyone else to that matter. As well as the usual suspects of teal, gadwall, shovelers, etc, I also found a little grebe, a fleeting glimpse of a bearded tit and some marsh harriers and buzzards.

Coot

Little Grebe

Cormorant

Gadwall

Shoveler

Marsh Harrier

Curiosities of Nature: Mind-controlling Parasites

Last week, I kicked off this new series about the weird and wonderful things in nature with the mind controlling parasitic cordyceps fungus, which takes over an insects brain in order to reproduce. But what if I told you that there are even weirder parasites out there that take mind control to another level. Its time to delve into the strange world of zombie snails and suicidal rodents. A world that's still puzzling scientists to this day

Green-banded Broodsac Flatworms pulsating from a snail

The green-banded broodsac (Leucochloridium paradoxum) is a flatworm with a bizarre lifecycle. Found across Europe and North America, it starts its life within bird droppings. Along comes a snail that eats the dropping, worm and all. This is exactly what the worm wants. At this point, the worm larvae travels around the snail's digestive system until it is ready for the next part of its development. Suddenly, the eye-stalk of the snail becomes a pulsating, swollen advertisement as the worm becomes what's known as a sporocyst or 'broodsac'. The worm has made the snail an eye catching target for predators, specifically birds. In order to get to its next stage of its complicated lifecycle, it needs to enter a bird's digestive system. To do that, not only does the worm pretend to be an irresistible maggot, it also controls the snail's mind and forces it to climb to higher ground to be more exposed. A bird then comes down and eats the snail's eye stalk. The snail is still alive and can grow its eye stalk back, as well as more sporocysts. Meanwhile, inside the bird, the worm enters adulthood and the whole cycle begins again.






Horsehair Worm coming out of a cricket

While the snail gets to continue to live its life despite having its eye stalks harvested every now and then, nothing can be said about the victim of the horsehair worm (Spinochordodes tellinii). Horsehair worms begin their lives in water as microscopic larvae, but they need grasshoppers or crickets to continue their development. When a grasshopper arrives for a drink, the young worms enter their host, where they develop into adults. While inside their host, the worm can grow four times longer than the actual length of the grasshopper's body! Once the worm reaches maturity, they need to return to water to complete their lifecycle. This is bad news for the grasshopper, as the worm somehow manipulates its brain and force it to commit suicide by jumping into the water and drowning. Poor grasshopper!

Toxoplasma gondii

Could there be anything more stranger than zombie snails and suicidal grasshoppers? Well, yes, yes there is. My final tale from the strange world of mind controlling parasites takes everything that I explained so far to another level. Toxoplasma gondii is a type of protozoa, which is a single celled organism, that thrives in the bodies of cats. It reproduces asexually, meaning it splits itself in two, but in order to spread itself to other cats it does something truly weird. After a cat does its business, the soil in which it defecates on becomes contaminated and this is where T. gondii gets to spread onto plants, which eventually gets eaten by rodents, the main target of this single celled parasite. Normally, as we all know, rodents, such as rats and mice, tend to fear cats and avoid them at all possible. However, if infected by T. gondii, they lose all fear of cats. In fact, they are manipulated to be an easy target to catch. Once the cat catches the infected mouse, T. gondii infects the cat and the cycle begins all over again.

That's not all. It is said that between one-third to half of all people alive today is infected with T. gondii. If you own a cat, the chances of having this parasite is pretty high. Studies suggest that it causes subtle changes in personality and it has also been linked with schizophrenia. But before you start fearing your pet cat and worrying what it has infected you with, the chances are, you will probably live a normal life. Though it does bring new light to the term 'crazy cat person'.

Oct 19th Holme Dunes

Freshwater pools at Holme

My Reception Hide colleague, Tricia, invited me to tag along for a trip to Holme Dunes with her and her friend. We were in search of yellow-browed warbler and any other scarce or rare bird we could find. Holme is home to the BTO's (British Trust for Ornithology) bird observatory based in Norfolk where birds are caught and ringed. All sorts of things turn up in their mist nets including some of the rarest species to turn up in the UK. The surrounding area is also an excellent place for such rarities as it has a mixture of habitats for them to hang out in. The yellow-browed warbler, for instance, has been seen here in the last few days. Could this be the time I finally see one at last?

Pied Wagtail

Wigeon and Teal in flight

First, we visited one of the hides overlooking some freshwater pools. Wigeon and teal dabbled and lazed in and around these pools in great number, while pink-footed geese flew over in several skeins. A kestrel and a buzzard watched from afar sitting atop of their separate perching spots. Redshanks, curlews, lapwing and little grebes completed the main cast of this section of the reserve. No sign of anything special here though. A spotted redshank would have been a nice addition to our day, but it wasn't to be. However, looking through the photos back at home, I didn't realise that I took a couple of shots of a female pintail!

Female Pintail!

The beach at Holme

Next up was a short walk through a small area of pine trees, where goldcrests teased us with their calls while remaining to hide up in the cover of dense needled branches. A sparrowhawk was seen much earlier this morning as it emerged from these trees as we were getting our things from Tricia's car during our preparation for our walk. Once through this small pine tree copse, we made our way onto the beach for a spot of sea watching. Brent geese flew low over the waves, streaming left or right, but never towards us. Some were even bobbing up and down on these waves for a rest. Along the tideline, oystercatchers and sanderlings were seeking for any morsel washed up onto the shore to eat, while far out at sea, gannets, cormorants, squadrons of gulls and many smaller shapes that could be made out as anything from waders to tiny seabirds too distant for me to ID flew back and forth in the far horizon.

Brent Geese on the sea!

Black-headed gulls

Oystercatcher

Sanderling

Holme BTO Bird Observatory

After a quick look in the BTO observatory, where recordings of bird calls played to lure them into the mist nets confused me for a moment as I was unsure if I was hearing the real deal or not. Apparently the nets were pretty successful earlier, with the highlight being a flock of bearded tits. I could hear some pinging nearby out in the reedy edges of the pools. Moving on, were followed the fence of the observatory until we reached a section of dunes and saltmarsh. Linnets and meadow pipits were pretty common here. Good, but not exactly rare.

Common Darter

Linnets

Suddenly, I caught sight of a really small bird flying past a section of fence behind me before circling low around us just metres from our feet. It then landed on the path to where we came from. Tricia managed to get a look at the mysterious bird before it vanished further up the path, where it was much more overgrown with vegetation. She told us that it had two vertical wing bars and that it was greenish yellow, but she was unable to make note of the bird's head. If there was a pale white supercilium (a stripe above the eye), this could have been our yellow-browed warbler. We followed in the direction of this intriguing bird in the hope that it would pop back out for us to see, but it had completely vanished. So close! Was it or wasn't it? We will never know!

Starlings

Finally, we got back into the car and drove down to a car park next to a golf course. Shorelarks had been seen by the dunes on the opposite side of this golf course and we were hoping that they would make up for our misfortune of scarce migrant hunting so far. Unfortunately, we only saw skylarks, not the shorelarks that we so desired. On the plus side, we did experience an extremely close encounter with hundreds of starlings forming mini murmurations as we spooked them up into the air a few times. A roar of whirring wings thundered by our heads. It was amazing! It was most definitely the main of our trip to Holme today.