issue 34 september 2012 alderney wildlife · issue 34 september 2012 £2.00 protecting alderney’s...

Alderney Wildlife Issue 34

September 2012

Protecting Alderney’s Wildlife for the Future£2.00

President Charles Michel

Directors

Brian Bonnard Ken Baker David Hart

David Storer Robin Whicker

Staff

Manager Roland Gauvain Hon. Secretary Lindsay Pyne Trust Ecologist James Allison

Assistant Ecologist Frances YatesRamsar Off icerAurelie Bohan

Reserves Off icer Adam Offler

Conservation Off icer Sarah Lewington

Marine Off icer Juan Salado

Consultant Ecologist Melanie Broadhurst

Editors David Wedd

Robin Whicker Front Cover Image

Fort Albert with bird’s-foot trefoil & pyramidal orchids

Librarian Elizabeth Gauvain

Shop Manager Caroline Gauvain

Graphic Design Amy-Louise Richards

Photographers James Allison, Bill Black,

Sarah Lewington, Lindsay Pyne, Henry Rowe, Juan Salado, David Wedd, Sarah Wedd,

Robin Whicker

3. News & Views 4. Wildlife Week 5. British Wildlife Trusts Come to Alderney6. Birds 8. Rock Pooling + Wildlife Quiz10. Dircon 12. Jubilee Garden Update 14. Watch16. Insects18. Alderney Wildlife Trust Interview 19. Wildlife Quiz Answers20. Calendar

Protecting Alderney’s Wildlife for the future 3Design & Production Amy-Louise Richards 07793386457 [email protected]

Alderney Wildlife Trust, 51 Victoria Street, St Anne, Alderney, GY9 3TA Tel 01481 822935 Email [email protected] Web www.alderneywildlife.org

Contents

Alderney Angling, Mark Harding, 32 Victoria Street, St Anne, Alderney GY9 3TAAlderney Gravel Co Ltd TA Blanchards, PO Box 51, Newtown Road, Alderney GY9 3BHAlderney Printers Ltd, Mr Norman Butel & Mr Peter Annereau, The Val, Alderney GY9 3ULAlderney Shipping Limited, Bruno Kay-Mouat, The Quay, Alderney GY9 3XXAnthony Le Blanc & Partners Ltd, Les Houx Trois, Valongis, Alderney GY9 3YWBelle Vue Hotel, PO Box 100, The Butes, St Anne, Alderney GY9 3UNBoardmans Pharmacy & Perfumery, Mr & Mrs Paul Durston, 38 Victoria Street, Alderney GY9 3TA Braye Beach Hotel, Richard Proctor, Braye Street, Alderney GY9 3XTBusiness Management & Consultants Ltd, Mr Charlie Worsley, Trevieres, Rue de l’Aitte, St Peters, Guernsey GY7 9BPContinental Metals Ltd, Wim Bruekers, c/o Century House, Victoria Street, St Anne, Alderney GY9 3UTFarm Court, Mrs M Sleeman, St Anne, Alderney GY9 3UYHamon Architects, Mr D J Hamon, 7 Martyn House, QEII Street, Alderney GY9 3TBHome & Garden Services, Mr & Mrs Francis Short, 9 Clos Carre, St Anne, Alderney GY9 3UHIsland Networks Ltd, Nigel Roberts, 4 & 5 St Anne’s Walk, Alderney GY9 3JZ, CHANNEL ISLANDSKiln Farm, Mike & Clare Cox, Kiln Farm, Longis Road, Alderney GY9 3YBL’Haras Guest House, Mrs N Jansen, L’Haras, Newtown Road, Alderney GY9 3XPLochin Marine International Ltd, Simon Thomas, Crest Cottage, Firle Road, Seaford, BN2 52JA, UNITED KINGDOMPhoenix Contract Hire, Jan & Sid Boughton-Leigh, Noir Houmet, Platte Saline, Alderney GY9 3YARonez Limited, Peter de Garis, Les Vardes Quarry, St Sampson’s, Guernsey GY2 4TFRugby Property (Guernsey) Ltd, David Storer, Brayemar, Braye Road, Alderney GY9 3XLSt Anne’s Guest House, Miss Ingrid Murdoch, 10 Le Huret, Alderney GY9 3TRThe American School in London, Mr Paul Richards and Ms Megan McGilchrist, 1 Waverley Place, London, NW8 0NP, UNITED KINGDOMThe Georgian House, Holly Fisher, Victoria Street, Alderney GY9 3UF9th Jersey (St Luke’s) Scout Group, Mr Ian Coupland, St Saviour, Jersey Auto-Motion, Mike Dean, Braye Harbour, Alderney GY9 3XX

AWT BUSINESS MEMBERS

Protecting Alderney’s Wildlife for the future 3

The Trust’s 10th anniversary celebrations were hectic but thoroughly enjoyable. Wildlife Week was considered to be one of the best ever and soon afterwards the visit to Alderney of almost all the British Wildlife Trust directors for their 100th annual conference caused initial trepidation (could AWT cope?) but in fact proved a triumph. It was pleasing to hear a Dircon visitor, responsible for wildlife in a big chunk of central England, remark “You may be the newest and smallest Trust, but I wish we had your dynamism” – and the mass of congratulatory thank you letters and cards now on the wall of the AWT office stress yet again that Roland’s decision to found the 47th Wildlife Trust was a brilliant one.

Plenty more has happened during the past three months. Juan has taken rock-pooling to a new level, mainly for the younger islanders and visitors, discovering sea creatures that are usually viewed only on TV or in magazines. Numerous bat walks have raised awareness of these secretive animals, leading (we hope) to a ‘bat map’ of the island. The early part of the summer was disappointingly wet – but even this had some advantages, as Alderney’s flowers can seldom have bloomed with such profusion and colour, as is shown on our front cover and in illustrations throughout this magazine. Alderney has been confirmed in the Moths Count 2012 newsletter as the top locality for moths in the British Isles, thanks to our remarkably varied habitats, our nearness to the Continent and the work of a dedicated team of light-trappers. The Jubilee Garden, which filled the centre-spread in our last number, has bloomed unbelievably and has already turned up an astonishing flora and fauna. And with Rod Paris’s organisation and support from the running club, the first ever Alder-ney Stones race proved a big fund-raising success. Andy Goldsworthy cannot have envisaged this event when he set up his art work, but he would surely approve – and the race provided over £800 for the Trust.

George McGavin was here for the whole of Wildlife Week and, as ever, involved himself nonstop in many activities, including formally opening the Jubilee Garden. Before joining us in Alderney, he had been in South America filming his new TV series, The Dark, about the nocturnal life of seldom-viewed animals. When we emailed after the first programme to say how much we had enjoyed it, we received a reply within 20 minutes – from beside the Mississippi, where George was filming the explosive hatching of millions of mayflies! DW

Protecting Alderney’s Wildlife for the future 3Design & Production Amy-Louise Richards 07793386457 [email protected] Protecting Alderney’s Wildlife for the future 3

News & Views

4 www.alderneywildlife.org Protecting Alderney’s Wildlife for the future 5

A very happy 10th Birthday, Alderney Wildlife Trust! And despite the weather it would seem it was.Running over the Jubilee bank holiday and beyond, the 10th anniversary Wildlife Week, with 27 events, special guests in-cluding the BBC One Show’s Dr. George McGavin (Patron of the AWT) and Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, Stephanie Hilborne, was a grand affair.

Though the weather put paid to several wildlife boat tours on the Trust’s new survey vessel Sula of Braye, there were enough dry spells to tempt large groups to take part in everything from forage food master classes to rockpooling and a spe-cial anniversary lecture by George (which was sold out). During the course of the week a Big-10-Birthday Bash, held at the Island Hall with a very special wild and local foods meal, much of which was collected by the guests themselves and cooked up by the Georgian House Hotel, proved one of the highlights, with the party running on well into the night. George raised a huge sum by auctioning off his own services as a guide to the Oxford University Natural History Museum, his place of work for over 20 years. Local artist Steve also created a bidding frenzy with his puffin image on driftwood. All in all, the impromptu auction more than doubled the profits for the night.

To cap it all there were two ‘grand’ openings hosted as part of the week. The Trust’s junior membership, Watch, formally unveiled the St. Anne’s School Jubilee Wildlife Garden with George uncovering the plaque and opening this unique space worked on by dozens of local children to make it a really wild habitat. And to conclude the week the Trust re-opened its very first facility, the Wildlife Bunker. This site was originally opened as part of Alderney Week 2002, the first time nature and military history had been merged in the Channel Islands. The renovations recently undertaken by staff and volunteers of the Trust have significantly increased the bunker’s usability, adding new displays, re-vamping the lighting and solar power systems, replacing the floor and generally making it a more welcoming space. Stephanie Hilborne conducted the ceremony with around 40 people squeezed into the bunker’s main room and in doing so concluded one of the most successful & jam-packed wildlife events ever held in the Channel Islands. RG

WILDLIFE WEEK 2012


On June 11th the UK invaded Alderney! It was perhaps the friendliest invasion in the island’s history but walking down the street one evening I couldn’t help but overhear from a local lad the comment, ‘Can you believe it, the anoraks have landed’. For an island of our size to have its population increased by 5% is always a little bit surprising! When those 5% are the CEO’s for the British Wildlife Trusts, coming from areas as diverse as Scotland and Gwent, together with staff from the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT), it was a bit of a shock to the system. Yet Alderney seems to have thrived on the visit whilst those attending were stunned by the island’s natural beauty (helped by the unseasonably good weather of course). So what was this all about? Well once every year the 47 Wildlife Trusts that make up the partnership meet to discuss nation-al strategy and planning. 2012 was not only the 100th anniversary of the RSWT but also the youngest Trust, Alderney’s, 10th birthday. So it was decided to hold the conference in what is one of only two non-UK Trusts (the Isle of Man being the other). The delegates arrived by various means, from trusty Aurigny Trislander to a bright yellow catamaran called Bumblebee, and even on a member’s RIB. Once arrived the weather cleared and they were given the very best of what Alderney could offer. Not only was the wildlife stunning, the community, which might at times be bemused by 30 pairs of binoculars, rolled out the red carpet and gave their all. Delegates stayed in accommodation as diverse as self catering properties courtesy of Alderney Accommodation and the spare bedrooms of hosting families. Their breakfasts, and in fact the majority of food they ate during their visit, was local produce. Perhaps one of the most notable events of their stay was a stupendous forage foods meal supplied by the Georgian House Hotel, prepared with the help of the Trust’s staff. The next evening thanks go to Bruno and Jeanette and the Braye Chippy, who came together to make it possible to serve up a very special local pollock and chips supper as a picnic on the roof of Fort Raz, one of the island’s most stunning fortifications, overlooking the flooding waters of the Alderney Race. Whilst the island provided a stunning backdrop, the conference itself dealt with the very serious business of an organisation with over 800,000 members and the largest reserves network in the British Isles. Perhaps the island venue itself helped to focus discussion on the need to respond to make sure the big picture comes across at a local level. How do you put across the desperate need to interconnect wildlife havens on a national scale to someone trying to protect an island, or a single nature reserve. Yet many of those who were visiting Alderney for the first time went out of their way to comment on how the Trust and island fit together with a wildlife trust dependant on the community and vice versa. We in the Channel Islands live so much more closely with our environment than in many other places.Each Island knows when we do it poorly, but we seldom recognise when we succeed and here on Alderney we are doing a lot better than we often give ourselves credit for. The only way a conference of this scale and importance could work on an island of 2000 people is either through investing vast amounts of money or from a complete community effort. I am proud to say it was the latter in Alderney’s case and our thanks go out to all those involved, from Aurigny to our anorak merchant! RG

WILDLIFE WEEK 2012 The British Wildlife Trusts Come to Alderney

BIRDSBURHOU UPDATEJuly has been a very busy month for me with numerous visits to Burhou to undertake a wide variety of objectives. Thankfully the weather has vastly improved since writing my last update so getting to and from Burhou hasn’t been the gauntlet that I had become accustomed to!The first of the month saw Sacha Vincent, Channel TV cameraman Paul Marshall and me heading over to Burhou to complete what had been months of hard work, research and preparation – the setting up of the new PuffinCam and PetrelCam system.Completely powered by solar panels, we’re now using cutting-edge technology to beam back live video of not only the puffins but also the highly secretive storm petrels as they go about their nocturnal endeavours. We’ve already had exciting footage of puffins and petrels sharing burrows – something we had no idea was going on under our feet! If you haven’t already done so, check out the video by following the link on the Trust website. On 13th July, Guernsey ringers Paul Veron and Chris Mourant hopped over to con-tinue the long-term study of Bailiwick gulls – this time we were ringing the chicks.

As with the adults, the chicks are fitted with a standard metal ring as well as a colour ring – this helps track the movements of each gull so that we can better understand their migration routes as well as give us information about their survival rates.Last year, Burhou’s gulls had a disastrous breeding season and Paul was only able to find and ring 21 chicks. This year, however, we managed to find and ring approximately 200 chicks, all lesser black-backed gulls. We probably missed many more as they proved difficult to locate amongst the bracken and boulders. Both Paul and Chris commented on the fantastic condition of the gulls – a good indication of healthy fish stocks in the surrounding waters.Shags, too, have had a fairly successful year with many fledged shags learning to fish around Burhou. There were still some to be found in nests – a few just a day or two away from having their first swim. Once fledged, the shags will remain depend-ent upon their parents for several weeks until they master the art of fishing and have to fend for themselves.For those who haven’t been keeping an eye on PuffinCam (amazingly addictive!) over the past couple of weeks, it is fairly evident that we are coming to the end of the season. The pufflings will have left their burrows during the night and will be far out to sea by now. It is a myth that puffins desert their chicks before they fledge (so that hunger entices them from the bur-row). In fact, puffins continue to bring fish to the puffling right up until it decides to leave. On Saturday 14th I found a couple of sand eels just inside the entrance to an active burrow - finding dropped fish at the burrow is a sure sign that the puffling has departed. In the coming days I will carry out the end of season burrow count to determine how many pairs of puffins attempted to breed on Burhou this year.Other sightings of note included two fledged peregrines perched on top of the Great Nannel as well as a flock of 10 whimbrel - presumably failed breeders making their way south to their wintering grounds. JA


A FISHING LESSON FOR YOUNG SHAGS?


One afternoon in late July, we clambered to a lower point on the cliff above Hannaine Bay to check whether the two or three puffins that I had watched regularly over the past three months were still around. I didn’t see them on that afternoon but what immediately caught my eye was a group of six shags in a relatively small area of calm sea (roughly 10 by 15 metres) close to the rocks below me. Twelve more shags were huddled together on the rock nearest to this small flotilla. Most of the shags were immature and those on the water dived and resurfaced continually, being underwater for only short periods. After a few minutes I noticed that one of the immature shags left the sea and joined the group on the rock while at roughly the same time, one of those on the rock flew over to join the flotilla. This behaviour of exchanging places, so keeping the numbers present in each of the groups the same, continued over the next half hour when we had to leave. Had the shags been people, we would have guessed that this was either a supervised game or a lesson in swimming and surface diving for young people! Swimming is instinctive in young seabirds and diving is most probably instinctive too. But fishing? Young seabirds prob-ably chase fish instinctively but it seems possible that a little advice from a parent on actually catching fish could well improve the young shag’s chances of survival. It is well known that birds of prey teach their young to hunt until they can fend for themselves but what about seabirds? There seems to be considerable diversity even between closely related species. Guillemots are known to care for their young for up to three weeks after they have enticed them into the sea but their close relatives, the razorbills, leave their young to fend for themselves as soon as they leave the rocky ledge where they were borne. Similarly as soon as young puffins leave their burrows and young gannets leave their nests, they have to fend for themselves. Previously my mental picture of parental instruction in the bird world was based on watching peregrines with a single offspring over the Southern Cliffs. If the group of immature shags that I saw in Hannaine Bay in July were indeed pupils, there were many of them and at least two “teachers”. I consulted our ecologist, James Allison, and he told me that fledged shags are known to be partially dependent on their parents for two to ten weeks after they have fledged. He had also seen large floats of shags around Burhou and believes that they might do this “believing” there is safety in numbers from predatory great black backed gulls. He guessed that the shags I had seen in Hannaine Bay were probably a group of adults with their partially dependent young. This seems a most likely explanation but some questions remain in my mind. Why were the numbers on the sea and on the land kept constant? Were the mature birds on the sea the parents of the immature birds that were swimming and diving? Did a parent leave the sea and join the group on the rocks after his or her offspring had retired for a rest and conversely did a parent follow its offspring into the sea? Or is there really co-operation between families of shags after their chicks have fledged but are still dependent on the parents? Perhaps someone can tell me the answers! CM


Rock Pooling

with Juan


WILDLIFE QUIZ NO 9 Twenty Questions - Do you know the answers?!

Picture A

A B

C

Picture B

Picture C

1. A pride of lions, a ....... of pheasants.2. Can fish sneeze?3. The weird sisters in ‘Macbeth’ propose to add a ‘blindworm’s sting’ to their horrid potion; why can’t they?4. In which direction does an anticyclone rotate?5. Picture A: what is this and where might you find it?6. Alderney’s bright green day-flying moth that lays bright yellow eggs: what is it?7. What was remarkable about Campanula poscharskyana in 2011?8. When can you eat a parasol?9. Bishop’s Mitre is a) a flower b) an insect c) a fungus?10. Picture B: what creature is this? 11. Why is the crack willow (Salix fragilis) so called?12. What kind of tree grows closest to the front door of the Trust’s office in Victoria Street? Go on, have a look! If you are unlucky enough not to live in Alderney, you may be forgiven for not knowing the answer to this question.13. A codling is a) a fish b) a moth c) a fruit?14. What bird is sometimes called a screech owl?15. Picture C: this creature has an apt name; what is it?16. Which is the smallest British seabird (it nests on Burhou)? 17. What are Porphyra and ulva?18. What insect is shown on the new Alderney 39p stamp?19. Can you think of three ways to distinguish the native bluebell from its Spanish cousin?20. Why must Papilio machaon be particularly careful to avoid Hirundo rustica rustica in this final question?

KEYA - Ormer

B - Sea SlugsC - Bearded Rockling

DIRCON VISIT


JUBILEE GARDEN UPDATE5th June 2012 was a wet day, but large crowds came to see Dr George McGavin formally open the Jubilee Garden. These pages show how the site has since developed into a fine wildlife area.

14 www.alderneywildlife.org

Watch is always busy. Its members are involved in numerous AWT activities, but also many of their own devising. Since our last number rock pooling has provoked plenty of enthusiasm and, especially when Juan has been free to take charge, a great deal has been learnt about the creatures to be found around our island. The Jubilee Garden, which played such an important part in the group’s activities earlier in the year, has been a big success and after George McGavin had unveiled the plaque to open the garden officially, it was good that Watch members were able to invite him and Lois to a meal to say thank you for their support. Since then, the garden has blossomed extraordinarily and now largely looks after itself, although a strimmer is increasingly needed to stop the paths disappearing. Recently bat walks have been the main activity (below) and Watch has been able to introduce many visitors to the mysteries of bat detectors. Light-trap catches for the Garden Moth Scheme are still recorded regularly and are mounting rapidly, now that our summer seems to have arrived at last. DW

WATCH

Protecting Alderney’s Wildlife for the future 15

William Ambridge Luff was a Channel Islands man, a Victorian naturalist so versatile that he had a fungus, a sand wasp, a mealy bug and a moth genus named after him in his lifetime. The two Luffia moth species that bear his name are strange insects, both of which are common in Alderney. Luffia ferchaultella is wingless, parthenogenetic (only females ex-ist) and spends its whole life inside a case made of the lichen on which the larva feeds, usually on tree trunks. L lapidella, which is even more abundant here, is found, as its name suggests, on rocks and especially Victorian walls all over the island. It does have a winged male form, but this is rare – and does not seem to be ‘needed’!

We wondered how such a tiny creature (7 mm at most) could move about Alderney and even cross roadways. Both spe-cies are numerous on the Continent and presumably were in the Channel Islands way back, before the isles were cut off by water. Watch mapped the distribution throughout Alderney and found that the weird moths were virtually everywhere, including many on walls in St Anne town and with big colonies on Fort Raz and Fort Tourgis. So how did they get there? The project devised by Watch was very simple. We used fibre-tip pens to mark where a Luffia case was positioned and another dot on the lichen case itself. The larva moves mostly at night, so it was easy to come back next morning and see where it had got to. We envisaged three or four centimetres as the maximum journey and were surprised to find that many had travelled over a metre. Shortly afterwards we discovered that some could cover more than three metres in a night, and the maximum was over five. This was far enough to cross streets and roadways, especially with Alderney’s light traffic. We also learnt that they could travel down the walls, as well as up, simply by descending on a silken thread and climbing up again from the bottom. Throughout the Watch project, not a single Luffia was harmed and there was no dissection of specimens to discover the percentage numbers of the two species, which look identical. It was not a scientific project but the investigation did reach some positive (and, we believe, new) conclusions - and it was fun to do! DW

THE LUFFIA PROJECT

A B

C

KEYA - Larva on the move

B - Starting point & marked larva

C - Marking


Butterfly Conservation’s Moths Count newsletter for 2012 lists Alderney as the top moth locality in the British Isles. This is based on the number of macro-moth species noted from every 10km square by the National Moth Recording Scheme, so it is as authentic as possible! Our island does have advantages: few other localities have our variety of habitats in such a small area, and none is nearer to the Continent, hence the number of migrant species that appear here. Nonetheless, it is gratifying to be recognised, and the AWT observers and the team who operate moth-traps around the island through-out the year deserve congratulation for their endeavours.

This top-ranking seemed to count for little during the miserable weather early in the summer, when there were few insects about, although flowers were blooming spectacularly. Occasional sunny spells reversed the trend, however, and the night of 24th June brought rare moths, Dewick’s plusia, small ranunculus and splendid brocade to the light traps. On 27th July there were long-tailed blue butterflies seen at the scrambling course and also in the new Jubilee Garden and three more have been seen since. Up to a dozen large tortoiseshells have also been recorded. Sunny weather in August has shown that the insects have not disappeared, but have delayed their appearance. Clouded yellows have started to arrive. Warm winds from the Continent have brought to the moth traps such exotic species as rosy underwing, tree-lichen beauty and cosmopolitan, and we have recorded species familiar on the UK mainland but uncommon here, like September thorn and toadflax pug (each only the second record from Alderney). There has also been a huge invasion of the rare micro-moth Cydia amplana (83 in one night must be a record?) It has been a good year for dragonflies, too, and a brilliant one for grasshoppers and crickets – which can be tracked by using bat detectors!

The Jubilee Garden is becoming an insect paradise. We reported the appearance there of the rare shieldbug Grapho-soma lineatum in our last number. Of many recent discoveries the most spectacular has been the emergence of a colony of the lunar hornet moth from a single big willow tree. We found seven examples of this remarkable mimic, and there must have been many we did not see.

The series of Tiger Moth stamps, which came out in July, seems to be genuinely popular. The next set will be Beetles, which we will show in our next issue. Even if you do not like these insects, I feel sure you will admire the Alderney land-scapes in which Petula Stone has set them! DW

INSeCTS

Lunar Hornet MothSeptember Thorn


Toadflax Pug

Cydia amplana Rosy Underwing

In April 2011 Garth Foster, an expert on Water Beetles, led a team investigating Alderney’s ponds and reservoirs. They have just produced a paper listing their discoveries: 21 species new to Alderney, 4 of these new to the Channel Islands and one not known from Great Britain or Ireland.

We shall have a fuller account in the next number of this magazine.

STOP PRESS

The Alderney Wildlife Trust InterviewNo 21: Stephanie Hilborne, C.E.O of the Royal Society of

Wildlife Trusts, talks to Robin WhickerThe other night, at the Trust’s 10th Birthday din-ner, we were talking about early memories; what is your earliest wildlife memory?

I remember newts hiding under old roof tiles in a wrecked corner of the garden. Toads, too. My elder brothers encouraged me to be interested in wildlife; I saw things and they told me about them. We lived near Cobham in

Surrey, where there was a lot of local development going on, including the building of the M25; I watched David Attenborough on television and when I was about 16 I read a book on the Greenhouse Effect. All that fired me up to change the world!

The passion was clearly there but how did you come to be Chief Executive of the Trusts?

No one at home knew what I should do to be a con-servationist, so I read Biology at Bristol. Then a wise lecturer suggested I should do an M.Sc. at U.C.L., the first post-graduate course specifically on conservation. I joined the London Wildlife Trust and worked as a volunteer helping to produce a report on the effect of the M25 called Ever Increasing Circles. Then I worked for Wildlife Link, a small group co-ordinating Non Government Organisations


on issues such as whaling, forestry, agriculture, the marine environment. That was a brilliant job; we worked with a whole range of groups from Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to the Wildlife Trusts and I met a great many people. It was really the perfect preparation for my current role.

The last time you came to Alderney, you brought your husband and your two children – and again this time: do they share your interest in wildlife? My husband Jez and son Adam do; at the moment Katy is more interested in horses but they all like Alderney – it’s small and friendly, Katy can ride and Adam can surf and we all went foraging with Roland and Juan. The great difference from our part of Nottinghamshire is the variety of different habitats as against open floodplain and huge expanses of agriculture. Alderney is the centre of a marine environment. And here nature is crucial to the community’s prosperity, something one can lose sight of on the mainland.

You’ve had a chance to look at what the AWT is doing with its very limited resources; what are we missing?

I think you could well tap into the resources of the mainland Trusts for more help. There may even be more support in Alderney, although you are doing so well. Perhaps a firm might help with computer simulation to show what the island was like in the past and what it could be like in the future. Communicating the potential of the future is the big challenge facing the Trust movement as a whole. Because we are now becoming well- established, people tend to assume that everything is ok.

An interview can be a bit like a three course meal – introduction, main course, and pudding – so here’s the pudding question; it may be too soon for you to say what is your favourite part of the island but what’s been the best bit so far? After George (McGavin) had re-opened the Wildlife Bunker, I sat on the clifftop, revelling in the staggering view and the warmth and stillness at the end of a hectic week.


1. A bouquet of pheasants2. Not exactly, but with a sudden motion of their gill flaps they can flushout their gills much as a sneeze would flush out a nose.3. The ‘blindworm’ or slow worm is not poisonous & has no sting.4. Clockwise - in the northern hemisphere.5. This is frogspawn!6. A forester moth (Adscita statices).7. It flowered in Alderney in every month of 2011.8. When it’s an edible mushroom (Lepiota procera).9. An insect, the shield bug Aelia acuminata.10. A peppered moth camouflaged on lichen.11. Its side shoots break off very easily and can root if they fall in muddy ground.

12. A young sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus).13. All three!14. The barn owl (Tyto alba).15. A water boatman.16. The storm petrel (Hydrobates pelagicus).17. Edible seaweeds, purple and green laver respectively.18. The garden tiger moth (Arctia caja).19. Native flowers are more slender than the Spanish; they grow on only one side of the stem, which droops at the top; the tips of the petals curl right back and the anthers are creamy.20. Old hands will recognise the tail end question. The swallowtail must avoid the swallow to preserve its tail.

ANSWERS TO WILDLIFE QUIZ NO 9

Mystery Picture: this is Watch after the opening of the Jubilee Garden – but try to work it out!

Dates for your Diary

Protect ing Alderney’s Wildl i fe for the Future Alderney Wildl i fe Trust, 51 Victoria Street, St Anne, Alderney, GY9 3TA

Tel: 01481 822935 Email : info@alderneywildl i fe.org

www.alderneywildlife.org

AWT Bat Walks are currently on Thursdays, usually starting at the Victoria Street Office, times varying. Contact 01481 822935 for further details.

WATCH Activities take place most week-ends & sometimes mid-week, often at short notice. Contact 01481 822673 for details.

For further information visit the Trust’s website www.alderneywildlife.org or ‘phone the office 01481 822935

AUGUST 25th – 28th

AUGUST 26th

AUGUST 30th & 31st & SEPTEMBER 1st

SEPTEMBER 15th

SEPTEMBER 22nd

OCTOBER 6TH

WILDLIFE FESTIVAL

THE FAYRE AT ESSEx FARM

CHANNEL ISLANDS MOTH NIGHTS

BEACHWATCH

JUMBLE SALE

OUR ISLAND, OUR HOME – KEEP ALDERNEY CLEAN

issue 34 september 2012 alderney wildlife · issue 34 september 2012 £2.00 protecting alderney’s...

Documents