Quadrats, Transects and Trash Pandas

My newsletter is enjoying an encouragingly growing circulation. Nothing earth shattering, but a slow accretion. It began as a way to introduce readers to the too often overlooked wildlife in our towns and villages and gardens, plus some useful information about wildlife gardening based on our own, small scale efforts in suburbia. As Mr. Gradgrind famously said, “What we need is facts, boy. Facts.” But just facts alone can be a bit dry and dusty, so from now on, I will endeavour to occasionally add some colour as I wander down a few related rabbit holes.

“Make it into a story”, the experts tell me. “It’s not a text book”. We shall see.

Transecting the Shoreline

A few days ago, we came upon the short article that you can read in the following link. My brain started surfacing a forgotten experience from a time and a place far away from today.

Night Life — On the Beach at Maple Hollow

A little on the other side of 55 years ago in the summer of 1968 a group of biology students (one of whom has been living alongside me for all the intervening years) were taken by coach and ferry to spend a very fine and sunny summer week at a field studies centre in Millport, on the tiny island of Great Cumbrae just off the west coast of Scotland. There, we were introduced to all sorts of fascinating biological field study techniques such as randomly chucking “quadrats” over our shoulders and then making lists of all the living things they encompassed wherever they chanced to fall. That’s all to do with statistically random sampling rather than the biased sampling which happens when you know something especially rare and exciting is lurking and so plonk your quadrat [LINK] down on top of it so it can be included in your records. We played with scuttling crabs, slipped on rocks covered in seaweed, collected many things from rock pools and had a splendidly studentish time on a fairly relaxed leash. I don’t recall visiting pubs though - an omission that today’s students would probably not believe, but back then we lived restrained lives and didn’t have the spare cash anyway … remember that back then the “age of majority” was 21 and not the 18 that today’s youngsters are trusted with.

The relevance to the above link being, that we also did shoreline/beach transects. Happy days.

The transects described above were done at night because to do this stuff seriously means you want to do it on a falling tide in order to get the greatest amount of exposed land and if that happens to be at night, then that’s when you go out and work. That’s sensible science. We, though, were neophytes simply learning a new technique rather than doing a serious continuing multi-year study with a strict protocol and looked at from these distant years it was clear that our mentors wanted to get the concept over in daylight. Anyway, because of that, we transected the beach and rocky foreshore on a rising tide. The length of our transect got shorter and shorter as we scrambled to take notes of what was living along it. I know we took specimens back to the lab to be identified, and suspect several of us had pretty wet feet when we were done. I just looked up the field centre we were at. It is still there and has been enlarged with its own student accommodation too — no longer using local B&Bs. I found a photo of modern students with a quadrat on the beach … apart from the hairstyles and clothing, that could have been us 🙂

One day, we had a break from learning things and took another ferry across to the much larger island of Arran where we hiked to the top of Goat Fell (Ainmean-Àite na h-Alba). Some years later, we spent a proper vacation there — really, a very nice place indeed, and Goat Fell is well worth the effort of getting to the top of.

Funny what sticks with you in memory. Gosh, biology can be such fun.

As you have discerned, this has little to do with 1001 Species, but I doubt that an apology is needed. Story time over.

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The Bandit Raccoons

I have to confess that we really, really like and enjoy having mask-wearing trash-pandas living around us. There is a pretty healthy - and exceedingly well fed - local population, going by their general chubbiness. For the most part they come out late in the day, most often being seen around dusk. What fascinates us are their “busy little paws” which are incredibly dextrous - if ever they evolve thumbs then human society is probably doomed. I know some people think they cause trouble, well they do, by being able open garbage cans and compost bins unless you lock them down, but for the most part they just go abut their business pretty unconcerned with your presence. We have often sat on the deck of a summer’s evening and watched mum, dad and the kids pottering through the garden and then fading into the shadows cast by the trees between us and the neighbours.

Of course, sometimes they can cause serious problems - for example, a few years ago “in the latest battle of Toronto’s perpetual raccoon war, a family of masked bandits shut down a midtown Toronto bank, annexing its ceiling as part of their territory”. (LINK) while only a few days ago one of the tribe, Toronto again, fried itself on some piece of electricity distribution equipment and thereby closed part of the city’s subway system for three hours, trapping people in lifts/elevators as well as cutting off water in nearby buildings (LINK).

These guys are so well known, there isn’t much point my going into much detail about their biology, as I usually do, so instead I will share a couple of photographs taken last Friday morning in our garden when a pair of fairly young, and chubby, raccoons pottered through the garden. On the way they checked various nooks and crannies, unearthed some seeds fallen to the ground below bird feeders and generally look around. One of them - see the portrait below - came up onto the deck and peered into the room through the glass doors … and yes he was as close, and as unconcerned, to me and my camera as you can see. We were almost nose to nose with just the glass between.

The common species name of raccoon comes from a native Powhatan word meaning “animal that scratches with its hands.” In French they are raton laveur after the hand-washing motions that their incredibly sensitive paws are often engaged in while feeling in shallow water for food.

Those who have had raccoons successfully get the lids off compost bins and similar feats will be delighted to learn the clever little creatures can remember solutions to tasks for up to 3 years and can learn new tricks by observation.

Raccoons congregate in gender-specific groups. Mating season for raccoons falls between January and June. Most females begin reproducing around the age of one and give birth to two to five kits, usually in the spring.

Originally raccoons lived in the tropics where they could be found foraging along riverbanks. Over time they moved north up the continent, successfully adapting to new territories and expanding their diet. Traditionally, they live in tree cavities or burrows emerging at dusk to hunt frogs and crustaceans while keeping an eye out for predators such as coyotes and foxes. Barns have aided their northern migration, offering refuge from cold northern winters, and now, raccoons have been found as far north as Alaska.

The species originally kept to the deciduous and mixed forests of North America, but its impressive ability to adapt has enabled the animal to move into a wide range of habitats, from mountainous terrains to large cities. The first urban sighting was in Cincinnati during the 1920s. Raccoon populations do very well in urban areas, primarily due to hunting and trapping restrictions, a general lack of predators, and an abundance of available human food. The size of a raccoon’s home range varies depending on habitat and food supply. In urban areas, its home range generally spans about one mile.

• pbs.org

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Coming soon(ish) with early spring

I happened upon this interesting comparative photograph of the very pronounced differences between male and female flowers of a hazel (filbert) tree … the male flowers are what we all know as ‘catkins’. Not many weeks now until spring and we will see the real thing.

So, Just How Big Is A Filbert Flower?

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Just in case you missed it …

I shared some pictures earlier in the week on my (mostly) photo only parallel Substack. I think readers of this one may well be interested … such a unique and wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime experience involving OWLS.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-141082852

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Coming soon, but not soon enough, to the garden

One of the end-of-winter plants that we always look out for under the trees of our garden (still a couple of months away) is the emergence of the flowers of Sanguinaria (aka Bloodroot). What was, a few years ago, a small clump has grown to a very gratifying extent and has also sent out colonists to establish themselves in other corners. Here is a nice explanation of how they achieve this … let’s hear it for the ant gardeners.

Bloodroot

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