Nosey grasshoppers

It’s not uncommon in southern Europe to come across a grasshopper that looks like a stick insect. A quick browse in Chinery’s book on insects and there was a species that matched it well – Acrida ungarica. This book gives no English name but more recently names that crop up are nosed grasshopper or cone-headed grasshopper, from its look, and Hungarian grasshopper, from its scientific name.

Insect ID often isn’t that easy and that’s the case here. Paul Tout, Honeyguide leader in Istria and Slovenia, sent me a link to an Italian picture showing two species. Some internet sources show three subspecies.

Then Paul Brock’s book ‘A photographic guide to Insects of Southern Europe & the Mediterranean’ was released late in 2017, and a visit to Crete in April was an ideal time to test this fine new book in the field.

Truxalis nasuta or Nosey Cone-headed Grasshopper, Crete, April 2018. Only easy to see this green form when it steps out of the vegetation.

The insects in Crete match perfectly what Brock calls Truxalis nasuta or Nosey Cone-headed Grasshopper (using Brock’s style of capital letters). The IUCN* calls this species Splendid Cone-headed Grasshopper.

The IUCN also says “The genus Acrida is in need of taxonomic revision”. However most references, Brock included, have simply two species: Acrida ungarica in much of central and southern Europe and Truxalis nasuta in the Mediterranean, including coastal Iberia, Crete and North Africa, albeit with maps showing quite a lot of overlap. I have re-labelled photos from Morocco as Truxalis, following Brock.

Truxalis nasuta, Morocco, March 2017. A dry year in Morocco so a brown form. 

Colour variation is a nice feature of these grasshoppers, green or brown to match the surrounding vegetation.

They’ve always been silent in my experience, but a recent post on YouTube from Spain shows that they rub their hind legs against their wings like other grasshoppers.

* The International Union for Conservation of Nature

Nature in the heart of Norwich

A mass of ox-eye daisies by Canary Way.

For several years I have kept track of the fortunes of some bee orchids in urban Norwich. It all started by accident when I was cycling past and noticed both a bee orchid and a man with a strimmer. 

That conversation led to an annual visit to a patch of grass - now a wild flower meadow - outside Big Yellow Self Storage on Canary Way, opposite Norwich City FC’s football ground (for example Big Yellow bee orchids are back, June 2016).

Fast forward ten seasons and leaving the flowers to grow and bloom has become routine here – in a good way. Never mind the orchids – the show of ox-eye daisies is reason enough to stop and take a look. 

Of course ox-eye daisies are common on roadside verges, but somehow sandwiched between a garage and a supermarket alongside the inner ring road they have extra appeal. Not surprisingly the flowers were buzzing with bees when I took a close look on 5 June 2018.

Red-tailed bumblebee on an ox-eye daisy.

Bee orchid; this one has thrived despite being slightly strimmed.

Bee orchids like thin turf and have a way of popping up opportunistically in surprising and often infertile areas. 

The denseness of the daisies made me wonder if the bee orchids would be crowded out – in ecological terms as this bit of grassland micro-habitat moves to a later stage in its natural succession.

The reality was interesting. Only one bee orchid was among the uncut area with the ox-eye daisies. 

However there were six more in the adjacent area that had been rough-cut earlier in the spring – but cut long enough ago for the relatively late flowering orchids to grow.

It shows that wildlife has a capacity to surprise. So if you are passing The Meadow in the City, do stop and take a look. Better still, pop in and say thanks to the Big Yellow team for how they've helped nature.

Updates: 18 June, three Honeyguiders visit, find 12 spikes, and I know they missed one. 25 June, after hot, dry spell: ox-eye daisies like a bone-dry hay crop, 8 bee orchids spikes either gone over or last-lingering blooms.

Ox-eye daisies outside Big Yellow Self Storage.

Thorpe Marshes in the 1960s (part 2)

In a previous Norfolk Wildlife Trust blog [Thorpe Marshes in the 1960s, January 2017] I wrote about Thorpe Marshes in the 1960s. That was after meeting John Rushmer who, during that decade, had a herd of cattle for milking on what is now the NWT nature reserve - Honeyguide's local patch. At that time I had no pictures from the 1960s to illustrate the story.

John Rushmer has now located two slides taken at the time. The Kodachrome slides are undated, but they are of a design used by Kodak from 1959-1962. John was offered the grazing in 1960 and started grazing livestock there from 1961; these slides show the marshes after ploughing and sowing with rye grass so they will be from 1961 at the earliest and more likely from 1962. The slides were scanned and cleaned up by Thorpe Marshes volunteer Derek Longe.

The first is a view of Thorpe Marshes from the pedestrian footbridge over the adjacent railway line, looking south. The most striking feature of the landscape is its openness. There’s not a tree or bit of scrub to be seen on the north side of the River Yare, though the wooded landscape on the south side of the river at Whitlingham is much as now. The gravel pit, now called St Andrews Broad, is also not yet there: that was dug in the 1990s and the posts and wires went at around the same time.

Towards the right of the picture is the bail, the mobile milking unit. It surprised me to see it here, close to the river, as the concrete pad put in as a base for the bail is farther east on the marsh – somewhat beyond the left edge of the photo. “The reason to see the milking bail on the marsh,” says John, “is because before we did the concrete standing we towed the bail from marsh to marsh where the cows would be grazing.” 

The second photo shows a group of Friesians waiting to be milked. The man is the photo by the milk churns is John Rushmer’s head herdsman Frank Bracey. “And what a good man he was too, very knowledgeable with livestock,” says John. 

Chris Durdin, April 2018.

A bird in the hand

Pallid swift (Rob Carr)

There are good reasons why Andalucia, Extremadura or the Pyrenees are often the first places in mainland Spain visited by wildlife enthusiasts. However two Honeyguide holidays in Valencia have shown that this region also has much to offer, with the right local knowledge.

Cetti's warbler, showing its rounded tail and short wings.

Pau Lucio provides that local know-how as well as plenty of experience of the Honeyguide style. Pau is a member of local ringing group Pit-roig (Valencian for the robin), supported by this holiday’s conservation donations. One of the group’s regular working areas is Pego Marshes, not far from our hotel tucked away in an orange grove outside the town of Oliva.

Moustached warbler

On our first visit to Pego Marshes in 2018 the late afternoon sunshine provided perfect conditions to see low-flying pallid swifts, often a tricky bird to see well.

The Honeyguide group in March 2018, as in March 2016, was also privileged to see the results of a ringing session at Pego. High winds meant the first date was called off but all was well when we arrived shortly after breakfast on 14 March. 

White-spotted bluethroat

Several birds, all caught in mist nets put up by a path through the reedbed, had already been ringed, weighed and measured. The timing was perfect to see then release five different species.

A wintering chiffchaff and a resident Cetti’s warbler were no surprise. Moustached warbler is an important local bird. Generally though to be a resident species, unlike the similar sedge warbler, ringing returns show that Pego Marshes also supports birds that move here from southern France, in a stroke doubling the importance of wetlands near the coast in this part of Spain. 

Reed bunting and a feisty white-spotted bluethroat were the final birds. We left the ringers to put away their equipment and went to walk in another area nearby.

Chris Durdin, April 2018

Beavers in Poland

In his third bulletin on mammals in Biebrza National Park, Artur Wiatr, Honeyguide’s leader in Poland, writes about beavers. Photos by Piotr Dombrowski.

"Beaver: the second largest rodent in the world and the biggest one in Europe, known for its very interesting behaviour. Biebrza the river was named after the beaver and in old Polish language Biebrza means ‘beaver's river’. Considering that now it is a very numerous mammal it may be hard to believe that in the beginning of the 20th century beavers became extinct here. They were reintroduced to Biebrza again from Russia after WW2.

"Beavers have a high sense and knowledge of water engineering, reflected in building dams, creating ponds, building lodges and digging corridors and chambers in the ground. Doing this process, beavers improve local environmental conditions for other animals yet sometimes may be in conflict with what man would not like to see, such as flooded meadows or broken trees.

"Beavers do not hibernate over winter time so they must prepare themselves. They cut small tree branches and pile them underwater to eat them over winter when rivers are frozen and they have no access to fresh food. 

"The beaver is rather a shy creature with a nocturnal life style. Of course you can see them once in a while over a long period. Again, winter seems to be a good moment to watch them. In warmer days when ice starts to get melted you can see beavers enjoying themselves on the ice eating fresh willow branches and doing their ‘manicure and pedicure’. "

Picking up on penguins

Why did a pack of penguin biscuits arrive in the post in the Honeyguide office? The answer is a mixture of pedantry, enthusiasm for natural history and an apology with a sense of humour.

Each weekend a trade magazine called Travel Weekly arrives here. Between you and me (and that's not many in the early days of the Honeyguide blog) I wouldn't subscribe to Travel Weekly, but it is free of charge and though it is mostly for travel agents (high street shops and online equivalents) it does sometimes have useful travel trade news and information.


In a recent cruise special - cruise is a growing sector of the travel world nowadays - a columnist listed seeing penguins in the Arctic as a bucket list ambition for a cruise. I admit to being a pedant on this kind of occasion, and it took only a moment or two to email the editor to explain this was the wrong hemisphere for penguins (see picture of my letter).

Andy Harmer of the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), the polar mix-up culprit, was swift to write to me. He owned up to his "ridiculous error", thanked me for reading his article and sent a packet of penguin biscuits - the apology with a sense of humour, to his great credit. Some local (East Anglian) links helped that connection.

So if you are passing Thunder Lane and would like to drop for a cup of coffee and a chocolate biscuit ...

Fish otter – a perfect predator

The fish otter, writes Artur Wiatr, Honeyguide’s leader in Poland, is a perfectly skilled predator of fantastic abilities and a body adapted to swim. It likes to take fish most of all – though the diet may also contain crayfish, frogs and bird chicks – and because of this it has a bad reputation among fish pond managers in Poland.

Otters by the Biebrza River, photos by Piotr Dombrowski.

Otters have become a more and more frequent mammal in Biebrza National Park. Although one otter family may occupy up to 5km of a river it is not easy to spot them. As for many other mammals, the best time to watch otter is winter. They like to hunt from frozen river banks and they seem to be quite successful. Once a while you can see the whole family playing together on the ice and teaching juveniles how to fish. When disturbed, otters quickly jump into the water and may stay there for few minutes when necessary. In the seasons when the vegetation is thick our otters stay rather shy so we enjoy our otter encounters when we can.