Namibia, day 1 ... Windhoek

This is the first of what is intended to be a series of Honeyguide blog postings about Honeyguide's holiday in Namibia, November 2018. 

Namibia Day 1, 10/11 November – Heathrow to Windhoek

A bright English morning turned to driving rain on the M25, but everyone made it to Heathrow Terminal 2, including David and Steph who had flown in from Manchester. A walk to the distant departure gate was followed by the long, smooth and very full overnight flight to Johannesburg, punctuated by meals and sleep as best everyone could manage while sitting. Passport control and luggage reclaim was quick, on this occasion. 

Southern marked weaver, Windhoek (Tim Hunt)

Observant Jeremy noticed the rock martins outside as we walked – albeit not far – from Terminal A to Terminal B to check-in for Windhoek, then walked back to Terminal A to go through security again and catch the Windhoek flight. Outside there were little swifts. The onboard meal, an early lunch, was welcome; less so the wobbles in turbulence as we descended. The pilot took us round again and then it was a smooth landing, though he said he nearly postponed it for a second time on account of baboons on the runway. There was full African heat as we walked the short distance to the terminal, with pale, long-tailed African palm swifts buzzing round the buildings and palm trees. Passport control here was very slow, but eventually we were through, meeting Geoff and Darrin who’d driven with the vehicles from Cape Town.

  

Joe's Beer House, Windhoek,  with eccentric paraphernalia

With cash and sim cards sorted, we noted laughing dove, fork-tailed drongo and house sparrows around the airport car park. We then drove west to Windhoek, Geoff explaining how recent rain had brought green to the scrubby acacia trees. We seemed to be earlier than expected at Klein Windhoek Guest House, but keys and rooms were found. In the meantime some of us watched a southern masked weaver on a new nest, and Geoff showed us the bird bath he’d filled earlier which drew in red-faced mousebirds. We went to rooms to freshen up. Outside my room I found blue waxbill, white-crowned sparrow weavers and acacia pied barbet, and the theme of easy birds close to home continued for everyone who gathered for a cold beer. The star species was certainly swallow-tailed bee-eater; fly-over European bee-eaters called on occasions too. A yellow mongoose wandered across the plot of land we overlooked on at least three occasions.

After a bit of a rest, most of the group gathered at 4pm for a short drive to Avis Dam, a popular spot for dog walkers and others out on a Sunday this hot afternoon. Where there is sometimes water today it was dry, though the mixture of scrub behind the dam and dry grassland where water might have been was still productive. Aerial feeders stayed with us in good numbers the whole time: white-rumped and little swifts, rock martins and striped swallows. A plain bird in the scrub had the chestnut undertail area that is a feature of chestnut-vented tit-babbler (actually a Sylvia warbler); a dark bird under a bench revealed the red underside of crimson-breasted shrike. There was more: a familiar chat perched alongside more swallow-tailed bee-eaters; three African hoopoes landed on a bare tree-top; a black-headed heron and six blacksmith plovers flew into the grassy area.

We gathered at 6:20 for the short drive to the celebrated Joe’s Beer House for our evening meal among its eccentric paraphernalia.

Swallow-tailed bee-eater, Windhoek (David Bennett)

A Tale of Two Bugs

November’s guided walk at NWT Thorpe Marshes was on a lovely mild morning. Stonechats are overwintering on the reserve for the third time and both of the pair showed well for the group of 20 people. However winter birds, such as ducks on the gravel pit, St Andrews Broad, were all but absent.

The riverside footpath isn’t always the nicest with some muddy patches, but it feels sheltered and lush. Keen eyed group members found two interesting bugs tucked into the stinging nettles and white dead-nettles.

I guess any experienced bug observer would know them, but I couldn’t name them straight away and that feels like a good reason to share their names and pictures. Much as most of us would know blackbirds and chaffinches, or red admirals and large whites, common bugs feel like a learning curve worth tackling.

Thorpe Marshes regular Susan Weeks showed herself to be that experienced bug observer and came up with the right IDs on the spot. Well, I was impressed.

The red and black bug is Corizus hyoscyami, a scentless plant bug called 'cinnamon bug' or, rather simply, 'black & red squash bug'. I don’t recall seeing it at Thorpe Marshes before. In East Anglia it should be an easy one to remember. Not so once you get into Europe. Have a look at all these rather similar red and black bugs.

The shield bug is hairy shieldbug Dolycoris baccarum, also known as sloe bug (e.g. in Chinery’s Pocket Guide to Insects) though that name is waning as it seems to be a misnomer with no link to sloes or blackthorn. The black and white antennae are easier to observe than the bug’s hairiness.

Even without the right field guides, help is easy thanks to online sources. These two are good: Norfolk & Norwich Naturalists’ Society's Shield Bugs of Norfolk and, across the river from Thorpe Marshes, James Emerson’s Shieldbugs & allied insects of the Whitlingham area. Bear in mind that larval forms of bugs can look quite different to adults.

Brochure wrap

The Honeyguide brochure for 2019 will drop on doormats soon. This year it will be in an envelope rather than polythene wrap. The colourful covers will be hidden, but the aim is straightforward – to avoid single use plastic.

I’ve used the same local mailing house, Cavalier, for many years. I also meet my main contact there from time to time on the youth football circuit, another reason to stay loyal. Magazines from the National Trust and RSPB now come in a see-through wrap made from potato starch, like the material used quite widely for food waste bins, and these compost readily. Could the same, I asked, be arranged for the Honeyguide mailshot?

They had reservations. Starch wraps have short shelf-life. If there’s no demand, there is soon a decomposing pile in the warehouse.

Secondly, will they be widely used? They cost about 3p each compared with about 1p each for plastic. That’s a modest difference in cost for a small mailshot – of about 1,000 – for Honeyguide. Others may not think the same. Legislation or taxes are probably the answer – think of the collapse in plastic bag use since they cost 5p each.

The upshot was the mailing house agreed to get some in, but quite not soon enough for our mailing. And yes, I did first ask many months ago. So we went with old-fashioned envelopes, widely recyclable, as the other non-plastic option. Next year, we’ll see.

 

Car sticker

Less recyclable is a new product: a Honeyguide car sticker. It should have a long life: it should peel off without leaving a mark and even be moved. These haven’t been enclosed in the brochure mailing: I concluded that many might be thrown away. Instead I plan to include them with booking confirmations in the coming months.

The Honeyguide car sticker is the same size and shape as car stickers for the National Trust, RSPB, wildlife trusts etc, and looks good alongside them, I think. I hope you agree and that they spark some conversations, for example in nature reserve car parks.

Holiday reports

With waste minimisation still in mind, let me pose a question. Since the start of Honeyguide – in the pre-internet era – the information package for holidays, for enquiries or with booking confirmations, has included a previous holiday report, where available. We admit to being proud of the reports: effort and TLC goes into their production, and leaders certainly refer to them. But that shouldn’t mean routines are cast in stone. Are holiday reports, in reality, better looked at online? We could, for example, still post reports as a souvenir after a holiday or on request, but with respect to future bookings is a previous report a waste of paper? Answers on a recyclable postcard, or an email!

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