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National Allotments Week 

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Written by Paul Arestides, Transforming Lives Trainee. 

It’s National Allotments Week which will run from 12th-18th August 2024. The week marks the 22nd year of celebrating allotments through The National Allotment Society‘s annual awareness campaign.

As part of this, they will be celebrating and educating on pollinators, wildlife, eco-friendly pest control, companion planting, soil health and much more.

This years theme will be ‘Celebrating Biodiversity on UK allotments’. There is no better way to embrace this than creating a pond for you and all the people on the allotments to enjoy. Why not create a community pond inviting people to join in? There is loads of advice in our Just Add Water booklet.

Creating a pond on an allotment is becoming more popular. The UK has lost so many ponds to development and intensive farming that these small havens can only be beneficial. Toads, frogs, and newts will readily take up residency and are very helpful for anyone growing fruit and veg, feeding on invertebrates, slugs and many more creatures that can be a challenge for gardeners to cope with. 

A healthy population of amphibians in your garden will help you control these pest species without the use of chemicals, so it’s a positive for everyone! 

You can visit our website to find out more about wildlife-friendly features for your allotment and all the benefits they can bring.

What our animals are doing this month

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Written by Eve Goddard, Transforming Lives Trainee

Gills in, venture out!

Credit: Gareth Ward

As August hits, our newt larvae, which have been aquatic until now, absorb their gills and head out onto land to begin the next stage of life as an eft or ‘newtlet’.

Their diet will change from chydorids, daphniids and cyclopoid copepods (that’s water fleas and tiny crustaceans to you and me!) to terrestrial invertebrates such as worms and slugs.

They will take shelter under warm, damp logs, stones and paving slabs.

The weather will play a big part in their success at this stage. If it has been too hot and seasonal ponds have dried early, larvae may not have developed enough to leave the ponds and will perish.

However, the annual drying of seasonal ponds provides an advantage for our newt friends long term, as whilst adults can remain on land, aquatic predators such as fish will be predated and ducks will move on. 

 

Hop into Summer!

August falls into the period when froglets and toadlets will absorb their tails and leave the pond for the first time to reach dry land. They will often leave en masse as there’s safety in numbers!

The young will be around 1cm long and will shelter around ponds and damp areas trying to keep cool in the summer heat.  Being largely nocturnal, they will be active at night and avoid daytime temperatures. They feed on small flies, insects and worms.

 

Reptile Egg-stravaganza!

August is the time when UK reptiles begin to be born. 

Grass snakes begin to hatch from their eggs. The eggs will have been laid in rotting vegetation where neonates (hatchlings) can keep warm before they are ready to explore. Neonates are adept swimmers and will feed on small fish and amphibians.

Common lizards incubate their eggs internally (known as ‘ovoviviparity’) and will now give birth to up to 11 young. The young can be predated by birds and domestic cats. Their secret defence is shedding their still-moving tail in the case of an attack.

Juvenile common lizards love the August sunshine and will be found in open dry, sunny spaces with dense cover nearby.

Credit: Josefine Stenudd

Book Review: One Garden against the World- in search of hope in a changing climate by Kate Bradbury

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Written by Roger Downie, Froglife and University of Glasgow

After obtaining a degree in politics, then training in horticulture, Kate Bradbury has become a busy wildlife/gardening writer (newspapers, magazines and books- this is her sixth book since 2017) and broadcaster, including on BBC’s Springwatch. Among her many roles, she is a Patron of Froglife, so supporters of Froglife will not be surprised that an enthusiasm for amphibians and reptiles is a theme of the book, and may be aware of one of her previous books, How to Create a Wildlife Pond (2021).

One Garden is Kate’s second memoir, following The Bumblebee Flies Anyway- a memoir of love, loss and muddy hands (2019). In the acknowledgements section, she writes that the book has been ‘challenging to write’, but the reader would hardly be aware of that, given the apparently easy conversational style and chatty asides to her dog Tosca,  the hedgehogs that visit her garden, the frogs, plants and her partner Emma. So this is an entertaining, inspiring and informative read.

After a prologue summarizing the twin/linked biodiversity and climate crises, including continuing habitat mismanagement in towns (over-zealous mowing; tree removal) and gardens (plastic grass; excessive paving), Kate introduces her own small urban garden in Portslade-by-Sea, near Brighton on the edge of the South Downs. The rest of the book covers her actions, interactions, experiences and thoughts over the period of April 2022 to June 2023 in 15 monthly chapters, each starting with an attractive wildlife drawing by Abby Cook, and ending with a short account of the natural history of a species found in her garden: ten insects such as the wool carder bee, the common backswimmer, and four others such as the slow-worm.

Each month she describes the work she does in the garden aimed at providing and protecting wildlife and enhancing biodiversity: bird feeders; seed sowing and seedling transplantation; hedgehog food and refuge provisioning; robin nest protection etc. She also covers the observations she makes and attempts to explain the sometimes puzzling behaviour of some species. She spends hours using her binoculars to follow the mating frenzies of frogs in her pond and the nest-building of a family of robins (when does she get any writing done?). There are also attempts to encourage others in her neighbourhood to look after wildlife, often via social media: a man repairing his roof is persuaded to provide swift boxes; a group campaigns against a man (‘drone bastard’) who is trying to dissuade gulls from nesting on his roof by flying a drone at them; others look out for hedgehogs that are struggling to find food in a drought.

Kate claims to be a reluctant protestor, only occasionally taking part in national climate change actions, but she certainly makes up through the practical local steps she takes that can make a difference. The main themes are climate change- constant worries over heat and drought effects on wildlife, especially hedgehogs, birds and insects. Indeed, in my view correctly, a big part of the book is on insect population and species declines and their cascading effects  on everything else. Her June 2023 chapter includes a howl of anguish at the attitudes she reports from friends, relatives and acquaintances over climate change, from denial to complacency (it’ll be good for us; our weather has always been variable; ‘they’ will find a solution).

The book’s subtitle is ‘in search of hope’: did she find it? I’ve been involved in environmental campaigning since the 1970s, and am finding it very hard to be hopeful: we seem to have to fight the same battles over and over, and are cursed with political leaders who refuse to take the environmental crises seriously. Kate’s approach, that individuals can make a difference, certainly has value, but we need structures that work with the natural environment, not against it. I would take issue with one of Kate’s sentences in her final chapter (which outlines actions people can take in their own gardens): she writes: ‘Climate change has not been caused by us but by big business, by oil giants, by capitalism’. There is an understandable tendency to think in terms of us (blameless) and them (the villains). But too many of us rush happily to buy the latest planet-damaging stuff and have the attitudes she clearly describes in her June chapter. We need to look at ourselves, and change our behaviour , because we are, collectively, to blame.

One Garden against the World- in search of hope in a changing climate by Kate Bradbury, Bloomsbury (2024); £18.99, hardback.

Froglife joins other Wildlife & Countryside Link members publishing a briefing on the new indicators of species abundance in England.

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Written by Dr Andrew Smart, Science & Research Manager. 

The recently published briefing sounds a bit dull, but Wildlife & Countryside Link members have called on the Government to review the data included in their abundance indicator and provide information to support their choice of the species they use and the impact of adding two new data sets, plants and freshwater invertebrates.

The indicator is really important as it will be used to identify whether the Government is meeting its targets under the Environment Act. The previous indicator (see the graphs included here) suggests that after an alarming decline from the situation in 1970, we currently have species abundance at around 40% of that of 50 years ago and that the indicator is continuing on a downward trend over the last few years.  

While we are pleased the Government wants to include more species to the indicator (at the moment there are no amphibians or reptiles included) they should be clear about their choice of species and how the inclusion of particular data sets changes the data.

What we hope for is some new commitments linked to the restoration of biodiversity and the natural environment as outlined in the Labour Party Manifesto: ‘Labour will deliver for nature, taking action to meet our Environment Act targets’.

 

 

Recent papers: Red eared terrapins and alpine newts in Scotland and their possible impact on common frog tadpoles

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Written by Dr Andrew Smart, Conservation & Science Manager

A paper presented by Chris Catherine at the 2023 Glasgow Natural History Society Scottish Herpetological Conference has recently been published online in the Glasgow Naturalist. The paper outlines information about Scottish invasive species from a range of data sources. Catherine highlights the confusion around the status of the barred grass snake (Natrix helvetica) in Scotland with records from Dumfries and Galloway possibly of native animals or from a feral population. Catherine found 101 records of four different non-native species: alpine newt, sand lizard, Chinese pond turtle and common slider. The only record of sand lizards in Scotland is a single record form1970 on the island of Coll as part of a benign introduction programme in the 1970s, to help protect the species in the UK.  Similarly, Chinese pond turtle has only been recorded once, at Glasgow botanic gardens in 2022.

The alpine newt is a concern because of its ability to act as a vector for Batrachochytrium fungi the cause of chytridiomycosis or chytrid fungus in our native amphibians. In Scotland there appear to be four distinct populations. 

Common slider, the red-eared terrapin, is the most widely distributed invasive herpetofauna species in Scotland with records from 42 10km grid squares and 10 distinct populations. Globally, where the species reproduces it can cause significant impacts and is listed by the IUNC as one of the 100 most invasive species.  There is no breeding recorded in Scotland but  these animals can live for 20-40 years

Common slider/ red-eared terrapin, is the most widely distributed invasive herpetofauna species in Scotland

A second recent paper by Vodrazkova et al, working in the Czech republic undertook a lab based study on the impact of red eared sliders on frog tadpoles. Following up on previous research, Vodrazkova et al examined the speed of metamorphosis, size of froglets and the level of stress hormone in frog tadpole in a lab environment with or without the presence of  a red eared terrapin in the water (isolated form tadpoles but present in the tank).

The result showed that long-term and short-term presence of the terrapin in the same water increased the stress levels within the tadpoles, with hormone levels indicating the presence of chronic stress when the terrapin was present.  The tadpoles in the three treatments showed no significant difference in time taken to metamorphose but the size of the froglets in the three treatments varied, with smaller animals at metamorphosis in the treatments in the presence of the terrapin.  This indicates a developmental strategy to metamorphose at the smallest possible size to avoid the risk of predation in the waterbody.

At the moment red eared terrapins are not breeding in the UK but with a significant range, there is a risk that temperature increase due to global warming could lead to a new more widespread threat to our native species in the future.

What our animals are doing this month…

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Written by Emma Byrne, Transforming Lives Trainee

July is a month full of activity for our reptile and amphibian friends! This month, let’s take a closer look at the UK’s only species of legless lizard, the slow worm, and see what they’re up to throughout this warm, summer month…

Slow worms emerge from hibernation in late March, with breeding taking place in April and May. The gestation period is around 11 – 14 weeks, so from July until September, slow worms are giving birth! They are ovoviviparous, which means that females incubate their eggs internally. The eggs hatch inside the slow worm’s body, and the young stay there living off the yolk of their egg. The female will then go on to give birth to between eight and twelve live young. Hatchlings are born still wrapped in their embryonic membranes, which burst open to reveal tiny slow worms, little more than four centimeters long. They can be identified by their gold or silver backs with a black stripe down the middle, a black dot on their head and glossy black sides.

Juvenile slow worm
Credit: Will Howells

If you hope to spot a slow worm, here are a few helpful tips:

  • Head out at dusk as this is when slow worms tend to be most active hunting for food.
  • Make a beeline for open woods, damp heaths, rough grassland and grassland and meadows with hedges and scrub.
  • If you prefer to stay closer to home – take a look in your garden. Be sure to keep a close eye on your compost heap, as slow worms like to use the warmth to heat up their bodies!
  • If you’re unsure whether you have a found a slow worm or a small snake, remember unlike snakes, slow worms have eyelids, small ear openings, their tail is detachable and they have notched tongues as opposed to forked tongues.

Always remember to record your amphibian and reptile sightings on our FREE Dragon Finder app.

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