Northumbria Mammal Group

Droppings

Droppings is a regular column in the Northumbria Mammal Group’s quarterly newsletter. It’s a collection of small bits of information about mammals.
Northumbria Mammal Group exists to further the study of mammals and encourage the collection of mammal records in the north east of England, specifically the counties of Northumberland, Durham and Cleveland and to inform and enthuse about mammals generally. Most of the records it reports on relate to the forty species of terrestrial mammals, plus cetaceans, that are recognised as existing in its region. However, from time to time, we get reports of creatures that are not supposed to exist here. Some of these are complete exotics but, by my definition, cryptozoology includes animals that turn up in places where they were hitherto unknown. Consequently I’ve included a few reports of species from other parts of Britain that have recently been discovered here.
Northumbria Mammal Group membership is open to anyone with an interest in mammals and subscription fees are Ł5 per annum. If anyone is interested in joining the group, please contact the membership secretary: Stuart Will at the Natural History Society of Northumbria, The Hancock Museum, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE2 4PT or e-mail nhsn@ncl.ac.uk

Droppings Autumn 2008

I don’t know if the Guinness Book of Records has picked it up yet but its possible that a new world record has been set for hand washing. Earlier this year Defra announced its policy and action plan for managing Wild Boar in Britain. Now unlike most world records it wasn’t the speed in which it was done, in fact Defra ran its Wild Boar consultation some two years ago and have been nagged by various bodies to produce their conclusions ever since, instead it was the thoroughness of the operation that took the breath away. For those of us who have waited with baited breath to see whether they would recommend zoning, culling some of them, culling all of them or encouraging their continued existence; Defra’s new policy on Wild Boar is… ( pause for imagined drum roll…) allow landowner’s to decide the future of Wild Boar on their landholdings. So I guess if you do want to see Wild Boar back in Britain then all you have to do is buy up a decent sized chunk of Kent.
In the Forest of Dean, the Forestry Commission have already decided to institute a cull. The cull is based on safety concerns as there have been a few instances of people or dogs being threatened or attacked and the odd boar has turned up in gardens and in one case in a Primary School. The numbers of Wild Boar in the Forest of Dean are relatively small, either 50 or 100 depending on which source you read, but have the potential to rise rapidly. The cull will only be partial and will concentrate on taking out young animals.
Meanwhile Wild Boar continue to pop up in unexpected places. Kevin O’Hara tells me that on of his ex-students has sent him a grainy photo from their mobile phone of a boar that was killed on the road between Hexham and Corbridge.
Another exterminated species that is heading back to our shores is the Beaver. The Scottish Environment Minister, Michael Russell, has now issued the licence for the trial reintroduction of up to four families of Beaver in Knapdale in Argyllshire. Not only that but it seems like every conservationist across the country (I could be exaggerating slightly at this point) is talking about beaver reintroduction for their stretch of river. The bandwagon is rolling; I wonder where it will stop.
An introduction that definitely wasn’t licensed has occurred in Ireland. The introduced species only came to light during an analysis of owl & kestrel pellets when skulls of the Greater White-toothed Shrew, Crocidura russula, were found. The Greater White-toothed Shrew is a European species that is only found in Britain on certain of the Channel Islands, although the related Lesser White-toothed Shrew is found on the Scilly Isles. It is not known how long the shrews have been there or how they got there but they definitely seem to be well established as they have now been found in 15 locations in Tipperary and Limerick. In one sample 53 skulls were found in 10 pellets indicating that they are becoming an important food source for barn owls where they are found. It has been suggested that the shrews, which are apparently often associated with human habitation, were accidentally imported with horticultural products. If this is the case, and I struggle to imagine the alternative of someone deliberately smuggling in shrews, then surely it would have only involved a very small number of animals. Perhaps their successful establishment from such a small founder stock could be due to lack of competition, the only other shrew in Ireland being they Pygmy Shrew. It does make me wonder, if the shrews can colonise Ireland from a few individuals that stowed away in some bulbs from Holland, or similar, where else might they have got to? I shall have to sharpen my tweezers and soak a few more owl pellets.
Another exotic species that definitely didn’t get here in plant pots is the Coati. Coatis are long-nosed, raccoon relatives from Central & South America or just about any animal collection you could care to mention. There are a few of them living wild in the Lake District as attested by a photo in a recent edition of BBC Wildlife Magazine. They have actually been known about for several years and a Parks spokesperson told BBC Wildlife that they considered them a bit of a novelty (like grey squirrels then?). Recent changes to the Dangerous Wild Animals Act mean that a licence is no longer required to keep Coatis so they may be escaping more regularly in future.
As if these weren’t enough to make the hot off the press, “Mammals of the British Isles Handbook” out of date it appears that a Prevost’s Squirrel has been hanging around gardens in Leeds. Prevost’s Squirrels are extremely attractive, indeed their latin name means beautiful Squirrel or perhaps extremely attractive squirrel. They have a shiny black dorsal surface and an orangey belly separated by a thin white line (think arboreal Great Crested Newt only shinier)
For those of you who like your squirrels in different colours, it seems that Cambridgeshire is the place to be. The (I nearly said native) grey, Grey Squirrels are being ousted by black, Grey Squirrels. In some places the majority of the Grey Squirrel population is black. Some have suggested that the black squirrels are more aggressive than the grey ones but I suspect that will turn out to be as false as the theory that grey squirrels drove out the reds because they were more aggressive. The black coat is a mutation of the melanocortin receptor gene but this allele is dominant which would explain the spread of the colour through the population. However to be a nice shiny black colour squirrels need to have two copies of the gene, heterozygous squirrels are a black-brown colour. It is thought that the black squirrels spread from Hertfordshire where black squirrels have been known for some time but that doesn’t explain their recent, rapid expansion so perhaps there are two types of allele for black colour in squirrels, one dominant and one recessive, as is the case in certain domesticated animals. So far black squirrels have only spread as far north and west as Cambridge but who knows, if this continues we may have them in Northumberland in fifty years.
I’m never sure how I feel about public surveys; I’m a great believer in getting as many people involved as possible but I’m not sure how confident I am of the result; after all they always seem to evict the wrong person in “Big Brother.” I think this has been recognised to the extent whereby a survey question about whether the area of a piece of habitat is the size of a car or the size of a tennis court is now considered too difficult for the general public (you know who you are ?). An ambitious bucking of this trend has recently been launched by Scottish Natural Heritage who are wanting the public to report sightings of genuine Scottish Wildcats. As I’m sure you know Scottish Wildcats face extinction due to interbreeding with feral cats and it is incredibly difficult to tell apart a genuine Wildcat from a crossbreed. In fact a prosecution of a gamekeeper accused of killing Wildcats failed because no expert could be one hundred per cent sure of telling a pure bred Wildcat from a crossbreed. The on-line survey has helpful drop down menus where you can select various characteristics, for example the coat colour options range from black and white, through tortoiseshell to tabby (I kid you not!) Fortunately last year a genetic marker was identified that can distinguish between pure Wildcats and those with some feral genes. So all the public needs then is a mobile lab and the audacity to pluck a bit of fur from the Wildcat without getting it tainted with the DNA from their own blood. Now those are the sorts of people I want voting on “Big Brother!”
My contribution to Jonathan Pounder’s mammal map of Cleveland has largely been confined to the distribution of bits of fur left on roads. In all I must have recorded over 500 such bits and there’s always a tinge of sadness, not to mention irony, that something has had to die for me to record its distribution. This week I came across my saddest bit of fur yet. On North Road, the main road that runs through the centre of Darlington, two feet into the road on a pedestrian crossing, is a squashed hedgehog. While some have postulated that they may be evolving to run away from cars rather than roll up into a ball its clear that they still haven’t evolved enough to wait for the green man.

Droppings Spring 2008

Last year continued in a similar vein to 2006, with some significant new mammal finds. The year concluded with a report of a new species of giant rat of the genus Mallomys in the cloud forests of New Guinea. Although hailed by the tabloids as five times the size of a sewer rat, it wasn’t that unusual as there are several other species of very large cloud forest rats in New Guinea. Still good to know there is another species among their ranks. Somewhat more unusual was the discovery of a Giant Peccary in Brazil and a dwarf Manatee in the Amazon, the latter small enough to fit in a bath (now if only I could persuade my wife to use the shower instead). There was also the announcement of a dwarf type of Orca in the Antarctic.
The practice of splitting “known” species into two or more sibling species, perhaps most famously done in the case of the Soprano and Common Pipistrelle bats in Europe, has also thrown up some intriguing possibilities for new species. At the beginning of the year it was announced that the Clouded Leopard of Borneo and Sumatra was a separate species to its mainland relative. There are distinct differences in the coat colour of the two species and further evidence of their distinctiveness was provided by DNA analysis, in fact it was postulated that they might have diverged around one million years ago. More recently an examination of the DNA of the various sub-species of giraffe has found at least six genealogically distinct sub-groups. The giraffe has been considered as a single species but it has now been suggested that there may be as many as eleven genetically distinct populations, each of which might merit specific status. Unfortunately some of these populations are critically endangered with just a few hundred individuals left.
More mundane but still guaranteed to gladden the heart of any Hartlepool ecologist, Robert Smith reports that Water Vole have recolonised Greatham Beck. This was their main stronghold in Hartlepool but they disappeared last year around the time mink were spotted on the beck. Not only that but there was a definite sighting of an otter on the nearby Claxton Beck by Ian Forrest on 1st December. It would be nice to think that otters had driven off the mink, which allowed the water voles to recolonise; not necessarily great ecological science but excellent PR material.
Meanwhile, up on Tyneside, a hitherto unknown creature has emerged. Bank voles some 5” long have been seen by a couple of reputable naturalists in Gosforth Park. The voles, dubbed by some, (me mainly), as the Gosforth Were-Voles, live near the water and have very short tails. Apparently there are photographs of the creatures so they might not remain in the annals of cryptozoology for long.
There seems to have been a lot in the press about government proposals on culling Badgers. To my shame I haven’t kept abreast of the arguments so have only got a vague idea of what has been going. Forgive me if I’m wrong but it seems to me that it has gone something like: farmers say badgers should be culled – government says cull badgers; Krebs says culling badgers won’t work – government says don’t cull badgers; chief scientist says we’ve got to do something, so cull badgers- government says cull badgers. However I think I recognise this game and if I’m not mistaken the next line of argument will be, “Simon says don’t cull badgers.” So that’ll be alright then.
Australian scientists have come up with a novel way of potentially cutting greenhouse gases. As I’m sure you are aware, ruminants such as cows and sheep produce methane as a by-product of their digestion. Combine the potency of methane as a greenhouse gas with the fact that certain cultures like to eat burgers a lot; the result is an estimated 20-30% of the greenhouse gas effect. Kangaroos, on the other hand, digest their food without producing methane; in fact a by-product of their digestion is acetate, which actually aids digestion. The scientists have isolated the bacteria in the Kangaroo’s guts that enable them to do this and are proposing introducing those bacteria into ruminants in some form of food supplement to try to reprogramme them to digest their food more efficiently without producing methane. Now it strikes me that this is approaching the problem from the wrong end. Surely it would be simpler if we just ate Kangaroos or, perhaps not as easy but much more satisfying, couldn’t we just reprogramme Americans.
Plans by the multi-millionaire, Paul Lister to turn his 23,000 acre Alladale estate in Scotland into a kind of Mesolithic Park have taken a step further with the importation of a pair of young European Elk from Sweden. The elk are to be released into a 450 acre pen where their interactions with resident red deer, roe deer and wild boar will be monitored. In the longer term Mr Lister plans to re-introduce all of the big species now missing from the British fauna including predators such as lynx, bear and wolves. Although his estate is huge it isn’t big enough to sustain a couple of packs of wolves so he is hoping to recruit local farmers to work in partnership in creating a bigger reserve which will be surrounded by the biggest electric fence in Britain. The article on the BBC website concludes by saying, “Although a dangerous wild animals licence is needed for the wolves, one of the biggest obstacles is likely to be winning over his critics, including the Ramblers’ Association, who would have to agree to a change in their access rights to the land”. If it’s a choice between ramblers or wolves I wonder which one the farmers would rather have.
Extinct British megafauna made a brief return to County Durham in December when David Cooper found a Wild Boar dead by the side of the road near Hardwick Hall in Sedgefield. I ran Colin Holm, the Countryside Officer from Sedgefield, to see if he knew anything about it. He hadn’t heard anything but he did say that there were farms in Sedgefield district that had exotic species such as Elk and Bison; I can’t wait for the power cuts!

Happy Anniversary Patti!

An anniversary that might have escaped you in 2007 was that it was 40 years since the famous footage of an alleged Bigfoot was taken by Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin at Bluff Creek, California. Widely denounced as a hoax, the film clip has been subjected to minute scrutiny and more recently digital enhancement and yet, so far, no one has found the zip. In fact an attempt by Chris Packham on BBC X-Creatures to debunk the story possibly ended up giving it more credibility. The Bigfoot in question, undoubtedly female as it had pendulous breasts, was nicknamed Patti and in honour of her, or him if it was a man in a monkey suit, I’m devoting another article to all things primate. (Also I needed an excuse to compile the salacious monkey stories that Alistair McLee sent me)
While sightings of Bigfoot are ten a penny, it is less well known that China has its own “Wildmen”. In the Shennongjia region in the province of Hubei there have been over 100 sightings of an upright bigfoot like creature, albeit a little smaller than the American version, in the 1.5-2m height range. In the most recent sighting the witnesses were approaching a sharp curve in the road when they saw two “wildmen” covered in black hair, about 50m from their car. The larger of the wildmen was 1.7m high and the smaller one 1.4m. What made the sighting more interesting was that two different sized footprints were found at the site. Professionals followed the sighting up two days later from the China Association for Scientific Expedition. One of its members Zhang Jinxing, described as Head of Comprehensive Expedition Team of Bizarre Animals, (either something was lost in translation or someone is making that up) is on record as saying that they have found some 2,000 footprints to date plus some hair that they haven’t been able to attribute to other animals.
If you think stories of unknown primates are bizarre they are nothing compared to some of the things attributed to their known relatives. In Delhi the deputy mayor was killed by monkeys when he fell off the roof of his house whilst trying to fend off a band of Macaques. Rhesus Macaques have become a major problem in Dehli but culling them is an unacceptable option to devout hindus. Various methods have been tried, unsuccessfully, to remove them including, it is reported, training the larger Langur monkeys to chase away the smaller Macaques (can’t think why that didn’t work). A more recent plan by the state’s government to get unemployed youths to sterilise the monkeys has been condemned by conservationists as cruel and counterproductive. I think it would be equally cruel to India’s unemployed youth, imagine trying to castrate aggressive male Macaques (or perhaps don’t); as job creation schemes go it makes Norman Tebbit look like a Liberal Democrat.
If you think they have it bad in Dehli spare a thought for the women of the village of Nachu in Kenya. Here large groups of monkeys invade the farms and eat the crops, to the extent that the village now has to receive famine food relief. The monkeys seem to be more afraid of men so the women, whose job it is to tend the crops, have apparently tried wearing their husbands clothes to fool the monkeys. Unfortunately the monkeys don’t seem to be fooled. According to one of the women villagers quoted in the BBC report: "The monkeys can tell the difference and they don't run away from us and point at our breasts. They just ignore us and continue to steal the crops." Not content with that the monkeys make rude gestures at the women. “The monkeys grab their breasts, and gesture at us while pointing at their private parts. We are afraid that they will sexually harass us," the witness continued. It may be that the Kenyan monkeys had read a recent article in the journal Nature, describing the results of a study led by David Reich of Harvard Medical School. The study looked at the differences in DNA sequences between chimps and humans and used that to estimate when the two species split. By their calculations the species may have split between 5.4 and 6.3 million years ago rather than the 7 million years estimated by previous studies. Not only that different parts of the genome differed by different amounts, with the X chromosomes being the most similar. This suggested to the researchers that the two groups (species) continued to hybridise perhaps for up to a million years after they had otherwise diverged.
It is well known that we are more closely related to chimps that say, chimps are to gorillas or other apes. Indeed Jared Diamond, in his book of the same name, describes us as the third chimpanzee. If we are the third chimp then the second species is, of course, the Bonobo, formerly known as the Pygmy Chimp and only distinguished from the Common Chimp about 70 years ago. While the physical differences between Bonobos and Chimps are subtle, their behavioural differences couldn’t be more marked. Chimps are the familiar male-dominated, highly tribal, species, with a tendency to resolve things with aggression and violence; in Bonobo society females rule the roost, inter-group relations are fairly peaceful and, most noticeably, disagreements are resolved by a bout of group sex. I don’t think I need to point out which one we most closely resemble. I can’t help but think that the world would be a much better place if we’d taken after Bonobos, if nothing else it would certainly make Prime Minister’s question time a lot more interesting.

Ian Bond

Winter 2007

· Bechstein’s bat, which is one of Europe’s rarest bats and possibly Britain’s rarest mammal (a title it competes for with the Black Rat,) has been found in its most westerly location ever. Three Bechstein’s were found roosting in a house in Newton Abbot in Devon on 3rd October. The finding was further unusual in that this is only the third time Bechstein’s have been recorded in a building and they were roosting a short distance from a cluster of Long eared Bats. Bechstein’s are usually confined to ancient woodland and their previous distribution was confined to a small area of south-east Wales and central, southern England. Bechstein’s are so rare that the first colony in Britain was only found in the late 1990s when a roost turned up in someone’s airing cupboard!
Another exotic species might be taking the first steps to becoming established in Britain. There are reports of Sugar Gliders, a marsupial, on Wimbledon Common. Sugar Gliders have long grey fur and long pointed noses, so there is always the possibility of confusion with the Common’s more famous inhabitants; I’ll let you decide which more likely to be the correct identification.
Meanwhile a long established exotic species might be well on the way to being a regular feature of north east mammal fauna. Kenny Crooks has seen a Muntjac twice within a week or so, in woodland between Nunthorpe and Guisborough. This happened in late August this year but he tells me that farmers have been reporting Muntjac in the Great Ayton/Stokesley area for the past year. Meanwhile, back in April, a colleague of mine, Derek Wardle, saw a live Muntjac by the side of the A1M at Washington Services. This is much further north than any of the other Muntjac sightings that NMG has recorded, the most northerly sightings prior to this being in the Sedgefield area. Even assuming that Muntjac are established in the Sedgefield area this is a long way for an individual deer to stray so perhaps they have colonised the intervening territory. Some tantalising evidence in support of this was offered by another of my colleagues who had taken her children to “Down on the Farm”, an open farm near Houghton le Spring. The farm keep red deer and told her that lots of little deer, which they claim were Muntjac, come out of the woods on a regular basis. It may well be that they are misidentifying Roe Deer but if anyone feels like following this up it should be worth a visit as they keep a number of other exotic mammals such as wallabies, chipmunks and raccoons, all potential future Houghton le Spring fauna.
An assortment of records from the south of the region:
1 A road kill Otter was found near to the Sporting Lodge on Low Lane near Stainton on the outskirts of Middlesbrough, it is apparently one of last year’s females and now with a taxidermist.
2 Ian Lawson watched a water shrew at Wolviston Mill on the Billingham Beck, Grid Ref NZ430238
3 Neil Porrit saw a pine marten easting road kill somewhere in the North Yorks Moors area. We’ll try and track down more details fro the next edition.
4 The number of Whiskered bat records in Cleveland has almost doubled in the past couple of months. A bat training workshop in August caught one in a harp trap at Hutton near Guisborough, the first record for the borough of Redcar & Cleveland. Not to be outdone, Middlesbrough’s first Whiskered Bat was found by Debbie Scott on the floor outside the Tees Forest offices in Stewart’s Park
5 There has been another hint that Leisler’s Bats may be present in the north east. During a survey near Piercebridge, John Drewett recorded large and low flying bats with an echolocation call in the upper 20s kHz. Whilst these could be Noctules, the pitch of their calls seemed rather high. John hopes to obtain some time expansion recordings to give a better chance of confirming the identification.
6 After 10 years of doing bat work, which involves picking up several distressed bats each year I finally came face to face with my first Soprano Pipistrelle. The owner of the house where the bat was found told me that it had spent two days down their toilet before they put it in a box and phoned someone for help (I guess they got to the point where they just couldn’t cross their legs any more!) Fortunately the bat made a full recovery and was released back over the west end of Darlington where it was found. This ratio of Common Pips: Soprano Pips rescued is pretty much in line with the results of last year’s Bats & Roadside Mammals surveys of Durham which found a ratio of 208:11 Common:Soprano in terms of passes on the bat detector. Interestingly though this contrasts with the situation in North Yorkshire where John Drewett has found that Soprano roosts are quite common, especially along river valleys. Given that Soprano Pips are associated more with riparian habitats it is worth noting that mine was found 500m from the River Tees and 400m from Northumbria Water’s reservoirs.
7 Finally a conundrum to baffle mammalogist minds, assuming of course that it was a mammal. Alistair McLee reported this encounter while he was fishing along the Tees at Girsby, near Sockburn. From the other riverbank he heard a gentle purring noise, not unlike what a moggie might make though possibly a bit louder than typical as he heard it across the river. Following shortly after that and about 20 yards down the river he then heard a loud shrieking noise, similar to a chimpanzee. The shrieking noise was repeated several times over a couple of minutes. However there was no commotion as if one animal was killing another, he didn't even hear the animal or both animals if it was more than one, moving about. There was thick willow growth on the other side so he didn't see anything. Assuming that the shrieking was an animal and not the ghost of the legendary Sockburn Worm’s last victim, my best guess was that the original purr was from a moggie and that the shrieking was from something totally unrelated (goodness knows what) that was reacting to the cat. Anybody able to offer a solution?
A study by researchers at Imperial College, London and published earlier this year modelled the effects that re-introducing wolves into the Scottish Highlands would have on the burgeoning red deer population. The study found that the wolf population would eventually reach an equilibrium point where it could maintain the red deer population at about 50% of its current level. This might even have an economic benefit because, although the wolves would take some trophy stags, estates wouldn’t have the cost of culling hinds. In fact the study found that if culling of hinds was above 4-5% of the population per annum then the wolf population wouldn’t be viable. This latter conclusion seems to contrast with a presentation that Martyn Gorman gave to the Mammal Society conference on a similar study in which he concluded that wolves could keep the red deer population in check but only if there was a severe cull of red deer in the first place. However it was a long time ago and I can’t remember all the assumptions Professor Gorman made in his model and how long the model ran for. This latest study also surveyed the attitudes of various groups of people to the re-introduction of wolves. People living in urban areas were significantly in favour of it, whereas people in rural areas were only slightly in favour of it; farmers were slightly against it but farmer’s representative groups were dead against it. The study didn’t model the scenario of wolves preying on deer and sheep, partly because a one predator- two prey scenario is much more complex to model than a one predator-one prey scenario and partly because the dynamics of sheep farming in the Highlands may undergo significant changes. Obviously sheep predation is a major issue that needs addressing but I think its worth bearing in mind that even if wolves do decide they prefer slow, defenceless mutton to rather fleeter venison the wolves will likely all be radio-collared and outnumbered 10 to 1 by researchers and that the experiment could probably be curtailed at any point. In any case the benefits of increased tourism would probably pay for compensation for most of the sheep in Scotland. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if providing wolf fodder wasn’t a more economically viable form of sheep farming; take out some sheep and bring back people in the form of tourists, it would be a bit like the Highland Clearances in reverse (that’s me not getting the Policy Officer job with SNH!).
Full details of the report can be found at: http://www.carnivoreconservation.org/files/issues/wolf_scotland_reintroduction.pdf
You will recall that a proposal for re-introducing beavers to Knapdale in Argyllshire was thrown out by the previous Scottish Parliament environment minister. I wrote a facetious e-mail about this to Scottish Wildlife Trust asking how I might register my disapproval. The Trust cut out my e-mail and stuck it in the letters page of their magazine and I was somewhat surprised to find that I’d won a book for their star letter.
Since then fears of beaver re-introductions have featured in the news a couple of times. In Perthshire a family of beavers have been living in a loch for several months. There doesn’t seem to be any indication of where they came from but they are being actively pursued in order to recapture them. A source quoted in the Scotsman said "The Scottish Executive are jumping up and down, saying you must trap them, even to the extent of digging them up.” A spokeswoman for the Scottish Executive, who presumably had taken a break from jumping up and down at that point, was quoted as saying "These animals have escaped from some unknown location and, as such, represent an illegal introduction into the Scottish countryside.” At the same time, down in the Cotswolds, a colony of beavers that were introduced into the grounds of the Cotswolds Water Park in 2005 have been upsetting residents. One resident, “Concerned of Cotswolds” was quoted as saying; "Perhaps there was a good reason why the beaver population died out in the first place.” (Not sure that I would class us killing them all as a “good” reason!) What was it about the beavers that so upset the residents? Apparently they cut down some trees. It was pointed out that the trees by the waterside needed thinning anyway so the beavers were actually doing a bit of good. Hopefully this placated the residents in this case but looking at the wider picture such attitudes do leave me unsure about the reaction of the public if we ever get round to re-introducing other species. Take bears for example; I am reliably informed that they crap in woods. Meanwhile, as you will be aware, winds of change are blowing north of the border and I’m pleased to hear that the beaver re-introduction is riding on the breeze. The new environment minister, Michael Russell, has given his support to the re-introduction of the beaver. In fact he has said that he would like to see this happen as quickly as possible. Plans have now been drawn up with the intent of seeing beaver back in the wild in Scotland in early 2009. I do hope Mr Russell likes wolves!

Summer / Autumn 2007

I think I may have discovered a new phenomenon! We have left several areas of grass in North Cemetery in Hartlepool uncut, primarily to allow the young trees we’ve planted the opportunity to grow unhindered but in fact its had a much wider benefit than that. Quite a lot of wildflowers have arrived and not a few insects. What has also been noticeable since we planted the trees is the presence of owls in the cemetery after a gap of many years. Several people have commented on how good it was that us planting the trees had brought back the owls. Now owls are pretty charismatic and very good PR, much more so than the Silver Y Moths and the froghoppers that seemed to me to be the main beneficiaries, so far be it from me to point out the inconvenient ecological truth that tree planting doesn't equal owls without little, furry intermediaries. I was happy to let people think that we'd made the owls appear just by tree planting. The thing is North Cemetery had previously had the bowling green manicure for many years and added to that it is slap bang in the most built up area of the town. I really couldn’t see word getting out to the Field Voles and Common Shrews in the wilder parts of Hartlepool that there was a bit of long grass going begging and them sneaking in, in the dead of night, to claim it. How little do I know! We strimmed the perimeter of one of these grass islands last week and several Field Voles scattered before us. This can only mean that voles are scattering around over large inhospitable distances or that some of them hung on for decades in the few square cms of long grass that didn’t get strimmed around the graves. Further evidence of this phenomenon was provided by a visit to Dale Fort Field Studies Centre in Wales, which is sited on the very end of a rocky promontory. Right in the middle of the buildings complex there is an isolated strip of soil, about 12m*2m, left over by the builders in 2006 and now vegetated with long grass. The mound is now lifting with Field Voles with burrows every foot or so; in fact its so overcrowded that the voles can be easily seen running around between the burrows. These two vole success stories raise all sorts of questions about how far voles can disperse, how many individuals you need to found a new population and the minimum amount of habitat required to sustain one but perhaps I’m thinking too ecologically. Maybe spontaneous generation is true after all and if you leave long grass you end up with voles (and owls).
If this wasn’t confusing enough I now realise that I never understood foxhunting. You see I thought that the purpose of foxhunting was to keep down the number of foxes yet, according to an article in The Observer, the Masters of Fox Hounds Association is claiming that the number of foxes has fallen since the ban on hunting with hounds. Apparently thirty-six percent of hunts are reporting fewer foxes with only twenty percent reporting more. Their argument being, I suppose, that if we want lots of foxes we’d better hunt them.
Fox numbers could be hit further if calls for the re-introduction of lynx are heeded. A study published in the Journal of Zoology looked at lynx predation on foxes and the population trend of foxes following lynx re-establishment in Sweden. It found that lynx predation accounted for 50% of the mortality of foxes in the admittedly, small-scale, (4 of 8 individuals) radio-tracking study. On an annual basis lynx predation accounted for between 4 and 14% of the total fox population. Fox populations also decreased by around 10% annually during the study period. The study concluded that the population decrease could potentially be accounted for by lynx predation alone, although there were alternative explanations. David Hetherington of Aberdeen University has studied the feasibility of re-introducing lynx to Britain. His study concluded that there was sufficient habitat to create the fourth largest lynx population in Europe with suitable areas for re-introduction being the Highlands and Southern Uplands of Scotland and Kielder in Northumberland. It was postulated that this could be achieved with a founder population of around 30 lynx. The government, obviously keen not to exacerbate the fox-reducing effects of its ban on hunting, is not showing any signs of endorsing such a re-introduction.
The otter would appear to be continuing to spread in the region. A report to Durham Wildlife Trust of a road casualty near Bishop Middleham was the first evidence that otters are now colonising the upper reaches of the Skerne (one had been previously seen on the lower reaches in Darlington town centre). In April this year I drove for several days past an elongated piece of chocolate brown fur on the A1M at Morden Carrs, about 100m north of where the Skerne goes under the motorway, before realising that I might be looking at the remains of a dead otter. The identification was subsequently confirmed by Colin Holme, who managed to get a photo of it.
Unfortunately water vole populations seem to be going the opposite way to those of the otter. I haven’t seen one at Drinkfield Marsh in Darlington for several years now though that perhaps not unexpected given the increase in water levels and cats on the site. Of much greater concern is that on the Skerne, with its miles of interconnected habitat, Clive Merrick hasn’t seen one for at least a couple of years. Previous to that Clive could pretty much guarantee seeing or hearing one in the Rockwell stretch whenever he visited. Similarly a study of water voles in Hartlepool in 2006 by Emma Glister found no evidence of water voles at 4 of the 11 sites where they had been found in a previous survey in 2002. Even more worryingly the voles seem to have subsequently disappeared from their Hartlepool stronghold on Greatham Beck. Countryside warden, Robert Smith, regularly surveys this Beck and has seen no signs of the voles this year. Ominously a mink was seen on this stretch of Greatham Beck by Derek Clayton earlier in the year. Mink droppings have also been seen on Seaton Common, which is probably the only other decent sized water vole population in Hartlepool. It would seem that water voles are faring no better throughout the north east. A study commissioned by the Environment Agency in 2006 visited some 265 sites throughout the north east at or near to where water voles had been previously recorded. Of these only 39 still had water voles. In addition the survey looked at 100 new sites that had suitable water vole habitat. Of these only 5 had water voles. There was a little good news in that large populations were found at sites in the upland areas of the East Allen near Alston and Langdon Beck on the Tees. I think we should press the government to relax the Hunting with Dogs legislation to allow the hunting of water voles with Jack Russell’s; it may be their only hope!

Spring 2007

I was flattered to see that the BBC has again been using my articles as a basis for their television programmes. This time it was the turn of Horizon, a programme that I generally find a little dull, long-winded and inconclusive, to look at the issue of whether chimps were really humans. The programme was considerably enlivened (just long-winded and inconclusive to go) by being presented by the comedian Danny Wallace who tried to persuade a number of chimpanzee experts to confess that chimps should be classed as people. To his disappointment most of the experts concluded that the fraction of a percent of DNA that divides our two species still equated to quite a significant difference and that chimps and humans were different things (so, to be fair, just a tad on the long side in the end.) It did however remind me of my favourite bit of chimp docu-drama. This was set some years ago at the famous research site at Gombe and featured the two brothers Freud and Frodo. Freud had led the group for some time, was of a relatively calm demeanour and had ruled by building up good relations with the female members of the troop. His younger brother Frodo was physically stronger and his stock in trade was thumping other chimps and thrashing trees. It seemed inevitable that Frodo would wrest control from Freud by force but, on the day Frodo made his move, the female chimps gathered around Freud to support him and Frodo was unable to gain control. Two things struck me about this episode. Firstly that this was a simple form of democracy, the female chimps were in effect choosing their leader, and secondly, if chimps can choose their leader on the basis of experience and diplomacy, why on earth can’t Americans.
Speaking of the down-side to Americans, the Grey Squirrel has been further indicted on crimes against British wildlife by a recent study, sponsored by the British Trust for Ornithology, into breeding and survival rates of Spotted Flycatchers in woodlands and gardens. According to the BTO almost a third of woodland species have declined by more than half in the past 30 years with Spotted Flycatchers in particular declining by 83%. The study showed that survival rates dropped from 75% to 25% when predators weren’t controlled. Whilst the study didn’t address Grey Squirrel predation specifically the squirrels were described, by Dr Chris Stoate who led the study, as the number one suspect given their arboreal habits and fondness for eggs and chicks.
Experiments by a team from the University of Leeds & Princeton University have demonstrated that bats are able to sense the earth’s magnetic field. Ten Big Brown Bats, a North American species, were subjected to artificial magnetic fields, which altered the direction of magnetic north that they might perceive by ninety degrees either west or east. The bats were then released about 20km north of their usual roost along with a control of five Big Brown Bats from the same roost, which hadn’t been exposed to the artificial magnetic fields. The five bats in the control flew straight back south to their roost whereas the ten “magnetised” bats flew off either east or west, the direction corresponding to the magnetic field that they had been exposed to and took a few days to find their way back to the roost. The ability to detect the Earth’s magnetic field was only previously known in two other species of mammal, Naked Mole Rats and Siberian Hamsters. This research lends support to the idea that other types of mammal may be able to navigate using the Earth’s magnetic field, though I suspect that my wife won’t be one of them.
The group of wild boar that were released from a farm on Exmoor at the end of 2005 are proving to be very mobile; I seem to recall that the attempt by the local hunt to try and round them up was predicted to have that effect. The boar have now turned up in Dartmoor, some 50 miles away and are reported to have bred there. Their reception has been a little mixed with the press accusing them of menacing a dog walker and terrorising a dachsund.
Meanwhile, closer to home, in a wood near the A19, George Howe found some cloven hoofprints, four inches long. He sent me some initial pictures, which weren’t terribly clear. My initial suggestion that a Roe Deer had skidded in the mud was answered with a rebuttal and a second picture, which showed three indistinct, rounded prints about six inches apart. My second reply was that it was a black panther stalking a Roe Deer or a wind-up. Again a rebuttal, more pictures and a comment about the heel prints at the back. Four-inch cloven hooves with separate heel prints suddenly started to register and Jonathan Pounder was despatched with plaster of paris and a better camera. Jonathan sent me the picture later in the day, which showed a very clear imprint of a porcine trotter. We await confirmation as to the wildness of the print’s maker but it was in the depths of a wild, wild wood less than a mile from where a wild boar farm closed down a couple of years back.
I was tempted to do a Hartlepool article for this edition such was the number of Hartlepool related stories that have turned up. Alistair McLee reported that a birder friend of his, whilst sea watching at Hartlepool saw 2 large cetacean fins surface twice at great distance then vanish. His friend used to be a cetacean counter on the Biscay ferries Research Group, so was well used to cetaceans and distance. He thinks his brief sighting was of 2 sub adult male orcas.
Robert Smith, one of Hartlepool’s countryside rangers, was taken aback by a much closer range view of Hartlepool’s wildlife. Whilst stood outside the portacabin that “shelters” the local Partnership for Nature from the ravages of Seaton Common’s weather he was taken aback to be approached by a fox. The fox got closer and closer until eventually it came right up and took a bite of the pork pie in Robert’s hand. The fox regularly comes up to Robert for a snack now and has even brought its vixen, although she is more circumspect. I believe Robert is discussing with the foxes a partnership approach to preventing rabbit damage to the hedge that Natural England have planted on the approach road.
There is a bit more evidence that Muntjac may be getting a toe-hold in the region. There have been two reports of Muntjac at Aisalby last November. Also George Howe told me that a couple of local farmers who were watching the hunt go past saw a group of six (that’s 6!) Muntjac at Embleton on the western boundary of Hartlepool about 4 or 5 years ago. Prior to this I only knew of four reports; Teeside Airport (aka Durham-Tees Valley-Just-Over-The-Border-From- North Yorkshire Airport, or whatever catchy, inclusive title it now goes by); Wingate; Great Burden in north-east Darlington and the road kill specimen near Thorpe Thewles. Thorpe Thewles and Wingate are at either end of the Castle Eden Walkway; with Embleton in the middle and lots of woodland in between its probably a good spot to start looking.
Finally some good news and some bad news
The re-introduction programme for Harvest Mice run by Stockton Borough Council would seem to have succeeded in at least one instance. Around 50 captive bred Harvest Mice were released in Pickard’s Meadow at the Wynyard Woodland Park in 2003. On October 18th 2006 one of the small mammal trapping sessions that are run at each of the release sites caught a single harvest mouse. I am not aware of any conclusive evidence that the releases have succeeded in the long term in any of the other three release sites though something is using the mouse boxes on sticks at Portrack Marsh and a Harvest Mouse nest has been found near to the release site on the Tees Road. Ironically the release at Pickard’s Meadow was the only hard release and involved one of the lowest numbers of mice.

You will no doubt have heard for many years now the familiar lament that if we don’t do something now, something will go extinct. Of course naturalists are aware that things are already going extinct quite rapidly but what the media mean by the second “something” is something big, warm-blooded and with a bit of media appeal.
Well it has finally happened and we have lost the Baiji. The Baiji is a primitive, blind, river dolphin that swam in the Yangtze River for several million years but has finally succumbed to the many forms of pollution that suffocate the world’s busiest watercourse. Its likely demise has been known about for some years, in fact it features in Douglas Adams book, “Last chance to see” which was about a whistle-stop world tour to see species on the brink.
In the case of the Baiji something was about to be done in that the Chinese government had set up a reserve in a lake to which they were going to transfer the Baiji to start a captive breeding programme. Unfortunately a six-week expedition to locate some Baiji using sonar equipment failed to find even one.
Those involved commented that the odd animal might have escaped them but that, even so, the species is effectively extinct.
Whilst the sad demise of the Baiji might be hoped to act as a wake up call, we all know deep down that we still wont do something, or at least not enough, the Baiji will just be the first and the only question will be which big, charismatic species will join it.
I’m not looking forward to the BBC series.

Winter 2006

As a follow up to the “Great Bear Diary” in the last edition, there has been some good news and some bad news for the re-introduction of bears into the French Pyrenees. The good news is the release this year of a further five bears to bolster the existing population which is thought to number just 14-18. The bears were translocated from Slovenia, which has one of the strongest populations of bears in Europe with an estimated population of around 550.
The bad news is that one of the bears has been found dead after an apparent fall from a cliff. Opponents of the translocation have argued that the Slovenian bears are not adapted to the rocky landscapes of the Pyrenees and that this had led to the accident. (Quite where in the genome the gene for not falling off cliffs was located was not speculated on!)
By pure co-incidence (at least I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt) the BBC broadcast their own “Big Bear Diary” recently in which they sent their Wildlife Whisperers in pursuit of bear “dramas” in North America. More used to big cats and elephants, the Whisperers seemed a bit puzzled by the bear’s behaviour. “This bear seems really stressed,” said one of them who had been pursuing it round the island all week. She was further puzzled when the bear put its paw up in front of its face. “I’ve never seen behaviour like this before,” said the perplexed Whisperer. Those of us watching at home, however, could clearly see the two claws sticking up.
Getting back to re-introductions, Wolves have also been making a bit of a comeback in Germany, only under their own steam. About 20 wolves in two packs now live in the state of Brandenburg, which is part of the former East Germany. Wolves were wiped out in Germany a century ago but as parts of this state are being de-populated due to political and economic changes, the wolves have been able to move in from Poland.
Impatient with the lack of progress on re-introducing extinct animals to Britain, a group called the Wild Beasts Trust has decided to take matters into their own hands. According to the Daily Mail the group intends to release a number of species that have become extinct including Moose, Lemmings and Walrus. More pertinently it was claimed that the group had purchased a number of lynx and wolves, which they intend to release in Northumberland. So don’t be surprised if the Wildlife Trust’s goats start disappearing.
Whilst not as extreme as bringing back Walrus’ (is the plural Walri?) the re-establishment of Wild Boar is still causing plenty of controversy. Defra have now published the results of their consultation on Wild Boar in Britain. Of the 284 responses received 56% wanted to keep them in some form and 80% felt that there should be some form of management of the populations. The form of management with the most support was eradication, with 44% of the total respondents asking for this, mainly on grounds of animal health. Curiously, given that they have a published statement on this, the Mammal Society doesn’t appear to have responded to the consultation. Defra is due to announce its future policy with regards to Wild Boar later in the year.
One of the respondents to the Wild Boar consultation considered that it was now too late to eradicate the Boar. I find this a bit unlikely given that we managed it in C13, but Wild Boar do seem to be popping up more widely than Defra statistics show. The Wigan News has reported sightings of a Wild Boar sow and piglets near Standish and I recently received a phone call (about a possible big cat print) from South Wales from a man who had a regularly spot where he hunted for deer and Wild Boar. (The footprint turned out to be dog, an enormous dog granted, but definitely a dog)
If Lynx and Wolves do get released into Northumberland there may be some additional varieties of herbivorous mammals for them to prey on. First there was the case of the Were-Rabbit at Felton. This apparently giant lagomorph, which plagued allotment holders, was described as having footprints bigger than those of deer and taking big bites out of turnips (so just a rabbit then!) Now there has been a sighting of an even bigger animal near Eyemouth. The animal, dubbed the Beast of Berwickshire, was described as being like a guinea-pig, only 2’ tall when sat on its haunches. With that description, the most likely suspect is an escaped Capybara. These animals can be the size of a golden Labrador and weigh over 100lbs, so if you are doing a spot of mammal trapping In Northumberland can I suggest taking some scales instead of a Pesola balance.
Again moving closer to home, a survey commissioned by Pets at Home found that half of North-East households had seen bats in their gardens, with just over a third of households seeing a squirrel and a similar number a hedgehog.
There have been two separate sightings of Pine Martens in Hamsterley Forest this year. One was near Blackling Hole at the SW corner of the forest and the other by Malcolm and Jenny Gallimore, on or about 10 Sep at the NE corner near Sharnberry. Added to this, Derek Capes has recently had an unconfirmed report of a Pine Marten in Guisborough Forest.
The Bats & Roadside Mammals survey in County Durham has had a bit more success with the Roadside Mammals side of it. The survey in Darlington saw 6 rabbits, 3 badgers and a dead rat; whilst the survey in Sunderland found a squashed hedgehog and 3 cats, all of them black (is that they only kind of cat you are allowed in Sunderland?)
Finally and serendipitously in view of the forthcoming talk by Wendy Fail, there have been several new Harvest Mouse records in the Tees Valley area. Firstly Don Griss was sent the corpse of a male Harvest Mouse that had been killed during harvesting operations at a farm just east of Sadberge on the Darlington/Stockton border. Durham Wildlife Trust then received a report of a Harvest Mouse nest in a road verge near Sedgefield. Meanwhile in Great Ayton, Derek Capes’ neighbour’s cat brought back a Harvest Mouse and at Urlay Nook, the pellets that Alistair McLee collects from Long eared Owls have again turned up a couple of harvest mouse remains. All of these records are from places near where Harvest Mice have previously been recorded, though in the case of Sedgefield I don’t know of any records since the 1960s.

Monkey Magic
As the publication date for this edition of the newsletter co-incides with the third anniversary of my sojourn at Hartlepool, I thought it would be good to mark it with an article on primates.
As I’m sure is well known, Hartlepool is famous for its claim to have hung a monkey during the Napoleonic Wars because they thought it was a French spy. I used to think that Hartlepudlians would be sensitive about this episode in their history and, when first arriving there I kept repeating to myself “don’t mention the monkey!” Interestingly though the locals are quite proud of the episode and are happy to talk about it “as long you don’t make fun of the monkey.” Now why would I make fun of the monkey; it wasn’t its fault that it couldn’t speak English?
Not all intra-primate homicide is one-way. Alistair McLee’s wife was researching family history connections for people who were killed overseas and came across the sad case of Lt G Turner of the East Indian Company’s 38th Native Indians. The note on his file listed him as “killed by a stone thrown by a monkey.”
The similarity between humans and apes, particularly chimpanzees, has been emphasised in recent years with a figure of 98.5% similarity in the genetic make-up of the two species, thus making chimps closer to humans than they are to gorillas and leading to the description of us as the “third chimpanzee”. Recent research published in Nature by David Reich of Harvard Medical School suggests that the link might be closer still as different sections of the two species’ chromosomes differ by varying amounts, with the X chromosome being most similar. This suggests to the researchers that there was a hybridisation between the two species for a significant period of time after the species split.
Another study, published in Current Biology, and looking at chimp behaviour has found that they have adapted their behaviour to cope with a difficult man-made situation, that of crossing roads. The study in Guinea, West Africa found that the males would take up positions at the front and rear of the group whilst they crossed over the roads. This is similar to the behaviour that they exhibit when faced with other threatening situations. Whilst this shows the intelligence to adapt to new situations, the chimps still differ from humans in that they didn’t fill out a risk assessment first
By way of comparing chimps and humans (and for once I’m not being purposely facetious) it has been interesting to watch both Chimp Week and Big Brother. In Big Brother the humans once out of their normal environment and in what is effectively a zoo started to act in a remarkably similar way to the chimps. They spend much of the day lounging around aimlessly with occasional bouts of grooming and formed little alliances over food and other commodities; there was even the odd burst of pant-hooting. I really did find it hard to work out where the one and a half percent was.
For some time now there have been reports coming out of the Democratic Republic of Congo about a giant species of primate, the so-called Billi Ape. These apes, which do actually exist, would appear to be up to 100kg, have feet longer than those of gorillas and differ from chimps in having a sagittal crest and making ground nests. Whilst there has been proof for some time of their existence, there has been much speculation as to what they are, including them being a chimp-gorilla hybrid or even a totally new species of ape. New research reported in the New Scientist and based on DNA samples from their droppings now suggests that, in spite of these morphological and behavioural differences, they belong to a recognised, sub-species of chimp, Pan troglodytes
schweinfurthii. Bummer!
Those of us whose cryptozoological romanticism has been crushed by the taxonomic orthodoxy of the Billi Ape can take heart from the tale of a possible Bigfoot sighting in Virginia USA. Reports of Bigfoot are, of course, nothing new but this report differs in that it was by a group of ecologists doing bat surveys. I’ll leave the story in the observer’s own words:
“I would like to preface this report with a small fact: I have always wanted to see a Bigfoot. I truly believe that I have, based on what I saw tonight. I work for a monitoring lab that conducts late-night bat surveys. Very recently we were commissioned to do a survey to look for Myotis sodalis, the Indiana bat. We had to make sure that the bats were not roosting on an active mine site.
On the second night of our 6-day survey, my coworker and I were going to check one of the nets when we heard a very loud whooping howl nearby (within 30 feet of where we were standing). It was late at night, probably around 1:30 in the morning. At first I thought the sound was a person, trying to scare us by making howling noises. After the creature vocalized a second time, however, i knew the noise wasn't made by a man. I refused to move from my spot, scanning the tree line with my light. I didn't see anything then, but i heard rustling in the woods of something large moving.
The next night i was on a different part of the survey, but 2 more of my coworkers were in the same area i was in the night before. They told us at the end of our shift that they had heard noises in the woods, and saw a place that had been trampled down by something much larger than a deer or bear.
Finally, on the last night of our survey, I was back in the area i heard the noise on the second day. I was in a good mood, because i hadn't heard any strange noises since that first one. As i went to check the nets with 2 of my coworkers at around 2:30 in the morning (in the same area as before) I heard a single, high-pitched "whoop". I jumped but was prepared, and shone my light in the direction of the noise. about 40 yards in front of us, a large bipedal creature crossed the road. It was tall, probably around 7 feet, and was completely covered in short, coarse-looking black hair except for its face, which was brown. The creature looked at the 3 of us as it crossed the road, took two steps, and was gone up the embankment on the other side.
The 3 of us ran back to my truck, where one of my coworkers grabbed a machete. When my boss and another technician showed up, the 5 of us walked to where I had seen the Bigfoot. In the mud were 2 distinct footprints, each much larger than any of our shoes. in the direction that the Bigfoot had walked in was trampled down grasses and broken twigs, as if something very big had moved quickly through the brush. We promptly packed up our nets and left, all of us were extremely scared. I plan on going back soon and trying to extract as much evidence as I can find.”
I have to admit, I struggled a bit to find an up to date Hartlepool monkey story to round this off with, so was very pleased when on 7th August a Minke was sighted off Hartlepool Headland. I will of course be checking whether they have a licence for it!

Autumn 2006

The recovery of the otter seems to be continuing unabated. The one that had the misfortune to be run over on the road near Durham Wildlife Trust headquarters at Rainton Meadows was the first to be recorded in that area since the 1960s. The River Tees otters have also been busy and an otter has now been seen on the Lustrum Beck in the heart of urban Stockton. In fact, if a couple of reports from Alistair McLee are anything to go by, they could be starting to make a nuisance of themselves. A pair of otters on the River Tees were “playing” within a couple of rod lengths of a fisherman and consequently put all the fish off his peg, whilst on the same stretch of river two swans were so agitated by an otter that they tried to take off vertically like teal – singularly unaccomplished however.
Speaking of aquatic nuisances the Evening Gazette reported that a recent study by the Centre of Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science has shown that 49% of a sample of tagged salmon and sea trout on the River Tees had been eaten by seals. The study was supposed to be looking at the effectiveness of the “fish pass” at the Tees Barrage, which anglers claimed was too narrow and bottled up the fish making them easy targets for the seals. It was pointed out by the Environment Agency that this was just a snapshot and that a more detailed study was needed.
One possible solution to the above problem is to replace the seals with cows; these would leave the fish alone and might have the additional benefit of grazing off the enteromorpha algae, which is smothering Seal Sands. The idea came to me after a report last week about a herd of cows in Cumbria that for some reason just casually wandered into the sea and kept swimming until they landed in Scotland a distance, as the cow swims, of some five miles. For a terrestrial mammal not given to aquatic tendencies this struck me as very impressive but rather inexplicable. Assuming that they weren’t doing it for Sport Relief or fleeing religious persecution, why would they just up and head across the sea? Did they know there was land out there; after all if you miss Scotland, Canada is your next port of call? Were they originally from Scotland and hence were homing cows? Whatever the answer, I shall treat cows with a lot more respect in future.
Another supposedly, non-British, European bat has turned up in this country. This time it was a Parti-coloured Bat, which is distinctively coloured, as you might gather from the name. This individual was small for its species and it was therefore assumed that it was a juvenile, leading to speculation that its mother had migrated here, given birth, and then returned back to the continent. Personally I’m not sure that this speculation is justified as the bat was found in the Spring by which time it would have been several months old and adult size. I think it’s more likely that it was still underweight after hibernation. Parti-coloured bats are a migratory species and there have been around 10 records in Britain in the past 100 years or so, including two in the North East of which one is held at Bowes Museum. To strengthen my theory that this was a European bat that had migrated here, this particular bat was found in the rafters of a thatched cottage watching line dancers; I can’t imagine any self-respecting British bat watching line dancing!
Closer to home, Hartlepool, and, as far as I am aware Cleveland, has had its first record of Soprano Pipistrelle Bat. One or possibly two bats were recorded around Thorpe Bulmer Dene at the end of May.
In a bid to further our knowledge of bats and other mammals in County Durham, Durham bat Group did the first of the “Bats & Roadside Mammals Surveys” in early June. For the uninitiated this consists of driving round country roads at 15mph in the middle of the night with a flashing beacon on the roof and a bat detector stuck on the window whilst the passengers scan the roads for mammals or squashed bits of mammals. The first trip was plotted, purely by co-incidence you understand, to go straight through the heart of Trimdon Panther country; well, you never say never! We were at the very least expecting to fill in several new tetrads with squashed bunnies. Whilst not wanting to put off any of you who might wish to help with future surveys, I can report that we drove for an hour and a half around some of the most rural spots in East Durham and came up with a total of zero bits of flattened fur, with our only live mammals being a ferret and a bloke out walking his dog. To add to the frustration the ferret was about 100m outside of the Hartlepool boundary where it would probably have been a new district record. (If any undaunted NMG members would still like a ride in the world’s slowest bat mobile, please contact me on 01325 264296)
On a somewhat more positive note, there was another sighting of pine marten in Errington Woods on 19th June.
You may recall that in the last edition I was asking for 101 suggestions for uses for dead grey squirrels. Suggestion number 3 is from Alistair McLee who apparently drops a couple of them in the hole as fertiliser when planting new trees. A very practical and poetic use I thought, though I suspect some future archaeologist doing a thesis on “the politics and practice of tree planting in late C20 Cleveland” will imbue it with some more ritualistic symbolism.
It would seem that my mammalian taxonomy is stuck in the seventies (along with the rest of me) if a recent report in the New Scientist is anything to go by. Having always believed that bats evolved from insectivores, then got used to the idea that some of them might have evolved from primates and then to the idea that they probably all evolved from insectivores after all, it now appears that they belong to a super-order Pegasoferae which includes cows, horses, whales, cats and dogs. Within this group a study of DNA mutations has shown that only cats and dogs are more closely related to horses than bats are. Now I do usually take these reports with a pinch of salt and wondered if this was maybe overplaying the evidence, however Rob Pollard was in no doubt that this was true and, what’s more, sent me the following picture to prove it!

The Great Bear Diary
From previous articles, you may be aware that I am favour of re-introducing extinct British fauna, where this is ecologically feasible. However even I have great reservations about the feasibility of re-introducing bears. Bears are particularly problematic because, not only are they bigger than us but they require such huge territories and we are one of the most crowded countries in the world. From recent news items it would seem that conserving bears is fraught with difficulty across their range.
A re-introduction of bears into the French Pyrennees has been dogged with controversy with strong local opposition, particularly from farmers, leading to the project being temporarily suspended pending a ruling by the French Council of State.
Bears became extinct in France in the 1980s, but three bears were released in 1996, one of which is alleged to have killed 165 sheep last year. A further two bears from Slovenia were released recently, with a further three releases planned. In spite of the continued opposition the Council of State has ruled that the reintroduction can go ahead as France had pledged to protect the bears as part of an international convention.
The first bear to be seen in Germany for 170 years was shot recently in Bavaria. The bear, a young male from an Italian programme to re-introduce bears into the Alps, was shot because it had killed seven sheep and raided a chicken coop and the State Authorities had decided that its search for food was taking it closer to inhabited areas.
Apparantly the World Wildlife Fund agreed that the bear could not be left out as it was too dangerous, but the European Nature Heritage Fund expressed regret at the shooting saying “We consider the decision by the Bavarian government to be wrong, because it was based only on the fact that the bear was getting close to human habitation…If this is to be the yardstick for the right to life for brown bears then the outlook is bleak for European bears.”
A story with a happier ending occurred in Vancouver recently, when in a reversal of the Goldilocks story, a householder came home to find a bear in her house eating the porridge, well oatmeal. Rather worryingly the bear didn’t flee on the owner’s return (presumably it still had to try the chairs out). The police were called but decided to let the bear continue its meal and vacate the area under its own steam as it wasn’t aggressive and wasn’t destroying the house.
Polar Bears are also having a hard time these days. Global warming is resulting in less ice in the Artic and hence many bears are either starving or drowning. Perhaps a measure of their desperate plight is found in the news that a bear, which was recently shot in Northern Canada, turned out to be the first recorded occurrence of a hybrid Polar/Grizzly bear in the wild. The bear, which was termed, somewhat unimaginatively, a Pizzly bear, had the creamy fur of a polar bear, but the shoulder hump, long claws and shallow face of a grizzly bear.
As if bears didn’t have enough problems, the British Army has decided to continue using real bearskins for the Guards regiments. In spite of extensive efforts it would seem that they can’t find a synthetic fur that doesn’t get waterlogged on rainy days. I find it a bit difficult to believe that one of the world’s military superpowers can’t do waterproof hats; my mam has a perfectly serviceable plastic scarf (with little flowers on it) that keeps the rain off a treat. In fact I think the Queen has a similar model; perhaps they could all wear them at the trooping of the colour, it might save a few bears.
You may recall in the last edition that I was fooled by a large, black cuddly toy into thinking I’d found the remains of the Trimdon Panther. We’ll believe it or not, only two days later and a few miles up the road on the A689 I saw a 3 foot Winnie the Pooh flat on its back on the road verge.
As I say, this just isn’t a safe world for bears.

Summer 2006

Another stray raccoon has made an appearance, this time in North Wales. The animal, which turned up some 15 miles from home was caught and re-united with its owners several weeks after escaping. Could it be that we are turning into a nation of careless raccoon owners? I can just see the next reality TV show on Channel 4; two stern American ladies lecture members of the public on how to be model raccoon owners, including ensuring that their animals wash their hands whilst eating their food.
The government recently announced a plan for a concerted effort to cull grey squirrels. Well they sort of did; then they seemed to retract it a bit. It seems that grey squirrels are much too cuddly and well loved to be eradicated completely, so the plan is to have a more targeted approach in areas where forestry damage is high, or in buffer zones around red squirrel reserves. In the House of Lords they seem to be taken up the cause with some gusto. Lord Inglewood said: "What about celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver promoting (the grey) for school dinners? Indeed the House authorities could put it on the menu here." He went on to say: "Don't let's forget that a number of things we eat as a matter of course are entirely loveable creatures and they appeal to the wider world. What's the difference?”
Some more good news for Red Squirrels is the award of Ł626,000 by the Heritage Lottery Fund to the Red Alert North England partnership. Meanwhile on a very localised scale, Joe Davies tells me that red squirrels were still being reported at Castle Eden Dene until recently and are still thought to be present there, although their continuing existence must be incredibly perilous.
Another 35 wild boar have been released in Devon. This was from the same farm in South Moulton as the release reported in the last edition. In January, 100 wild boar were released, of which about half were recaptured and 22 were shot. The remainder are assumed to be roaming free. By my reckoning this second release makes about 70 wild boar loose in Devon with the farrowing season underway.
Whilst the release of wild boar into Britain is being seen by some as a plus for conservation, their release into New Zealand has been an unmitigated disaster as they chew their way through a native ground flora and fauna totally unadapted for such an onslaught. Fortunately those resourceful New Zealand folk are on the case. Alistair McLee recently sent me a cutting from a New Zealand newspaper with the heading “One hundred and one things to do with a dead pig (or one hundred and two if your name’s Bruce!)”. It featured the ultimate piggyback race, where large New Zealand blokes strapped even larger dead wild boar to their backs and took part in an obstacle race, which included negotiating barbed wire fences. (Is it any wonder we can’t beat them at rugby?) To give this a Northumbrian angle, I think we should launch a column called “One hundred and one things to do with a dead grey squirrel”. For activity No 1 we could have Jamie Oliver telling us how to stuff a grey squirrel, whilst for No 2, I could tell Jamie Oliver where to stuff it. I’m hoping for many more original suggestions from you for the other 99; who knows, perhaps there’s a grant for the winning suggestion.
Finally Jonathan Pounder’s Tees Valley Mammal Project has come up with some fascinating records. I came across the following whilst cross-checking his records with mine.
- 23/10/2003 - field mice - ad - 3 - a - portrack marsh, ran away from bobcat.
Is this one for the Big Cat Diary Jonathan?

Spring 2006

The December edition of BBC Wildlife magazine ran a five-page article about a group of Siberian chipmunks that were living in Wellington Country Park in Hampshire. On reading the article it turned out that they had just escaped from the Parks’ animal farm and that they had all been recaptured (But hey! we’ve all been short of copy). The species has a natural distribution that extends westward into Eastern Europe, but in recent years it has become established as an exotic in France & Belgium where it is increasing at a phenomenal rate. It surprises me that it hasn’t become established in Britain. There was a bit of a craze for them in the early 90s, when the price per chipmunk dropped from around Ł80 to Ł15 within the period of about a year. Having bred them myself, and having spent many a curse-reverberating hour chasing them around my shed, trying to get them back in their cage, I cannot believe there is anything in the known universe with such a propensity for escaping. So why have they established on the continent and not here? Purely idle speculation of course, but I wonder if those bolshy, American tree rats have usurped all the squirrel-type niches.
Another introduction that hit the news recently was the escape of 100 wild boar from a farm in Devon. Forty were recaptured fairly promptly, but at the time of writing the remaining 60 were still at large. Well actually, only 59 are at large. A high profile recapture attempt, involving the local hunt, farmers and Uncle Tom Cobbly tried in a spectacularly unsuccessful fashion to round them up again, but only succeeded in catching one. One elderly participant interviewed on the telly, it might have been Uncle Tom Cobbly actually, said that he was hoping to catch one of the boar by the leg whilst his friend put it in a sack. Given his age, it is likely that this gentleman will have passed his genes on, which is lucky for him as the gene for grabbing wild boar by the leg is one of those that natural selection tends to weed out of the population fairly rapidly. The story concluded by saying that the boar would now have to be shot, but as they may well have now been scattered to the four corners of Devon, it remains to be seen how effective that will be.
There have been several reports of a large Bigfoot-like hominid in the province of Johar in Malaysia recently. Apparently government officials and the Malayasian Nature Society, whilst not necessarily believing them, are taking them seriously and investigating them. Nearer to home I have had no more reports of a large, Bigfoot-like hominid stomping around the backwaters in Northumberland, but then Kevin O’Hara’s “Researching Ratty” project has now finished J.

Summer 2005

Whilst carrying out tree planting on the developing Bowesfield Nature Reserve, volunteers made an unexpected discovery, a female harvest mouse had come out to make sure the volunteers were doing a good job. This was a first for the site (and future work will be carried out to create more habitats areas) and another pin in the map for Harvest Mice in the area.
Has anybody seen a wallaby lately? Apparently the wallaby, let’s call him Wally, escaped from Elwick in Hartlepool about a month ago and was last seen heading for Trimdon. I haven’t heard of any subsequent sightings or of a recapture, but I would be interested to know what has become of him as “last seen heading for Trimdon” is not the sort of epitaph I‘d wish on anyone (well almost anyone).
For those of you who missed it, the press has been having great fun speculating that there are mako sharks out in the North Sea, predating our porpoises and dolphins (and no doubt just waiting for people to get back in the water). This follows a number of instances, 45 seems to be the general consensus, of porpoises and dolphins being washed up on north-east beaches with large bite marks out of them. There are of course other, slightly less dramatic, explanations such as seals or porbeagle sharks snacking on already deceased cetaceans. It does seem that something “different” is happening out there, but for all I know 45 small cetaceans with bites out of them may actually be the norm for a particular period of time.

Autumn 2005

A new species of bat for Britain was recorded in Britain last year with the discovery of a Pond Bat, Myotis dasycneme, in Kent. Whilst several, non-resident species of bat have been recorded as vagrants or stowaways in Britain over the years, the difference with the Pond Bat is that it is found widely on the western fringe of continental Europe and is a very mobile species. As such, I had hoped that it would colonise Britain and wondered if it might not be here already as it is essentially a larger version of the widespread Daubenton’s bat. I don’t know how easy it is to distinguish from Daubenton’s, but I’d better find out as I predict that this individual will be the first of quite a few of its species to be found here.

Winter 2005

The bandit that broke into a pigeon loft in Lincolnshire earlier this year, killing 13 pigeons, turned out to be a raccoon. The raccoon was shot by the pigeon fancier and the body later photographed by the Lincolnshire Echo. Hopefully this was just an isolated escapee as the species has the propensity to become well established here in the absence of its natural predators such as pumas
On the theme of masked invaders, a garden dormouse was found in Kent last year. This species has a significant ecological difference to our two existing species of dormouse in that it is much more insectivorous. It is found across much of western Europe and would have probably been native had it got its skates on when the ice melted.

Spring 2005

On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Or a mammalogist always gets his marten!) In his book, The Lost Beasts of Britain, published in 1974, Anthony Dent charts the disappearance of some of Britain’s most notable fauna. He describes the pine marten as having vanished from England in his own lifetime. Interestingly Dent was writing from North Yorkshire, where it seems the pine marten is enjoying something of a resurrection.
Whilst I’d heard of the pine marten skull which had been exhumed from Ingleby Greenhow in 1993 (which incidentally some British mammal experts doubted as to its provenance), I was still taken by surprise by a tale that Kevin Bulmer told me a couple of years back of someone in New Marske who had apparently seen one at the bird table in their garden.
As far as I was aware at that point, pine martens were still something of a rumour. However in the intervening period, NMG member Derek Capes has been ferreting away (sorry!) compiling a list of pine marten records for North Yorkshire. It had been a while since I had been in touch with Derek, as our computers don’t like to talk to each other and, when we did catch up he had something like 50+ records. Derek has subsequently been liasing with North York Moors National Park and Forestry Commission staff on this and some resultant publicity resulted in the total number of records growing to 67 by the end of last year.
The records have been classified into two groups. Those that have been vetted by the Vincent Wildlife Trust and achieved 7 or more on the Johnny Birks-o-meter are classed as probable and total 32 of the records. The others, some of which pre-date the Vincent Wildlife Trust survey, have been classed as possible, though most of them have come from countryside professionals or experienced naturalists. Whilst some of the 67 records may be cases of mistaken identity, doubtless there will additional records that don’t have the same confidence levels attached to them because of the conditions under which the sighting occurred, but which may nevertheless still be of pine marten.
The records follow the highly wooded escarpment, which forms the northern, and western boundary of the North York Moors and then continue across the large plantations in Ryedale. There aren’t as many records for Ryedale, but this may just be inversely related to the distance from Derek. Interestingly there aren’t any records for the large wooded valleys along the east coast. The records are very well spread out, though if I had to pick a place to start looking, it would probably be in the Ingleby Greenhow/ Carlton Bank area. As this may technically be just over the border in North Yorkshire, for NMG pine marten seekers who are be strictly territorial the New Marske/ Upleatham area seems to be the up and coming place for sightings and Kevin Bulmer’s sources have hinted that the appropriately named “Wiley Cat Wood” might be a good bet.
Although most of the records that Derek has collected are recent, 35 this century and 16 in 2004, they stretch back over a period of 40 years, indicating a continuity of pine marten presence in this area. In fact the Proceedings of the Cleveland Naturalists Field Club, 1899-1900, records one being trapped at Swainby in March 1900. The author commented at the time that “the capture of a marten in Cleveland is very exceptional” and wondered if it had wandered there from the Lakes or further north. However the increase in sightings in the past few years may just reflect increased interest in the species compared to the situation a decade ago, rather than a burgeoning population.

New Harvest Mouse records

A new record for the harvest mouse (Micromys minutus) has been found near Barmpton in Darlington (Grid Ref NZ316174).
The find was on 28th October 2004 and was of a single harvest mouse day nest in a small 5m*5m patch of reed canary grass. In February 2004 I had found what I felt sure were the remains of a harvest mouse nest in the same patch of grass, however it was in very poor condition and had disappeared completely when I went back to take photos a couple of weeks later.
This is the first definite record of harvest mouse that I have been able to trace in the area between the Tyne and the Tees since the 1980s and possibly the first ever for Darlington. However it might have been beaten to one of these records by some remains that Alistair McLee obtained from owl pellets. Alistair has been collecting long-eared owl pellets from the Elementis site near Urlay Nook (Grid Ref NZ4014). The pellets were analysed by Mr A. Love and harvest mouse remains were found in some pellets from winter 2002/2003 and again from winter 2003/2004. As the Elementis site is about 2km north of the River Tees, the remains probably represent an undiscovered VC66 population of harvest mice.
Postscript: I think we may have found the source of the harvest mice in Alistair's long-eared pellets. Ian Craft from RDS asked me to look at a couple of small, isolated patches (c 1 acre each) of damp grassland, one of which had extensive areas of reed canary grass. These were on the Coatham Beck at approx NZ377149. This is only 2km from Elementis and about 500m from the boundary with Darlington.

Spring 2004

Sightings of Pine Martin have come into the Tees Valley Wildlife Trust office as a result of advertising the survey to TVWT members. A report of one on the 18th May 2003 moving around through the tree tops in Errington Wood, and then another two sightings a few days later in woodland around Upleatham. Discussions before the survey showed that there have been lots of reported sightings around the Guisborough area (both recent and historical), but during the survey no confirmed evidence was found (we did find one possible dropping which has yet to be identified).
Jonathan Pounde
X-Creatures According to the Northern Echo a wolverine has been reported in the County of Durham. The creature seems to have a feeling for alliteration and turned up on moors between Rookhope and Ireshopeburn, thus becoming the Weardale Wolverine. It has been seen twice by the same motorist, who described as being a big, ferret-like creature almost as long as a badger. I was alerted to the report when a correspondent in the following week’s paper suggested that what they might actually have seen was a pine marten. I tend to agree, especially as wolverines are bigger than badgers. Still a pine marten would be a stonking good record for this area, and one that I would prefer; wolverines are a bit extreme, even for me. I now look forward to reports of a sabre-tooth, which will no doubt turn up in Sacriston or Satley.

Spring 2003

New species? Not Yeti!
I’ve reported on some pretty strange mammal sightings in previous editions of the newsletter, however I think the ultimate in bizarre has now been reached. For those who missed it, the Northern echo, Jan 6th 2003, ran a front-page story about a Bigfoot that has been reported from Bolam Lake Country Park, near Belsay.
According to the British Hominid Research Organisation (Oh yes there is!) there have been several recent reports from this area. Apparently a large, heavily built hominid has been seen stomping around the lake and frightening the fishermen. Whilst I might admit to romantic notions of the Orang Pendek being one day discovered in the forests of Sumatra, I think a British Bigfoot is a bit much for even the most optimistic cryptozoologist. However I think there may be a rational explanation for this. Just think Kevin O’Hara and water vole survey and I’m sure you can understand the mix-up.

Autumn 2002

I had a strange conversation the other night with a man who came into the Castle Eden Walkway, where I work, to tell me that had spent several nights filming a South African Fruit Bat there. I tentatively suggested that it would be having a bit of a lean time as we didn’t have any fruit trees, but didn’t mention my suspicions that there weren’t any fruit bats in South Africa to start with. I should have known better, but later checked up and found that none of the African fruit bats are found that far south. I’m not sure what he was filming; perhaps our owls fly a bit funny. Bizarrely, three days before Halloween, Jonathan Pounder’s dad, a solid, sober and generally clued up sort of bloke, saw two bats with a 2 foot wingspan flying around Hart village (for the uninitiated there ain’t no such critters in these parts). I know I’m the bat recorder for the county, but its all getting too much for me. I’m going to scrawl “Here be Dragons” on my ordinance survey map of Cleveland and keep well away of an evening.

Spring 2002

It may be cold in Consett but, even so, the creature that turned up on Gerry White’s doorstep last January was still a little unexpected. Gerry, a retired biology lecturer and all-round naturalist, added another new species to his life list of British mammals. Lit up by streetlight, just 15 feet from his front door was none other than an Artic Fox. The Arctic Fox (Alopex lagopus) is a completely different species to our own Red Fox. It’s a good bit smaller, almost cat-like and may be predated on by the Red Fox where the two species overlap. It would normally occur no closer than Iceland but I have seen it regularly in zoological collections and, being a fur species, it may well have been farmed in the country. Gerry saw the animal a couple of nights later but after that it disappeared, probably down a red Fox’s throat.
I’m starting to run a book on what will turn up next. I’ll give you 5-1 for a chipmunk; 15-1 on a Wolverine and, for those that like to chance their luck, 500-1 on an Aardvark.

Winter 2001

“The only good possum is a dead possum!” Or so ran a campaign some years back, fronted by David Bellamy, aimed at eradicating this alien species from New Zealand. The Northern Echo ran an article at the end of September about an obliging specimen that was found as a road casualty at Riding Mill. The body was identified by a New Zealand vet who was used to seeing squashed possum. The report came a couple of days too late to be included in the last edition, which featured so many reports of exotic species loose in the countryside. Fortunately as it turned out, we don’t have to worry about this species. This particular possum was one that had escaped from Eddy Bell’s collection some eighteen months earlier.

Autumn 2001

Imagine a guinea pig the size of a Labrador. Then imagine that this same creature spent most of its time in or under the water. You have just pictured what may be Britain’s latest alien mammal species, the Capybara.
According to the Daily Mail, there have been a number of reports of this enormous rodent, loose in the Cotswolds. It has been startling water bailiffs in the river Severn and taking a dip in garden ponds. There has even been one found dead in Tewksbury. Whilst alien rodents of various kinds have generally been bad news, the capybara is unlikely to pose a huge problem. It doesn’t burrow into bank sides, it would seem to occupy a totally different niche to any native species and it merely grazes on riverside vegetation for a living. (If it develops a liking for Himalayan Balsam maybe we should keep it!) Oversexed and over here?
DNA samples taken from pine marten road casualties in Northumberland show their origin to be from “ALASKA”!!! Martes Americana caurina from south eastern Alaska/Queen Charlotte Islands to be precise. Dr Alan Davison’s son, Angus, has been doing DNA related analysis in Japan in conjunction with the Vincent Wildlife Trust and Johnny Birks, and they have found this astonishing fact about their origin. He thinks they may have come from fur farms and have surely bred with native pine martens.
Kevin o’Hara

Summer 2001

BBC local television had a report of wild boar damaging a golf course next to Chopwell Woods. The footage of the damaged fairway did look like a pig had been rooting around in it and, what’s more, a local farmer who breeds wild boar admitted that one of h is animals had gone AWOL. The item pointed out that there were several other wild boar farms in the area and speculate as to whether there might be several animals o n the lose. I’ve never actually been to Chopwell Woods, but I would think that it wouldn’t be too difficult to find out if there were any wild boar there and it may well be that the question is answered by the time you read this. If not, it would make an interesting field excursion for some intrepid mammalogist. So if you go down to the woods today a) let NMG know what you find and b) make sure you’re near a climbable tree.
Bat out of Hayle
The Sunday Telegraph recently ran an article about a Greater Horseshoe bat that had turned up in North Wales. This was about 100 miles north of its known distribution and was significant because it was thought that this species had limited powers of dispersal. The Greater Horseshoe bat is confined to the south west of Britain and is of very high conservation importance as its population in Britain is only in the region of 3,000 individuals.