A black squirrel was first reported (in the wild) back in 1912 - in either Bedfordshire  or Hertfordshire , according which article you read!  That particular black squirrel had probably escaped from the 'menagerie' of a 'well to do' collector.  Victorians, and to a lesser extent Edwardians, were great collectors of things - both living and dead.  Vast collections of flowers, shells, butterflies, insects - were amassed by people like Charles Bailey and James Cosmo Melvill  . The present populations of black squirrels are probably descendants of the 'escapees' / introductions from this one source and this perhaps explains why the populations are still relatively localised.  By comparison,  the grey squirrel was introduced to the U.K. on a number of occasions and hence its more widespread distribution. Read more...

Woodlouses or woodlice have never previously seemed to me the kind of thing you would want to eat. But I came face to face with a cooked woodlouse recently when we made a woodlandsTV film about finding, cooking and eating woodlice. It turns out that they are very nutricious and as long as they are cooked they are perfectly safe. A big advantage of woodlice over slugs or snails is that they can be eaten almost immediately after collection, whereas with slugs and snails you need to put them in a plastic bag for about 24 hours so that their gut empties. For woodlice you just put them straight into the boiling water and they are soon ready to eat. Read more...

Phytomyza ilicis is a (dipteran) fly that lays its eggs in holly leaves.  It is one of the few insects that is able to make use of holly leaves as a food source and somewhere to live (when a larva).  The female fly lays eggs in the holly leaf (near the main veins or midrib – on the underside) using a thin tube or ovipositor.  The eggs are usually laid in early Spring when there are young and ‘soft’ leaves.  Older leaves have a thick and tough cuticle that is far more difficult to penetrate.  The larvae or maggots emerge from the eggs and tunnel their way along the midrib / veins emerging some time later into the lamina or blade of the leaf.  Here they feed on the photosynthetic tissues of the leaf – the palisade and mesophyll layers, creating a leaf mine (see featured image above).  The number of leaf mines per leaf is a maximum of three and often just 1 or two. Read more...

St Mark’s CE Primary School (Sussex) were surprised and delighted to be given the use of a piece of woodland and meadow, only 400 metres from the school. First the whole school visited the Ashdown Forest (under the aegis of the Sussex Wildlife Trust ), Then all the staff took part in an INSET day – also led by the Sussex Wildlife Trust. This gave the staff the opportunity to develop and refine some ideas on how to use the wood and meadow land to enhance children’s learning. Read more...

On 16th October 1987, the Great Storm took away many mature trees from the landscape of southeast England, a great swathe of destruction was wreaked on our woodland and parkland trees.  Many trees and overlarge coppice still lie where they fell, the coppice more often than not growing up again but from a much larger base.  The mature trees have been gradually rotting. All the resources locked up in the wood being released and taken up by bacteria, fungi, invertebrates and so to higher organisms.  It was a major ecological disturbance,  that in some ways has been of considerable benefit to wildlife. Read more...

The importance of hedgerows in the maintenance of biodiversity cannot be over-emphasised.   Hedgerows provide vital food, in the form of a variety of berries - sloes, haws, blackberries etc,  for small mammals and birds (redwings, blackbirds) and hedgerow flowers support pollinating insects - a  variety of bees and butterflies. However, the 'management' of hedgerows or trimming / flailing of a hedgerow can make a significant difference to its productivity - that is, the number of flowers and fruits produced. Read more...