My son, who lives in London, sent me an email the other day to tell me about a new and strange spider he had seen. It was big, with a body about a quarter the size of a golf ball, and long legs. The abdomen was brightly striped in yellow and black. John doesn’t much like spiders, so to find one that size coloured like a wasp must have come as a shock.
I was able quickly to identify it as a wasp spider, which these days is not uncommon across the South of England. But it’s quite a new arrival, a Mediterranean species originally, first recorded in England in 1920. Since then it’s spread widely across the south, and recent mild winters are encouraging a spread further north, so who knows? Maybe one day we’ll find them here. They’re not dangerous, by the way, except to grasshoppers, their favourite prey, and other insects.
New species are arriving in the UK all the time, some naturally, others either deliberately or accidentally introduced by human intervention. We think of brown hares, rabbits, pheasants as native species, but none of them are, even though hares at least have been here since Roman times. A more recent interloper that my son knows very well and sees every day is the ring necked parakeet, common now in London and across a swathe of the South-East (also, closer to us, in Cheshire). They have escaped from collections - or may have been deliberately released - but they seem to like it here. You can see thousands roosting at a time in Syon Park, London.
Birds that have arrived unaided include the collared dove, now seen in most gardens. At the beginning of the last century the nearest collared doves to us would have been in Turkey. Since then they’ve spread across Europe, arriving here in the 1950’s. Another recent colonist is the Cetti’s warbler, a resident (unlike most of our warblers which are summer visitors) that inhabits reed beds. This was first recorded nesting in 1973, and now there may be as many as 2,000 pairs. It is found as far north as Monmouthshire, but not easily seen, being small, brown and secretive. However, its explosive song is a dead giveaway - if it’s around, then in the season you’ll hear it.
Many water and marshland birds are new arrivals. These include birds deriving from escapes from collections, of which the Canada goose is the most widespread, but you could add to that such species as mandarin duck, Carolina wood duck, and Egyptian goose. More genuine recent colonists include the little egret, which is now found all over the country. Other herons include the great white egret, which I have seen at Llyn Coed y Dinas, and the cattle egret which is visiting in increasing numbers and has bred in Somerset. The glossy ibis is also a possible new breeding species.
Many species are declining in numbers, which is always a cause for concern. But some decline is natural, and some arrivals are too, and some changes result from climate change rather than direct human interference. Having written mostly about bird species, perhaps I’ll return to this topic to look at, say, mammals or insects.
No comments:
Post a Comment