Specialized Habitats And Microenvironments

[Treppenwitz]

The Baie de Mont Saint Michel is a strange place. As I noted elsewhere, for $20 or thereabouts you can get yourself hauled at low tide right out into the bay to inspect the habitat more closely. I have to say, it wasn’t what I was expecting.

You would have thought that what is, broadly speaking, a vast mudflat (well, sandy mudflat), would be stiff with wading birds. Not so - we saw a few oyster catchers, an egret and a heron. Most of the birds we saw were uninteresting gulls, hanging around there because of the other species that exploits that environment, humans.

[Photos cropped to remove close-ups of faces and, in one instance, for reasons of artistic pretension]

In the part of the bay where we were taken, there is a great deal of mussel farming. You would have thought that seabirds would be sitting atop the farmed mussels, scoffing away. Not so, but there are two species of crab which will eat them and are a problem. OK, so I was expecting mussel farms. I wasn’t expecting fish traps.

You need to click on the photo to get a better idea of how this works. There are continuous wooden hurdles on either side of a bottle trap, extending for perhaps 50 meters each side. The retreating tide gathers fish into the trap - which is pretty indiscriminate as to the size of fish caught. A hundred years ago you would have said, fine, hungry families need fish, and this is a matter of subsistence fishing. We watched our guide (and trap owner) pick out four dorade and then throw several kilos of undersized fish into the shallows, where gulls fought over them. Jesus.

There used to be 20 of these traps in the bay, now there are eight. The government rule is that a trap can be inherited but ownership may not be otherwise transferred so, given the hard work of maintenance required, they are slowly becoming a thing of the past. Personal view - it can’t happen too soon.

One of the oddities caused by the extreme flatness of this part of the bay - the tide retreats for miles - is that you can have very shallow water at high tide (I got the impression that there is very little tidal reach or variation.) Hence, odd little islands of samphire surprisingly far from “shore”.

Lastly, wading birds (slight return). This adds nothing material to the post (and I posted it in the Today In Nature thread as well). But damn, I like it so I’m going to post it again.

j

[Pardel-Lux]

As usual, very nice to read, thank you!
If you are into that kind of food, you are at the right place to try the local lamb, the mouton de pré salé

Les moutons de prés-salés - Destination Mont Saint-Michel Normandie

Keep enjoying!

[Treppenwitz]

@Pardel-Lux

If you are into that kind of food, you are at the right place to try the local lamb, the mouton de pré salé

Thanks for the feedback!

@Pardel-Lux

If you are into that kind of food, you are at the right place to try the local lamb, the mouton de pré salé

…at a price.

j

[Pardel-Lux]

Yes, it is not the kind of food to eat often. It is luxury, but also part of the local history and culture, so I said: “what the hell!” and tucked in. Once. I liked it.

[Treppenwitz]

English Prairie Maintenance 101

Kinda. We were at Wakehurst today for the first time since the prairie was cut. This is what it looks like now - for no very good reason I had assumed that the cuttings would be left in situ, but evidently not, looks like they were taken away.

Elsewhere on the estate, more habitat maintenance is underway. It’s a thing to bear in mind that many habitats require maintenance - the wetland area would be overgrown with scrub if theft to itself. There has been some scrub clearance carried out.

Perhaps management is more accurate than clearance. What strikes me is that the scrub appears to have been originally planted in straight rows - so perhaps this is an exercise in keeping it under control at a certain level rather than removing it.

j

[Treppenwitz]

Hampered by sciatica for - god help us - eleven weeks, I finally was able today to cycle out to my favorite swamp. The OP has one swamp photo, taken in the managed wetlands of Wakehurst Place. Todays swamp is a much more mature environment. It appears to exist thanks to the creation of Furnace Pond, which it abuts downstream. For some reason I had always assumed that the swamp was a reserve and was managed, but in writing this post I can find no evidence that it is. Interesting. I found this link (warning - spoilered as it downloads a PDF) which gives the location, some background and some aerial views: file:///C:/Users/John/Downloads/TNW012055351-en-brochure-1.pdf

I, on the other hand, was taking photos from ground level:

You really don’t get much of this sort of habitat in the south east of England. Just as I arrived and rolled to a halt a huge buzzard, annoyed at my presence, took off from a branch three or four meters away and flew out of sight - but not so far away that I couldn’t hear him shouting abuse at me.

There’s all the waterfowl you would expect here, and bird calls from everywhere - I get very annoyed that I can’t recognize the species from the calling. I even saw - on 2nd Nov! - a dragonfly doing its stuff.

Fun fact - the border between Kent and East Sussex runs through the swamp - the watercourse defines the border.

j

[Broomstick]

I just found this thread, hence commenting a couple months after the last time someone posted. Wanted to encourage you to keep us updated on the prairie re-creation.

@Treppenwitz

We were at Wakehurst today for the first time since the prairie was cut. This is what it looks like now - for no very good reason I had assumed that the cuttings would be left in situ, but evidently not, looks like they were taken away.

There are two things that might be the reason (or I could be wrong - it happens)

1. The took the cuttings away to avoid undesirable local weed seeds from getting a foothold.

2. Too much stuff to leave on top due to either being a fire hazard or possibly smothering the growing plants.

Other than that… I dunno. Like I mentioned in the other thread, around here we don’t mow the prairie, we burn it every couple of years.

[Treppenwitz]

Thanks for the encouragement!

I had been thinking this last week that I need to post something in this thread from time to time - basically because I was planning to reactivate it in the spring; and we now know that if a thread gets bumped after six or more months lying fallow, everyone who posted in it gets pestered by Discourse, and I wanted to avoid that. As it turns out, you’ve saved me the trouble ( ).

I had already taken a snap for posting a few says ago. Wakehurst, but not the prairie - the Loder Valley wetland which appears in the second photo in post #1. The swamp vegetation has died back over winter. Not the most interesting photo, but it was only ever meant as a placeholder.

We’ll get back to the prairie as shoots appear in the spring. In the meantime, if anyone has a habitat, this is your place - post it here!

j

[Broomstick]

Hmmm… wonder if I can remember to take and occasional picture of our Hoosier Prairie?

[Treppenwitz]

Prairie Update!

Well, just a single snap because the first spring flowers have started to bloom on Wakehurst’s new American Prairie in South East England

It’s not the greatest (or most interesting) of photos, but I thought it would be interesting to track the growth through spring and summer of year two, the first year it will wake from a dormant state. All comments welcome. Anyone recognize the flowers?

Elsewhere on the Wakehurst estate, there are signs of spring growth on the Loder Valley wetland area: Beyond this area is a lake, and today there were maybe twenty geese on it, with a constant racket of calling, and brawls going on almost all the time. Quite an entertainment.

j

[Treppenwitz]

Another location, another couple of habitats. Shoreham is a remarkable place. I discussed its vegetated shingle upthread. I’ll talk about its lagoon at some point in the future. Right now, here are photos of its estuary - the mudflats:

and the saltmarsh:

I mean, how many specialized habitats is it decent for a single town to have? The mudflats are pretty extensive; over the winter we’ve been seeing oyster catchers and redshank (which overwinter on the south coast of England) as well as the usual gulls and swans. There are multilingual signs up forbidding the collection of shellfish, from which I take it that this is an important breeding ground. (I don’t think the signs apply to the oystercatchers).

The saltmarsh we only found a few weeks ago, There is signage emphasizing the importance of the habitat, but so far we haven’t seen much actually in it. We’ll monitor it with interest.

j

[Broomstick]

@Treppenwitz

Prairie Update!

Well, just a single snap because the first spring flowers have started to bloom on Wakehurst’s new American Prairie in South East England

…[snip]…

It’s not the greatest (or most interesting) of photos, but I thought it would be interesting to track the growth through spring and summer of year two, the first year it will wake from a dormant state. All comments welcome. Anyone recognize the flowers?

Hard to say from the picture, but they look like… daffodils?

Your prairie is a few weeks ahead of the one out here, the Hoosier Prairie which was probably the ultimate source of some of yours. Ours still has a dusting of snow on it. Our temperatures have been running about -7 to 0 C this week, even if last week we did get up to 20 C one day last week. It’s long been my impression your temperatures don’t vary as much as ours do.

I don’t have an account for picture hosting on the internet, but if you PM me a preferred e-mail address I can send you pictures from our prairie areas for comparison if you’d like.

[Treppenwitz]

@Broomstick

Hard to say from the picture, but they look like… daffodils?..

Well, they don’t look like any daffodils I’m familiar with, but that doesn’t mean they’re not daffodils, of course. I googled prairie daffodils (I find that the boneheaded approach often works best) and found a narcissus which looks a decent match. That’s a European plant, but it looks along the right lines.

Were you planning to track the plant growth on the Hoosier Prairie in parallel with the Wakehurst version? That strikes me as very cool - to the point that if Hoosier and Wakehurst could be tracked in parallel, the gardeners at Wakehurst might even be interested in seeing the results.

j

[Broomstick]

Sure, message me an e-mail for you (because I don’t think you want to broadcast it) and I can send you pictures directly. I’m off the next two days, might be a good time to get some pictures.

I literally pass by the Hoosier on my way to and from work every day, and frequently while running errands in the neighborhood so it would not be inconvenient for me.

[enipla]

Alpine environments are very specialized. Still ass deep in snow up here, but surprisingly we heard some coyotes yipping last night. Don’t see many of them around at this elevation. Lot’s of moose.

The dogs stay inside during the night but boy or boy did they howl. It’s kinda cute the face they make when they do that, but sort of sucks at 2am in your bedroom (the dogs in the bedroom, not the coyotes).

[Treppenwitz]

Done.

j

[Treppenwitz]

I might have guessed alpine from the cunningly encrypted user name…

But hey, as the snow melts and spring gets going, keep us in touch with developments!

j

[enipla]

Heh, yeah. I named my first dog Alpine. I sort of took her name.

As far as developments, well, we are moving into mud season as the snow melts. I need my Yak-tracs on and also walk in mud. It’s better than -10F though.

Snow melts, snow comes, and it freezes overnight making for some treacherous conditions just to get to your car. Our cars are parked close to the house, but this time of year it’s often, ummm… “If I can make to the roof rack so I can grab on, I should be ok and get in it”.

90% chance of snow tomorrow. Probably not much though.

[Treppenwitz]

Posting photos on behalf of @Broomstick.

Three photos of the Hoosier Prairie, all taken yesterday, I believe. As is ever the case with Google photos, the image is slightly cropped by the posting process - click on the photo for the full image.

The first picture is a general view of the prairie at the start of one of the trails. Just for reference, temperature yesterday was around 20 F or -7 C, up until about two days ago we still had some snow on the ground.

This one is of just general ground cover. There are only a very, very few threads of green in all that. Before winter the grass in this area was between one and two meters in height, it’s been crushed down by the winter’s snow and ice. Also, lots of leaves from the local oak trees.

The only green we have on the ground right now is moss.

There are obvious differences compared to Wakehurst (post 30 for a recent photo), which was trimmed short at the end of the season last year as part of process of establishing the prairie. Still, it will be interesting to see how things develop. (In parallel.)

j

[Pleonast]

The Hocking Hills in Ohio have a bunch of micro-climates. The geology there causes many small narrow valleys that are significantly cooler than the surrounding areas. The flora in these valleys are remnants from the last glaciation, which are otherwise extinct in Ohio, but extant in Canada. I would hike through these when I was much younger, exploring the terrain and plants.

The San Gabriel Mountains in Los Angeles have some interesting micro-climates. There’s the climate differences due to elevation, but also caused by narrow valleys, or by water availability. You can find some gullies that are cool and dry, and then others that have year-round water.