What's Wild at WWT Arundel
Toads have been flocking to Arundel over the past week. To breed toads return to the water where they first emerged as toadlets, and can travel up to three miles. There was a mass emergence on our front reedbed three years ago. Hordes of toads were returning last week and our grounds team has been rescuing some found scaling our perimeter fence in their efforts to reach our reedbeds.
The smaller male toads embrace the larger females with their front legs and hang on in a move called amplexus (which is latin for embrace). The males are carried around, waiting for their chance to fertilize the eggs as the female is laying them in the water.
Sometimes in the water several male toads try to wrestle each other off a female in competition to be the one to fertilize the eggs. This mass of toads is called a mating ball and can result in toads drowning each other.
I checked several of the tins we put out to shelter reptiles on Sunday morning. I found two grass snakes and a slow worm on a stretch where we will soon be beginning our flood resilience work on our banks and ditches.
I also had a peek in several bat boxes and found my first bat of the year – a soprano pipistrelle at the back of the World Wetlands exhibit. Last year I discovered bats were using a nesting box we put up on a tree there for blue tits. When we installed bat boxes in the car park last year I put one up on the opposite side of the tree from the bird box. This is where I discovered the pipistrelle on Sunday. On an exciting side note the new bat boxes in the car park were occupied 90% of the time during 2016 survey season!
I heard more of spring singing this week from a Cetti’s warblers, a black cap and chiff chaffs in the Wildlife Garden and on the Mill Stream. Brimstone butterflies have been seen and coltsfoot, primrose, daisies and dead nettles are all flowering onsite.
Mon 13 March Sightings
Lapwing hide: teal, Canada geese, greylag geese, shoveler, gadwall, black-headed gull
Ramsar hide: lapwing, snipe, common gull, Med. gull, black-headed gull, greylag geese, Canada geese, 2 pintail, 2 wigeon, cormorant, shoveler, teal, shelduck, gadwall, tufted duck
Scrape hide: oystercatcher, snipe, shoveler, teal, tufted duck, greylag geese
Wetlands Discovery: pochard, tufted duck, little grebe, greylag geese, Canada geese
Arun Riverlife: lapwing, teal, tufted duck, black-headed gull, shelduck, Canada geese
Reserve & Grounds: water voles, chiff chaff, song thrush, goldfinch, reed bunting, wren, Cetti's warbler, chaffinch, robin, blackbird, water rail, mallard, mute swan, buzzard,
