Wildlife August 2011

[Anthony Darby]

Pat, many spiders die after they have mated and laid eggs. Orb spiders lay many batches of eggs, but they tend to live for less than a year. I remember catching Nephila spp. in Bali in 1985. They were everywhere. In 2004 I could only find them at the Bird Park or Butterfly Park. I suspect spraying (for mosquitoes) killed them all off in Nusa Dua? Short sighted really because the predators of mosquitoes are killed and after a while the mossies become resistant and you are worse off than before!

[Paddy Tobin]

Lots of wasps this year but it will be remembered as the year of the ant - or maybe the year of the foxes: Last night they took Mary's crocs from the back door. I found one in the garden with two bites taken from it. This has happened before. Also, the night before last, one of them dug a large hole in one of the beds, exactly where Galanthus 'Godfrey Owen' was planted. I found bulbs and labels and replanted adding a mulch of leafmould. A hole was dug in the same place last night.

Any suggestions for getting rid of foxes? I do miss my dog who kept them at bay for so many years. Fortunately, our hens and ducks are well fenced in and have not been touched to date.

Shooting is out of the question - too close to neighbours and main road - but I would consider poison but don't know what to use. Any suggestions?

Paddy

Wow, a death sentence for chewing a shoe and digging up a plant!?!  I hope you will reconsider!  I wouldn't be surprised if your dog did worse at times!  Sorry, but I can't stand to hear of such intolerance for wildlife!  
Further, kill off the few predators that can actually survive in our presence, and then you will be dealing with their prey - mice, voles, etc. - in your garden!

Don't worry, Lori, I'm not the killing kind; just very annoyed at the moment with a hole dug in the same spot in the garden for the third night in a row and right among clumps of snowdrops - ones only planted a year or two and, so, in small numbers yet. The loss of a few snowdrops from larger clumps wouldn't bother me but the loss of scarcer ones in the garden does.  By the way, a fox usually sits at the top of a flight of steps which is only about ten feet from where I sit in the house in the evenings and he looks at me and I look at him. The local wildlife and I have co-existed in peace for many years though I have to sympathy for rats and set poison each autumn. The annual influx of rats will come shortly as fields of cereal around us will be harvested shortly. Now, if the foxes could keep the rat population under control we could have a very happy arrangement in life.

John, I'm going to try your deterrent tonight - bleach-soaked cloth in an open container. Would bleach on the soil cause problems?

Paddy

[Paul T]

Maureen I would have never believed that wasps made nests in the ground until i saw yours. I watch bubble bees going into my drystone walls but never seen wasps making holes in the soil. Not really keen on wasps.
Hope you have killed them all now.

Angie

Angie,

We have an introduced pest species here in Australia called "European Wasps" (Vespula germanica), which are wrecking biodiversity in places (they're starting to invade up into the mountain national parks near here).  They consume so much food that where they have been established for some time there is only a fraction of the insect diversity left........ and they live in the ground with nests that may be up to a couple of metres across and weigh a tonne or more (I think I recall reading this somewhere?).  A single nest can have well more than 100,000 individual.  We've found a couple of them in my little canberra suburban block before.... one in a wall cavity and the other in a maintenance pit for the telephone lines.  You find them by watching the constant stream of wasps flying in and out.  Not fun at all. 

Paddy,

Re your fox problem..... what about putting a piece of wire down in the area where the fox is digging, to move it to somewhere else?  That would at least save your rare snowdrops.

[Paddy Tobin]

The wire is down already, Paul. That was one of this morning's jobs. Will put down the bleach-soaked cloth this evening.

Paddy

[Armin]

Hi Paul,
I heard of such pests in Australia - do you know the reason for introducing wasps in the past?
 
In Germany only 2 wasps species Vespula germanica and Vespula vulgaris eat from human dishes and can get an annoyance.
The wasps die with the first night frost in autumm, only young queens hybernate the cold winters. Therefore nest sizes remain small with populations of ~1000-3000 individuals with a seasonal peak in August. Very rarely larger nests are reported.

This induces me to bring up an old tale. When I was a boy I made an instructive experience with wasps - it was a hot, shiny mid summer day and I was going to fish in a pont. After arrival at a slope of the pont I prepared my equipment. I cast my rood and I sat down relaxed, exactly between two nest exits...
I just noticed a wild humming, numerous wasps orbited me and I've felt a first sting In a moment of panic I threw away my fishing rod and run away as fast as I could . The wasps guards chased me ~30-40 meters (!) and stung me while running...Ouch!!!

As a result I had about 30 stings in both of my calves. Immediately plenty of ice and ointment was consumed to lower the terrible itching...
Overnight, my calves became not only fire red but swollen twice the size as normal... Please refrain to sneer now - I looked horrible.

[mark smyth]

Maureen I would have never believed that wasps made nests in the ground until i saw yours.

I see more underground wasp nests than in trees or buildings

When I was younger my friends and I used to throw stones at underground wasp nests to see them swarm

[Lesley Cox]

Paddy -

Not Godfrey Owen! 

Try what they do here for raccoons getting into garbage cans.  Soak a rag in strong bleach and place it in an open container, place near the plant. The container will stop any bleach from dripping into the soil. It seems to break the habit of their visits to that site and works for at least a short time. It's now frowned upon here as it posed a risk to the refuse collectors.

johnw

I wouldn't be surprised if many refuse collectors would benefit from an application of bleach!

[Paul T]

Armin,

Not a deliberate introduction, but an accidental one as far as I know.  No natural enemies here, so they breed like crazy I think.  Interesting that yours die with the first frost.  Apparently our winters aren't cold enough here to kill them off, yet we definitely get to at least -6^oC every winter (usually lower), so maybe ours are a colder tolerant strain?  Because ours overwinter here they produce the massive colonies.  I'm guessing that in warmer parts of Germany yours would overwinter?  If not, then why the heck do they here. 

[mark smyth]

Please refrain to sneer now - I looked horrible.

I had to laugh and can imagine you running. A trick I used to play on my friends when we were bombing wasp nests was to tickle a neck with a grass seed head. The pretend wasp would send panic through everyone

[Armin]

Paul,
interesting question why yours can overwinter in spite of frosts. Maybe just due to the large nest sizes they are able to warm the nest like bees do? But wasps do not hoard food like bees. How can they find food in the cold period?

Here there are a lot of natural predators i.e. hornets and a lot of parasitic wasps weaken the colonies, too.

Mark,
I can laugh about it, too. Jaunty youth time. Interesting was that only my calves have been stung. Not a single sting in any other part of my body.

And yes, my friends and I played a lot of pranks too. To bomb hornet nests with water pistols was a special challenge!
Today I know how beneficial hornets are and I protect them.

[arillady]

OK something a lot more placid than wasps.
The kangaroos were closer to the house when I first saw them (they visit regularly) but they heard me trying to creep around the side of the house. I have made the photo a large resize so that you might be able to see the joey poking its head out. I saw it outside the pouch but it hopped back in to safety. If I had been able to take a photo of the joey out you sure wouldn't like to have something that big get back in your pouch.

[Anthony Darby]

Paul, there aren't any warmer parts of Germany. Curious how, even in the Mediterranean areas, nests don't overwinter. Even in New Zealand, nests can be huge, with the world record being held by a New Zealand nest. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1299744/Britains-biggest-wasps-nest-nearly-big-car-pub-attic.html Even this nest would have been occupied by a queen and her offspring for one season. In their normal environment the nest disintegrates in the autumn and only the queens survive the winter, hibernating in a shed or attic. The workers just die off. Take an organism out of its range and strange things happen. The density per km² of the Australian brush tailed possum in NZ is far greater than it ever was in its native land. You may get -6^oC Paul, but not for weeks on end and with most daytime temperatures below insect flying temperatures from November to February inclusive.

[angie]

Pat that's so lovely, it would be so nice to watch them 

Angie

[Maggi Young]

Got this photo this morning..... Ian, the Christie kind, removed it from the shower where it was trying to get a free clean with Ann!

[mark smyth]

a wee pipistrelle of some kind.

This week I was also sent a photo of a bat. This time it was hanging on a wall. A pip also