Our wetland secrets

Discover Our Wetland Secrets If you close your eyes and imagine a beautiful place in the UK countryside, there is a good chance it has water in it.

Human beings love water: we walk by it, we swim in it, we aspire to live near it and wherever possible we incorporate it in our gardens.

W

e aren’t the only species which flourishes in wetlands. The harsh squawk of a grey heron, the syncopated chunter of reed warblers, the bone-deep blast of a bittern, the whinny of a passing otter, even the infuriating whine of mosquitoes (Anopheles claviger, since you ask): all these sounds and innumerable others owe their presence in the UK to the existence here of wetlands. Not to mention the

sights: the spilled port purple of reed flowers, the blazing magenta of purple loosestrife, and the nail polish red of a ruddy darter. But while it’s easy to get excited about a kingfisher or a flock of whistling wigeon drakes, there are thousands of species which are overlooked because they are small, because they are secretive, because they aren’t immediately appealing or simply because they’re too common to attract attention. Here are a few unsung wonders to look for.

Discover Our Wetland Secrets

10 (c) northeastwildlife.co.uk

(c) Amy Lewis

Wetland secrets

Common reed

1

Just because it’s common doesn’t mean we shouldn’t notice it. Common reed is the background plant to almost every freshwater – and even brackish – habitat. It grows happily along rivers, it fringes lakes and pits, it flanks ditches and it fills fens.

The keys to its success are adaptability and what biologists call r-selection. Whereas some species – think whales, elephants, humans – have very few young and take great care of them over many years, others have vast quantities of young every year and fling them heedlessly across the landscape on the basis that, statistically, some are likely to survive. This is r-selection and common reed is its poster plant. On winter winds billions of reed seeds blow across the landscape. Most end up in utterly inhospitable places but there are enough of them that many also land on wet ground.

Wainscot moths

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Everyone knows that reed is fantastic habitat for rare creatures. Conservationists are forever on about bitterns, marsh harriers and bearded tits.

But reed is critical habitat for many less glamorous species too. Among them are some small, beige, nocturnal moths known as wainscots. Small and beige they may be but wainscots are the defining insects of reedbeds, with many species’ caterpillars feeding exclusively on common reed. Some wainscots are widespread and common, others are fussy and restricted, but wherever you find reeds in the UK in late summer you are sure to have wainscot moths nearby. Why not brush up on your beige wainscots and attend a reedbed moth-trapping event this summer?

Discover Our Wetland Secrets

10 (c) Stephen Dalton / naturepl

(c) northeastwildlife.co.uk

Wetland secrets

Garganey

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In most of the UK when we think ducks we think mallards. After all, they’re the friendly, noisy, colourful ducks which seem to thrive on every wetland in the country. Some ducks, however, buck all the trends. Garganey are the UK’s only ducks which migrate to Africa for the winter. Even when they return – often as early as March – these subtle brown-and-grey ducks are secretive, preferring reed-fringed pools and wild marshes to lakes and ponds. What’s more, whereas most duck species quack, grunt or at least whistle, in spring the drake garganey makes one of the strangest duck noises of all: a quiet throaty crackle.

Rat-tailed maggots

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A wetland doesn’t have to be big and pristine and inhabited by colonies of herons and egrets or families of otters. In fact even the smallest and most contaminated puddle of water can be a wetland ecosystem. Living in just such small, contaminated puddles, like the water that runs off manure piles, is a remarkable critter called a rat-tailed maggot.

It is the larva of a very common hoverfly called a dronefly which, as an adult, mimics a honeybee and is often seen feeding on garden flowers. The larva’s rat-tail is in fact a siphon through which it breathes air, enabling it to live in even the dirtiest, most oxygen-deprived water.

Discover Our Wetland Secrets

10 (c) Jan Hamrsky (naturepl)

(c) Jack Perks

Wetland secrets

Three-spined stickleback

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The three-spined stickleback is the default tiddler of freshwater habitats, beloved of pond-dippers all over the UK. In spring and summer, while the fish is breeding, males are readily distinguished from silvery females by their cherry red throats and blue-green eyes. A male makes a tunnel-like nest on the floor of the pond, from vegetation and his own secretions, and attempts to entice females in to lay their eggs. He fertilises any eggs which are laid and closely guards them as they develop, going so far as to waft oxygenated water over them with his fins.

Once the young hatch the male marshals them for a few more days; though it will take a year for them to reach full size, meanwhile running the gauntlet of predators such as herons, egrets, water shrews and fish including other sticklebacks!

Freshwater hoglouse

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Pond-dippers all know about the telescopic jaws of dragonfly larvae, the mobile homes of cased caddisfly larvae, the frilly gills of newt tadpoles and the silvery air-blankets of backswimmers. They may not be familiar with the humble hoglouse. The hoglouse is essentially an aquatic woodlouse, a crustacean which lives a peaceable life trudging through the sludge at the bottom of freshwater wetlands, recycling rotting plant and animal material. Female hoglice carry their eggs in brood-pouches under their bodies and even continue to carry their newlyhatched young here. The undersides of hoglice are decidedly busy places as it’s also here there they keep the gills with which they breathe.

Discover Our Wetland Secrets

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(c) Brian Eversham

Wetland secrets

Willows

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If reeds are the iconic plants of UK wetlands, willows are their trees. Most of our trees turn up their toes – or rather roots – at the thought of growing in wet ground but many species of willow are wholly at home here. White willows and crack willows line our rivers while sallows and osiers muscle into marshes. In fact willows will readily colonise most wetlands and in many places are instrumental in turning them into wet woodland. As with all native trees, willows are home to countless other species. Their pollen-heavy catkins in early spring are food for emergent insects including bumblebee queens and their leaves support the caterpillars of many moths and sawflies. Willows are often cultivated by people in wetlands, to remove contaminants, for their strong, easily-woven withies, and even for making cricket bats.

Alderfly

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Alderflies take the slow food movement very seriously indeed. Adult alderflies, identifiable by their lack of tail bristles and their strongly veined wings – like smoky old glass mullioned with lead – live for just a few days in April, May or June.

After mating, females lay huge numbers of eggs in waterside vegetation. It’s the resulting larvae which are the slow eaters and slow growers, living one, two or even three years in the sludge at the bottom of a wetland. Here they take their eating very seriously, hunting down invertebrate prey with their powerful jaws. Our commonest alderfly species, the aptly named mud alderfly, is found all over the UK in a huge range of freshwater habitats.

Discover Our Wetland Secrets

10 (c) Andy Sands (naturepl)

(c) northeastwildlife.co.uk

Wetland secrets

Water mint

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Imagine that: a marsh that smells of mint. Happily for us, water mint is one of our commonest and most widespread wetland plants. And it doesn’t just smell of mint; it smells of the most aromatic, flavoursome peppermint you could hope to find.

Alongside water mint you will often see the frothy white flowers of meadowsweet. Its flowers smell headily sweet but if you crush the leaves they smell more of antiseptic. Another of our commonest and most widespread wetland plants is decidedly not keen on being crushed: marsh thistle must be the spikiest of all our thistles. Nonetheless its rich purple flowers are full of nectar and attract many wetland insects. These are just a few of the countless plants – rare and common, large and small – which inhabit UK wetlands.

Water shrew

10

Water voles are cuddly and cute and much in conservationists’ thoughts but the UK has another small aquatic mammal which hardly ever hits the headlines. Found throughout mainland UK the water shrew is a fearsome predator of freshwater shrimps, aquatic larvae and even small vertebrates such as newts and fish. The largest UK shrew, it is unique in its black and white pelage and in having mildly toxic saliva with which it disables prey (and gets back at scientists who set small mammal traps!). Like all shrews it lives its life in the fast lane, with females having as many as three broods in a summer but rarely living for much longer than a year.