Smells, sunshine, sea and plenty of insects characterised the last day students spent in the forests of Doñana National Park in southern Spain, explains plant biologist, Professor Nigel Paul, from the Lancaster Environment Centre.
There have been some ups and downs with the weather this week, but this was pretty much a perfect Doñana day. Blue skies but just enough cloud and a bit of a breeze to stop it getting too hot for field work.
The forest smelt of warm pines and herbs. Today’s olfactory taxonomy - using smell to identify plants - had curry plant as “cinnamon”, “liquorice”, “mulled wine” or, possibly, “korma” (definitely not vindaloo), but everyone could remember it, whatever they called it. Plus my favourite performing plant did its jack-in-the-box trick, and made people jump. I know I should tell what that was, but why spoil the surprise?
On the animal side there were more insects than we’ve seen all week, including a chafer grub the size of my little finger. Beetles everywhere and, after a day with our invertebrate specialist Dr Rosa Menendez, the group could put them in to the right families, and even advise me on which ones might give me a nip.
Once bitten...
At this point I would like to strongly deny that I didn’t listen to that advice. In particular, the high-pitched squeal heard while I was picking the beetle up was absolutely nothing to do with me (I am sure Dr Stuart Sharp our bird expert could tell you what bird it was).
Here is today’s dung beetle bulletin. After three days of Rosa’s field work (involving generous donations of horse manure), the dung beetles in that area are now so well-supplied that they could barely generate the enthusiasm to roll any more dung-balls. They will miss us when we head back home.
Plants and paddling
Today’s “naming the names” was done sitting on the highest point of the dunes in the sunshine, so even spelling the curry plant’s Latin name (if you are wondering, it is Helichrysum picardii) wasn’t too much of a chore.
Back waiting for the coach, I rewarded the group for their efforts as I always do, by presenting each of them with a bunch of dozens of flowers. To be fair, at first they didn’t realise just how generous I had been. To an untrained eye it might have looked like just one flower, but now they know it wasn’t, and learned how to identify one of the biggest plant families in the process. If you aren’t sure which, go look carefully at a daisy, or you could always sign up to study with us, and come on the field trip!
Much as I’d like to think it was my startling insights into field ecology that was the highlight of the day, I suspect I may be deluding myself. A more likely candidate was the visit to the local beach. This is an essential element in meeting the educational objectives of my part of the field course because of the diverse flora found nearby, which allows me to test the group’s new found identification skills.
The fact that the group then had time for the beach was, of course, purely coincidental. To be fair, this was the group that had got caught in the heavy rain with Rosa yesterday, so a chance to get wet intentionally, then dry off in the sun, was probably some well-deserved compensation.
Tomorrow’s blog - Posters, politics and tapas
Read all Nigel’s blogs about the rest of the trip. Learn more about studying Ecology and Conservation, or other biology and environmental degrees at the Lancaster Environment Centre, and about the fieldwork on offer to students.
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