On the third day of the Lancaster Environment Centre’s annual field trip to the Doñana National Park in southern Spain, the students had a rare sighting and witnessed the ball control skills of dung beetles. Professor Nigel Paul explains.
While it is a short coach ride to where I take my group off through the pines and over the dunes, Stuart and Rosa can cover the ecology of Doñana’s birds and invertebrates in a short walk from El Rocio, the village where we stay.
Stuart (that’s Dr Stuart Sharp, our bird expert) takes his group around the local wetlands to see the impressive diversity of birds. So far, groups have been seeing fifty or sixty species of birds each day, and hearing a good few more. We should be on course to get above a hundred species of birds over the whole week.
So many species can come as a shock to students who are learning how to identify them. But with Stuart’s expertise at hand, students are soon confident in their identification. That was evident in one of today’s sightings - a real Doñana speciality, the Spanish imperial eagle. I admit that I am usually a little sceptical when anyone on the field course claims to have seen this bird, but those who saw the eagle today could reel-off its key identifying features as well as most text-books, certainly enough to convince me.
Another highlight was an exceptionally good view of a Cetti’s warbler. Great, not because this is a rare bird but because this is one of those birds that the books say is heard but not seen. Yet another example of organisms in the field not bothering to read the textbook.
Counting coots
It is not just the number of species that is impressive in the Doñana wetlands, it’s the sheer number of birds as well. Stuart’s groups have seen a flock of more than seventy spoonbills, more than 300 flamingoes and a pretty amazing nine thousand and something coots. And if you want to know how to count that many coots, ask one of the students who has been with us this week. You can also ask them about the feeding behaviour of the different species they have seen, and how they all manage to exploit the range of habitats present around the area.
Dung beetle ball rolling
Despite the rain which discouraged the pollinators a bit, there were still plenty of insects around to keep Rosa’s group busy. I have been asked to point out that no dung beetles are harmed during this field course. In fact, with Rosa (Dr Rosa Menendez our invertebrate expert) providing a supply of freshly collected horse manure each day, her field site has become a focus for the local dung beetle population.
Her group report that there were fifteen beetles showing-off their dung ball-rolling skills today. In fact we now have two species of beetle rolling dung balls. The second is an impressive insect we haven’t seen here before: shiny black and as big as a golf ball. No British dung-beetles is a roller, so it is not just in football where Spanish ball-control is some way ahead of what we can manage in Britain.
After that, today’s insect group had to dodge some extremely heavy showers to get to grips with how the local insects interact with the flowers that they pollinate. Not the ideal conditions for this sort of field work, but the data were collected, despite some slightly soggy notebooks. Perhaps they will have more luck tomorrow.
Tomorrow’s blog - Insects and sand dunes
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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