The first meeting of 2025 of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society (D&G Heritage) was held on Friday, January 17 at The Bridge, Dumfries, and also on-line via Zoom.
The speaker was Liam Templeton, project officer for Species on the Edge, an organisation responsible for the conservation of species of wildlife in danger of extinction in the region.
The talk began with an outline of the problems facing the species under consideration. Birds included terns, whose coastal nest sites are susceptible to wash from ferries and disturbance by irresponsible dog walkers. Other species, such as curlew, lapwing and stonechat, are losing breeding grounds due to modification of grasslands and rough grazing areas, which needs to be addressed through working with landowners. The same applies to Greenland white-fronted geese, which use natural grasslands for feeding in winter, and the red-billed chough, which is now extinct in our region but could repopulate from the breeding population on the nearby Isle of Man.
Habitat loss is also thought to be responsible for a 46 per cent drop in the population of a rare butterfly, the northern brown argus, since the 1990s. The most unusual species being studied is the tadpole shrimp. This looks like a small brown tadpole, but with a hard outer body casing, and is the oldest animal species on earth, it having been around for at least 350 million years, long before the dinosaurs. A colony was recently discovered at Caerlaverock, the only other known colony in the UK being in the New Forest in Hampshire.
The speaker then gave a more detailed account of the Natterjack toad, the species with which his work is mainly concerned. It is Scotland’s rarest amphibian, being found only on the Solway coast, between the mouth of the River Annan and Southerness. Here it is at the extreme northern edge of its range, which extends through Europe down to the Iberian Peninsula. It is also Europe’s loudest amphibian; the churring call of the male, emitted using a large inflatable throat sac, can be heard for up to two miles. It requires areas with small fresh or brackish ponds close to the coast, and is thus susceptible to habitat loss due to coastal development.
The Natterjack toad has been documented for centuries, mainly because it could be ‘milked’ to provide a fluid which has psychoactive and healing properties, and its bones were said to change colour to give a warning of ‘mischief’, something that is mentioned in Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’.
The Natterjack toad can be distinguished from the common toad by its paler colour, slightly smaller size, and especially by a narrow yellow stripe on its back running the length of the body. It lays spawn in long strings, rather than clumps, and it’s tadpoles are slightly smaller than those of the common toad. Although a huge amount of spawn is laid, less than one per cent survives to produce an adult toad, most being eaten by fish etc, or destroyed by adverse weather. For breeding it needs small coastal ponds among dunes or rough grazing. It will not tolerate ‘improved’ grassland, but surprisingly has been found in the cooling ponds of a steelworks.
Current conservation measures include creating ‘scrapes’ (artificial shallow ponds), in collaboration with landowners. This is done mainly by volunteers – more are needed.
The next meeting will be held in The Bridge, Dumfries, and also on-line, on January 31 at 7.30pm. Stephen Jackson from the National Museums of Scotland will give a talk entitled Furniture History in Dumfries and Galloway. Further information can be found on the Society’s website, www.dgnhas.org.uk, or its Facebook page.