The cervidae family.

Part five the muntjac deer.

Muntjac were introduced to the duke of bedford`s woburn estate in about 1900. Since then their descendants have escaped and spread throughout Britain. The muntjac is the smallest British deer which has a glossy red, brown summer coat, which is duller in the winter. The buck has a V shaped ridge on the forehead which extends down from his antlers and marked by dark stripes.The muntjac is distinguished by its rather rounded back. It has some white around the edge of its tail and a white rump under its tail. The males are called bucks and the females are called does. The muntjac has no rut, meaning they have no fixed breeding season and may give birth every seven months. They are spreading throughout Britain, mainly because the does can conceive a few days after fawning. The fawns are born singly at anytime of the year. They are born with spots on them to conceal them in the undergrowth which  fade after about eight weeks. They feed on grass,brambles,ivy and yew and are more active from dusk, although they can equally be seen during the day. Their call is a short dog like barking noise. The buck stands about forty eight centimetres high, the female is slightly smaller. They like dense cover in woodlands so they can have good cover. Their antlers are cast in may, then grow back again during the summer. The buck has permanent fang like teeth which he will use against other bucks, he will also mark his territory with the forehead glands, leaving their scent by rubbing against trees or the ground. When alarmed the muntjac will lift its tail to show his white underside, to worn off other deers.

Spiders and their silk.

Their are two British spiders that have fangs that can break our skin, they are the dolimerer spider or the raft spider and the house spider. Spiders venom has evolved to prey on insects, they are no harm to other spiders. Spiders evolved three hundred and fifty million years ago, one third of all creatures we know on the planet are spiders. There are six hundred and forty five in the British isles. The name spider comes from the latinised Greek for spinner, and of course spiders are famous for silk.

So why is silk so good?

Silk starts life a watery fluid deep in the body of the spider, its then passed through some microscopic tubes that then remove the water and turn this complex of protein and amino acids into silk. It contains lots of hydrogen bonds, this is what makes it so strong. It then passes through the body until it gets to some muscular valves called spigots. It is then extruded from these and twisted into a cable by what are called the spinnerets, which is a tiny little organ on the backside of the spider.

There are seven different types of silk,

1,Egg sack silk- This is the silk the spider uses to wraps its eggs in.
2,Swathing silk- This is the silk the spider uses to wrap its prey in.
3,Dragline silk- This is the strongest of all the silks, the spider uses it to hang on.
4,Attaching silk- They hang this to any sub-straight.
5,Non sticky silk.
6,Sticky silk.
7,Sticky stuff- This is what makes the sticky stuff stick.

The silk is a incredibly thin fibre that's thinner than human hair. But it`s five times stronger than steel, and is almost as strong as the strongest man made substance-Kevlar-This is used for bullet proof vests. So have a think about how strong silk is the next time you walk into some in your garden.

Habitats.

Part nine life in a natural pine forest.

Fragments on Britain`s primeval wilderness live on in Scotland, where they harbour a wealth of rare wildlife. Britain`s only large native conifer, the Scots pine, was once more exploited for its valuable timber, but now most forest tracts containing this survivor from prehistoric times are protected in nature reserves. They can be seen in such places as Glen Affric, which is west of Inverness, on Deeside and Speyside, they can also be found in the black wood of Rannoch. The pine forest protects, in turn, the elusive pine martin and the Scottish wildcat(i will be doing a separate blog about the Scottish wild cat in a later blog). The Scots pine also shelter the capercaillie. This amazing bird, with its fantastic mating call and ritual was once extinct in the British Isles. The crested tit also has a population, using hollows in some of the old trees to build their nest. There are also rare and unusual wild plants that flourish in the pine forests. These include chickweed wintergreen, common wintergreen, there are orchids such as the creeping lady`s tresses. Heather and bilberry`s are common throughout the pine forest. Bell heather grows in the driest areas, white cross-leaved  heath, bog asphodel, grass of parnassus and the amazing bog myrtle and its beautiful fragrant are found in the damper areas. Its also an amazing place to come and watch Britain's largest land mammal, the red deer. Birds of prey such as the hen harrier also flourish in the pine forset. The osprey is also now well established on the forest lochs, where it can be seen hunting for fish. The Golden eagle is also well established amongst the pine forest. The remnants of  the once-extensive Caledonian pine forests today form attractive, open woodlands which regenerate themselves  freely and contain trees of various ages. The older trees have flattish tops and bare stems, whereas younger trees are narrow-crowned, with branches to the ground. Young pines spring up in the open woodland unless the heather and moss become very dense, then the pine seeds cannot reach the soil. There is another native conifer that has established itself in the pine forset, the much smaller juniper. The remoter areas of the pine forest provide cover and feeding ground for the three native (shy) animals, the red deer,the Scottish wildcat and the pine martin, although the latter can be lured out by jam sandwiches.

Keeping warm.

The great British weather is a thermo regulatory nightmare. Of coarse when it comes to to staying warm, we humans are lucky as we can put on our hats and gloves etc. But what about our wildlife, its out in all conditions three hundred and sixty five days a year. Some of those days the wildlife will have to cope with all four seasons in just twenty four hours. How does it cope? The first thing that wildlife can do is get big, fat and blubber. This is brilliant insulation and seals are a great example of this. The next thing it can do is to get pelo-erect, which is to get goose bumps. Erecting the hairs or fur to trap a layer of insulating air. Some other mammals have got another really neat trick. They have what we call a counter current heat exchange system (i have a previous blog about this). The blood vessels carrying the blood which has been to the bodies extremities- therefore is a little bit cool- run very close to the blood vessels that are coming out of the heart and therefore are carrying very warm blood. The warm blood  warms up the cool blood so that it doesn`t shock the animals metabolism, when it gets back to the core. That's all well when it comes to staying warm when its cool, but what about when it gets warm, staying cool when it gets hot. The first thing you can do is to get lazy, think of all those deers sat round on a warm summers afternoon, they are not moving so they don`t generate any heat, which they will then have yo loose. If they do get hot you may see them panting. We don`t need to pant because we can sweat to cool us down, both achieve the same thing. It`s about evaporating water from the skins surface to keep the body cool. There is one other trick that mammals do have. Basically they pump blood very close to their skin, so any air currents tat pass by cool it, the blood is than passed back into the body to cool those areas as well. This is called blushing.