As part of my work on the SLIMERS project, I spent last week traveling around the South of England meeting our slug sleuths and visiting their farms. Following this successful trip, I thought the slug circle would appreciate an insight into the trip:
Day 1
Farms visited in Bedfordshire and Northampton. Beautiful day but bitter cold wind that night, however, I still found loads of slugs out and about. Slug species spotted and imaged included a mixture of Arionidae species (juveniles of the large black slugs), a number of the Budapest keeled slug (dark grey with long raise keel/ridge along its back) and many Deroceras reticulatum (the grey field slug)
Day 2
Started off in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, which unexpectedly had loads of the slug species, Deroceras invadens, which is commonly known as the Tramp slug, It is the same size as the grey field slug but brown in colour and doesn’t produce the milky white mucus.
Later that day/night in Ross-On-Wye Herefordshire, I encountered the reddest mud I have ever seen. Beautiful landscape with thousands of grey field slugs to be imaged.
Day 3
Arrived in Petworth, West Sussex. Had a very interesting talk about the trouble and control of slugs with an agronomist who is farming lettuce. No lettuce presently but will be going back and imaging the farm once the plants are in the ground.
Day 4
After a day of rest, I travelled through to Lenham, Maidstone. I was able to image hundreds of slugs that evening as perfect weather for slug modelling and photography. Again, mainly the grey field slugs. Interestingly, the one wheat field had thousands of them, and the wheat field across the road only had three.
Day 5
Travelled to Cambridgeshire, just outside a village called Caxton. The elements were against us here, wind and the heavens kept on opening and trying to drown us. Loads of slugs about, normal sized grey field slugs on wheat and supersize grey field slugs on the oil rapeseed.
So that was my first out and about meeting our farmers involved in the SLIMERS project and getting to know their farms in the South of the UK.
My next trip will involve visiting farms from Yorkshire right up to Dundee, followed by visit to farms across central UK. A good number of images have been collected which will help us determine what type of imagings we would like you to help us collect with the rigs in order to gather
good quality image data to train our AI monitoring system.
Day 1
Farms visited in Bedfordshire and Northampton. Beautiful day but bitter cold wind that night, however, I still found loads of slugs out and about. Slug species spotted and imaged included a mixture of Arionidae species (juveniles of the large black slugs), a number of the Budapest keeled slug (dark grey with long raise keel/ridge along its back) and many Deroceras reticulatum (the grey field slug)
Day 2
Started off in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, which unexpectedly had loads of the slug species, Deroceras invadens, which is commonly known as the Tramp slug, It is the same size as the grey field slug but brown in colour and doesn’t produce the milky white mucus.
Later that day/night in Ross-On-Wye Herefordshire, I encountered the reddest mud I have ever seen. Beautiful landscape with thousands of grey field slugs to be imaged.
Day 3
Arrived in Petworth, West Sussex. Had a very interesting talk about the trouble and control of slugs with an agronomist who is farming lettuce. No lettuce presently but will be going back and imaging the farm once the plants are in the ground.
Day 4
After a day of rest, I travelled through to Lenham, Maidstone. I was able to image hundreds of slugs that evening as perfect weather for slug modelling and photography. Again, mainly the grey field slugs. Interestingly, the one wheat field had thousands of them, and the wheat field across the road only had three.
Day 5
Travelled to Cambridgeshire, just outside a village called Caxton. The elements were against us here, wind and the heavens kept on opening and trying to drown us. Loads of slugs about, normal sized grey field slugs on wheat and supersize grey field slugs on the oil rapeseed.
So that was my first out and about meeting our farmers involved in the SLIMERS project and getting to know their farms in the South of the UK.
My next trip will involve visiting farms from Yorkshire right up to Dundee, followed by visit to farms across central UK. A good number of images have been collected which will help us determine what type of imagings we would like you to help us collect with the rigs in order to gather
