UKC

Good evening

We have just finished a nice wintry afternoons walk up Skidda, which was very exciting!

Just behind Jenkin hill and all the way to the gate before the last climb to the summit ridge, my daughter asked why there were worms on the path.

They were about 3cm long and very thin and pink. Hundreds of them!

Does anyone know what they were and why they were there as it was proper Baltic?

cheers 

Dave

I've posted this on our local naturalists FB page.  I'm intrigued 

Had someone just opened a can of worms?

They were escaping from the chickens on the other side of the road.

Thanks Billhook, I am too.

The only worms that I can find  similar are horsehair worms, but they aren’t it.

The preceding weather was cloudy and windy,  it it was subzero where these worms were at about 2800ft and they were moving, not dead.

Could they have been picked up and dropped there by a freak wind? 
There were way too many for birds to have dropped.

I was going to ask in Blencathra field centre this afternoon but ended up binning the walk due to the fog and bad forecast.

Please let me know if you hear back.

Cheers

dave

Have you been on Ilkley Moor baht 'at recently? If so, I'd start worrying...

Have you got any photos/video you can share?

I hope you have reported this to the local news? It was just this kind of thing that used to amuse me when I lived in north Cumbria and would hear on Border TV (a sheep got loose in Langholm once and this was not a novelty item).

Dave's got worms ...

youtube.com/watch?v=MOplxB5NEUw&

No Jon, sorry.

It was too bleak to be doing that.

They were:-

Reddy pink

Had a saddle that was dark

pointed at both ends

30mm long and about 3mm diameter 

ta

dave

The one quotation I remember from naturalist Gilbert White is that "worms are much addicted to venery" ( first time I'd ever heard the word, never having climbed in Dovedale at that point) so maybe a few of them had been slaking their lust  at the same time as trying to keep warm in the Baltic temperature and what you saw was the outcome.

I remember when a main item was a bench being set on fire in a Carlisle park .

A friend and I had a day linking Blencathra and Skiddaw in May 2007 and encountered what my notes describe as "vast numbers of mostly dead grubs" on the track near Skiddaw House. We reckoned they were the grubs of moths, but I'm not sure how we reckoned that. There were enormous numbers of them, to the extent that we couldn't avoid treading on some. I haven't seen anything like that before or since, so it's interesting to hear of a similar report from the same area, albeit at a completely different time of year.

This reminds me of an incident which made local TV news (possibly national). I can't recall exactly when (nineties/early noughties?) but it was a caterpillar infestation on the Howgills mainly. It was so intense that they created a kind of huge tide line as they ate their way upwards. I saw it myself. It also attracted mass influxes of birds like gulls attracted by the feast.

Baby earthworms? 

I will do.  I actually own two books on earthworms.  Great reading and some interesting stuff.  Alas I had a quick glance at the guidebook to the 26 species in the `uk but nothing mentioned like that.

I wonder if they were some kind of nematode ??~~~
 

I'm only guessing from memory but at the kind of altitude ywould be above 800m ?  and the vegetation would be short grass, plants and thin poor soil with some patches of erosion/bare shale?

Does this help?

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/research-centres-and-grou...

More evidence for global worming...

The spice must flow

Experts would cast doubt on this

Not forgetting Parrot killed in Carlisle.

The saddle might indicate they were earthworms of some sort.There have tales of raining m animals like frogs thought to have been sucked up and deposited elsewhere. Earthworms often seem to come to the surface after rain.

That’s correct billhook. Thanks.

Now I come to think of it, they all seemed to be heading downhill.

There were no animal carcasses nearby.

It’s a bit of a conundrum. Could they have surfaced and be heading downhill before the ground froze?

Personally, I think that they were wind deposited in some way.

ta

dave

This is actually quite fascinating, I'm not sure I will be able to look at a worm in the same way again... 

Heading to Keswick for a pub crawl?

I remember a holiday in the Howgills sometime in the 90s. We were staying near Orton and one morning we could see an enormous number of gulls up on the hills. When we walked up the hill we did indeed come across huge numbers of caterpillars and huge numbers of birds feasting on them. I've never seen anything like it since. 

It seems like it was 1998 (a bit earlier than I thought). I recall seeing it at the time and then the aftermath was thousands of dead and shriveled caterpillars. The damage caused seemed to disappear fairly quickly as well I think.

https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/antler-moth-threatens-cumbrian-fell-grazing

Interesting. I think the one I witnessed was even earlier than that. I only know because of who I was on holiday with - we were not together in 1998! If the 1998 outbreak was bigger than the one I witnessed, it must have been truly remarkable! 

Edit: A quick search suggests another outbreak in 1983, which probably fits better with my timeline, and suggests my initial recollection of sometime in the 90s as incorrect.  

No answer yet from our naturalists club - but then not many of the older members use facebook.

​​​​​​https://www.earthwormsoc.org.uk/earthworm-ecology
Maybe of interest - 

There is/ was  a giant worm over 2 ft long called the Palouse earthworm which lived in the area around Washington state.  However my book says its not been seen for over 20 yrs.  It liked undisturbed prairie grassland which is an increasingly rare habitat in that area..!!

There's an even bigger one in SE victoria, Aus., which is over 3ft long  - and stretch to 10ft  !!! - The Gippsland Earthworm.  I remember watching a David Attenborough programme where he was listening to the worm munch its way through the ground below the soil surface.   Nothing much is known about this worm.   It never comes to the surface, it is very very fragile and even handling it damages its skin and it can easily bleed to death and is therefore extremely difficult to study..

See e.g. https://www.giantearthworm.org.au/

This being Australia, there also used to be a 'Big Earthworm' monument on a site adjoining the Bass Highway in Gippsland. However, it has evidently now been demolished - see https://www.pisra.com.au/news/the-demise-of-the-giant-worm

Indeed, nothing is sacred.

It’s obviously volcanic activity warming Skiddaw and causing a “hot spot” for the worms to thrive in. If I lived in Keswick I’d be worried….

That monument is mentioned in one of my books.  Thanks for updating me.

For all you aspirant wormologists out there:0

The Earth Moved, 

(On the remarkable achievements of earthworms)  by Amy Stewart.

and/or

Earthworms, Nature's Gardeners.  A good guide book/ID with photos & descriptions plus some other interesting stuff on biology, habits and so on.    At  £4.95, when I bought my copy several years ago, it would make a nice stocking filler, for your other half.  

waterlogged soil would drive them to the surface (a thaw?)

also easier for mating/feeding/migration on the surface. my guess is migration

They also often come to the surface if they feel the vibrations of soil disturbance, you see it sometimes when digging. Maybe the vibrations from multiple runners confused them?

But i'm not aware or read of any worm species migrating.

a reference to migration here:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-earthworms-surface-after-rai...

new to me is their 'herding' behaviour: http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8604000/8604584.stm