On this lovely spring day I drove around the backstreets of Ickenham until I found my way to Austin’s Lane (there’s The Old Fox pub marking its start) and so to Ickenham Marsh nature reserve (London Wildlife Trust). It’s tucked away behind Northolt airfield: the second world war Spitfires have been replaced by transport planes and executive jets, but the result has been to keep development at bay. The marsh is bordered with great drifts of blackthorn, the soft white blossom lovely in the broad hedges. Chiffchaffs were singing all over, and a mistle thrush rasped out its harsh flight call. Even the dunnocks looked splendid, their grey and brown plumage catching the sun as they chased low around the bushes. The breeze brought the occasional whiff of aviation fuel, but still there were some small patches of common orange lichen, Xanthoria parietina, and the grey lichen of bare twigs, Parmelia.
Midland Hawthorn, Crataegus laevigata
A complete surprise was the Midland Hawthorn by the Hillingdon Trail which crosses the reserve. The bush is the same size and shape as the common Hawthorn, but the leaves are only very slightly notched rather than deeply divided, and the flowers have two styles, not one (easy to remember as the common Hawthorn is C. monogyna ‘one-female’). An uncommon or perhaps just an easily-overlooked plant, something old and special on the edge of London.
Lesser Celandine on Yeading Brook
Also crossing the reserve, roughly northeast-southwest, is the Yeading Brook. I was just taking a photo of the first buttercups of spring, the lesser celandine, which likes wet muddy places, on the steep bank of the brook, when a kingfisher shot down the middle of the little stream, blue and turquoise. I turned to take my photo, and the kingfisher, or its mate, raced back past me again.
One of the loveliest names in botany is Circinnate Vernation. It rolls, echoing, off the tongue, exotic and complicated-sounding. J.R.R. Tolkien had a theory that sounds like ‘Cellar Door’ were especially beautiful, presumably because they resonated with Old English speech (ok, you can call it Anglo-Saxon if you prefer). I think he’d have loved the sound of Circinnate Vernation.
Circinnate Vernation: fern fronds unrolling
Right, what does it mean? Circinna is the Latin for a shepherd’s crook, a long stick with a curled-over end to hook errant animals out of hedges or whatever. Ferns unroll in springtime as mini-shepherd’s crooks, craftily leaving the tiny green growing tips tightly protected in the middle of the roll, while anything trying to eat the new shoot gets the toughest, oldest part to try first. Sounds like a good survival strategy for the fern.
A day later, unrolling fast
Update: just a day later, the fronds have unrolled a turn or so.
Last year my pond was full of frogs, with at least four spawning females, followed by hundreds of tadpoles. It was the first time: normally there had been one large resident frog, apparently determined to live a solitary Jeremy Fisher existence.
Four Frogs underwater in Amplexus
Two weeks ago, the Gunnersbury Triangle pond contained over 12 exceptionally large, plump frogs, clearly in breeding condition. The light was a bit tricky for photography, but if you peer through the surface of the water you’ll see a pair of frogs near the top, with one of many spawning females that day.
Lots of Frogspawn at Gunnersbury Triangle
It’s hard to be sure from the mass of frogspawn, but I’d say there were more than six loads of eggs: the females seem to have preferred to spawn close to each other in one small area of the quite sizable pond. Perhaps there is safety in numbers. Certainly when there are several ponds close to each other, as there are in our block of gardens, all the spawn goes in one pond. I heard that a heron has been seen at the Triangle pond at dawn every morning lately, and the frogs are definitely hard to see now, so the predator has probably eaten several of them. So perhaps there is not so much safety in numbers, as extreme danger in being alone: at least in the crowd, you are just one target among many.
This morning I saw one moderately large frog in my pond. I couldn’t be sure, but I think he had a raincoat, fishing rod and galoshes with him. It looks like a solitary year down at the pond.
Since rain was forecast, we drank up our morning tea quickly, took the tools we needed and wheeled our wheelbarrows off into the reserve. I was given the job of making the boardwalk over the pond safe. It looked all right, but quite a few boards were springy, one or two wobbled, and there were some alarmingly wide gaps where the boards fanned out to get around an angle, so they were tight one side, gappy the other. A mallard duck and drake were snoozing on the other end of the boardwalk. She had laid an egg in the swamp, then moved it behind a tree, but didn’t seem to be sitting on it.
I’m not particularly keen on power tools, but the volunteer officer gave me some flattery about my always doing work aesthetically, so I took a look at the boards. Sure enough, at the angle the boards were all over the place, uneven, and fixed any which way. A chiffchaff sang its endless, two-note ditty: not all warblers have thrilling, nightingale-like songs.
I took the drill and set about pulling out the worst of the boards. Three screws came out; the fourth one was inaccessibly deep and the drill bit just rattled over it. I jemmied up the board, hammered out the offending screw from the back, and levered it off. This was not at all the quiet and restful day in nature I’d had in mind. I lined the board up where I felt it should have gone and screwed it down. The next gap was now wider than before, so it was the next board’s turn. You can guess where this was going. On the fourth board I pulled out six screws, but it still didn’t budge. Scraping around carefully, I spotted another screw, deeply buried in a dirty crevice. I cleaned it off as best I could and luckily it came out. The board was still remarkably solid at both ends: clearly there were still at least two screws holding it down. But where? I took a spare screw and scratched about suspiciously: sure enough, there were two more subtly buried heads. I picked the mud out of the heads, and remarkably they both came up with the drill. Nine screws where three or so should have sufficed, on a misplaced, unchecked board.
Just as I was fixing it down with these dark thoughts, a blackcap burst into song: the first of the year for me.
Mallard dispute
The remaining planks were not too gappy, but were a bit higgledy-piggledy at either end. I pulled up a few more and lined them up to step round the angle as evenly as possible. Then I walked about and put in a line of screws where the boards were springing up and hadn’t been fixed down to the stringer below. The sun was shining and it was really quite warm on the boards. Suddenly there was a splash, and a lot of quacking. A rival drake had landed on the pond! The sleeping pair stood up and quacked for all they were worth. In a moment he had come over, and the pair jumped into the pond. He gave chase. Round and round they went, taking shelter under my feet, their position given away by a steady line of ripples. Then out they burst, flying, splashing down, sometimes with both males grabbing the female. They all flew off, but came back to fight some more a few minutes later. Being a drake in the breeding season is clearly hard work, even when you’re the only resident on a pond.
Even as I arrived the weather looked threatening. The sun sparkled dramatically off the water, under a magnificently dark cloud, making the marsh marigolds gleam golden against the almost-black water.
From the hide, redshanks could be seen scurrying about; some lapwings energetically chased off a few carrion crows, and a few snipe wandered about, right out in the open, ceaselessly probing the mud for food. Even better, the first little ringed plover of the year came out on to the marsh, flying off suddenly, its narrow wings flashing. The lapwings’ territoriality is valuable to other nesting birds, like the little ringed plover, as it protects their nests from predators of eggs and young like the crows. Lose the lapwings, as we have done across most of England – there are hardly any wet meadows left – and you lose much more. Drain and fertilise the meadows, and coarse grasses outgrow all the delicate flowers: you lose both the beauty and the bees, and the bees matter as they pollinate crops. The farmers hardly noticed they had done anything: after all, they only did a few sensible things to the land. That’s how delicate the ecological balance is.
The rain arrived, sweeping in on a cold wind that whistled through the hide windows, spattered camera lenses and binoculars with fat raindrops. In a minute, every window was closed, everyone happy to be in a warm dry place. I focused the telescope on a snipe and watched it while the rain threw up splashes all around it. Every minute or two it shook itself, keeping its feathers dry and fluffed up to maintain its insulation – clearly its plumage is nowhere near as oily and waterproof as a duck’s. But it went on feeding, its legs in the chilly water, its long beak in the mud, or retracted and rapidly opening and closing as it swallowed its catch. Living and feeding on a marsh means being cold and wet most of the year, really.
In the distance on the open water, three or four newly arrived sand martins swooped to catch insects from the surface, dashing about like the tiny brown tailless swallows that they are – I was watching them through the telescope (not something that often works well with fast birds like swallows), gently swinging from side to side to follow them as those watching with binoculars tried to count how many there were, little fastmoving specks against the water. We were all enjoying some wildlife, small as matchboxes, over a hundred metres away, flying in the rain. It was a very light, happy atmosphere in the hide, with nobody in a hurry, all the talk on the birds we could just about see. Really, it was perfect.
This morning dawned bright and crisp, all the car windscreens covered in frost (the air 1.8 Celsius). In the garden, a Chiffchaff was singing, not a bird that often visits here: probably it has only just flown in from Africa.
Constrained to stay indoors all morning, I managed to get out to the Wetland Centre in the afternoon. There was a buzz of excitement in the hide, faces and optics jammed up against the windows, notebooks at the ready: someone had seen a Jack Snipe. A young man with a Canon SLR camera and a cream-coloured telephoto lens asked if I knew the difference between the Jack and the Common Snipe. Er, I said. It has shorter legs, a shorter bill, no pale stripe on its crown, and it bobs up and down a lot. He looked just a tiny bit embarrassed. Could I tell from a photograph? I went over and peered into the bright little screen. The crown, striped or not, was not in view; half the beak was in the mud; and the legs were bent and seemed … shortish. I said I couldn’t tell and did he have another photo. He apologised, the next one was overexposed. To me, it looked much more like a Common Snipe. Where did he see it? He pointed down, where I’d seen a Common Snipe zigzag in across the water and land. I said I thought it was probably a Common Snipe: he hadn’t seen it bobbing up and down? He thought not. I observed that the light was difficult, as the sun kept on coming out of a cloud, and the water varied from dazzling to nearly black in the reflections; did he bracket the exposures? He said yes, it would be a good idea. He took some more photos, said he had a nice one against the dark water. I looked into the screen again: it was true, the contrast of the sunlit brown-and-cream of the camouflaged plumage and the velvet-black water was quite lovely. I smiled and murmured that it was beautiful, but definitely not a Jack Snipe. We had both enjoyed seeing the commoner species, so close, so bright, so crisply patterned, in such fresh spring weather.
I left the hide and walked quietly around the sheltered lagoon. On the grassy bank, a Green Woodpecker’s red cap and black moustache – it was a female – caught my attention. The way the woodpecker was probing quickly in the soft ground with her long pointed beak, then bobbing up to take a quick look around for possible predators, was remarkably snipe-like. I suppose the problem of feeding on something buried a distance beneath the surface pretty much guarantees you are going to be vulnerable while your beak is jammed into the mud and you are busy feeling with your tongue to decide if you’ve caught something edible… your attention is simply not going to be on the sky for those moments. It was curious to feel the similarity between two such different birds as the big hole-dwelling woodpecker with its jolly green and yellow plumage and its black and red face markings, and the plump little snipe with its marvellously cryptic brown and cream camouflage jacket, and an absurdly long beak. Each was delightful; but definitely not a Jack Snipe.
We had summer already. Yes, in March. It was baking hot for two weeks, then it ended as suddenly as it began. Then we had spring: the grass started to grow; the gooseberry bush is covered in its fresh green dress; the cherry trees in the streets are glowing with white and pink blossom; now the plum tree too is following with its delicate white flowers.
I grabbed my binoculars and went down to Wraysbury Lakes to see if any warblers had arrived. Even from the road I could hear a Chiffchaff singing; there were at least 10 singing around the lake, so plenty of migrant birds must have arrived to join any hardy overwinterers in the springtime. A Cetti’s Warbler, too, sang its loud brief song from the waterside. But no other warblers, yet; the chorus included a Song Thrush as well as the usual small birds, Great Tits making an odd rasping noise today (nothing like the typical ticha-ticha-ticha call), Robins, Dunnocks, Wrens, a Blackbird.
On the water, I had a surprise: there were two female Goldeneye still present, and a handsome male not far from them. Their biological clocks are still on the ‘Winter’ setting, clearly; their far northern breeding grounds guaranteed to be bitterly cold, devoid of food so early in the year. And near them, two pairs of Pochard, the handsomely rufous-headed males gleaming in the bright sunshine.
A loud splashing alerted me to the presence of an aggressive Mute Swan, its neck folded back, its wings raised threateningly; it had flown a short distance to warn off a rival male, which did its best to appear unconcerned. They both swam very fast, repeating the flying off a short distance (the rival) and noisily giving chase (the threatener) three times. Eventually the rival decided he had saved face enough, and flew off a hundred metres or so, leaving most of the lake to the victor.
I turned to walk on, and out of the blue sky came a minute’s hail, the grains about 5 mm across, pattering cleanly on to the ground. The wind freshened to force 4 from the southwest, feeling wintry on my ears; presumably up at Cumulus cloud level, the wind was strong enough to carry the hail some distance sideways from where it had formed.
I arrived at Huckerby’s Meadows in the crisp early morning. No, I hadn’t heard of it either: it was round the back of the industrial estate at Cranford, squeezed in between the edge of London and the perimeter of Heathrow airport. The puddles were interestingly frozen, the looping pattern suggesting successive stages of freezing.
Wheels down: right under the flight path at the end of Heathrow’s north runway
The meadows have miraculously survived untouched by the rushing development all around them. In fact, it protected them – nobody wants to live exactly under the end of the flight path, just before the planes drop over the airport fence and shriek to a halt on the runway; and the airport itself may well have had designs on the land, buying it up just in case, but not sure what to do with it. Huckerby’s meadows are now leased by the airport authority to London Wildlife Trust. It discovered a hidden corner of England, taken over by wildlife: I saw muntjac deer prints, jays, a green woodpecker, mallard ducks, a singing song thrush, and fieldfares chattering in the hedges.
A carpet of crab apples – surely there for a reason
The meadows had become seriously overgrown with brambles, creeping across the grass from the hedges. Volunteers have now cleared most of them, revealing a curious sight: the meadows contain a large number of big, old crab apple trees in their midst, nowhere near the hedgerows, so they must have been there for a purpose. A possible clue is in the carpet of fallen crab apples: perhaps old Huckerby found them useful fodder for his pigs? The crab is so sour that it is barely suitable as human food – crab apple jelly about covers it – but pigs will eat them as a change from the swill they were presumably fed on, in those days.
We volunteers had been lucky enough to get a place on a fruit tree pruning course, run jointly by London Wildlife Trust and the London Orchard Project. The course tutor, Bob, had come down from Norfolk to get us up to speed. The pole saws we had to use were remarkable, extending to 12 foot long, with a viciously sharp curved saw at the far end – think of the scythe in the hands of the black-cowled figure of Death, and you have the general idea. Bob effortlessly lopped off an offending branch ten feet above his head. We wore awkward goggles and hard hats; fresh, sharp-edged sawdust falling in your eyes means an instant visit to casualty, and of course as you saw something and look up, that’s just where the stuff is going to fall.
Er, how do I hold this? LWT volunteers trying out pole saws for the very first time
Bob explained remedial pruning; you don’t want ‘a tree on top of a tree’, a new vertical shoot rising from the end of an exposed branch, or the tree will get topheavy and split. You can’t just hack away: the tree will go into emergency overgrowth mode if you cut away more than 20% of the branches in a year. If an individual branch is heavy, just slicing away from the top means it will split when you are halfway through, letting wet and fungi into the wound, so it is best to cut in stages, reducing the weight by cutting smaller branches further out. Then you can cut the main branch part-way through from the bottom, finishing off from the top for a neat job, a cut surface that will shed rainwater cleanly. And you want to shape the tree neatly, with no crossing branches: they should radiate out tidily, giving each other space. Suddenly there was a lot to think about, and we looked at trees with newly informed interest. Then it was time to try it for ourselves. It was a lot harder than watching Bob do it; the poles were tricky to manoeuvre through the tangle of branches, the sun was in our eyes, and sawing at a distance felt nothing like holding a handsaw. But with supervision and encouragement we got the hang of it, and were soon bringing sizeable lumps of wood safely down to earth.
Bob also answered our questions about fruit trees – I needed something to pollinate my Cox’s Orange Pippin apple as it wasn’t bearing much fruit. The pollinator needs to be a suitable variety, so the flowers are open at the same time and the pollen is not rejected as being the same – Coxes do not self-pollinate. Lord Lambourn, for instance, is a good choice, as it is a useful cooking apple to complement the sweet eating Cox, and the two varieties pollinate each other as the bees fly about the garden visiting flowers.
By the end of the day, I had learnt a great deal, realising that I was only just beginning to grasp the rudiments of a fascinating subject. Maybe I’ll try grafting next year.
On a glittering, beautiful spring day I visit the London Wetland Centre. Even out in the street the magnolias and cherries are dazzling, splendid in full flower. Inside, the blackthorns are covered head to foot in soft, pure white blossom, like costume drama heroines in broderie anglaise.
Every species seems to be celebrating springtime. The parakeets race overhead in pairs. My first red mason bee of the year perches on the welcome signboard. Redshanks stilt-walk about in the shallow water, probing in the mud with their long beaks. A reed bunting, handsome with black and white head markings, sings from atop a bush. A greylag goose flaps his wings, vigorously chases off a Canada goose, several times; then both start courting their females. Cetti’s warblers sing, very close and really loud. A little troop of long-tailed tits flit between trees. A greater spotted woodpecker drums rapidly on a tree trunk. Little clouds of midges enjoy the warm sunshine. A pair of shelduck snooze like holidaymakers on an island; a large cormorant with fine large white thigh patches and grey head and neck stretches out his wings in the species’ classic Christ-on-the-cross pose: renaissance painters used the cormorant for its symbolism. The first chiffchaff of the year warbles out its simple happy song.
But all is not sweetness and light. In the flooded reedbed, a tremendous amount of splashing, struggling and trilling disturbs the peace. A coot seems to have decided to try to drown a dabchick, a little grebe. Perhaps it is too close to the coot’s nest. Whatever the reason, the dabchick keeps on vanishing underwater and popping up nearby, squealing loudly, as the coot splashes about aggressively. If the coot really hopes to drown the bright little waterbird, it is disappointed: the dabchick is as buoyant as a cork, bobbing instantly to the surface and definitely alive. Spring has sprung.
Today was an amazingly hot day for mid-March. It dawned foggy and chill, but quickly warmed up. Down at the Gunnersbury Triangle, a big pile of coppiced willow logs and some birch trunks were waiting to be built into a loggery. This is by intention a home for the stag beetle, which happens to have its British stronghold centred pretty much on south and west London. The stag beetle larvae are soft, white helpless grubs, a ready meal for a fox or a hungry bird – except that they live underground, or rather in timber which is in contact with the ground. They tunnel through the dead wood with their only really hard dark parts, their mouthparts, grow fat, split their skins and continue eating wood and tunnelling along, gradually making holes of larger and larger diameter. After some years – it can be up to seven – they metamorphose into handsome adult beetles with their black and shiny chestnut carapaces, walk or fly, mate, lay eggs in dead timber which is in contact with the soil, and die.
Completed Trench for Loggery
To accommodate this bizarre life history, we dug a trench somewhat more than knee deep – quite a feat in the sticky brown clay with some flint gravel – and packed in the logs as tight and close as we could get them.
Shovelling earth into all interstices
We then jammed short lengths of smaller wood in between the logs to prevent them from wobbling, and finished up by shovelling earth and clay into all the gaps and stamping it well down.
The Completed Loggery
The rest is up to the beetles – millions of years of evolution has given them a superb ability to find suitable places to lay their eggs – and then with luck in a few years’ time we will see some shiny new stag beetles walking heavily about the reserve.
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature
