All posts by Ian Alexander

Wonders of Wakehurst Place … and Loder Valley

13 April 2014 Ian Alexander

Wakehurst Place is Kew Gardens in the countryside of Sussex, glowing on a cool but very sunny April day with spring all around: cowslips, primroses (pin and thrum, some antique school botany coming back to mind), bluebells, dog’s mercury, wood anemone; and a fine chorus of birds, with chiffchaff, blackcap, song thrush, blackbird and an assortment of noisy pheasants and wood pigeons for good measure.

Everything was coming into new leaf or into bloom: some plants like this Oak tree were doing both at once.

Wollemia nobilis, Australia's Wollemi Pine, in full fruit — Wollemia nobilis, Australia’s Wollemi Pine, in full fruit

Being Kew, there are some very special plants about, not least the one-step-from-extinct Wollemi Pine from Australia, here growing happily with odd-shaped cones of both sexes in the English countryside.

White-tailed Bumblebee pollinating Purple Toothwort — Garden Bumblebee pollinating Purple Toothwort

In the attached Loder Valley nature reserve, a special treat: the Purple Toothwort, a parasitic plant in the Broomrape family, scarce in Britain and a new plant for me. It wasn’t present as a lone stalk: there were good big clusters of it on a steep clayey bank. I’m not sure what it was parasitising, though at this time of year it must surely be a woody plant, and brambles were close by.

By a gatepost, a large and fresh wild arum seemed to deserve its country name Lords and Ladies, standing gracefully fresh.

Back in the park, the silver birches perfectly set off the sea of bluebells.

long trailing beards of Usnea lichen on oak trunk

Great trailing beards of lichen draggled down an oak trunk: it’s a rare sight in Europe, and all the more surprising in Sussex, not far from the pollution of Gatwick airport. Perhaps the prevailing winds keep the air clean, but in that case why are lichens so few in Hampshire and the southeast generally?

The park contains the extraordinary Millennium Seed Bank, complete with windows onto the world of toiling botanists, drying seeds and elegant specialised equipment – a gadget for pouring agar into stacks of Petri dishes, among others, and a dramatic selection of the world’s most bizarre seeds, like the very large and remarkably bottom-like Coco de Mer. It’s not one of the seeds in the seed bank just yet, as it is ‘recalcitrant’, refusing to be dried out so it can survive for centuries – it just dies instead. Love stronger than death, or something.

Natural History

Buff-Tailed Bumble-Bee Ambles About Aimlessly

12 April 2014 Ian Alexander

Yes, the Queen Bee is back, or rather, she’s probably been bumbling about the garden all along. She is as you can see certainly buff-tailed, unlike any workers of her species who, confusingly, have white tails. She constantly clambers about the grass, climbs up obstacles and then climbs down out of them, rather slowly. If something comes close she does not buzz, but raises a leg in warning, and carries on doing … whatever it is she is doing. I tried showing her a convenient hole for her nest under a stone slab: she was not at all interested. Wondering if she was low on energy, I offered a drop of watered-down honey: nothing doing there either. Since she must have been around since last autumn, she may well have enough energy to get through several days of searching, though not taking food when available does seem surprising. I left her still stumbling slowly around, within a couple of yards of where she was yesterday.

The compost heap, the pile of logs I left for stag beetles, and the garden shed with the undisturbed space underneath it are all nearby, so there would seem to be excellent freehold properties immediately available, no chain, immediate inspection recommended. But then, each bumblebee species has its own Lilliputian requirements, which are hard to guess from my Brobdingnagian proportions.

Or again, maybe she’s just low on energy.

Gardening, Natural History

Bicycle Birding without Binoculars

10 April 2014 Ian Alexander

Birding on a Bike without Binos, how is that possible? My mind fogged by editing, I took an hour off and cycled down to the river to get some air, space, sunshine and nature. It was a lovely bright spring day. A holly blue butterfly flew about the garden, and a buff-tailed queen bumblebee crawled about the grass looking for a hole to nest in – she was certainly a queen as she was very large, and she’s the only form of her species that is actually buff tailed, the rest are white tailed.

Coots, 3 cootlings and an egg in Chiswick Park

In Chiswick Park, a pair of mallard had at least six ducklings: the adults sat on the bank, with probably one more duckling (no binoculars today) while the six adventurous ones paddled nimbly about in circles not too far away. In the midst of William Kent’s carefully landscaped ‘river’ (a long narrow pond) was a coot’s floating nest; the sitting parent got up while I was watching, revealing three cootlings and one unhatched egg in the nest. A blackcap sang sweetly from the trees.

Down by the river, a solitary great crested grebe swam against the tide, glinting white in the sun. Goldcrests squeaked from the cypresses by the boathouse; allotment owners worked their patches of ground. A small tortoiseshell butterfly flew swiftly past the barbecues which were grilling kebabs. It did feel like spring.

Nature Reserves

Burning Brash at Ten Acre Wood

10 April 2014 Ian Alexander

London has a chain of not-quite-secret nature reserves stretching down its western side along the line of the Grand Union Canal and the valleys of the River Colne, River Frays, and the Yeading brook all the way to the River Crane, where there are more reserves; they are in the green strip you may briefly glimpse as you leave town on the M4 or M40. Many of them are rather tricky to reach because, almost by definition, the places that haven’t been built over are off the beaten track, round the back of airfields or industrial estates, past the housing estates and into the surprisingly green and quiet areas that have not yet been cut up by HS2 or other developments.

Burning Brash at Ten Acre Wood, with a blackthorn in full bloom

A Land-Rover full of London Wildlife Trust volunteers wriggled through the Hillingdon suburbs to Ten Acre Wood and what used to be the Ten Acre Wood Meadows. These have seen little management as agriculture has declined. The Trust’s chainsaw team had cut a fine crop of small trees – blackthorn, hawthorn, even oak, the climax plant in the succession from bare ground to full-blown forest – and left the branches neatly stacked in enormous rows across what should be meadow. The Yeading brook made the ground squelchy; six mallard flew in looking for somewhere suitably wet. Chiffchaffs and a blackcap sang merrily. We started two bonfires, admirably fanned by the cool breeze, and dragged branches on to them for hours until a sandwich and a welcome cup of tea intervened. With a bit more bramble clearance, and preferably some grazing, the meadows will again be a fine place for meadow flowers. Even now, it was amazing to realize that the city was all around, with nothing but greenery and blue sky in sight.

Environment, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Of Wild Pigs and Stained Glass, yes it’s the Forest of Dean

8 April 2014 Ian Alexander

It’s one thing to be used to seeing signs of wild boar in France, quite another to realize these fine animals have returned without any bureaucracy about release licences and experimental sites and suchlike. Whatever happened, whether they just escaped or were released by animal rights protesters or some other story, they are now out in the wild, and exuberantly breeding.

The many diggings beside the trails in the Forest of Dean show the presence of numerous family groups, while the splayed prints of different sizes leave no doubt about the families of pigs with all ages represented.

Stained Glass Window in the Forest: Sculpture Trail

Casting pearls before swine … or at least, dangling stained glass over them. The forest is enlivened with a wide range of sculptures in the now very well established trail. The famous giant chair is becoming a bit wonky, and has been repaired with cement. The magnificent stained glass window adds glowing colour whatever the weather.

Orange and White Lichens on Birch in Forest of Dean

A lone birch in a clearing shines out with brilliant orange and white patches. The orange is not the common orange lichen (Xanthoria) which shows a leafy thallus: the orange patches here seem to consist almost wholly of fruiting bodies which are not circular apothecia with clear rims, but fuzzy tufts, presumably of spores. And the white circular patches are also lichens, not just areas of bare bark: their fruiting bodies show up dark within the white circles.

Natural History

Primroses by the River Usk

7 April 2014 Ian Alexander

Having by good fortune been able to get away for a few days, we drove down to Monmouthshire and had a fine walk from the mediaeval stone bridge at Llangynidr along the beautiful River Usk.

Primroses Celandines Wood Anemones by River Usk

The path had been damaged by the floods, but now the waters have receded the path is surrounded by primroses, celandines and wood anemones in delightful combination: specially good to see near a path, as so many wild primroses have vanished into thoughtless people’s gardens in England.

Tolkienesque Oak and rapids on River Usk

The River Usk – the Welsh name is from the same root as Whisky (Uisge), meaning simply ‘water’ – swirled over little rapids, a pied wagtail hawking for flies from the midstream rocks. Apparently the river names Exe and Wye share this origin; while Avon also just means ‘river’. In the days when people lived by just one river and rarely walked further than the nearest market town, ‘the river’ must have been a sufficient name. As well as these etymologies, Tolkien would have liked the gnarled Old Forest oak trees beside the river, very mossy at the base, gripping the sandstone rocks with their roots.

Lichens grew to good size in the clean air. A piece of beard lichen (Usnea) had fallen from a branch on to the path; common cup lichen Cladonia conoiocraea grew on a mossy wall.

On the return walk through the fields we saw this ewe feeding her twin lambs.

Book Review

Book Review: A Sting in the Tale, by Dave Goulson

3 April 2014 Ian Alexander

A Sting in the Tale by Dave Goulson. Jonathan Cape, 2013 — A Sting in the Tale by Dave Goulson.
Jonathan Cape, 2013

OK, it’s time to sort out the old book review website. I intend to write all new book reviews here, if the experiment works that is, and then – phase 2 – to move all the old nature book reviews from the static web pages to here as well, so they’re all searchable and suchlike. Of course if it’s less convenient..

So, A Sting in the Tale. It’s fairly clear from the dust jacket that Goulson is going to write about bumblebees. I admit I went ‘hmm’, wondering how exactly bees were going to fill a book – my heart goes out to all publishers, literary agents and magazine editors who have to leaf through wads of badly-written stuff in the faint hope of finding something exciting to read, for once.

But by the second page of the Prologue I was captivated, and I’m happy to report the feeling of pleasurable excitement, recognition of shared enthusiasm for nature, and admiration for terrific natural history knowledge (and jolly good writing and editing) stayed with me until the end of the book. In fact it left me wanting more, a sure sign of success, something rarer than hen’s teeth on the bookshelves.

What grabbed my attention in the Prologue was that the seven-year-old Goulson was totally, absolutely, delightfully nature-mad. How many boys train honeysuckle up the shed to feed moths, plant pussy willow to give bees early spring food, or actually dig a pond and stock it with newts, sticklebacks and other beasts from the canal? It sounds marvellous fun. Mind you, we did build dams across the stream and … I think children back then were allowed out a lot more than they are today. But I digress.

What is fantastic about this book is that every chapter tells something new – I guarantee you haven’t heard of the sort of facts that Goulson has at his fingertips. He even dares to explain the “very complicated” genetics of bee sex – believe me, it really is worse than you remember. Goulson lectures on it every year, and he notes that half the students doze off every time. Somehow, he’s made it fun, because I read that chapter straight through, and believed I understood it all by the end. In other words, Goulson has the rare gift of being able to explain anything. As you go, you do dimly realize you’ve just understood something that most of the human race doesn’t have a clue about, which is rather fun. Along the way, too, you discover just how fascinating bumblebees are, and how vital they are for healthy ecosystems, and for our food supply. You also find out how much trouble they are in, and even better, what Goulson and others are doing to save them.

What a super book. Do buy it. You won’t regret it.
Buy it from Amazon.com (commission paid)
Buy it from Amazon.co.uk (commission paid)

Conservation

Hunt that Frog

3 April 2014 Ian Alexander

Down at the reserve, it was time to strim the meadow, which meant a frog hunt. A conservation frog hunt, to dislodge any frogs that might otherwise get permanently strimmed. I walked up and down, sweeping through the cow parsley – it’s a major reason why cutting is now necessary, it needs to be held back to allow more delicate flowers like garlic mustard through – but no frogs hopped out. I looked under the mats placed there for amphibia – there were no frogs, just three small toads sheltering in the cool darkness.

On the woodland edge of the meadow, brambles have been spreading in their looping way, bending down to the ground, striking root and springing off another few feet into the grass. I pulled up some dozens of them, cutting roots where necessary to leave nothing that could regrow. Some people just quickly clip them off above the ground, which slows them down for a little while: pulling, digging or root-clipping is far more effective.

Down at the pond, the heron was waiting silently, watching for frogs to eat. Since it has arrived, frogs have been much harder to find. I wonder how many of the dozen large frogs I saw mating a few weeks ago have finished up in that enormous dagger-shaped beak.

Environment

Desert Dust in Britain … all the way from the Sahara

2 April 2014 Ian Alexander

Yesterday the BBC explained that a high pressure zone over eastern Europe was bringing polluted air in on a southeast wind, picking up what smells like a sharp and acrid sulphurous dusty mess from the Ruhr. The same wind picked up desert dust from the Sahara and carried it straight across Europe. The dust has arrived with the dew and has formed a sandy smudge all over everybody’s car: it’s most obvious where the wetting has collected it towards edges of roof panels, as in the photo. Today the forecast is for very poor air quality, at warning levels 8 or 9 (out of 10 for worst possible), making life uncomfortable for asthma sufferers. The map shows it stretching from the tip of Kent in the southeast all across England to Dorset in the west, the Wash in the northeast and the North Wales coast in the northwest. Levels are ‘Very High’ along the south coast and up to Cardiff, and in a patch in the midlands.

Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wildlife

Spring has sprung

1 April 2014 Ian Alexander

Today dawned foggy and cool, but the sun soon burnt its way through and it became a hot spring day. I spent most of it reroofing the tool shed at the Gunnersbury Triangle nature reserve. It was in tatters after at least one hard winter, and it was an interesting exercise peeling off the layers hopefully tacked one on top of the leaky other. I then removed three full boards from the roof, complete with what I’m sure any mycologist would have found a fascinating colony of wet rot fungus, together with several wriggly centipedes and a lot of woodlice.

As it grew hotter on the roof, I was joined by at least two species of hoverfly, one large, dark, and almost unstriped. A brimstone butterfly chased around with a smaller white, perhaps a green-veined or an orange tip. A comma butterfly wandered about. Down below, the stinging nettles, hops, and garlic mustard (ideal for orange tips) are coming up nicely, but there’s too much cow parsley and some volunteers are pulling a lot of it out.

At lunchtime I walked down to the pond. Chiffchaffs were singing all over; the pond was suddenly covered in pond skaters (Gerris) with one or two whirligig beetles. The tadpoles have hatched out into a wriggling mass.
Spring has sprung.

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