Category Archives: Love of Nature

Environment, Love of Nature

Winter Thrushes in the Fog

With another day of freezing fog, very dangerous on the roads, nature is telling us that, yes, global warming or no, it’s winter. The false acacia, totally leafless, whirs with activity. A big wood pigeon sits impassively, ignoring the small passers-by. Within a few minutes, these include 3 goldfinches, keeping well away from each other in the branches; 2 male blackbirds, similarly, their heads high on the lookout for competitive activity; 4 ring-necked parakeets, never settling for more than a moment, jumping up squawking at the slightest provocation; 2 redwings, handsome with their contrasting eyestripes; 1 fieldfare, markedly bigger, and a handsome bird when seen in crisp winter sunshine rather than today’s murky fog. A few minutes later, a blackcap appeared: still a bird that we think of as a summer visitor, though a few pass through in winter from colder places. Later still, a great tit jumped in and wriggled about; and a little flock of 6 starlings blew in for a few minutes, sadly diminished from the sort of flocks I remember: and even this local flock used to have 7 members.

The effect as birds appear from and vanish into the gloom is rather of one of those popular tales physicists tell to try to make the public feel they understand what nuclear physics is all about: particles and antiparticles are ceaselessly created by the vacuum, and as continuously meet each other and annihilate, returning to their matrix, the apparently endlessly creative fog, which one would otherwise have mistaken for chilly nothingness.

Love of Nature, Natural Patterns

Who Said Pink and Orange Didn’t Go?

Pink and Orange Do Go - the Extraordinary Fruit of the Spindle Tree
Pink and Orange Do Go – the Extraordinary Fruit of the Spindle Tree.

The colours have not been manipulated in any way: they are just as they appeared on a sunny crisp November day.

Clusters of Spindle fruits
Clusters of Spindle fruits

The Spindle tree was once used to make spindles for spinning thread (you can see the long straight twigs, which were ideal for the job). The bizarre fruits dehisce into four, revealing the four bright orange seeds.

Love of Nature

Hips, Haws, and Burrs: yes, it’s Autumn at Wraysbury Lakes

Burdock burrs, complete with the hooks that inspired Velcro
Burdock burrs, complete with the hooks that inspired Velcro
Rose Hips
Rose Hips
A Splendid Teasel
A Splendid Teasel

It really was a beautifully warm last day of October: 17.5 degrees, shirtsleeves only in the sunshine. The trees were going golden, the berries red, the burrs and teasels a warm brown.

Robins were singing, as always. On the lake, the first few winter ducks (three drake Gadwall) have arrived, but the general air was of late summer languor, and walking had that feeling of unreality that comes from knowing that everything is, just now, totally lovely and free, whatever frost, wind, rain, or manmade disaster may come along tomorrow.

A little twittering flock of Goldfinches blew by; a Green Woodpecker and a Kestrel lent colour to the meadow. It was warm, dry, and lovely.

Love of Nature, Natural History

Aural Amble at Wraysbury Lakes

Indian Summer days are delightful, but often not terribly rich in visible wildlife – this year’s young have fledged and left the nest; flowers have faded and gone into fruit (which can be beautiful, of course); butterflies and dragonflies have mostly stopped flying; summer birds have left for Africa; and the warm calm air doesn’t bring winter migrants from the frozen North.

But there was plenty to listen to this morning.

As I walked in off the road, a Heron took off behind the bushes, and gave a two-tone ‘cronk’ note as it flapped off over the lake. I peered through a gap, and there it was, its amazingly broad angled wings like an ingeniously light balsa wood and doped muslin flying machine, totally unlike the awkward folded umbrella of an ungainly bird that a Heron is when perched.

Two Mute Swans took off and flew low over the water right in front of me, as silent as their name: only their wings whistling with each heavy wingbeat.

A solitary Cormorant took off from the water, very black without the white breeding season thigh patches, also silent except for the heavy thwack of its feet slapping the water on the first ten wingbeats.

A Cetti’s Warbler, invisible in the waterside bushes as always, burst into its loud rude song. (Once you’ve read Barnes’s description of just how rude that is, in How to Be a Bad Birdwatcher, you’ll never hear a Cetti’s without smiling again, I promise.)

A Green Woodpecker gave its cheerful triple signature call, somewhere far out of sight. No need to look.

A few Long-Tailed Tits called anxiously to each other, ‘Tsirrup’, high in the willows. I couldn’t see them either, and again, I didn’t mind a bit.

Bizarrely (and this was a sight to behold, perhaps the only one of the walk), 4 Cormorants took to the air, seeming to be chasing 4 young Herons, presumably a family party.

Up on the horses’ hill, a Kestrel hovered silently on whirring wings.

The horses won’t be there much longer: Affinity Water have put up little notices To Whom It May Concern, saying they’ve had enough with ‘flygrazing’ (makes a change from flytipping, presumably) and will remove the horses if they’re not taken away. I suppose the gypsies have left them to breed as well as graze for free (there’s plenty of grass); the horses are always gentle, and do a good job of controlling the meadow, actually. Why would they do that, a friend wondered. I suggested that it made perfect sense – each year, the ‘owners’ could drop in, take a mare, and leave the others to keep up the supply of new horses. What an economical, ecological system. Without the horses, I guess someone will have to pay for mowing, or maybe they’ll hire a flock of sheep for a few weeks each year? Not sure the horses aren’t a better solution. Of course they could leave some goats to go feral. (Only kidding.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love of Nature

Highland Heat Wave: Butterflies at Insh Marshes and Feshiebridge

Dark Green Fritillary at Insh Marshes
Dark Green Fritillary at Insh Marshes
Ringlet Butterfly
Ringlet Butterfly at Insh Marshes
on Tormentil
Cimbicid Sawfly on Tormentil. It’s a different species from the Trichiosoma sorbi shown on InsectsofScotland.com, a useful website, but looks to be in that genus, Trichiosoma.
Hoverfly cf Volucella pellucens on Meadowsweet
The large, shiny, bumblebee mimic Hoverfly Volucella pellucens on Meadowsweet. The specific name refers to the pellucid (semi-transparent) white band at the front of the abdomen.
Chimney Sweeper Moth at Insh Marshes
Chimney Sweeper Moth at Insh Marshes – common, but difficult to approach!
Meadow Pipit with food waiting to fly to nest
Meadow Pipit with food waiting to fly to nest
Insh Marshes panorama with Ruthven Barracks
Insh Marshes panorama with Ruthven Barracks
Empid fly with long beak on Scabious
Empid fly with long beak on Scabious at Feshiebridge
Conops wasp mimic fly on Scabious
Conops wasp mimic fly on Scabious at Feshiebridge
Bilberry Bush at Feshiebridge
Bilberry Bush at Feshiebridge
Foxglove Pug moth on bracken
Foxglove Pug moth on bracken at Feshiebridge
Hoverfly Chrysotoxum bicinctum
Hoverfly Chrysotoxum bicinctum (the specific name refers to the two yellow belts) at Feshiebridge
Love of Nature

Wet Enough for Liverworts in the Pavement

Marchantia polymorpha in pavement
Marchantia polymorpha in pavement

Well, it’s been pouring. The English Summer app is running, sort of, only the running is as in “running water”. The pavements in my street are wet enough to support flourishing colonies of the greenhouse liverwort Marchantia polymorpha. It is named polymorpha as it has many (poly-) forms (morph-). Two of these are rather splendidly visible in the photo.

Firstly, the female plants have decorative little umbrellas with star-shaped tops, which are gametophores which carry the female gametes, the ova.The flat green thallus is lobed like a liver, which by the mediaeval doctrine of signatures was supposed to be God’s way of indicating to the herbalist that this was a useful medicine for the liver … no worse than the modern crackpot ideas that Ben Goldacre ridicules in Bad Science, I guess.

Secondly, sticking up from the top of the thallus (try the top right of the photo) are little circular cups containing gemmae, small discus-shaped blobs of tissue. When a raindrop (yeah) splashes into the gemma cup, the gemmae ricochet out and land a little distance away, ready to grow, asexually, into new liverworts.They do this so well that stream banks are often carpeted with the little plants; and so are greenhouse pots.

Male plants (not shown here) have circular gametophores instead of the female star-shaped ones. Quite a lot of fun and curiosity from a small corner of pavement, really. In a sufficiently wet year, of course.

Conservation, Love of Nature

Looking for Swifts near Chiswick Mall…

Little Egret by Chiswick Eyot
Little Egret by Chiswick Eyot

Today I set out between the showers to survey the Swifts, if any, near Chiswick Mall. Equipped with a map and instructions, I chose six viewpoints at road junctions, and cycled between them, keeping a sharp eye out. By St Nicholas’ Church, three House Martins wheeled overhead, but no Swifts.

Up the Mall, near Chiswick Lane South, one Swift hawked high over the river, as did a pair of House Martins, quite an encouraging sight:. There were six nests in good condition on Field House, and within a minute I saw two Martins fly in and out of a nest.

Down the beach in front of Chiswick Eyot, a Little Egret trotted up and down in the water, showing off its elegant figure and yellow feet, and stabbing rapidly at invisibly tiny fish.

Nil to report at Eyot Gardens, despite the handsome tall terrace of red brick houses that once held many House Martin nests. No malice had been shown the colony: probably the loss is due to the dangers of the Sahel (and the guns of the Mediterranean).

Round the corner in British Grove, I was surprised and delighted to see two Swifts overhead – quite high, twice the height of the buildings, so no indication of a nearby nest, but still nice to see them.

If you know of any Swift nests in the area or nearby, I’d love to hear from you!

 

Gardening, Love of Nature, Natural History

Belle Noiseuse: Newly-Emerged Sawfly Drying its Wings

Newly-emerged Sawfly stretching its still-curled wings
Newly-emerged Sawfly stretching its still-curled wings

A miniature drama unfurled in my garden this morning, little streaks of orange and black sparkling in the sun as they chose places to land and sun themselves. They seemed to be newly-emerged, as they immediately stretched out their wings on landing: and if you look closely, you can see that the wings are not fully deployed, but are still soft and need to be puffed out quickly before they harden. If so, it’s remarkable that these little flies can take to the air in that condition.

La Belle Noiseuse
Emmanuelle Béart in La Belle Noiseuse

La Belle Noiseuse, the beautiful nuisance, roughly. Not the female sculptor in Jacques Rivette‘s 1991 film, starring Emmanuelle Béart, but a small sawfly. It’s a glorious little insect, shining in the sunlight, its deep orange-ochre abdomen contrasting with its black thorax and head, its legs elegantly banded black on orange, giving it a slightly waspish look in flight. (Indeed, it is presumably a Batesian mimic of wasps, benefiting by looking as if it might sting.)

Newly-emerged Sawfly detail
Newly-emerged Sawfly detail

But its nuisance value does not lie in stinging, but in its caterpillar-like larvae, which devour the leaves of gooseberries and can defoliate whole bushes.

Still, it’s a splendid sight.