Yet another astonishingly warm day, not exactly Indian Summer now with a cloudy start, but too hot for more than a t-shirt by midday. The Wraysbury Lakes were quiet, the winter ducks represented only by a few shoveler and a couple of gadwall. The most impressive waterbirds were the cormorants roosting on the dead branches of a large willow.
Muntjac footprint and pellets
On the path I found a single muntjac deer footprint, with its tiny pellets. A few goldfinches twittered in the bushes, and a linnet. A buzzard circled over the hills in the distance.
I have an unhealthy obsession with sheep. It occupies many of my waking hours and haunts my dreams. I hate them. Perhaps I should clarify that statement. I hate not the animals themselves, which cannot be blamed for what they do, but their impact on both our ecology and our social history. Sheep are the primary reason – closely followed by grouse shooting and deer stalking – for the sad state of the British uplands. Partly as a result of their assaults, Wales now possesses less than one-third of the average forest cover of Europe. Their husbandry is the greatest obstacle to the rewilding I would like to see.
— George Monbiot. Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life. Penguin, 2014. Pages 154-155.
Autumn Reds: Guelder Rose at London Wetland Centre
Today a brisk southwesterly wind blew the ragged clouds away, and it suddenly felt very much like autumn. The willows have lost many of their leaves, while other trees are still fully clad in green. Down at the Wetland Centre, the Guelder Roses were resplendent in scarlet: the photo is exactly as taken.
Down on the grazing marsh, a few migrant birds were giving the resident birdwatchers a treat. The Peacock Tower echoed to excited calls as a Whinchat perched on a faraway reed to the left, a Jack Snipe bobbed obligingly among some dead reeds to the front, and a Stonechat perched momentarily on a reed to the right. To my own surprise I saw all of them, even confirming that the Jack Snipe was bobbing up and down and had a dark stripe down the centre of its head. When it sat still it was marvellously hard to see, even in a telescope zoomed in and centred on the bird, its disruptive patterning doing an excellent job of breaking up its shape and matching the light and shadow of the vegetation around it.
Round on the wildside of the reserve, a few (Migrant) Hawker dragonflies and some Common Darters were still flying; and overhead, five House Martins, presumably on their way down south from somewhere far to the north, were busy refuelling on the many small insects flying over the water.
I didn’t even bother to struggle round the Fungus Foray in the afternoon, as it was obvious from the dry weather of the last month that there wouldn’t be any mushrooms to speak of. So I wandered along to say hello to whoever came along, and perhaps see some other wildlife.
Sure enough I met Alick Henrici, the indefatigable mycologist; he leads fungal forays in every county, even the Grampian Fungus Group, so he gets about a bit away from his home patch in Surrey, especially Kew Gardens. He said there was nothing to see, barring a few certainties like Phoma hedericola (Hedera=Ivy) which forms small dried-out looking patches on “almost every Ivy leaf”.
Around the corner, as he had said, some children and their mothers were thoroughly enjoying pond-dipping. Most of the summer animals were nowhere to be seen – not a newt anywhere, hardly a waterflea – but I saw some Pond Skaters, a Water Boatman, a few tiny damselfly nymphs, a Hoglouse or two, and a couple of plump dragonfly nymphs.
Hoglouse, Dragonfly nymph, Ramshorn snail
A weird, soft screeching noise was coming from a small oak above the pond. It wasn’t quite the harsh screech of a jay, and if it was a crow it had a seriously odd high voice. I climbed up to have a look. A grey squirrel was the source. It was alone so it wasn’t clear why it was calling.
On the steps over the mound are some wooden posts to keep the uprights in place. And peeping through the wire netting on the mossy top of one of these posts was a teeny tiny clump of a yellow Ascomycete fungus, the ‘Golden Spindles’ toadstool, Clavulinopsis fusiformis. The holes in the netting are about a centimetre across.
On an incredibly warm afternoon for the end of September (26° C), I went for a walk around Wraysbury Lakes, not expecting to find much: nearly all flowers should be over by now; it’s too warm for most birds to bother migrating south for the winter; insects and birds have mainly finished their showy summer breeding season; the winter ducks will not yet have arrived from the north. So I determined to relax and enjoy whatever might turn up, if anything.
There were not many ducks on the lake: mostly Tufted, a few Mallard, but 13 shy Gadwall under the far bank. A couple of Great Crested Grebes, a Heron, and a family group of cygnets made up the waterfowl, but for a party of a dozen Cormorants flying past. There were no gulls except a few Black-Headed. For the warblers, a couple of Cetti’s sang briefly; something churred once; and a few Chiffchaffs called.
Banded Snails on dried Hogweed: there are 5 in the photo
The hogweed had almost all formed its fruiting umbels and dried up, though one or two latecomers were still in full leaf. The dry stalks each had at least one banded snail parked up: some had 5 or more. So I thought I’d photograph each snail and, unusually for a nature blog, do a little rather random science and try to count the numbers in each colour variety. For the white-lipped banded land snail is rather delightfully polymorphic. I imaged 37 snails, all those I could reach, so they were probably a fair sample, unless you think there were some better-camouflaged ones I didn’t notice: I doubt that as all of them were high up on the stalks. Here are a few of them to illustrate some of the colour variation.
Polymorphism in White-Lipped Banded Land Snail
I counted:
2 yellow ( unstriped), 5%
16 yellow with brown stripes, 43%
15 white with black stripes, 40%
4 black, with an obvious broad fused stripe, 11%
Actually the stripes and background vary fairly continuously so a better way of dividing them up would be necessary. All the same, it’s fun to see just how convincing the polymorphism is. I didn’t see any dark-lipped snails (another species), by the way, and only a couple of snails of other species.
A small Pedunculate Oak had dozens of spangle galls under its leaves; these are caused by tiny wasps that live inside them.
Spangle Galls on Pedunculate Oak
A few dragonflies were still about: one Emperor; a few Hawkers, probably the Migrant Hawker; one smaller species, likely a Darter; and one Common Blue Damselfly.
The teasels, like the hogweed, had all fruited and dried out, forming a handsome pattern against the sky with their bristly pineapples on spiky stalks.
Teasels
Rose hips and hawthorn haws proclaimed Autumn, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness: contradicted by the humid heat of the day.
Round on the reclaimed landfill hill, it was a pleasure to see the low five-petalled cinquefoils in the horse-nibbled grass.
Potentilla (cinquefoil)
The surprise of the day came almost at the end of the walk: a party of perhaps fifty Meadow Pipits, shyly calling see-see-see as they swept up from the meadow, flashing their white outer tail feathers: the same species I had seen all over the moors of Badenoch and Strathspey, 500 miles to the north. It felt a little strange to see them passing by here.
For a day when I didn’t expect to see much, I think I did pretty well.
Knotgrass Moth Caterpillar, Acronicta rumicis, in garden, on a beautiful autumn day. It has eaten a substantial portion of the leaf. Its aposematic black-red-white coloration and bristling setae advertise it conspicuously as foul-tasting or poisonous.
An Indian Summer is one of those special times. Yes, autumn is here; yes, flowers and leaves will soon fall; yes, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, all of that: but for a brief moment, we know it is warm, even hot; that the time is precious, and we must seize the moment; and we drop everything to go outside with binoculars and camera to see whatever is to be seen.
And it is as wonderful as we could have hoped, warm and blithe. The Jackdaws hop about, quick to take their opportunities: some seem to live exclusively on sandwiches and crumbs. A Jay perches close by on an oak branch, abandoning the usual caution of its species. A series of high-pitched calls is not the usual posse of Ring-Necked Parakeets, but a family group of three Hobbies almost overhead, wheeling, diving, chasing each other, showing off their power and agility with long angled wings, stooping into a mock dive, fanning a tail, their black moustaches clearly visible.
Down at the Pen Ponds, pairs of Common Darter dragonflies are still in cop, laying eggs while the sun shines; around them zip Migrant Hawkers, and I glimpse one blue damselfly too. We walk around the ponds; a Heron flaps quietly across the water; a pair of Mute Swans ride high towards us, their two grey cygnets sailing between them.
And then, quite suddenly, I saw him: a stag with fine 14-point antlers, brimming with testosterone, preparing for the autumn rut. He stood quite still, up to his belly in the water. He had decorated his head with vegetation – Bracken and some Oak twigs – and was now quietly absorbing the elements, sun and water, as he listened to the occasional preliminary roar of another stag in the distance. In a few weeks he will be fighting for a harem of hinds; but today, he seemed contemplative.
A few hundred yards away, in the open grassland, a group of twenty hinds is accompanied by a couple of young males with nearly straight antlers. A big stag will surely put them to flight in an instant when the rut begins; but today, they grazed quietly with the females.
A Buzzard soared overhead, circling in the fair-weather thermals; one of the young Hobbies dashed past.
Bee in the garden of Pembroke LodgePembroke Lodge
In the beautiful garden of Pembroke Lodge, they were preparing for a wedding, the lawn looking its verdant best, the bees buzzing softly in the still colourful flowerbeds full of tall daisies and delphiniums, lavender and alkanet. On the belvedere terrace, with its spacious view to the West, lovers made soft conversation at the café tables.
Gooseberry Sawfly: possibly unwelcome to many gardeners, but beautiful nonetheless. Unlike typical ants, wasps and bees, the Symphyta have no narrow waist to the abdomen.
Back at home, a pair of bright saffron-coloured Gooseberry Sawflies (there are actually several species that attack gooseberries and other currants indifferently, I’m not sure what species this one is) were joyfully mating near my currant bushes, while others flew sedately about – they have a rather unusual steady flight, not like anything else. The air was warm and light; and the sawflies did not seem to have made any impact on the fruit crop. I was happy to get a photograph of one of the tiny insects, happy to see them flourishing in this Indian Summer.
Potter/Mason Wasp with very long yellow waist, side view on Fennel, taking nectarAmmophila pubescens, the smaller sandwaspAn all-black spider-hunting wasp, also taking Fennel nectar
Today the morning sun blazed from a clear blue sky and the air around the tall handsome Fennel outside the kitchen swarmed with insects of all shapes and sizes, hastening to benefit from the plant’s abundant nectar. Among the visitors were the large black-and-yellow potter wasp, a small sand-wasp (Ammophila pubescens) – still a largish wasp, and a handsome species with its red and black abdomen – and an all-black spider-hunting wasp, like an Anoplius (and maybe of that genus) but without the red bands on the abdomen. Also enjoying the feast were many tiny solitary bees and a good number of flies of different species, including one with a long bristly red cylindrical abdomen, as well as what look very much like ordinary social wasps. A single red-and-black striped Trichodes alvearius beetle joined in.
Strangalia maculata, stingless but with colours mimicking those of wasps, on MintSooty Copper on Mint
The garden Mint, now coming into full bloom, had an almost entirely different set of insects on and around it, including large flies (preyed on by Crab Spiders), a Strangalia maculata longhorn beetle, and a Sooty Copper. Half a dozen Gatekeeper butterflies chased about; a Wall Lizard scurried down the wall on the lookout for insect prey. A Large Skipper perched for nectar.
Immature male Common Darter on Cherry twig
In the evening, two dragonflies hunted over the lawn. A Small Pincertail hawked up and down, its abdomen showing a roughly striped yellow and black appearance as it flashed past, wheeling up and turning aerobatically like a military helicopter over the box hedge. A Common Darter chose a perch at the end of any of three bare twigs on the Cherry, darting up like a Flycatcher, hovering, and landing again, often on the same perch. It was hard to see its markings against the light, even with binoculars, but by stalking it with the camera and adjusting the brightness and contrast it was possible to see its orange coloration and rather plain markings, as well as clear wings, excluding Yellow-Winged and Ruddy Darters, both of which I’ve seen here.
A distinctly battered Silver-Washed Fritillary, warming itself on a rock after feeding in the shadeA small brown Mantis, unknown species
This rather beautiful small Mantis with a ‘millefiore bead’ pattern on its eye was resting on the kitchen shutters. I’ve never seen the species before: it is much shorter than the common green Praying Mantis of Europe that we get here (mainly on chalk, but also in sandy clay meadows), and it is probably well camouflaged in brownish grass or vegetation. The wings are surprisingly clear, so there is no startling ‘deimatic’ flash of bright colour available from the forewings. There seems no doubt, though, about the ‘praying’ front legs (I almost said ‘arms’).
Other insect visitors include Southern White Admiral and Scarce Swallowtail (actually commoner here than the ‘Common’ Swallowtail, a fast flier which we sometimes see).
A spidery surprise. The garden mint is now in full flower, attracting a wide range of flies, bees, and other insects. Lying in wait are three Crab Spiders, which look mainly white to us, but are seemingly invisible to other insects. One of them was this morning visited by a small black-and-gold spider, apparently of quite a different kind judging by its body shape, coloration and large chelicerae; it hung onto her large globular abdomen for an hour or so, not seeming to do any harm, and certainly not appearing to mate. The male, for such it is, is far smaller than the conspicuous female. Whether he often ends up as a meal or not, he is impressively different from the female of the species Misumena vatia.
When I first acquired a macro lens for my camera, I raced about the meadows, photographing every insect I could: and many of them were species new to me, though I must have seen them flying past (or away) many times. For the close-up lens and detailed images gave me something I had never had: the ability to study shy insects as if I had caught them and pinned them to a Victorian collector’s card. Suddenly those speckled orange butterflies resolved themselves into Spotted Fritillaries, or for that matter Glanville, Queen of Spain, Silver-Washed, Small Pearl-Bordered and High Brown Fritillaries. It was a revelation, and a delight.
It was also sobering: in all my journeys around the British Isles, the only Fritillary I ever saw was a Small Pearl-Bordered, and that was on the north coast of Cornwall, only a few miles from Land’s End, as if almost the whole of Britain had been scrubbed clean of butterflies, but a few remote corners with the last few surviving individuals had somehow been overlooked.
But as far as rural France was concerned, once up in the wooded hills with their mosaic of old coppiced woodland, little meadows, fruit trees and ponds around old tumbledown farms and barns, or out on such steep chalk grassland hillsides as remain, the butterflies, beetles and wild flowers remained much as they must have been a century ago. I clicked away and framed a postcard-sized print of each species, 8 to a clipframe, and returned each day to the meadows to photograph more.
Lady Orchid in Dordogne
It was the same with the flowers, especially on the chalk, as soon as I finally managed to get down here in springtime to see the orchids, rather than in high summer to see dry brown grass (and perhaps burnt-out orchid seed-heads, the colour of well-cooked toast). Everywhere there were Pyramidal Orchids and Chalk Fragrant Orchids, so numerous as to have a wealth of variation in size, shape and height, evidently frequently hybridizing. In damper places were Early Purple Orchids; and here and there were species I had never seen in Britain – Lizard, Military, Lady, Green-Winged, Fly, and Butterfly Orchids. They all went on the wall, printed as close-ups.
A green longhorn beetle with black spots: I’m delighted to learn from the Romanian Longhorn Project that it’s Saperda punctata (Linnaeus, 1767)
As for the beetles, the only really large species that I’d seen at all frequently in England was the Stag Beetle. Here, I photographed at least 8 species of Longhorn, from the mighty Tanner to two kinds of wasp-coloured beetle (Clytus and Strangalia) and a magnificent green kind with black spots, Saperda punctata. The Romanian Longhorn Project kindly identified it from the photo, saying that it is protected in Central Europe: such splendid insects are becoming rare, and not only in England.
Waspish beetle: Strangalia maculata on Mint
Yet perhaps it was really the wasps that caught my eye and stole my heart. Yes, wasps. As well as ordinary-sized social wasps, the area was home to great spherical nests of the European (Red) Hornet and the new, darker, slimmer and far more aggressive Asiatic Hornet. And besides those were Sphecid or Digger Wasps of many kinds, all solitary and often handsome; Ichneumons with narrow waists and enormously long ovipositors like overgrown stings (though wasp stings are actually modified ovipositors, so only females have them); and marvellously beautiful and imposing Potter Wasps with black and yellow legs and long slender yellow waists. These are shy and wary of large animals, so photographing them was always a challenge: but eventually I managed it.
Now, as the years go by, I find I recognize these insects not only by their size and shape and patterns, but by their habits of flight, the kind of weather that brings them out, which plants they like to visit, where they nest. In short, they have become familiar: and with familiarity has come a comfortable feeling of friendship and of being at home, of things being in their right places. The excitement of the new has been replaced by the appreciation of this particular ecosystem, where ‘eco’ means what its Greek etymology implies: οικος (oikos), house: this is my and their home, the place where we live together.
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature
