Category Archives: Natural History

Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wetlands, Wildlife

Mayflies, May Blossom… yes, it’s May at Wraysbury Lakes

Mayfly cf Ephemera vulgata
Mayfly cf Ephemera vulgata

The sun is shining … in between the showers. Mayflies are resting all over the plants near the river. May blossom makes a bright show on every hawthorn bush. Yes, it’s May down at Wraysbury Lakes. The energetic breeze gives a cool feel, but out of the wind it’s very pleasant. Enjoying the brisk airflow are at least four Common Terns over the lakes and overhead; a few Swallows; and a small number of Swifts, newly arrived in the last few days, racing down to the water surface to catch flies — not the mayflies, which are active mainly at night. The warblers which are definitely about are hard to hear for the wind in the trees, but I caught snatches of Chiffchaff, Blackcap, many Whitethroats, plenty of Garden Warbler, a Willow Warbler, three Song Thrushes and a Blackbird, not to mention Robins and Wrens.  A Cormorant lumbered past, climbing with effort, its jizz very much like that of the Boeing 747s lumbering heavily into the air.

Mayfly look, but no tails. Hmm
Mayfly look, but no tails. Hmm

There are some pale mayflies, with neither antennae nor the 3 tails: maybe these have broken off in the vegetation.

Beautifully iridescent green-bronze female Banded Demoiselle
Beautifully iridescent green-bronze: a female Banded Demoiselle

Also new today are quantities of damselflies: there are many brilliant iridescent blue male Banded Demoiselles, with their beautifully clear green-bronze females. This one seemed definitely to be watching me attentively. Two small blue species have also emerged, Blue-Tailed Damselfly and Common Blue Damselfly.

Over the lake, a long-winged falcon swooped at speed: I wondered for a moment if I had a Cuckoo, but the moustache and white face markings showed it was a Hobby, arrived from Africa in pursuit of the Swifts, and perhaps hunting damselflies as easier prey in this place. The low number of Swifts is worrying; they have been declining for years, as building renovation removes their old nest-holes, and increased human population pressure in Africa threatens them there too.

A small Grasshopper on Comfrey
A small Grasshopper on Comfrey

This small grasshopper, missing an antenna, is my first of the year.

Further along, the bare damp area that often has teasels is bright yellow with clumps of a yellow Brassica that has clasping leaves like wild turnip (or cultivated swede). There’s a definite cabbagey smell. A Whitethroat, caught out in the open, makes a dash for a bush.

Book Review, Conservation, Natural History

Book Review: Notes from Walnut Tree Farm by Roger Deakin

Notes from Walnut Tree Farm by Roger Deakin
Notes from Walnut Tree Farm by Roger Deakin

I made a mental note a while ago only to review books that I really loved: books that were special, that I’d go back to, that I’d wholeheartedly recommend to close friends. Life is too short to review books that were merely so-so, acceptable, somewhat informative, useful as background. I read (parts of) many of those, “researching” subjects and places, and for the most part once I’ve done what I wanted the book goes on a shelf and stays there.

Books that stick in the mind, that quietly speak to me long after I last dipped into them, are a small proportion. It is only too easy to buy something that looks inviting, only to find after a chapter or two that it’s a bit overblown, poorly argued, limply presented. Books that are specially trumpeted are particularly at risk here. Amazon reviews tend, on average and given sufficient quantity, to be truthful: of course authors ask friends to review their books (we all do it) so you need a good sample to get a genuine impression from readers, and, caveat emptor, you should read between the lines to see if the reviewer is real and appreciating the book in the same way as you.

I mention all this because I took a look at my most recent shelf of books with an eye to writing a review. The internal dialogue went something like this. “Um. No. Gulp, not that. Reviewed that already. no. No. no. Ah.. no, did that back in 2007. No, no, no, no, no. Erm, not much here. Hold on, did I ever do Notes from Walnut Tree Farm? Time I did.”

Roger Deakin wrote two marvellous books, Wildwood and Waterlog. It isn’t accidental that they both have something to do with wood in their names: Deakin was very close to wood, and had carpenters and men named Wood in his family. He then died suddenly, leaving 45 notebooks full of daily observations of all kinds, written in the last six years of his life. Alison Hastie and Terence Blacker took on the task of selecting extracts and arranging them into a composite year.

Walnut Tree Farm was Deakin’s house in the Suffolk countryside. It was timber-framed, in other words made of local wood. He bought it in ruinous condition, and rebuilt it himself: a mediaeval house, with a moat that he liked to swim in. Every corner of his life was of a piece, intensely personal, fully and passionately experienced. His writing is cut from the same sturdy oak.

 Fire: nothing gives me more comfort or more anxiety than fire.

Look up Cobbett on the laying of fires — talk about bread ovens and faggotts of furze for bread-making.

The fireplace has been subsumed by the TV, pushed out of the nest as by a cuckoo. People now contemplate the TV, not the fire.

What is it about Deakin’s notes that is so compelling? Reading him on fire just now, I can hear the crackle of logs in the grate, smell the woodsmoke, feel the pleasure as the flames flicker red and yellow. I would call him a sensuous writer, at the risk of being misunderstood: he does not write purple prose. He feels  life directly and communicates his sensory experience in clear, straightforward words, the opposite of rambling, yet he conveys the impression of relaxed thought, of coming upon interesting things and reflecting on their possibilities. Reading him feels very private: it’s like being in his mind, a privileged position.

Deakin takes us — me, you —to Suffolk; to walk in the woods, to reflect on a dead, trapped fox, to watch the carp in his front pond, to listen to a willow warbler which “sings in the spinney by the old goat sheds”, to join him scything his lawn by hand, cooking on a “little cast-iron stove” from Morocco, having “singing lessons with Mrs Gillard, who put her hands on my stomach as I sang”. It’s extraordinarily varied, authentic in every corner, always warm, always intelligent.

There is nothing else like Notes from Walnut Tree Farm: fresh, insightful, funny, stimulating, informative, peaceful, full of life and nature. Please read it.

Buy it from Amazon.com (commission paid)
Buy it from Amazon.co.uk (commission paid)

Gardening, Natural History, Wildlife

Even more on a Blackcurrant Leaf … Welcome or Not

Further to the World on a Blackcurrant Leaf, today the Ichneumons and the Harlequins were joined by two more conspicuous flying visitors, some green Shield Bugs (true bugs, Hemiptera) and some swift yellow-abdomened Sawflies, most probably Gooseberry Sawfly. Both of these are held in definite disfavour by many gardeners, the bugs for sucking plant juices and possibly weakening plants or spreading disease, and the sawflies for making caterpillars which in a bad year can totally defoliate gooseberry bushes — it only happened to me once, and it was quite a shock: from seeing the first little green caterpillars to leafless plants only took a week or so.

Since then I have carefully checked the gooseberry every few days for signs of sawfly damage (and actual caterpillars). If there are just a few, I remove the affected leaves and squash any caterpillars I find; this usually does the trick. If there are many, which has only happened once or twice, I consider spraying, choosing a time without wind, after sunset so the bees aren’t flying, and work close to the bush to keep the stuff local. The approach seems to work well for bees and berries.

As for the bugs, well, I rather like their handsome appearance and their confident swagger. There always seem to be enough currants so I don’t mind if the yield is down a bit on what it might have been.

Natural History, Wildlife

Wood Wasp, Sprouting Loggeries

While doing the Butterfly Transect at the Gunnersbury Triangle, I came across a fairly large Wood Wasp (in the sawfly family), about 25mm long. It was a bit tricky getting a photo,  as these insects are distinctly skittish – they race about in the shadows, occasionally perching on a leaf’s upper surface. The breeze was wafting the branches gently, so patches of sunlight came and went. I shot several images with the miniature camera – it has two big advantages over my full-size SLR: one, it has a very short focal length, so it has a better depth of field than an expensive macro lens; two, it’s small and cheap, so I habitually carry it with me in my rucksack.

Wood Wasp, cf Sirex, on Ivy

The two images here show (left) the resting position with the wings over the body, the long antennae,  the alarming-looking ovipositor, and the orange-brown legs; and (right) the plump black abdomen with white spots. Perhaps the two images show that it’s rather hard to get a single image which is suitable for identification. This one looks like a Sirex so perhaps that’s what it is. The eggs are drilled into wood.

The butterfly transect yielded the first definite Green-Veined Whites, i.e. I was able to get close enough to be sure; until now they’ve all been “Small/Green-veined” worse luck. There were some Speckled Woods and an Orange Tip, too; a Brimstone turned up after I’d put the clipboard away.

Sprouting Loggery
Sprouting Loggery

But the most curious observation of the day was this sprouting loggery. We ‘planted’ (more literally than we knew) the sawn Willow logs in the winter. They seem very happy in their new setting and are growing vigorously. It will be interesting to see how they get on.

Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wildlife

Endless Forms Most Beautiful … Conifers in Kew

Looking Straight Up: Giant Sequoia at Kew
Looking Straight Up: Giant Sequoia at Kew

One of the unceasing delights of nature is the feeling, some days more clearly justified than on others, of coming into contact with Darwin’s ‘endless forms most beautiful‘. A marvellous botanic garden – it has to be a large one, like Kew – takes one perhaps more directly into that space of wonder and delight than anything else, if it is laid out taxonomically to show the variation and diversity within one group after another.

Today we wandered happily among the Conifer section of Kew Gardens, gazing straight up into the patches of sky between the radiating branches of the Giant Sequoia, feeling the soft fibrous red bark and wondering why everything is larger in America.

Chinese Hemlock Tsuga chinensis
The pattern of new spring growth in Chinese Hemlock, Tsuga chinensis

Then on to the Hemlocks and Spruces, delighting in the pattern of bright new bunches of needles scattered in diverse patterns among the older, darker growth: of course the new leaves are always at growing tips, so the patterns reveal the habit of growth of each species.

Quite a different pattern in Himalayan Spruce, Picea smithiana

Many of the spruces are adorned with new male cones; those of Picea orientalis ‘aurea’ are a surprisingly pretty pink.

Male Cones of Picea orientalis 'aurea'
Male Cones of Picea orientalis ‘aurea’

The male cones of the Bishop’s Pine, Pinus muricata, from California are, on the other hand, grouped into pineapple-like spirals and surrounded by the Pine genus’s characteristic pairs of long slender needles, forming a fine rosette.

Down at the end of the gardens, Queen Charlotte’s cottage ornée (just for picnics, never inhabited; the royal party could walk down the mile and a half from the red-brick Kew Palace, or came (often) by carriage to play a la Marie Antoinette at having a little cottage in the woods. The 37 acres of bluebell woods around the cottage form a nature reserve, complete with real badgers, inside the gardens. As well as the Bluebells, Alkanet and Ramsons made the woodland floor lovely, while around the margins skipped Orange Tips, Brimstones, Peacock butterflies and Small Coppers. Fit for a Queen.

Small Copper on daisy
Small Copper on daisy
Natural History, Wildlife

Lacock, Home of Fox Talbot, Pioneer of (Nature) Photography

Lacock Abbey
Lacock Abbey

Lacock Abbey: it sounds innocuous enough. Suffice it to say that it is one of the very few mediaeval abbeys whose buildings survived the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII. Many of our great abbeys were closed, stripped of all their portable assets, and allowed to fall down – Fountains, Rievaulx, Tintern among them. Lacock was slightly luckier: its Augustinian Canonesses – nuns to you and me – were sent away, the buildings sold by the king (not his to sell, really, but nobody felt like telling him so) to William Sharington, who knocked down the church (it would have been on the green lawn in front of the house), used it to build himself a brewery and other practical outbuildings, and converted the abbey itself into a comfortable house. One of his descendents, Olive, inherited the property and married a Talbot. Fox Talbot, centuries later, was lucky enough to have the time and space to play about, and one thing he played about with was photography.

Fox Talbot's window at Lacock, subject of his first photograph
Fox Talbot’s window at Lacock, subject of his first photograph

His first, famous, photograph was a postage-stamp-sized negative and positive of this window, looking out the front of the erstwhile Abbey. Many of his (not much) later photographs were of natural subjects, not least of the patterns of veins in leaves. In other words, as soon as people had the technology to photograph nature in detail, they did so, from the first man. Fox Talbot thus qualifies as ‘obsessed by nature’ (.com).

Ramsons at Lacock
Ramsons

In the beautiful grounds, under graceful beech trees is a springtime carpet of Ramsons, sometimes called ‘wild garlic’. It’s not exactly garlic but it is an Allium, and while the bulbs are much too far down to be worth trying to dig up (and it’s illegal anyway unless they’re on your land), the leaves are delicious. You just cook them like Spinach and add a little oil or butter; they are soft with just a hint of onion-family taste about them.

A Woodland Carpet of Ramsons at Lacock
A Woodland Carpet of Ramsons at Lacock

Outside the Abbey’s grounds is the hurly-burly of a touristy village. The first Swifts of the year wheeled around the church tower; Jackdaws nested in the belfry. Down by the ford with its little pack bridge, a Treecreeper zipped across the road and climbed up a small tree in the hedge.

 

Gardening, Natural History

To See the World on a … Blackcurrant Leaf

Apologies to William Blake and the world in a grain of sand and all that.

Today, being a May Bank Holiday Weekend, it is very sunny and bright but the temperature has plummeted. I went shopping with my bicycle — wearing a thick fleece under a windproof jacket, and a ‘silk’ balaclava under my cycle helmet. So much for ‘Cast Ne’er a Clout / Till May be Out’. (I’ve never been sure whether ‘out’ means ‘May has come out’, i.e. it has begun, or ‘May has gone out’, i.e. it has ended. Whichever, it’s remarkably cold.)

After all the nature reserve visits lately, it’s time to look for wildlife closer to home. The blue tits have a lot of hungry little mouths to feed in the nest box above the kitchen door, and the adults flit in and out every minute or two. Sometimes one parent is still feeding when the other returns, whereupon the returner goes and perches in the Apple tree, calling softly, until the feeder flies out. There must be at least 40 feeding trips per hour, and it could easily be more. Remember that next time you’re wondering how much trouble kids are.

Ichneumon Fly on Currant leaf
Ichneumon Fly on Currant leaf

The Blackcurrants are in full leaf now, and suddenly today each leaf seems to have an insect crawling over or displaying upon its upper surface. Some are certainly brief visits: smallish Ichneumon flies, about 10mm long and very slender, walk or run hastily about, on the lookout for caterpillars to parasitise with their eggs, a way of life disgustingly cruel enough to put Charles Darwin off religion for ever – leaving all the intellectual arguments aside, he simply found it sickening to imagine a loving creator doing anything so cruel. It’s interesting for such a careful scientist, able to spend 20 years marshalling arguments and evidence, that on a personal level, it was a visceral reaction that settled matters.

Harlequin Ladybirds mating
Harlequin Ladybirds mating

Other insects are clearly more like residents. Half-a-dozen leaves have a boldly coloured Harlequin Ladybird (or two: mating) in full view. It has been well said that insects fall into two camps: those that take good care not to be seen, and those that make sure they can be seen. Ladybirds, with their bold warning colours – red+black, yellow+black, red+black+white – are certainly in the conspicuous camp. This means they are signalling their unsuitability as food; the great pioneering zoologist E. B. Poulton coined the term ‘Aposematism’ (Greek ‘apo’ = from, ‘sema’ = sign, i.e. ‘warning off’) for this kind of warning coloration. In the case of the ladybird, they have bitter, foul-tasting or toxic chemicals in their bodies sufficient to make any predator gag, spit them out, and remember not to eat them again. This doesn’t necessarily save the life of the one they learn on, but it’s good for all the others. Each foul-tasting animal gets a better chance of not being tried out as a meal if it looks as much like other foul-tasting animals that predators may have had a bad experience with already. The result is Müllerian Mimicry (yeah, another famous Victorian zoologist) in which the vile imitate the vile as closely as possible. This is why bees look like wasps which look like bees: they all do better if they have the same obvious ‘don’t mess with me’ look.

2-Spot Ladybird, on the same bush
A native 2-Spot Ladybird, on the same bush

The Harlequin Ladybird is big and bold, advertising itself fearlessly. It is spreading rapidly through Britain, having been unknown here not many years ago. It hasn’t totally displaced our native ladybirds: in fact, my Blackcurrant bush is also home to several 2-spot Ladybirds, much smaller and red all over but for one big black spot on each wingcase. The Harlequins are so called because they have many possible patterns, from much like a 12-spot Ladybird to almost entirely black (the odd red patch remaining), but they always have quite a lot of white on the head, which the natives generally don’t.

A nearly-black Harlequin ladybird
A nearly-black Harlequin ladybird… one species, whatever the pattern

As if that wasn’t enough, several small rather triangular true flies (Diptera) are displaying on the same bush; these are probably males waiting for a mate. They lack the ‘pictured’ wings of the Celery Fly – I’ve got those too, worse luck, though they are pretty little insects, and it’s curious to see them in a mating pile-up, as rival males fight to get the female. What she thinks of it, nature does not relate.

All you have to do to enjoy diverse insect life in your garden is … not to spray. In fact, the insects I’ve seen today are a good reason why spraying is a bad idea. The ladybird larvae are powerful predators of aphids, while the Ichneumon ‘flies’ (parasitic wasps) are valuable biological controls of many damaging species of moth, killing their caterpillar larvae. In short, they are the gardener’s friends.

That’s a lot of the world on a leaf. Or at least, a lot of evolutionary ecology for a May Bank Holiday weekend.

Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wetlands

Highland Cattle Grazing in Central London

Highland Cattle on the Wetland Centre Grazing Marsh
Highland Cattle on the Wetland Centre Grazing Marsh

In the hope of catching a glimpse of a little more of the spring migration, and happy to take an hour off from writing, I popped in to the Wetland Centre. There was no sign of the assorted rarities that the warden had put on the board for the day – likely, they flew overhead while he was doing his morning scan of the skies – but the Sand Martins were joined by five House Martins, hawking for flies over the wildside lake.

The view from the wildside hide was pretty desolate, with the water level now low in the grazing marsh; a few Black-Headed Gulls squealed querulously at each other, their chocolate-brown heads and napes (quite a misnamed bird, really) handsome with their red legs. Two rufous Highland Cattle grazed peacefully, their close nibbling and heavy feet doing a job of mowing, disturbing the ground gently, and adding manure to attract flies, that could hardly be achieved any other way: hence the tabloid headline.

Guelder Rose in Bloom
Guelder Rose in Bloom

On the wildside summer route, now open, Guelder Rose bushes are elegant with their white rosettes of large florets around a disc of small ones, making a flower-like bunch all together. Their deeply divided leaves provide an easy distinction from the Wayfaring Tree.

Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wildlife

Glorious Spring Morning at the Wetland Centre

Starling foraging by reedbed ... why do they think they're waders?
Starling foraging by reedbed … why do they think they’re waders?

One of the abiding mysteries of London’s natural history is why Starlings act as if they believe they are wading birds. At the Wetland Centre, the flock of Lapwings is constantly accompanied by Starlings, whether in the air or on small muddy islands.

Today, a few starlings were rootling about in front of a reedbed, their handsomely starry plumage giving back the warm sunshiine with green iridescence that for once the camera has managed to catch. They really are beautiful birds in fresh plumage; quite unlike their ‘worn’ plumage, where they just look dark grey-brown and scruffy.

Six warblers today – an early Sedge Warbler squeaking and rasping out its complex rhythms with funky discordant notes a few feet away from the path; some invisible Cetti’s as usual; Blackcaps and surprisingly Whitethroats all about, singing away; a Chiffchaff or two; and a Garden Warbler too.

Out in the pools and on the grazing marsh, a good number of Redshank with their graceful calls, and plenty of activity from Lapwings and Common Terns – these being harassed by Black-Headed Gulls; and overhead an early Hobby, circling like a small dark Peregrine with long wings, high in the sky.

Not many butterflies about – Orange Tip, a very worn Peacock, Brimstone, Small White; and several Bee Flies, like a miniature hummingbird moth with a furry body and a long straight proboscis; but while they keep up the wing action in front of a flower, actually 4 out of 6 legs perch on it! One of the bee flies was hovering over some low vegetation with no flowers, darting down rapidly and repeatedly, at once coming back up, like a damselfly laying eggs: that might be what it was doing.

Natural History, Wildlife

All-round Amateur Dilettante Nature-lovers…

A reader of the RSPB’s members’ magazine, Nature’s Home, wrote in a letter to the editor that “If I had my time again I would try and be an all-round naturalist, instead of just a birdwatcher.” [Mike Strickland, Summer 2014 issue, ‘Your view’ page 13.]  Well, good on you, Mr Strickland. He went on to praise “such ‘all-round giants’ as Gilbert White and Charles Darwin.” White wrote the Natural History of Selborne, covering topics such as the swallows that flew round his nice house, how to get a garden growing (buy several cartloads of manure – literally – and use it to build a raised veggie bed), the doings of a hibernating tortoise, and whether swallows spend the winter underwater or in holes somewhere. Darwin wrote about everything from Galapagos Finches to earthworms and human emotions, with a lot of time on dogs, pigeons, barnacles and natural selection.

Clearly Mr Strickland had a point. If we’re going to be rounded naturalists, we need to observe whatever is around us – slime moulds and lichens, aphids and fireblight, hoglice and cuckoospit, not just the elegant courtship dances of Great Crested Grebes.

The editor assured Mr Strickland that “The study of other forms of wildlife has definitely become more mainstream with more and more birdwatchers also taking a keen interest in dragonflies, butterflies and moths. While other wildlife has been a feature of the RSPB magazine for quite some time, birds will definitely remain at its heart.”

The other forms of wildlife that, we learn, birdwatchers bother to look at are apparently dragonflies, butterflies and moths. That’s just two groups really – Odonata and Lepidoptera; both are large, day-flying, colourful, and conspicuous – just like birds, but without the feathers – differing only in being insects. Forgivable, I guess. They are, basically, the next best thing: easy to notice, out there when you want ’em (shame they don’t fly all year), and best of all, not too numerous.

I mean, suppose the average birder wanted to get into the beetles, the Coleoptera. They can be found all over the world, are quite often big and spectacular, don’t fly much, are generally black or brown, and are mostly so small you need a hand-lens or microscope, and are so numerous in species that you need to take them to the museum expert to get identified for you. Not terribly convenient, but definitely important.

The biologist J.B.S. Haldane is supposed once to have said, in response to a natural theologian who wondered what one could conclude about God from the study of nature: “An inordinate fondness for beetles.” Since there are about 400,000 species of beetle, one species in every four is a beetle, and a rational Martian visiting Earth would conclude that the planet’s ecosystem designer must have had six legs and a hard waterproof exoskeleton, presumably the joke that Haldane had in mind.

Shepherd's Purse in my street ... almost finished reproducing for the year
Shepherd’s Purse in my street … almost finished reproducing for the year

If we are going to be less species-ist than Haldane’s Coleopteran Creator, we need to cast our net wider than Aves, Odonata and Lepidoptera. The streets round here are planted with cherries, mainly; there are a few whitebeams, a rowan or two, a line of ash trees, and a few foreign hazels, they could be the American hazel, must check when they fruit.  Under the cherries, the observant naturalist can note that Shepherd’s purse, the delightfully named Capsella bursa-pastoris (guess the poor man had so little money, it could fit in those tiny capsules) is already in fruit, soon to scatter its miniature seeds, and April isn’t even over: weeds have to be quick to survive on dry ground, perhaps. The ash trees support a lichen flora which is far more diverse than the basic Lecanora conizaeoides (low grey scaly lichen, no English name) that survived the pollution of the twentieth century; the trees have circles of Common Orange Lichen (Xanthoria parietina) and little patches of a grey leafy Parmelia lichen. And it doesn’t just consist of birds and other conspicuous day-flying objects, either. If that’s all we know to look at, we’re definitely amateur dilettante nature-lovers. Amateur is the French for lover, by the way, and dilettante is the Italian for someone that takes (idle) pleasure in something, the word is related to ‘delight’. Curious that both words should mean “ignorant dabbler” in English. But curiously appropriate, perhaps.