Category Archives: Natural History

Natural History

Primroses by the River Usk

Llangynidr Bridge on the River Usk
Llangynidr Bridge on the River Usk

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
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
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.

Common Cup Lichen
Common Cup Lichen

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.

Ewe with twin lambs
Ewe with twin lambs

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

Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wildlife

Spring has sprung

Ramshorn pond snails
Ramshorn pond snails

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.

Newly-Hatched Tadpoles
Newly-Hatched Tadpoles

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.

Natural History

Circinnate Vernation (what ferns do in spring)

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
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
A day later, unrolling fast

Update: just a day later, the fronds have unrolled a turn or so.

Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wetlands

Definitely not a Jack Snipe

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.

Natural History, Nature Reserves

Drown that Dabchick

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.