Category Archives: Nature Reserves

Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wetlands

Tourbières de Vendoire and Plateau d’Argentine (24 July 2014)

11 August 2014 Ian Alexander

There were Dryad butterflies all over beside the paths on the fen peat of the Tourbières, the old peat workings (the French word Tourbe is cognate with our ‘turf’, a block of peat for the fire).

Turtle Doves cooed peacefully as we arrived, and continued the whole time.

Vendoire is one of the best wet meadow areas in all of Aquitaine, with its shallow fen pools and alkaline peat making it a wonderful place for dragonflies. Today, there were Keeled Skimmers all over, making local dashes low over the water; Blacktailed Skimmers here and there, dashing about widely; a pair of Emperors; Scarlet Darters fiercely territorial; White-legged damselflies; Common Bluetail damselflies; Banded Demoiselles; some Small Pincertails on the chalky entrance path.

Marsh Frogs, Rana ridibunda, lived up to their Latin name (‘laughing frog’) with hilarious, loud laughing song (“what’s that bird?”) during our picnic. Around the peat-ponds are woods and Carr of Ash, Alder, Willow, Sallow, Alder Buckthorn, and wet meadow with long grass rich in flowers.

A single Hobby came overhead, its slender Swift-like wings scything, presumably hawking for dragonflies. A Rose Chafer whirred heavily into the air from the scented Meadowsweet and Purple Loosestrife.

Purple Loosestrife at Tourbieres de Vendoire

Among the butterflies, Large Skipper, Dryad, Gatekeeper, Mallow Skipper, Meadow Brown, Speckled Wood, Common Blue, Holly Blue. The attractive and common micro-moth Pyrausta purpuralis too.

Pyrausta purpuralis, a handsome micro-moth in the Pyralid family

Mallow Skipper, a rewarding insect to find

Plateau d’Argentine

One of the delights of France is that species like Glanville Fritillary, almost gone from Britain, are still fairly common

This wonderful reserve, if such it is – it’s still used to launch aircraft, not military any more but hang-gliders – is a flat bare plateau of hard limestone, topped with dry calcareous grassland and scrubby trees, rich in flowers like Viper’s Bugloss, Horseshoe Vetch, Knapweed, Autumn Squill, Eyebright and Devilsbit Scabious, as well as Orchids in springtime, and alive with butterflies. The temperature reached 33 degrees on this sunny afternoon, the Common Blue and Glanville Fritillary butterflies seemingly unaffected by the heat.

Common Blue on Autumn Squill at Plateau d'Argentine — Common Blue on Autumn Squill, a delicate-looking blue flower of calcareous grassland at Plateau d’Argentine

Back at base, a hairy black-and-red striped beetle, Trichodes alvearius visited the Fennel, remaining wary of approach. The very large, black-and-yellow-legged Sand Wasp did the same; it’s tricky to observe as its eyesight is so good.

Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wetlands

A Cloud of Keeled Skimmers at Thursley Common

2 July 2014 Ian Alexander

Thursley Common on a sunny July day can shimmer with the wings of dragonflies. Today, hundreds of Keeled Skimmers, joined by plenty of other species large and small – from the mighty Emperor to the dainty Small Red Damsel, made the air seem to sparkle as brightly as the water beside the boardwalk. There were Keeled Skimmers perched alertly on stalks, ready to spring into the air at an instant’s notice; Keeled Skimmers in tussling pairs, their wings rustling and scuffling as they clashed in brief, brutal territorial disputes; Keeled Skimmers in groups of four or five, dashing and swerving over the water; Keeled Skimmers over every pond, bog pool, and lakeside.

Emperor Dragonfly patrolling its pond at waist height

Over one quieter pool, an Emperor Dragonfly patrolled in more stately fashion, almost hovering, drifting forward slowly as if a helicopter pilot was holding the machine’s collective drive stick just a little forward of the hover position, its striped blue tail gleaming in the sun.

Small Red Damselflies in cop over a bog pool at Thursley

A Four-Spotted Chaser, pausing momentarily over a sparkling pool

Many of the Odonata were busy laying eggs, from the Skimmers to the damselflies. One or two Black Darters were about: they can be here in large numbers later in the season.

On the sandy heath, the Sand-Wasp Ammophila sought her insect prey, her distinctive shape almost dragonfly-like with an extremely elongated red waist leading to a plump ‘tail’ to her abdomen.

Overhead, a Hobby dashed and stooped, handsome through binoculars, moustachioed, spotted below, its long scything wings like a giant Swift easily outpacing the fastest dragonfly. Below, a lizard rested unobtrusively at the edge of the boardwalk, ready to scuttle into the heather at any threat; another a yard further on. A Reed Bunting rasped out its short scratchy song, skreek, skreek, skrizzick. A Curlew called once; a Skylark soared invisibly high into the blue, singing as if John Keats were at hand to report on the beauty of its song.

Large Skipper on Cross-Leaved Heath — Large Skipper on the rather special Cross-Leaved Heath

Four Wings Good, Eight Wings Better - Keeled Skimmers in cop — Four Wings Good, Eight Wings Better – Keeled Skimmers in cop

Conservation, Environment, Love of Nature, Nature Reserves

Aah, it’s Duckling Time

30 June 2014 Ian Alexander

Aah. Ducks with ducklings. Coots with Cootlings. Geese with Goslings. Swans with Cygnets. Moorhens with … chicks. Whatever the charmingly mediaeval diminutive nouns, it was a day for walking around the London Wetland Centre, enjoying the ‘sunny spells’ and the bright display of wild flowers, artfully seeded, and delighting in Mother Nature’s ability to conjure up fluffy sentimental feelings about roughly duck-shaped balls of fluffy down feathers.

I’d gone alone to see if there were any interesting dragonflies, but there weren’t many about: a warmer day is always better. But there was a Black-Tailed Skimmer basking on one of the ‘wildside’ paths.

Apart from that, I glimpsed one Hawker dragonfly – probably a Hairy dragonfly, as the only kind other than the Emperor seen there in the past month; and there were plenty of Common Blue and Bluetail damselflies about.

As for butterflies, it was alarmingly empty: a couple of meadow browns, a small white or two, and a female brimstone the highlight. My alarm at the lack of insects in general in England is growing. If it’s neonicotinoids – hot on the heels of all the earlier insecticides, many now rightly banned for their destructive side-effects on wildlife – then we are watching a manmade calamity. The BBC noted that some ditch water was toxic enough to be used, just as it was, as an insecticide spray for crops. The effect of that on dragonflies can only be imagined: a sad thing, as (living in rivers and ponds rather than on farmland) they have to some degree escaped the disaster that has all but eliminated our farmland birds, bees and butterflies.

But on a dead tree, wildside, was another fluffy-duckling sight, this time from a distinctly arboreal bird.

Two Green Woodpeckers, presumably a parent and a newly-fledged juvenile, were clinging to a dead tree, the parent a little higher up, the youngster apparently begging for food with open beak. The family drama went on for several minutes.

Tiny wildlife shows were visible on the flowers: here, two hoverflies of different species, busy being Batesian mimics of dangerously stinging wasps (but harmless as doves) are feeding, slow and relaxed in the sunshine, on the small flowers in a Great Burnet’s flowerhead. They didn’t seem at all bothered by each other, or by any risk from predators. But despite their glorious colours, it was duckling day today.

Conservation, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Aston Rowant: Beautiful, Brutalized

18 June 2014 Ian Alexander

Aston Rowant: view over the Oxford Clay plain... and the M40 — Aston Rowant: view over the Oxford Clay plain… and the M40

Aston Rowant National Nature Reserve is on the scarp of the Chiltern Hills, between Watlington and Chinnor. That places it at the western edge of the relatively hard rock of the Cretaceous period – Chalk – overlooking the softer rocks of the Jurassic period – the Oxford Clay. It has some fine chalk grassland, once a widespread habitat, though most has been lost to the plough, woodland, or development. And it has a rushing noisy motorway right through its middle, complete with a deep cutting hacked through the chalk escarpment. Here’s a short video clip to give you the general idea.

I visited in hope of seeing some orchids, and was delighted to find not only Pyramidal Orchid and Bee Orchid, but some seemingly hybrid plants with a few looking very close to ‘Wasp Orchid’, a variety of the Bee Orchid species.

The site is carefully managed by English Nature to conserve the plants and animals of this special habitat. They employ a team of 24-hour all-terrain woolly mowing machines to keep the grass sward properly short for the more delicate flowers, such as the orchids, the Cistus rock rose, the delicately aromatic tufts of wild thyme, the eyebright, salad burnet, and many others.

Team of all-terrain 24-hour mowing machines: Beulah speckle-faced sheep

The flowers in turn support a wealth of bees, butterflies including (those that I saw) Meadow Brown, Small Heath, Marbled White, Speckled Wood, Brimstone, Adonis Blue and Small Tortoiseshell, as well as day-flying moths like the Cistus Forester and the Six-Spot Burnet.

The shiny green Cistus Forester moth, Adscita geryon, flies over chalk in full sunshine. Its caterpillar feeds on the rockrose

The delightful grassland is scored by ancient trackways, and the pre-Roman Ridgeway runs along the bottom (surprisingly) of the slope. Which brings us back to the modern trackway, its constant roar doing its best to drown out the bleating of the sheep and the screams of the red kites. The zizz of the grasshoppers is not lost entirely, but the quiet contemplation of them is certainly a little difficult.

Ancient Trackway, Modern Motorway: what are we conserving?

So, what are we conserving? Beautiful nature, ancient landscapes, specific habitats, individual species, an experience for the public, material for scientists to study? As the photograph shows, humans have cut trackways through the chalk for thousands of years: it’s just that somehow, an ancient trackway seems a little, well, quieter than the modern variety. The most obvious effect is on human visitors: the place isn’t quite the escape from modernity that it might be.

Drifts of scented Meadowsweet... — Drifts of scented Meadowsweet…

Beautiful but brutalized: perhaps meadowsweet waving in the breeze under the sunshine on the M40 is the perfect icon for the Britain of Cameron (and Blair before him). We need transport infrastructure, heaven knows, just as we need sufficient housing and everything else. And yet, a reserve where visitors can actually hear the birdsong (and record it if they want to) would be nice, even if the birds do manage to reproduce somehow. Are they affected? They easily might be. So what is a nature reserve for? If it’s a place where a teacher can bring a class and say ‘this is what the countryside was like x years ago’, then Aston Rowant fits part of the bill. Realistically, what do we want our world to be like? Just with one or two pretty bits to conserve the orchids, the cameras judiciously avoiding getting trucks in the background, the video having to dubbed with birdsong and grasshopper stridulation in the studio? Can we afford something more complete, given all the other pressures on the budget? Not easy to say, I think.

Bee with a good load of pollen on Wild Mignonette

Conservation, Love of Nature, Natural History, Natural Patterns, Nature Reserves

Of Hoverflies and Bush Crickets

17 June 2014 Ian Alexander

An English Summer is, as the saying goes, three fine days and a thunderstorm. Or, going out with sunhat, suncream, sunglasses… and a pullover and raincoat, just in case. Today it started out cold with a chill north-north-easterly wind, but quietened down and became rather too hot to work comfortably.

A tree had fallen across the glade in the Gunnersbury Triangle where the beekeeper is going to station one of her hives. I soon threw off my pullover, and my rainproof jacket never left my rucksack. The soft willow wood was no trouble to saw up, and I dragged the branches to the dead-hedge without much effort. A lot of small holm oak, an invasive alien species from the Mediterranean (think Ligurian coast) has sprung up from old stumps, so they joined the pile. A Blackcap sang to me while I worked.

The butterfly transect revealed very little, though some Commas are encouragingly laying eggs. As for other insects, several species of hoverfly, from tiny and slender to large wasp mimics and a fine one largely black, perhaps a bee mimic, were active. They hover, perch and sunbathe, or dash and chase each other (specially the large black ones) aggressively. I had fun trying to photograph one actually in the air, you can see the atmospheric but not very useful result above. It does give something of an idea how much they whiz and dash about, hovering always on the qui vive.

Ragwort is getting more and more abundant on the reserve; today, Helen spotted some tiny (probably first instar) Cinnabar Moth caterpillars on one of the plants; an adult visited me while I worked.

The Peacock Butterfly caterpillars of last week seem all to have pupated in hiding somewhere; there are quite a few younger ones still on the stinging nettles, so there will be at least two lots of adults.

We found a Knot Grass moth caterpillar (a Noctuid moth) on a bramble. It is hairy and aposematic, with brown hair but without the four long brown ‘shaving brush’ tufts of the Vapourer moth caterpillar (a Lymantriid or Tussock moth), which we’ve also found here.

But perhaps the insect I was happiest to see was this young Bush Cricket, resting on a flower for no particular reason, and taking a risk as its fine spotted green camouflage was totally compromised by its white and yellow flowery background. It must be the first one I’ve seen this year.

I have always loved natural patterns. The bark of this Aspen tree looks almost as if it encodes symbols in some cuneiform notation.

Natural Pattern: Aspen bark, almost seeming like a form of writing

Conservation, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Summer Bugs at Gunnersbury Triangle

13 June 2014 Ian Alexander

Ragwort is at full height now and will soon be flowering. A few adult Cinnabar Moths are about; they will mate and lay eggs on the ragwort, which is in several places around the reserve, and then we will have the fine black-and-orange banded caterpillars in quantities, eating the Ragwort to pieces. They are poisonous with alkaloids taken up from the plant, so few predators eat them: an exception is the Cuckoo, which seems able to cope with the chemistry.

Iris Sawfly on Yellow Iris, with examples of how it damages leaves

Iris sawfly caterpillars are starting to chew inroads into the spearblades of the Yellow Iris; they are rather like moth caterpillars, but with rows of little dots on their backs and different numbers of prolegs.

It looks as if there are young foxes about; a very well-worn run goes straight up the grassy bank into the bushes, and the grass nearby is much trodden down.

The new buildings towering over the reserve are approaching their final shape; it will be a relief when the roar of heavy engines and the squeal and clatter of caterpillar-tracked bulldozers subside into history. There was a horrible accident on the building site this week when something fell from a crane; three workers were injured, one seriously, and the air ambulance arrived, followed by the health and safety inspectors.

Love of Nature, Natural History, Nature Reserves, Talks

Camouflage Talk, Camouflaged Cakes

8 June 2014 Ian Alexander

Today I gave my ‘Camouflage without Spots’ talk at Gunnersbury Triangle nature reserve. It was very hot, and having helped the RSPB local group set up their stall at the Bedford Park Festival on the common, I cooled off and picked up the materials for the talk.

Helen had set out the tables and baked some amazing Camouflage Cakes – someone joked they couldn’t see them – and we all had lemonade in the heat.

2 legs good, 4 legs better: Tadpole Metamorphosis before our eyes

Once I had run through the talk and arranged the talk table with books and materials, I had a quick walk around the reserve. The tadpoles are just at the moment of growing legs – some have none, some two, some four: it’s very beautiful and touching.

A keen entomologist came running, a Clouded Yellow presumably blown in on the warm southerly wind had breezed across the reserve in front of the hut! They are only occasional visitors here, common enough in France, but they hardly ever perch when the weather is warm.

A Pompilid Spider-Hunting Wasp with prey ... on a sheet of paper in the hut — A Pompilid Spider-Hunting Wasp with prey … on a sheet of paper in the hut

A second entomological excitement: a Pompilid spider-hunting wasp was running rapidly about on some papers in the hut, dragging something white below her body. The photo shows what the naked eye could hardly perceive: she had a paralysed spider as big as herself in her jaws (a leg has broken off). She was presumably running about to find a suitable hole to bury the unlucky spider in, complete with one of her own eggs which will hatch and eat the spider as a supply of fresh, living food, enough to keep it going until it pupates.

Masked Hunter Bug, camouflaged with sand grains

A surprisingly large audience congregated for the talk, which looked at tricks that animals use to conceal themselves, often in plain sight. I demonstrated using painted cylinders in the fortunately bright sunlight how countershading works and why it is necessary; and how some animals like skunks and honey badgers use it in reverse to make themselves as conspicuous as possible. We all marvelled together at the wonderful camouflage of the Masked Hunter Bug, the Flat-tail Horned Lizard, and perhaps best of all the Potoo, beloved of Hugh Cott, motionless with its astonishing disruptive markings in the fork of a tree. I risked bringing out my copy of Abbott Thayer’s Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom, complete with his fine but sadly misguided paintings of camouflaged Peacock, Roseate Spoonbills and Wood Duck. He was right about the principle of countershading, and the superb disruptive plumage of gamebirds, though.

Then we had more lemonade and ate the camouflaged cakes!

Conservation, Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wetlands

Demoiselles and Warblers beautiful at Wraysbury Lakes

8 June 2014 Ian Alexander

Banded Demoiselle Female with Half-Open Wings

I had a beautiful, peaceful, sunny summer walk down at Wraysbury Lakes. Away from the roar of the traffic and the enormous queues brought on by roadworks and summer weekend commuting, I was surrounded by fluttering, glittering, shimmering Banded Demoiselle males, and on the vegetation also the gloriously iridescent green females, their clear green wings like fine lace dress trimmings to accompany their dazzling emerald-jewelled and enamelled bodies.

As well, Common Blue damselflies basked in the sun; a few pairs in cop carried out their incredibly complicated sex act, all claspers (male tail to female neck, female tail to male belly with its spermatophore and secondary sexual organs, forming the startling ‘heart’ or ‘wheel’, in which the pair can, at a pinch, fly like synchronised swimmers.

At first I thought there were no warblers about, but gradually little bursts of song punctuated the afternoon, and by the end I had heard six warbler species, and good binocular views of three of them (Garden Warbler, Whitethroat and Willow Warbler).

There were some handsome Ichneumons about, but perhaps the insect I was most surprised to see was a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly. When I was a boy these were so common as to be unremarkable – as were House Sparrows, Starlings and Yellowhammers. It is almost a shock to discover that seeing just one is now a rare treat: more nostalgic than pleasurable, perhaps. Much work needs to be done on landscape-scale and farmland conservation to bring back our common butterflies.

Conservation, Natural History, Nature Reserves

Flaming June

5 June 2014 Ian Alexander

After all the rainy weather (I even found a large toadstool – in June: The Blusher, Amanita rubescens), today was suddenly hot, at least it seemed so while digging brambles out of the ramp meadow, raking up the scythed Cow Parsley in the full sun, pitchforking it into a barrow and carting it off to a deadhedge. It was a satisfying conservation job, one of those where you can see what you have done, and it looks a lot better after than before. The area is supposed to be a meadow; we successfully suppressed the overgrowth of brambles two years ago, leading to a burst of rather nice Garlic Mustard and its attendant Orange Tip butterflies last year: and a second wave of Cow Parsley that must have seeded itself really well, because it suddenly covered the area this year. Now that it’s all cut, we may hope that grasses and smaller herbs may get going: some Ground Elder at least has begun the process.

In the pond and on the vegetation for a way around it, including atop the hump, Large Red Damselflies are soaking up the sunshine, and flying in cop, egglaying – the females dip the rear half of their very long abdomens in the water to reach an aquatic plant such as Myriophyllum on which they place the eggs.

The butterfly transect was again quiet, but graced by the first Cinnabar Moth of the year: there is a fair bit of Ragwort coming up, and this adult must be newly hatched out of a pupa, presumably at ground level or below as the plants are annual.

Sure enough, after I had finished the transect, the first Holly Blue butterfly of the year, beautifully fresh and new, skipped its bright quick flight just in front of the hut.

Natural History, Nature Reserves

Grasses at Gunnersbury Triangle

3 June 2014 Ian Alexander

With the light changing all the time in a showery airstream (and the Met. Office seemingly unable to get the forecast right for the last several days, wrong every time to my surprise), things looked hopeless for butterflies (just a Speckled Wood or two) and insects (a few leaf beetles, hoverflies and bees).

So we picked up a field guide and a couple of identification sheets, and went out to see what grasses we could find between three of us.

Ryegrass is a tough grass useful in lawns. Its neatly alternating spikelets make it easy to identify.

Cocksfoot is a taller grass with a head that somewhat resembles the shape of a bird’s foot with its chunky branching spikelets to left, centre and right .

Soft Brome is as its name suggests soft to the touch; its spikelets like most Bromes are compactly plump and rounded, they form a pattern of green and white stripes, and they have awns (little barley-like spines). It’s quite distinctive once you’ve seen it.

Barren Brome looks very different: perhaps its name comes from the way it appears to have nothing much in its seed-heads, which are thin, triangular and very spiky; the plant is altogether long and thin and dark purplish-brown.

Yorkshire Fog, a beautiful name for a lovely soft plant, is thick and tall with broad soft leaves and a remarkably thick, soft seedhead. It’s one of those plants you can recognise twenty yards off once you know it.

The reserve has some False Oat-grass which in theory we should be pulling out – it seem unlikely given the way it’s tightly integrated with the rest of the grasses and herbs, so it’s probably here to stay.

There seem to be several Fescue grasses in the thin strip of acid grassland along the line of the old railway – the clinker that the sleepers rested on consisted of chunky angular chips of hard acid rock from somewhere far from London. One is Sheep’s Fescue: there may be Red Fescue, and there is something that looks like one of the taller Fescues too.

The Meadowgrasses have a typical light open panicle for their seedhead, giving a rather delicate appearance with their slim stems. I carefully checked which kind this one was; it has a pointed ligule where the leaf joins the stem, and is gently rough with little hairs, so it’s the Rough Meadowgrass.

In the woods near the path there are tufts of a broad-leaved grass that tolerates shade: it’s the Wood Melick. Finally, there’s one conspicuous grasslike plant that enjoys the wetter places here: the Pendulous Sedge. It’s a bit invasive but so handsome that I always admire it.

ObsessedByNature

Category Archives: Nature Reserves

Tourbières de Vendoire and Plateau d’Argentine (24 July 2014)

A Cloud of Keeled Skimmers at Thursley Common

Aah, it’s Duckling Time

Aston Rowant: Beautiful, Brutalized

Of Hoverflies and Bush Crickets

Summer Bugs at Gunnersbury Triangle

Camouflage Talk, Camouflaged Cakes

Demoiselles and Warblers beautiful at Wraysbury Lakes

Flaming June

Grasses at Gunnersbury Triangle

The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature