Category Archives: Nature Reserves

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, 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.

Environment, Nature Reserves, Wildlife

Star Species of a Seven-Warbler Walk was … Skylark

I did wonder, before I began writing a nature journal here, whether half the entries wouldn’t be ‘nothing much to report today’. Well, so far I haven’t been there.

I went down to Wraysbury again in the hope of finding the Lesser Whitethroat. I arrived rather early, driving out of town only to see a gigantic queue of cars crawling in the other way, trying vainly to beat the Tube strike. No-one was about as I wrapped up in an extra pullover and listened intently to the morning chorus.

My day was already made when I actually SAW a Cetti’s Warbler – for about a second, before the rich brown bird with the rounded tail dived for cover. A Cormorant flapped heavily, taking off from the lake like a lumbering military transport, showing glossy blue-black plumage like a giant crow, circling three times to gain height. Two pairs of Gadwall (only one pair last time) swam shyly near the far side of the lake; Green Woodpeckers laughed their loud ringing call.

Comfrey flowerhead just starting
Comfrey flowerhead just starting

Blackcaps were singing all over; Song Thrushes too, at least three of them; a considerable flock of Long-Tailed Tits made their extraordinary “Tsrrrrrp” noise (try it); Chiffchaffs spoke their name, and (Common) Whitethroats sang their rasping songs or chattered from inside their thornbushes. Great clumps of Comfrey, the medicinal herb used in mediaeval times to knit bones, have suddenly sprung up with their dark, foxglove-like leaves and clusters of flowers in a range of anthocyanin colours – reds and violets.

There were more Willow Warblers and Garden Warblers, too, making them easier to find; more must be arriving each day now.

Whitethroat habitat
Whitethroat habitat: Hawthorn bushes in damp open scrubland

I made my way over the bridge and out into the dry scrubland. Whitethroats were all around now, singing competitively; a few Blackcaps joined in. Then, yes, I heard the simple, flat trill of a Lesser Whitethroat. I sat down and listened, heard it a few more times to make sure: it was a Seven Warbler Walk, I think actually my first, at least when I’ve taken the trouble to count them and write them down. I took a swig of water; an Orange Tip and a Brimstone butterfly flickered past.

DSCN0214 Roe Deer slots (with penny for scale)
Roe Deer slots (with penny for scale)

Looking about the bushes carefully, I noticed a trail of Roe Deer prints, medium and small. Their numbers have been increasing steadily, certainly since 2007, and they are close to becoming a nuisance. About 350,000 are culled each year; another 74,000 or so are killed on the roads, without limiting their growth. Clearly we need some predators, though what our farmers would say to having Lynx back, let alone Wolverines, is easy to imagine.  Where they are most numerous, woodland shrub vegetation and bird numbers are suffering.

On the way out, some Goldfinches sang near the road, and a Swallow flew overhead by the river Colne. I felt I’d had a good day, and braced myself for a tricky drive home. On a whim, I went via the airport road. It’s a bit slow but not uninteresting, and there’s a nice tunnel. Waiting at one of the sets of lights, I opened the window, and at once heard a Skylark singing its rippling song. I looked up, and there it was for a moment, a little flickering dark shape against the bright sky, pouring out its aerial music. The lights changed, and a jet growled in to land, the air whistling over its fully-extended flaps.

Fancy, a Skylark at Heathrow, seen and heard from a car, the highlight of a seven-warbler walk, Lesser Whitethroat and all.

 

 

 

Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wetlands, Wildlife

Seven Sea Swallows Don’t Make a Summer …

Down at Wraysbury, I wondered what I might see now the spring migration is well and truly under way. Last year there was a single Cuckoo, a rare treat. And perhaps there would be a good number of warblers already.

The winter ducks had all vanished from the lakes, all bar a pair of shy Gadwall right at the back. There were indeed quite a few warblers about – Chiffchaffs, Blackcaps, Cetti’s, Whitethroats, Garden Warblers and one or two Willow Warblers, all singing lustily. I listened out for a Sedge Warbler to make it Seven but couldn’t find one. Still, not bad going.

But over the lake there was a high call: Pik! Cheer! Cheeri-Cheeri-Cheeri-Cheer! A pair of Common Terns, the first of the year: graceful white ‘sea swallows’, marvellously buoyant in flight. But no – there were two pairs .. no, five birds … no, seven in all. They wheeled and shrieked high above, swooped and delicately took insects from the water surface. Comically, one or two of the Black-Headed Gulls tried to do the same: they looked like tubby Sunday footballers trying gamely to keep up with their mates, flapping heavily, looking rotund and clumsy – yet, these are the same birds that gracefully wheel about the tourists at the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, skilfully catching pieces of bread tossed into the air at any speed, any angle, any distance. It’s just that the terns are seven times more agile. Their forked tails divide into streamers as long as the rest of the tail; their wings almost pure white below, smooth ash-grey above. Do they make a summer? Almost.

Also swooping over the water was one Swallow, the first of the year for me; and about eight House Martins were hunting above the treetops. Some Alder Flies flew past; perhaps they are emerging from the water, providing a feast for the terns.

One green female Banded Demoiselle perched on some nettles; she too is the first of her kind – indeed, the first dragonfly of any kind – for me this year. And a solitary Greylag goose stood in the shallows, an unusual sight here.

Horses and Jackdaws at Wraysbury
Horses and Jackdaws at Wraysbury

Around the horses on the green grassy hill that used to be the dump, a flock of Jackdaws with some Carrion Crows, benefiting from the insects around the horses; and a second flock, more of a surprise, of Stock Doves. They are notoriously under-reported, people just assuming they are Feral Pigeons or Wood Pigeons without looking to check. They all had the same pattern, and none of them had white wing flashes.

Walking down to the road, the narrow path was carpeted with small teardrop-shaped white petals: Hawthorn flowers, May blossom.

Natural History, Nature Reserves

Sand Martins and Sandpipers

The recent East winds and warmer weather have brought plenty of spring migrants to southern Britain. Today at the London Wetland Centre a twitch was in full swing at the Peacock Tower, the object of the lovers’ attention being a Common Sandpiper peacefully browsing along the muddy shore, happily unaware of the excitement it was causing. The breeding Redshanks, too, stalked about the shallows probing for food; the Lapwings as always alert, chasing off Carrion Crows and anything else that might have been interpreted as threatening. Around the paths, three or four early Sand Martin arrivals wheel and swoop like the small brown swallows that they are; their nest-cliff is still empty.

Around the reserve, quite a few Brimstone and Small White butterflies, and an Orange Tip gave movement and colour. I heard the first Sedge Warbler of the year, and despite being right next to the willow bush from which a Cetti’s Warbler was giving out its explosively phrased song, I couldn’t see the songster. A Blackcap however could be glimpsed behind the Sheltered Lagoon, chattering its alarm call.  A Song Thrush sang at intervals, and a Dabchick gave its beautiful trill and some small squeaks from the Lagoon, in between spending a lot of time under water.

Back at home, a queen Wasp was nosing about some Ivy-Leaved Toadflax, and a red Mason Bee dug for earth in a seedbed, flying off with a little load for her nest.

Conservation, Natural History, Nature Reserves, Wildlife

Of Witch’s Brooms and Anthills

Down to Aston Rowant on a fine clear sunny day with a cold East wind that brought spring migrants like the Ring Ousel, a rare blackbird of mountain and moorland. I saw a probable one diving into a juniper bush; they like to stop off on the scarp of the Chiltern Hills as the next best thing to their favoured moors, before flying on to Wales or wherever.

Anthills dotting Aston Rowant chalk grassland
Anthills dotting Aston Rowant chalk grassland

The scarp slope of the relatively hard Chalk falls steeply to the broad plain of the soft Oxford Clay below, to the West. Much of the grassland has been destroyed for agriculture, either falling under the plough or simply being ‘improved’ as pasture with fertiliser, encouraging long grasses at the expense of the wealth of flowers that once covered the English countryside. Happily, here in the reserve and in quite a few places on the Chilterns, the steepness of the land has discouraged improvement. The chalk grassland is dotted with hundreds of anthills, the tiny yellow ants living all their lives below ground, tempting green woodpeckers to come out and hunt for them.

Whitebeam coming into leaf
Whitebeam coming into leaf

The trees and flowers are visibly weeks behind those of London. The Whitebeam is just coming into its fair white leaves, which look almost like Magnolia flowers in their little clusters newly burst from the bud. But the tree’s name comes from its white wood, not its leaves.

Witch's Brooms
Witch’s Brooms

At the bottom of the scarp, a field away from the Ridgeway which follows the line of hills for many miles, Hornbeams and Birches marked a change in the soil, which must be neutral or acid down here, compared to the strictly alkaline rendzinas and brown earths of the chalk. One of the Hornbeams looked as if it was oddly full of Mistletoe, but up close it proved to be a mass of Witch’s Brooms, growths of the tree itself caused by an infection.

 

 

 

Natural History, Nature Reserves

A Six Warbler Walk… First of the Year

A high pressure zone is bringing bright and mainly sunny weather to Britain, but as it’s not overhead it is also bringing quite a cold breeze. Down at Wraysbury Lakes, all the winter ducks have left, with just Tufted, Mallard and a pair of Gadwall remaining. Two Great Crested Grebes wandered around each other, not quite getting into a courtship dance.

Things were more exciting on the birdsong front. Blackcaps and Chiffchaffs sang sweetly all over. A Cetti’s sang very loud, very close by the lakeside as always, first in front … I stalked up very quietly … and then behind me. Invisible, the skulker. In the thicker scrub, several Whitethroats sang their scratchy short song, the first this year; and at least three Willow Warblers sang their descending scales, also the first of the year. And, briefly, one Garden Warbler gave me a burst of his even, musical tunefulness. There’s often a Sedge Warbler near the river but not apparently today. More song came from the Robins, a Song Thrush, and a Chaffinch or two.

Overhead, a Grey Heron circled upwards towards a Boeing 747-400 and did its best to resemble a soaring stork or crane, quite impressive really with broad, downcurved wings rather like one of those air-filled kites made only of light cloth.

St George's Mushroom
St George’s Mushroom

A small patch of St George’s Mushrooms nestled among the Potentilla leaves by the path; it’s about the only edible mushroom at this time of year, but I don’t pick them, both for conservation reasons and because I’m not keen on their rather mealy taste.

The first Speckled Wood butterflies of the year are in evidence; they are fiercely territorial already, chasing off numerous Peacock butterflies. A few Green-Veined Whites settled, frail and shy, on the thicker herbs.

Ground Ivy
Ground Ivy

Great patches, almost carpets of Ground Ivy, which sounds a lowly herb, but looks glorious among the low-cropped grass, shining in the sunshine. It’s in the Labiate or Mint family, and has pretty rather short toothed leaves, purple-tinged, with attractive blue lipped flowers that are really quite orchid-like if you ignore their long tubes.

Natural History, Nature Reserves

Wonders of Wakehurst Place … and Loder Valley

Wakehurst Place (mansion)
Wakehurst Place (mansion)

Wakehurst Place is Kew Gardens in the countryside of Sussex, glowing on a cool but very sunny April day with spring all around: cowslips, primroses (pin and thrum, some antique school botany coming back to mind), bluebells, dog’s mercury, wood anemone; and a fine chorus of birds, with chiffchaff, blackcap, song thrush, blackbird and an assortment of noisy pheasants and wood pigeons for good measure.

New Oak leaves and flowers
New Oak leaves and flowers

Everything was coming into new leaf or into bloom: some plants like this Oak tree were doing both at once.

Wollemia nobilis, Australia's Wollemi Pine, in full fruit
Wollemia nobilis, Australia’s Wollemi Pine, in full fruit

Being Kew, there are some very special plants about, not least the one-step-from-extinct Wollemi Pine from Australia, here growing happily with odd-shaped cones of both sexes in the English countryside.

White-tailed Bumblebee pollinating Purple Toothwort
Garden Bumblebee pollinating Purple Toothwort

In the attached Loder Valley nature reserve, a special treat: the Purple Toothwort, a parasitic plant in the Broomrape family, scarce in Britain and a new plant for me. It wasn’t present as a lone stalk: there were good big clusters of it on a steep clayey bank. I’m not sure what it was parasitising, though at this time of year it must surely be a woody plant, and brambles were close by.

Lords and Ladies, new spathe and spadix
Lords and Ladies, new spathe and spadix

By a gatepost, a large and fresh wild arum seemed to deserve its country name Lords and Ladies, standing gracefully fresh.

Blue Sky, White Birches, Bluebells
Blue Sky, White Birches, Bluebells

Back in the park, the silver birches perfectly set off the sea of bluebells.

long trailing beards of Usnea lichen on oak trunk
long trailing beards of Usnea lichen on oak trunk

Great trailing beards of lichen draggled down an oak trunk: it’s a rare sight in Europe, and all the more surprising in Sussex, not far from the pollution of Gatwick airport. Perhaps the prevailing winds keep the air clean, but in that case why are lichens so few in Hampshire and the southeast generally?

Coco de Mer or Double Coconut
Coco de Mer or Double Coconut

The park contains the extraordinary Millennium Seed Bank, complete with windows onto the world of toiling botanists, drying seeds and elegant specialised equipment – a gadget for pouring agar into stacks of Petri dishes, among others, and a dramatic selection of the world’s most bizarre seeds, like the very large and remarkably bottom-like Coco de Mer. It’s not one of the seeds in the seed bank just yet, as it is ‘recalcitrant’, refusing to be dried out so it can survive for centuries – it just dies instead.  Love stronger than death, or something.

Nature Reserves

Burning Brash at Ten Acre Wood

London has a chain of not-quite-secret nature reserves stretching down its western side along the line of the Grand Union Canal and the valleys of the River Colne, River Frays, and the Yeading brook all the way to the River Crane, where there are more reserves; they are in the green strip you may briefly glimpse as you leave town on the M4 or M40. Many of them are rather tricky to reach because, almost by definition, the places that haven’t been built over are off the beaten track, round the back of airfields or industrial estates, past the housing estates and into the surprisingly green and quiet areas that have not yet been cut up by HS2 or other developments.

Burning Brash at Ten Acre Wood
Burning Brash at Ten Acre Wood, with a blackthorn in full bloom

A Land-Rover full of London Wildlife Trust volunteers wriggled through the Hillingdon suburbs to Ten Acre Wood and what used to be the Ten Acre Wood Meadows. These have seen little management as agriculture has declined. The Trust’s chainsaw team had cut a fine crop of small trees – blackthorn, hawthorn, even oak, the climax plant in the succession from bare ground to full-blown forest – and left the branches neatly stacked in enormous rows across what should be meadow. The Yeading brook made the ground squelchy; six mallard flew in looking for somewhere suitably wet. Chiffchaffs and a blackcap sang merrily. We started two bonfires, admirably fanned by the cool breeze, and dragged branches on to them for hours until a sandwich and a welcome cup of tea intervened. With a bit more bramble clearance, and preferably some grazing, the meadows will again be a fine place for meadow flowers. Even now, it was amazing to realize that the city was all around, with nothing but greenery and blue sky in sight.