A beautiful shiny Tortricid micro-moth on Hogweed
Handsome micro-moth in gunnersbury triangle
Tag Archives: Gunnersbury Triangle
Onlooker
This pair of Azure Damselflies formed the “wheel” or “heart”, part of the complex mating behaviour of the Odonata, on a reed in the Gunnersbury Triangle nature reserve pond. As you can see, the colourful male (with the bright blue “tail”) uses his claspers to grasp the female behind the head so he obviously can’t use his tail end to fertilise her at the same time. He therefore transfers the packet of sperm, the spermatophore, to the underside of his abdomen. She uses her tail to pick up the sperm packet from there. So now you know.
Meanwhile, another male of the same species has noticed the female, and is hovering close in the vain hope of getting a chance to mate with her. Of course he looks as if he’s a voyeur, there to enjoy the spectacle; but from an evolutionary point of view, his “selfish genes” can’t be anything but “disappointed” at the fact that another male has got there first.
Large Red Damselflies in Gunnersbury triangle
Suddenly, after a freezing but dry April and a warmer but moist (April Showers) May, it’s June and Summer. The hazels have rushed into full leaf; the brambles are pushing across the paths at astonishing speed; Azure Damselflies have all hatched at once and are sunning themselves near the pond; and pairs of Large Red Damselflies are urgently flying about, all 8 wings in harmony, in their complex mating system, to lay eggs rapidly on pond plants before it all dries up. Like their much larger cousins, the Dragonflies, Damselflies are predators, and fiercely competitive for their territory; males chase off not only other males but other insects.
Springtime under Lockdown
A beautiful spring day, the sky deepest blue, the birches gleaming white, their catkins reddish, the grass glowing green as the lawns of Tolkien’s Lothlórien. I glimpse the beauty on my daily exercise walk: even the phrase sounds like a prison routine.
Last Tango in Chiswick (well, last volunteering before Corona-virus)
Corona-virus is reaching every part of all our lives. Last week I made my final box of stobs like overgrown willow-pencils, along with a fine pile of woodchips, before Gunnersbury Triangle volunteering was shut down. It was a happy workday with relaxed chat about everything from knitting to frogspawn.
Today I went for a solitary walk around, keeping a good 2 metres from passers-by.
A Chiffchaff sweetly sang its simple song (its name, many times over), hopping about the still mainly-bare Willows and Birches, and feeding on the newly-leafed bushes of rose and hawthorn. Early spring is the best time to glimpse our warblers, which are small, slim, greeny-brown and very difficult to spot when all the trees are in full leaf. This one gave me a front seat in the stalls, singing in full view.
A brilliant yellow Brimstone butterfly, my first of the year, fluttered about the brambles, reflecting the warm spring sunshine, its wings slightly pointed in the middle (in the manner of Elf-ears, if you take my meaning).
A gloriously orange Comma butterfly, also the first for this year, shot past me and then landed near my feet to take the sun, its markings wonderfully fresh.
On the way home, my Dentist phoned to cancel the last remaining appointment in my diary. Let’s hope people will respect the rules so we can all continue to go out quietly and at least enjoy Nature.
Willow Felled by Storm Ciara in Gunnersbury Triangle
Mushrooms in Winter
Volunteer, Chest Waders, Umbrella, Bear … it must be the Gunnersbury Triangle Christmas Trail!
Red Waxcaps in Gunnersbury Triangle
Keeping Chiswick’s Wet Woodland Wet
Well, it’s late November, the animals aren’t breeding, and the flowers are mostly not flowering (Rowan and Cotoneaster are honourable exceptions). So, it’s the perfect time for clearing out the Wet Woodland (Carr) to keep it looking, well, Wet, rather than getting more and more overgrown and full of leaf litter until it turns into good old ordinary dry woodland, or Mixed Temperate Forest as an ecologist would say.
There’s always a debate about why we do this sort of thing. Shouldn’t we just do George Monbiot’s Rewilding thing and leave nature alone? Well, we could. Then the reserve’s pond, wet woodland, meadows, grassy banks, and demonstration flowerbed would all go through the succession to mixed woodland, and we’d have an end-to-end canopy of trees: not a bad thing you might say.
But we would lose much of the diversity of habitats and of species – no pond life, no grassland flowers or grassland butterflies, for instance. In a large enough area, that would be fine: the rivers would flood and meander, create new oxbow lakes, mudflats, and shingle banks, which would be colonized and grow up into varied ponds, wet woodland, meadows, and forest, just as you’d hope.
Only one small problem: you need to include a river’s catchment area and flood plain in the reserve. That’d be the whole of Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and London, roughly…
So, to be practical, in an urban nature reserve you only get a small area to conserve, to allow people to visit to see and feel and smell and touch nature, and to teach children (and adults) about nature. Those are worthy aims, and they’re the raison d’etre of London Wildlife Trust. To manage that, one needs to maintain a bit of diversity of habitats and of species for people to see and learn about. And that means holding back the natural succession so that not every inch is a tree canopy, splendid as canopies are. And that means having volunteers scoop mud, mow grass, and pull out tree seedlings, all the while trying to leave enough seeds, eggs and other life-forms in place for the reserve to burst back into life at all stages of the succession.
Yes, we know George Monbiot calls all that “gardening”: but really, it’s not. We’re just creating the conditions for nature to do its own thing, or rather, a lot of its different and wonderful things.
Actually, one can hardly help letting nature do its thing. It does it even in the mud in a wheelbarrow!