All posts by Ian Alexander

I have been in love with nature as long as I can remember. Nature photography, birdwatching, lichens, fossils, orchids, mountains, insects, everything else. Conservation, gardening at home, community gardening. I've loved it all.
Natural History

Jet Contrails over Chiswick at Dawn

Four jets criss-cross the dawn sky over Chiswick in the West of London, adding their contrails to at least six others. At the right, a plane coming in to land, making no contrail, rumbles off towards Heathrow Airport. This month, Heathrow is consulting on how best to add yet more flight paths over the city to accommodate the planned third runway, which will be directly in line with Chiswick High Road.
Natural History

Greater and Lesser Stag Beetles Over-Wintering at Gunnersbury Triangle

Tara with two species of Stag Beetle
The (Greater) Stag Beetle is a much bigger beast than the Lesser Stag Beetle
Enormous Stag Beetle larvae found deep underground on roots of dead Pear tree. The body of the larva is soft and white except for the hard brown head and legs, and extremely hard sclerotised black mouthparts, adapted for chewing wood. The plump larvae are a tasty meal for foxes, which can easily sniff out and dig for them in soft earth or rotten wood, so their only protection is to be deep down in a large block of wood. This is part of the value of leaving standing dead wood in the nature reserve; and it explains why we bury logs with several feet of their length below ground!
Natural History

January: Cold. Grey. Gloomy? Not Now!

January. Cold. Grey. Gloomy.

Well, not always. On a clear early morning, Venus gleamed brightly in a deep blue sky, and the waning Moon shone over the city, giving it a wintry beauty.

Venus as Morning Star, and Moon over Chiswick

On the common later that morning, the harsh blowing-over-a-comb buzz of a Mistle Thrush alerted me to a flock of winter thrushes flying up into the trees. As they moved along, the chack-chack calls, medium size, and occasional flashes of handsomely contrasting brown and grey backs showed that most of them were Fieldfares, down here from the snowy wastes of Scandinavia or Russia to enjoy the relatively balmy warmth and accessible food of Chiswick in January.

In the Gunnersbury Triangle nature reserve, as I rounded a corner a male Sparrowhawk finished his drink in a hurry and flew up from the gravelly ditch, an intimate moment.

Conservation, Environment, Nature Reserves

Putting the Gran Turismo into Gunnersbury Triangle!

The Race Team, putting the “GT” into Gunnersbury Triangle … one of the more bizarre bits of rubbish that must have flown over the fence when there was a garage next door (It seems to be the exhaust pipe of a large motorcycle; and Sarah’s jacket is from sailing races round the Isle of Wight)

Flagon and Oil Can … not to mention the hundred beer cans, dozens of energy drink cans, lemonade bottles, bits of insulation, cable, and mirror … it’s really convenient to heave your rubbish over the fence into the nature reserve, ideal place for it …

Auricularia mesenteroides, a relative of Jew’s Ear, a jelly-like fungus with indeed a mesenteric appearance. (The mesentery is the flexible membrane that ties the gut in place, in case you never did Biology dissections when you were at school.) Alick Henrici found quite a few interesting Ascomycetes, a good day for it after recent rain.

Conservation, Nature Reserves

A Winter Task: Digging out Wet Woodland

Image

Digging out wet woodland in Gunnersbury Triangle, seen from the boardwalk bridge. The “carr” steadily silts up with mud, leaves and roots. Here the team is carefully preserving the rushes and gypsywort, removing mud to a spade’s depth. The mud will be graded to form a gentle transition from the deeper areas, which only dry out in midsummer, to the dry bank that’s covered in holly.