Category Archives: Conservation

Conservation, Love of Nature, Nature Reserves

Yay! It’s Frog Day! Pond-dipping at Gunnersbury Triangle

I try to get down to the pond on Frog Day because, whatever the weather, it’s always such fun looking into trays, seeing what people have caught, and helping people to get a rough idea of what sort of wildlife they are looking at. The parents too are frequently fired up with (especially boyish) enthusiasm. One dad turned out to be expert at catching newts; another family caught dozens of tadpoles (all still without legs).

Pond Dipping on Frog Day
Pond Dipping on Frog Day

People come and go; some are regulars, some are new, some were just passing by and are astonished to find a nature reserve here, let alone a pond and volunteers and free pond-dipping and wriggly wild animals.

Beetle larva from the pond
Beetle larva from the pond

And there definitely weren’t just the usual suspects in the water, either.

Budding Hydra, with head of a damselfly nymph
Budding Freshwater Hydra, with a nymph

This really was a surprise; a Hydra, not just bright green but actually budding. These tiny animals are coelenterates, like corals and jellyfish, with no proper gut running mouth-to-anus, but just a mouth surrounded by the tentacles, and a hollow bag of a body; anything undigested has to come out the way it went in. The animal is green with symbiotic algae, so it has quite a bit of plant about it, and when it isn’t in a white dish, it’s practically invisible.

Stonefly
Stonefly

This little fly has two tails, and may well be a Stonefly; it is a lot smaller than the common Mayflies, which have three tails. It seems like a special animal today.

Looking at a Dragonfly Nymph
Looking at a Dragonfly Nymph

A fine Dragonfly nymph was captured in one dish; here it is, being examined closely by one youngster. I saw a Broad-Bodied Chaser near the pond some years ago, so it might be that species.

Nymphs and waterfleas
Nymphs and waterfleas

With their characteristic three tails, the Mayfly nymphs are distinctive. Here in one dish are some, along with what seems to be a long slim beetle nymph, and the Dragonfly nymph. There were quite a few Damselfly nymphs about too, some quite boldly green.

Yellow Iris or Flag
Yellow Iris or Flag

At four we packed up to go and have a well-deserved cup of tea. As I turned round, I realised the Yellow Irises the other side of the boardwalk were in full bloom.

Conservation

RSPB Central London Local Group: Hope Farm (and Buffet)

Yesterday I went along to the RSBP’s Central London Local Group. They meet in the Scottish church hall behind Harrods in Knightsbridge: on the short walk from the tube I passed some amazingly expensive-looking people, associated with a lot of taxis and a green-coated commissionaire. Inside, I nibbled a biscuit and was offered a raffle ticket.

The group’s AGM was billed to last 30 minutes: it did, and was presented efficiently and interestingly by the members of the organizing committee. They regularly run 10 coach trips each year to out-of-town reserves as far away as Lymington and Slimbridge.  They hold a similar number of indoor meetings, with at least one scientific talk, a non-birding talk, one on a specific bird, and some on good birding places in Britain or overseas. Audiences are increasing; the group is more than breaking even, and makes an annual donation to RSPB projects.

The main talk was by Ian Dillon who manages the RSPB’s Hope Farm in Cambridgeshire. It’s not exactly a nature reserve: it’s a working farm, bought after a successful fundraising campaign in 1999, and run “for Food, Profit and Wildlife”. Dillon used to be warden of a nature reserve up in Orkney caring for Corncrakes, once a familiar farmland bird (I actually remember our music master at school berating the congregation during a singing practice for sounding like Corncrakes (they go Crek, Crek not terribly musically), which tells you how long ago it was) but now almost extinct except in the Outer Hebrides where the shy birds don’t have to try to outrun giant modern tractors that can harvest a field at 25mph.

Dillon gave a practised and lively talk about Hope Farm, covering the 90% decline in some farmland birds since 1970 (Grey Partridge, Corn Bunting, Turtle Dove among them) as farmers have, from their point of view, improved their farming. They grow twice as much wheat per hectare, up to around 8 tons. They have achieved this through intensification, using pesticides, fertilisers, mechanisation and drainage. The result is clean, healthy crops, free of weeds, pests, and diseases: but also largely free of wildlife. Specific issues for birds are the increase in winter wheat and barley, meaning there is no food-rich stubble for them to feed on in the winter, and the 1960s policy of grubbing out hedges to increase field size and hence efficiency, removing nesting sites, insects, and roosts. The speed of modern farm machinery is also fatal to wildlife such as Grey Partridges and hedgehogs. The overall effect is an average 50% decline in farmland birds since 1970; it has not quite run to completion, with numbers continuing to decline slowly in what is in the more arable parts of Britain such as East Anglia effectively a sterile countryside adapted to industrial food production.

Hope Farm runs a conventional wheat-oilseed rape – wheat – beans/peas rotation. With the EU farm subsidy, and farmed by an efficient large contractor – each big machine only visits the farm for a few days per year: it would be silly for Hope Farm to buy its own – the farm makes a profit and achieves good yields, so in theory farmers should be happy to listen to what the farm has to say about its practices, however much of a turn-off they find the name ‘RSPB’.

For as well as farming, Hope Farm aims to increase wildlife, at least its farmland birds. It has been successful so far: since 2000 the number of Skylark territories has increased fourfold, while Yellowhammers have recovered to more than their 1960s levels – luckily an early BTO survey covered the farm. Wintering bird numbers are well up, too – 200 Yellowhammers, 37 Grey Partridges, 172 Skylarks, exceeding expectations. This has been achieved with two main changes: some small inconvenient-to-plough areas have been sown with mixed crop seeds so different birds each get winter food; and five metre square patches, dotted around the arable fields, have been left bare, enabling Skylarks to feed in summertime. Curiously the Skylarks actually continue to nest in the dense crops (of wheat, etc), but once these become tall they find it hard to land there, so without bare patches they tend to nest close to the ‘tramlines’ made by the tractor when spraying. The nests don’t get run over, nor are the birds destroyed by harvesting (they’ve flown by then), but nesting near the tramlines so they can readily take off and land makes them vulnerable to passing predators – foxes, badgers, hedgehogs – all of which use the tramlines. Very careful survey work, with remote cameras, proved that this was the problem. So the lark patches help, but in rather an indirect and surprising way.

Hope Farm has to date been less successful at persuading farmers to follow suit. The RSPB set out confident that with solid evidence of effectiveness and profit, the world would do what they said. Ah, they reckoned without the slow, cautious, individualistic, calculating ways of the farmer. After all, why do anything that doesn’t pay? One answer is that it does: you qualify for an agro-environment scheme, which increases your subsidy. Another is, that trying to farm those small awkward corners doesn’t pay, either: you spend more time and money trying to work those bits of land, which slope, or are shaded, or have poor drainage, or are more susceptible to disease, and the effort, diesel, seed, pesticides and fertiliser you use are not justified by the small extra returns. This is for the farmer a practical matter; for us and the RSPB and our children, a matter of whether there will be wildlife in farmland, or not.

The evening ended with a delicious finger buffet and a glass of Cava. The group is active, enthusiastic, and runs a varied programme. I shall go along. Why don’t you?

Book Review, Conservation

Classic Book Review: The Worm Forgives the Plough, by John Stewart Collis

The Worm Forgives the Plough, by John Stewart Collis (Vintage Classics edition)
The Worm Forgives the Plough, by John Stewart Collis (Vintage Classics edition). The fine linocut of teasels is by Angie Lewin.

I promised myself I would only review books I really loved, that I would urge a close friend to read, sure they wouldn’t be disappointed. Few books pass this test.

John Stewart Collis was an educated man, born in  Ireland in 1900, living and working in England. He wrote some biographies and pottered along quietly in the literary life. Then the Second World War came along. Wanting to work for his country, but too old to fight and not fancying a dull desk job, he volunteered for the Land Army. It consisted mainly of women, “Land Girls”, as thousands of farm labourers joined the armed forces.

"We could do with thousands more like you: Join the WOMEN'S Land Army". Second World War recruitment poster
“We could do with thousands more like you: Join the WOMEN’S Land Army”. Second World War recruitment poster

Collis makes the long-gone era of scythes and horses immediately accessible. As a professional writer, he is from our modern urban world, familiar with politics, technology, change,  middle-class angst. As a man experiencing the daily toil of following the plough or harrow, hoeing by hand, harvesting, pacing oneself while looking out for the owner’s car (a good moment to appear busy), he is in that rural world painted in such a golden light by the wartime posters.

And he’s funny. He notes that farm work is not an exhilarating form of exercise — he recommends a game of tennis for that; instead, you go at it steadily, never hurrying, whatever the weather. He is perfectly capable of writing wide-eyed descriptions, as when he kneels down beside an ancient tree-trunk and admires the insects hidden under the bark “building their Jerusalem in these countries of decay which must represent for them the acme of perfection”, the strange world of the fungi. But much more often he is direct, matter-of-fact: he likes to test the rotten wood with his boots.

Collis has the gift — I’d say it was rare — of noticing that the ordinary aspects of life and work all around him are strange and temporary. Here he is on what it is like trying to harness a farm horse by yourself:

When I came to harnessing for the first time I was surprised at the weight of the harness. I found that the breeching and attendant straps were as heavy as a saddle. When I tried putting the collar on I found I had put the bridle on first. Having taken off the bridle, the collar still wouldn’t go on — for the simple reason that you must reverse it while negotiating the head, which I had not done, thus following the example of Wordsworth who also failed in this matter. I was no more successful with the hames; I got them the wrong way round, and when at last I got them the right way round, I failed to pin them under the collar in a sufficiently tight notch. This done, I was now ready to put the horse into the cart. But I was not prepared for the difficulty of backing it straight between the shafts nor for the weight of the cart when lifted up by one of the shafts, nor for the difficulties confronting me in continuing the good work. For, having thrown over the long chain that rests on the breeching, and dodged under the horse’s neck to catch it on the other side, I missed it and it rolled back so that I had to throw it over again, all the time holding up the shaft with one hand while I went to the other side. And after this came the fixing of the remaining chains, all of which I put into the wrong notches.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sweating and powdered with stable dust just reading about it.

With the arrival of the first combine harvesters, which Collis admires, he perceives that the old way of life is going to be utterly disrupted, even while he and the other farm labourers continue to work on the farm, while the village pubs were still full of countrymen. It would be nostalgic, only the writing is quite unsentimental, and we are right there alongside Collis, looking up from our work as we watch the new machine as it roars and rattles along doing the work of twenty men, and reflect on what it will mean. This is something special.  And I promise you’ll want to go out and buy a well-balanced axe and billhook, to try the pleasure for yourself.

Buy it from Amazon.com (commission paid)
Buy it from Amazon.co.uk (commission paid)

Book Review, Conservation, Natural History

Book Review: Notes from Walnut Tree Farm by Roger Deakin

Notes from Walnut Tree Farm by Roger Deakin
Notes from Walnut Tree Farm by Roger Deakin

I made a mental note a while ago only to review books that I really loved: books that were special, that I’d go back to, that I’d wholeheartedly recommend to close friends. Life is too short to review books that were merely so-so, acceptable, somewhat informative, useful as background. I read (parts of) many of those, “researching” subjects and places, and for the most part once I’ve done what I wanted the book goes on a shelf and stays there.

Books that stick in the mind, that quietly speak to me long after I last dipped into them, are a small proportion. It is only too easy to buy something that looks inviting, only to find after a chapter or two that it’s a bit overblown, poorly argued, limply presented. Books that are specially trumpeted are particularly at risk here. Amazon reviews tend, on average and given sufficient quantity, to be truthful: of course authors ask friends to review their books (we all do it) so you need a good sample to get a genuine impression from readers, and, caveat emptor, you should read between the lines to see if the reviewer is real and appreciating the book in the same way as you.

I mention all this because I took a look at my most recent shelf of books with an eye to writing a review. The internal dialogue went something like this. “Um. No. Gulp, not that. Reviewed that already. no. No. no. Ah.. no, did that back in 2007. No, no, no, no, no. Erm, not much here. Hold on, did I ever do Notes from Walnut Tree Farm? Time I did.”

Roger Deakin wrote two marvellous books, Wildwood and Waterlog. It isn’t accidental that they both have something to do with wood in their names: Deakin was very close to wood, and had carpenters and men named Wood in his family. He then died suddenly, leaving 45 notebooks full of daily observations of all kinds, written in the last six years of his life. Alison Hastie and Terence Blacker took on the task of selecting extracts and arranging them into a composite year.

Walnut Tree Farm was Deakin’s house in the Suffolk countryside. It was timber-framed, in other words made of local wood. He bought it in ruinous condition, and rebuilt it himself: a mediaeval house, with a moat that he liked to swim in. Every corner of his life was of a piece, intensely personal, fully and passionately experienced. His writing is cut from the same sturdy oak.

 Fire: nothing gives me more comfort or more anxiety than fire.

Look up Cobbett on the laying of fires — talk about bread ovens and faggotts of furze for bread-making.

The fireplace has been subsumed by the TV, pushed out of the nest as by a cuckoo. People now contemplate the TV, not the fire.

What is it about Deakin’s notes that is so compelling? Reading him on fire just now, I can hear the crackle of logs in the grate, smell the woodsmoke, feel the pleasure as the flames flicker red and yellow. I would call him a sensuous writer, at the risk of being misunderstood: he does not write purple prose. He feels  life directly and communicates his sensory experience in clear, straightforward words, the opposite of rambling, yet he conveys the impression of relaxed thought, of coming upon interesting things and reflecting on their possibilities. Reading him feels very private: it’s like being in his mind, a privileged position.

Deakin takes us — me, you —to Suffolk; to walk in the woods, to reflect on a dead, trapped fox, to watch the carp in his front pond, to listen to a willow warbler which “sings in the spinney by the old goat sheds”, to join him scything his lawn by hand, cooking on a “little cast-iron stove” from Morocco, having “singing lessons with Mrs Gillard, who put her hands on my stomach as I sang”. It’s extraordinarily varied, authentic in every corner, always warm, always intelligent.

There is nothing else like Notes from Walnut Tree Farm: fresh, insightful, funny, stimulating, informative, peaceful, full of life and nature. Please read it.

Buy it from Amazon.com (commission paid)
Buy it from Amazon.co.uk (commission paid)

Conservation, Environment, Love of Nature, Quotation

An Innate Need to be in Contact with Nature

Quote

An Innate Need to be in Contact with Nature

Without wishing to question the wisdom of the Ancient Greeks, with their six kinds of love, I do think they missed out one of the most crucial varieties. And that is love for the natural world, for the wilds from which we sprung and of which we are still — though we may fight against the idea — a part.

I am drawn to the concept of ‘biophilia’, the idea that we have an innate need to be in contact with nature. It strikes me that the word could be used to express the seventh variety of love. Clearly we need those other varieties — erotic love, the love of friends, playful love, pragmatic love, self-love and universal love. But I believe we also need love of nature.

—Hugh Warwick, The Beauty in the Beast: Britain’s Favourite Creatures and the People Who Love Them.  Simon & Schuster, 2012. page 305.

Buy it from Amazon.com
Buy it from Amazon.co.uk

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.

 

 

 

Conservation

Hunt that Frog

Down at the reserve, it was time to strim the meadow, which meant a frog hunt. A conservation frog hunt, to dislodge any frogs that might otherwise get permanently strimmed. I walked up and down, sweeping through the cow parsley – it’s a major reason why cutting is now necessary, it needs to be held back to allow more delicate flowers like garlic mustard through  – but no frogs hopped out. I looked under the mats placed there for amphibia – there were no frogs, just three small toads sheltering in the cool darkness.

On the woodland edge of the meadow, brambles have been spreading in their looping way, bending down to the ground, striking root and springing off another few feet into the grass. I pulled up some dozens of them, cutting roots where necessary to leave nothing that could regrow. Some people just quickly clip them off above the ground, which slows them down for a little while: pulling, digging or root-clipping is far more effective.

Down at the pond, the heron was waiting silently, watching for frogs to eat. Since it has arrived, frogs have been much harder to find. I wonder how many of the dozen large frogs I saw mating a few weeks ago have finished up in that enormous dagger-shaped beak.

Conservation, Nature Reserves

Midland Hawthorn on Ickenham Marsh

Blackthorn on Ickenham marsh
Blackthorn on Ickenham marsh

On this lovely spring day I drove around the backstreets of Ickenham until I found my way to Austin’s Lane (there’s The Old Fox pub marking its start) and so to Ickenham Marsh nature reserve (London Wildlife Trust). It’s tucked away behind Northolt airfield: the second world war Spitfires have been replaced by transport planes and executive jets, but the result has been to keep development at bay. The marsh is bordered with great drifts of blackthorn, the soft white blossom lovely in the broad hedges. Chiffchaffs were singing all over, and a mistle thrush rasped out its harsh flight call. Even the dunnocks looked splendid, their grey and brown plumage catching the sun as they chased low around the bushes. The breeze brought the occasional whiff of aviation fuel, but still there were some small patches of common orange lichen, Xanthoria parietina, and the grey lichen of bare twigs, Parmelia.

Midland Hawthorn, Crataegus laevigata
Midland Hawthorn, Crataegus laevigata

A complete surprise was the Midland Hawthorn by the Hillingdon Trail which crosses the reserve. The bush is the same size and shape as the common Hawthorn, but the leaves are only very slightly notched rather than deeply divided, and the flowers have two styles, not one (easy to remember as the common Hawthorn is C. monogyna ‘one-female’). An uncommon or perhaps just an easily-overlooked plant, something old and special on the edge of London.

Lesser Celandine on Yeading Brook
Lesser Celandine on Yeading Brook

Also crossing the reserve, roughly northeast-southwest, is the Yeading Brook. I was just taking a photo of the first buttercups of spring, the lesser celandine, which likes wet muddy places, on the steep bank of the brook, when a kingfisher shot down the middle of the little stream, blue and turquoise. I turned to take my photo, and the kingfisher, or its mate, raced back past me again.

Conservation

Awash with Frogspawn… or a Solitary Frog

Last year my pond was full of frogs, with at least four spawning females, followed by hundreds of tadpoles. It was the first time: normally there had been one large resident frog, apparently determined to live a solitary Jeremy Fisher existence.

Four Frogs underwater in Amplexus
Four Frogs underwater in Amplexus

Two weeks ago, the Gunnersbury Triangle pond contained over 12 exceptionally large, plump frogs, clearly in breeding condition. The light was a bit tricky for photography, but if you peer through the surface of the water you’ll see a pair of frogs near the top, with one of many spawning females that day.

Lots of Frogspawn at Gunnersbury Triangle
Lots of Frogspawn at Gunnersbury Triangle

It’s hard to be sure from the mass of frogspawn, but I’d say there were more than six loads of eggs: the females seem to have preferred to spawn close to each other in one small area of the quite sizable pond. Perhaps there is safety in numbers. Certainly when there are several ponds close to each other, as there are in our block of gardens, all the spawn goes in one pond. I heard that a heron has been seen at the Triangle pond at dawn every morning lately, and the frogs are definitely hard to see now, so the predator has probably eaten several of them. So perhaps there is not so much safety in numbers, as extreme danger in being alone: at least in the crowd, you are just one target among many.

This morning I saw one moderately large frog in my pond. I couldn’t be sure, but I think he had a raincoat, fishing rod and galoshes with him. It looks like a solitary year down at the pond.

Conservation, Nature Reserves, Wildlife

On the boardwalk, we’re havin’ some fun

Since rain was forecast, we drank up our morning tea quickly, took the tools we needed and wheeled our wheelbarrows off into the reserve. I was given the job of making the boardwalk over the pond safe. It looked all right, but quite a few boards were springy, one or two wobbled, and there were some alarmingly wide gaps where the boards fanned out to get around an angle, so they were tight one side, gappy the other.  A mallard duck and drake were snoozing on the other end of the boardwalk. She had laid an egg in the swamp, then moved it behind a tree, but didn’t seem to be sitting on it.

I’m not particularly keen on power tools, but the volunteer officer gave me some flattery about my always doing work aesthetically, so I took a look at the boards. Sure enough, at the angle the boards were all over the place, uneven, and fixed any which way. A chiffchaff sang its endless, two-note ditty: not all warblers have thrilling, nightingale-like songs.

I took the drill and set about pulling out the worst of the boards. Three screws came out; the fourth one was inaccessibly deep and the drill bit just rattled over it. I jemmied up the board, hammered out the offending screw from the back, and levered it off. This was not at all the quiet and restful day in nature I’d had in mind. I lined the board up where I felt it should have gone and screwed it down. The next gap was now wider than before, so it was the next board’s turn. You can guess where this was going. On the fourth board I pulled out six screws, but it still didn’t budge. Scraping around carefully, I spotted another screw, deeply buried in a dirty crevice. I cleaned it off as best I could and luckily it came out. The board was still remarkably solid at both ends: clearly there were still at least two screws holding it down. But where? I took a spare screw and scratched about suspiciously: sure enough, there were two more subtly buried heads. I picked the mud out of the heads, and remarkably they both came up with the drill. Nine screws where three or so should have sufficed, on a misplaced, unchecked board.
Just as I was fixing it down with these dark thoughts, a blackcap burst into song: the first of the year for me.

Mallard dispute
Mallard dispute

The remaining planks were not too gappy, but were a bit higgledy-piggledy at either end. I pulled up a few more and lined them up to step round the angle as evenly as possible. Then I walked about and put in a line of screws where the boards were springing up and hadn’t been fixed down to the stringer below.  The sun was shining and it was really quite warm on the boards. Suddenly there was a splash, and a lot of quacking. A rival drake had landed on the pond! The sleeping pair stood up and quacked for all they were worth. In a moment he had come over, and the pair jumped into the pond. He gave chase. Round and round they went, taking shelter under my feet, their position given away by a steady line of ripples. Then out they burst, flying, splashing down, sometimes with both males grabbing the female. They all flew off, but came back to fight some more a few minutes later.  Being a drake in the breeding season is clearly hard work, even when you’re the only resident on a pond.