Category Archives: Natural History

Natural History, Wildlife

All-round Amateur Dilettante Nature-lovers…

A reader of the RSPB’s members’ magazine, Nature’s Home, wrote in a letter to the editor that “If I had my time again I would try and be an all-round naturalist, instead of just a birdwatcher.” [Mike Strickland, Summer 2014 issue, ‘Your view’ page 13.]  Well, good on you, Mr Strickland. He went on to praise “such ‘all-round giants’ as Gilbert White and Charles Darwin.” White wrote the Natural History of Selborne, covering topics such as the swallows that flew round his nice house, how to get a garden growing (buy several cartloads of manure – literally – and use it to build a raised veggie bed), the doings of a hibernating tortoise, and whether swallows spend the winter underwater or in holes somewhere. Darwin wrote about everything from Galapagos Finches to earthworms and human emotions, with a lot of time on dogs, pigeons, barnacles and natural selection.

Clearly Mr Strickland had a point. If we’re going to be rounded naturalists, we need to observe whatever is around us – slime moulds and lichens, aphids and fireblight, hoglice and cuckoospit, not just the elegant courtship dances of Great Crested Grebes.

The editor assured Mr Strickland that “The study of other forms of wildlife has definitely become more mainstream with more and more birdwatchers also taking a keen interest in dragonflies, butterflies and moths. While other wildlife has been a feature of the RSPB magazine for quite some time, birds will definitely remain at its heart.”

The other forms of wildlife that, we learn, birdwatchers bother to look at are apparently dragonflies, butterflies and moths. That’s just two groups really – Odonata and Lepidoptera; both are large, day-flying, colourful, and conspicuous – just like birds, but without the feathers – differing only in being insects. Forgivable, I guess. They are, basically, the next best thing: easy to notice, out there when you want ’em (shame they don’t fly all year), and best of all, not too numerous.

I mean, suppose the average birder wanted to get into the beetles, the Coleoptera. They can be found all over the world, are quite often big and spectacular, don’t fly much, are generally black or brown, and are mostly so small you need a hand-lens or microscope, and are so numerous in species that you need to take them to the museum expert to get identified for you. Not terribly convenient, but definitely important.

The biologist J.B.S. Haldane is supposed once to have said, in response to a natural theologian who wondered what one could conclude about God from the study of nature: “An inordinate fondness for beetles.” Since there are about 400,000 species of beetle, one species in every four is a beetle, and a rational Martian visiting Earth would conclude that the planet’s ecosystem designer must have had six legs and a hard waterproof exoskeleton, presumably the joke that Haldane had in mind.

Shepherd's Purse in my street ... almost finished reproducing for the year
Shepherd’s Purse in my street … almost finished reproducing for the year

If we are going to be less species-ist than Haldane’s Coleopteran Creator, we need to cast our net wider than Aves, Odonata and Lepidoptera. The streets round here are planted with cherries, mainly; there are a few whitebeams, a rowan or two, a line of ash trees, and a few foreign hazels, they could be the American hazel, must check when they fruit.  Under the cherries, the observant naturalist can note that Shepherd’s purse, the delightfully named Capsella bursa-pastoris (guess the poor man had so little money, it could fit in those tiny capsules) is already in fruit, soon to scatter its miniature seeds, and April isn’t even over: weeds have to be quick to survive on dry ground, perhaps. The ash trees support a lichen flora which is far more diverse than the basic Lecanora conizaeoides (low grey scaly lichen, no English name) that survived the pollution of the twentieth century; the trees have circles of Common Orange Lichen (Xanthoria parietina) and little patches of a grey leafy Parmelia lichen. And it doesn’t just consist of birds and other conspicuous day-flying objects, either. If that’s all we know to look at, we’re definitely amateur dilettante nature-lovers. Amateur is the French for lover, by the way, and dilettante is the Italian for someone that takes (idle) pleasure in something, the word is related to ‘delight’. Curious that both words should mean “ignorant dabbler” in English. But curiously appropriate, perhaps.

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, Talks

Camouflage without Spots: Gunnersbury Triangle, Sunday 8 June 2014 at 2pm

Cheetah (title image)
Camouflage without Spots: is that even possible?

Free Talk: Gunnersbury Triangle, Sunday 8 June 2014 at 2pm

In this short and I hope lively talk, illustrated with models and photographs, I will try to show that camouflage is a lot more than spotty coats.

Animals use many different tricks to hide themselves. Even when there is no cover to hide behind, animals find ingenious ways to make themselves invisible. And if they don’t need to hide, they use the same tricks in reverse to make themselves as obvious as possible.

“Suitable for ages 8 – 80”. Roughly.

OK, you want more technical detail. Hmm. Well, I shall not be talking about military camouflage, though it is (or should be) based on the same principles as in zoology. The title already promises no spots, more or less, so I shall obviously mostly be avoiding what my hero Hugh Cott called disruptive patterns. Yes, you can see that I’ve spent far too much time trying to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of camouflage. If you nose about in there you’ll discover that I’ll have plenty of spotless methods to talk about.  To whet your appetite, here’s Hugh Cott’s beautiful drawing of a Potoo, which makes itself as good as invisible by perching, stone-still, atop a broken branch. I’ll leave it up to you to work out how the trick works. Even better, come along to my talk.

Hugh Cott's Invisible Potoo
Hugh Cott’s Invisible Potoo
Natural History, Wildlife

Plume Moth cf Stenoptilia bipunctidactyla

An extremely slim-winged Plume Moth landed on the kitchen window and has rested there for some hours, in broad daylight. I was familiar with the distinctive White Plume Moth, Pterophorus pentadactyla, a ghostly little moth with thin, branched, feathery wings – never understood the ‘penta-dactyla’, (‘five-fingered’) as I’d make it many, or perhaps two, but certainly the wings are oddly subdivided. This moth was obviously something in the same family (Pterophoridae) but another species, and given its brownish colour, it must be very inconspicuous among vegetation or on bark.

Plume Moth cf Stenoptilia bipunctidactyla
Plume Moth cf Stenoptilia bipunctidactyla

The excellent British Moths and Butterflies: A Photographic Guide by Chris Manley 2008, reprinted 2011 by Bloomsbury ( Amazon.com,  Amazon.co.uk), quickly pointed to a species of Stenoptilia: there are several similar and hard-to-tell species, so I wouldn’t presume to say which one it is, but it is most like Stenoptilia bipunctidactyla. The photo shows the family’s distinctive T-shape, and the long thin whitish legs with spines. The back is dotted, and the wingtips lack white, which is why I’m guessing it’s something like this species. It’s said to be common throughout Britain, eating Scabious.

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.

Natural History

Buff-Tailed Bumble-Bee Ambles About Aimlessly

Queen Buff-Tailed Bumblebee
Queen Buff-Tailed Bumblebee

Yes, the Queen Bee is back, or rather, she’s probably been bumbling about the garden all along. She is as you can see certainly buff-tailed, unlike any workers of her species who, confusingly, have white tails. She constantly clambers about the grass, climbs up obstacles and then climbs down out of them, rather slowly. If something comes close she does not buzz, but raises a leg in warning, and carries on doing … whatever it is she is doing. I tried showing her a convenient hole for her nest under a stone slab: she was not at all interested. Wondering if she was low on energy, I offered a drop of watered-down honey: nothing doing there either. Since she must have been around since last autumn, she may well have enough energy to get through several days of searching, though not taking food when available does seem surprising. I left her still stumbling slowly around, within a couple of yards of where she was yesterday.

The compost heap, the pile of logs I left for stag beetles, and the garden shed with the undisturbed space underneath it are all nearby, so there would seem to be excellent freehold properties immediately available, no chain, immediate inspection recommended. But then, each bumblebee species has its own Lilliputian requirements, which are hard to guess from my Brobdingnagian proportions.

Or again, maybe she’s just low on energy.

Gardening, Natural History

Bicycle Birding without Binoculars

Birding on a Bike without Binos, how is that possible? My mind fogged by editing, I took an hour off and cycled down to the river to get some air, space, sunshine and nature. It was a lovely bright spring day. A holly blue butterfly flew about the garden, and a buff-tailed queen bumblebee crawled about the grass looking for a hole to nest in – she was certainly a queen as she was very large, and she’s the only form of her species that is actually buff tailed, the rest are white tailed.

Coots, 3 cootlings and an egg in Chiswick Park
Coots, 3 cootlings and an egg in Chiswick Park

In Chiswick Park, a pair of mallard had at least six ducklings: the adults sat on the bank, with probably one more duckling (no binoculars today) while the six adventurous ones paddled nimbly about in circles not too far away. In the midst of William Kent’s carefully landscaped ‘river’ (a long narrow pond) was a coot’s floating nest; the sitting parent got up while I was watching, revealing three cootlings and one unhatched egg in the nest. A blackcap sang sweetly from the trees.

Down by the river, a solitary great crested grebe swam against the tide, glinting white in the sun. Goldcrests squeaked from the cypresses by the boathouse; allotment owners worked their patches of ground. A small tortoiseshell butterfly flew swiftly past the barbecues which were grilling kebabs. It did feel like spring.