Tag Archives: Dog Lichen

Environment, Love of Nature, Natural History, Walks

Barden Moor, Yorkshire Dales

Lower Barden Reservoir, constructed in the 1880s by Bradford Corporation Water Works

Barden Moor is an extensive water catchment area, on acidic rock (Millstone Grit), providing soft drinking water to the city of Bradford. The area is part of the ancient Bolton Abbey estate, and is now also in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. It’s covered in heather and moorgrass with areas of meadow and bog pools. It’s a fine place for an open airy walk away from the sometimes busy mountaintops, and a wonderful spot for nature.

Apricot Club, Clavulinopsis luteoalba. The fungi are yellow all over, but some look white in the bright light. The clubs are quite broad, unlike the slim spindles of C. fusiformis.
The grooved Earthtongue, Geoglossum cookeanum
Persistent Waxcap, Hygrocybe persistens
Blackening Waxcap, Hygrocybe conica
Like much of Britain’s uplands, the land is managed by muirburn, controlled burning of the moorland, to encourage new growth of heather, mainly Ling, which is the principal food of Red Grouse, and is also nibbled by the hardy upland sheep, which of course prefer open areas with grass to tall woody bushes. The thin ash-grey subsoil (Podsol, Russian for ash-soil) can be seen on the trackside bank.
Podsol on top of Millstone Grit, the local rock. The soil is black and slightly peaty with plant material at the top, then quickly turns to a poor subsoil with sand and fragments of rock, and then not very far down, actual bedrock.
Rowan (Mountain Ash) in full fruit
Maidenhair Spleenwort, Asplenium trichomanes, a beautiful small fern of rocks and walls
This seems to be a Dapperling; I’d have said it was Lepiota hystrix except that that’s a woodland species. Suggestions?
One of the Cladonia ground-living lichens of the ‘reindeer moss’ group.
This one might be C. portentosa, which likes acid moorland.
Dog Lichen, Peltigera canina, a lichen of sandy moorland.
A handsome crustose lichen on rock, cf. Ochrolechia.
Common Frog among the tiny cowberry bushes

Natural History

Garden Warblers All Over Watlington Hill!

Prime Garden Warbler Habitat at Watlington Hill
Prime Garden Warbler Habitat at Watlington Hill, with Gorse, Blackthorn and Wild Cherry in bloom

The weather forecast said fine and warm, getting warmer each day. The chalk downs called, so I popped out to Watlington Hill to enjoy the spring sunshine and the birdsong. I wasn’t disappointed: I’ve never SEEN so many Garden Warblers, and I mean seen. Their full, rich warble came from every patch of scrub, sometimes two or three singing at once, and the still mainly leafless trees (the buds just broken) make them visible for once. In binoculars, they are almost evenly soft mouse-brown all over, slightly paler below for countershading, with the merest hint of a little half-collar of pale grey. Sylvia borin has been called “Sylvia boring” by birders, and it’s a good mnemonic, if not much of a joke. They don’t have the Whitethroat’s white throat or patterned tertials; they don’t have the Blackcap’s black cap, or even the Chiffchaff’s eyestripe. All negative descriptions: but their song is both lovely and readily recognisable.

Also singing were Chiffchaff and Blackcap, both in numbers; Blackbird, Mistle Thrush (conspicuously perched atop their respective trees, and calling loudly and ringingly to each other); Dunnock, Great Tit, Blue Tit, Robin, Chaffinch, Wren. From the woods, Jays screeched; a Pheasant called in the distance; a few Swallows caught flies overhead; Buzzard, Stock Dove, Wood Pigeon, Magpie, Jackdaw, and Carrion Crow were about.

The hill is on the west-facing scarp of the chalk (Cretaceous, obviously) of the Chilterns, dropping down to the Oxford Clay plain which stretches away to Didcot and Oxford in the haze. The chalk grass is closely cropped by rabbits, but constantly invaded by hawthorn, blackthorn, whitebeam and bramble scrub.

Dog Lichen, Peltigera canina, in chalk grassland
Dog Lichen, Peltigera canina, in chalk grassland, with rabbit dropping for scale

I was pleased to see some patches of the Dog Lichen in the low turf.

The shadow of a Red Kite passed over the grass, and I looked up. A pair of the long-winged, fork-tailed raptors drifted over the hill, swivelling their tails, their bodies perfectly streamlined and front-weighted like gliders.

Brimstone female
Brimstone female

As it warmed up, a Brimstone butterfly appeared, perching on the ground to absorb some heat from the sun. It is one of the most leaf-like of our butterflies, which would suggest camouflage: but they are conspicuous even with closed wings. Perhaps birds see them differently from us.