Tag Archives: Natural Patterns

Conservation, Nature Reserves

Keeping Chiswick’s Wet Woodland Wet

Sedge removed (a tuft still visible bottom right), much mud still to scoop out …

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.

Mudscooping the Wet Woodland (aka the “Mangrove Swamp”)

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.

Muddy but Happy!

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.

Chaotic patterns of wet mud running into erosion gullies down the flat face of a wheelbarrow. The pattern forms within a minute of tipping mud from the barrow: different every time, but always giving the same wonderfully beautiful natural result.

Actually, one can hardly help letting nature do its thing. It does it even in the mud in a wheelbarrow!

Natural History

Stop Thief! Who Stole My Hazelnuts? But a Valuable Clue…

Scene of the Crime: Someone able to Climb Trees, Carry Nuts, and Crack them Open Swiftly
Crime Scene Close-up: Hazelnuts Skilfully Opened, Contents Eaten …
we know who the villain is: Grey Squirrel!
All’s Well That Ends Well: a Rich Hazelnut Harvest, Still Green and Leafy!
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em: despite the record early morning heat (already 26C at 8am, imagine), I at once went out with a sun-hat and picked all the hazelnuts I could find, leaving one or two for the, ah, wildlife. After all, if a Professional Hazel-Eater says it’s Harvest Time, the sensible thing to do is to believe them. A clue, not only of the Inspector Clouseau sort.
Hazelnut Cluster Symmetries: you may think hazelnuts come in twos or threes, but they can come in ones, twos, threes, fours, or even fives, making themselves as symmetrical as they can. So, a two means they’re in a line, three in a triangle, four in a tetrahedron…
Love of Nature, Natural Patterns

Spring at Kew: Nuthatch, Marsh Tit

Nature's Chaos: eddying foam below waterfall
Nature’s Chaos: eddying foam below waterfall

It was a delight to walk in Kew Gardens in spring sunshine. The thousands of daffodils shone golden on the mound of the Temple of Aeolus; thousands of blue Scillas coloured the grass, and a mass of Grape Hyacinths (Muscari) puzzled visitors as it grew under a hundred different labels of herbs not yet emerged from their winter rest!

Overhead, a Nuthatch ran about the branches like an arboreal mouse, calling loudly (but with single whistling calls, not its triple see-see-see). A pair of Marsh Tits, presumably on migration, called Pitchu! Pitchu! to each other, readily visible in the still-bare trees. Hundreds of small children clustered eagerly around the Easter Egg hunt stands.

Conservation, Love of Nature, Natural History, Natural Patterns, Nature Reserves

Of Hoverflies and Bush Crickets

Large hoverfly in dark woodland space
Large hoverfly in dark woodland space

An English Summer is, as the saying goes, three fine days and a thunderstorm. Or, going out with sunhat, suncream, sunglasses… and a pullover and raincoat, just in case. Today it started out cold with a chill north-north-easterly wind, but quietened down and became rather too hot to work comfortably.

A tree had fallen across the glade in the Gunnersbury Triangle where the beekeeper is going to station one of her hives. I soon threw off my pullover, and my rainproof jacket never left my rucksack. The soft willow wood was no trouble to saw up, and I dragged the branches to the dead-hedge without much effort. A lot of small holm oak, an invasive alien species from the Mediterranean (think Ligurian coast) has sprung up from old stumps, so they joined the pile.  A Blackcap sang to me while I worked.

The butterfly transect revealed very little, though some Commas are encouragingly laying eggs. As for other insects, several species of hoverfly, from tiny and slender to large wasp mimics and a fine one largely black, perhaps a bee mimic, were active. They hover, perch and sunbathe, or dash and chase each other (specially the large black ones) aggressively. I had fun trying to photograph one actually in the air, you can see the atmospheric but not very useful result above. It does give something of an idea how much they whiz and dash about, hovering always on the qui vive.

Ragwort is getting more and more abundant on the reserve; today, Helen spotted some tiny (probably first instar) Cinnabar Moth caterpillars on one of the plants; an adult visited me while I worked.

The Peacock Butterfly caterpillars of last week seem all to have pupated in hiding somewhere; there are quite a few younger ones still on the stinging nettles, so there will be at least two lots of adults.

Knot Grass caterpillar on bramble
Knot Grass caterpillar on bramble

We found a Knot Grass moth caterpillar (a Noctuid moth) on a bramble. It is hairy and aposematic, with brown hair but without the four long brown ‘shaving brush’ tufts of the Vapourer moth caterpillar (a Lymantriid or Tussock moth), which we’ve also found here.

But perhaps the insect I was happiest to see was this young Bush Cricket, resting on a flower for no particular reason, and taking a risk as its fine spotted green camouflage was totally compromised by its white and yellow flowery background. It must be the first one I’ve seen this year.

Young Bush Cricket
Young Bush Cricket

I have always loved natural patterns. The bark of this Aspen tree looks almost as if it encodes symbols in some cuneiform notation.

Natural Pattern: Aspen bark, almost seeming like a form of writing
Natural Pattern: Aspen bark, almost seeming like a form of writing