Yes, a shepherd in London. Mid-March is lambing time, and she was out with her Land-Rover on the wide grassy banks of the reservoirs at Wraysbury, just beyond the end of the runways at Heathrow, checking that the new lambs were healthy. The ewe looks as though she’d like a rest, unsurprisingly. The grassy banks are quite steep, and mowing them would be costly and dangerous; how enlightened of Thames Water to use sheep instead. Genuinely “green”.
Also on the walk, several Brimstone butterflies, and a couple of Peacock butterflies (presumably overwintered in a hollow tree or some such place). Near the sheep were two Buzzards and a Red Kite, on the lookout for some carrion, I won’t mention what they were hoping to find. Also about was an early Chiffchaff singing its simple song (its name, over and over), a Cetti’s Warbler, and a Song Thrush. And a flock of Goldfinches finishing up the last of last year’s seeds in a big patch of thistles, burdocks, and teasels.
Volunteers (not me this time) cutting and burning scrub that was invading the Chalk Grassland at Aston Rowant. They made a lovely snipping and clipping noise, very gentle, with a background crackle of burning, as the smell of woodsmoke floated across the reserve.
Ravens, several in aerobatic pairs, wheeled overhead, as did a Buzzard and quite a few Red Kites.
The Witches Broom Hornbeam tree – the brooms are not Mistletoe but shock growths of the tree itself, caused by a bacterium, fungus, or virusBryony Fruits and handsomely spiralling stems of this climbing plantChalk Grassland is perfect for a picnic – smooth and dry to sit on, and there’s usually a lovely view. Ideally comfortable – unless you sit on a low-growing Sit-Upon Thistle!
A Bullfinch wheezed its odd “Deu” call from a hawthorn bush as we had our picnic.
The local Sheep have made a comfortable hollow to keep out of the wind while they’re lying down to digest a bellyful of grass (and why shouldn’t they, it must be tough). The result is a neat geological section through the thin soil, called a Rendzina, down to the solid white Chalk only a few inches beneath the turf. The topmost layer of soil is relatively rich in humus (organic matter); then it turns into a mixture of eroded chalk bits and poorer soil; and then it’s Chalk. The soil successively deepens as it goes down the valley, becoming a richer Brown Earth at the bottom; the chain of soils from thinnest, driest Rendzina at the top to thickest, moistest Brown Earth at the bottom is called a Catena (Latin for chain).Sulphur Tuft in attractive “troops” all over and around a mossy tree-trunk, which it is helping to decomposeThe “Egg” of the Stinkhorn fungus, which rejoices under the name Phallus impudicus (“The Rude Phallus”) – the gelatinous “Egg” turns into a long roughly cylindrical, er, stalk, with a brown, wrinkled, stinking, bell-shaped, er, top which crumbles into masses of spores; flies, attracted by the stink, come and disperse the spores. As they say, there are lots of ways to make a living …
Unloading wheelbarrows from roof of Land-Rover at Fray’s Farm, one of London Wildlife Trust’s numerous reserves on the western edge of London. All we needed to do was to find the logs!
We fanned out across the reserve looking for log-piles. On the way, I found this beautiful Oak in full autumnal splendour, as well as a buzzard, a red kite, and a common darter dragonfly (not bad for mid-November), and a brief glimpse of a roe deer. Jules found a handsome Carabid ground beetle.
Anna and Netty loading the spoils. The logs were covered in lichens and the ones which had lain a year or two with elegant curtain crust fungi as well.
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, 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
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.
It was suddenly summer again this morning, so I packed cameras, binoculars and a sandwich and went down to Thursley in glittering sunshine. This photo perhaps catches something of the dazzle and sparkle of the bog pools and their shimmering guardians: a pair of Keeled Skimmers (Orthetrum coerulescens) are flying over the water; she is darting down to lay eggs, he is hovering above, guarding her from other males. Their wings sparkle and flash, and it is amazingly difficult to follow, frame, focus and shoot fast enough to get anything like a decent picture. But I rather like the motion blur in this one, and if it’s not perfectly in focus, you know why. I hope you like it too.
Emerald Damselfly
I was pleased, too, with this shot of an Emerald Damselfly, the sparkling water behind it forming a pattern of pleasantly out-of-focus circles.
Small Red Damselflies in Wheel
There were quite a few Small Red Damselflies about, mostly single but a few egg-laying pairs; and a modest number of blues, most likely Azures.
Apart from the hundreds of Keeled Skimmers, other dragonflies included Common Darter, Black Darter (I only saw a few females today), Black-Tailed Skimmer (just one), and Southern Hawker.
Large Skipper on Bog-Cotton
We saw few butterflies apart from Large Skippers which bustled about flowers near the boardwalk, and little Gatekeepers (I do mean they were smaller than usual) … until we arrived on the amazing Parish Meadow that was once a dump for emptying cesspits. Now it has an ecology strikingly unlike the rest of Thursley Common.
Centaury on Parish Meadow
The meadow was full of Meadow Browns, Graylings (mating), Ringlets, Essex Skippers, a Brimstone, Large and Small Whites, and … a Purple Hairstreak (about the Oak trees). The rabbit-bitten pasture, dotted with little flower-stalks of Centaury, was thick with Ragwort, which in turn was richly covered with Cantharid beetles, solitary bees, wasps, and hoverflies and other Diptera. We put up a Silver Y moth which obligingly landed in front of us and perched in the open. We found the traces of a Green Woodpecker killed by a Sparrowhawk; but happily saw a live one in the Oaks nearby.
Cantharid Beetles Rhagonycha fulva mating on Ragwort
Silver Y Moth
Sparrowhawk Kill – this Green Woodpecker’s flying days are over
The boardwalks were busy with Lizards and Skimmers sunning themselves.
Lizard on boardwalk
We met a local group of birders, complete with masses of tripods, telescopes and cameras, and asked if they were looking at the Stonechats. No, they replied, the Hobbies, there are three. We looked up, and sure enough there were three raptors. But in our binoculars, they turned out to be a Kestrel, a Hobby, and a Red Kite! Perhaps there were some more Hobbies somewhere else.
A little way further, absent the birders, we found a dead tree with some juvenile birds perched about it, and a lot of twittering. Yeah, a typical Chiswick Cafe. Some of them were young Redstarts; the others, young Stonechats: pretty confusing. But the Redstarts flew up into a Pine tree – not a Stonechatty thing to do – and sure enough, there was an adult Redstart on a lower branch, plain to see. And a Stonechat adult rasped out its grating call over to the right.
In a group of tall Oaks, we sat and ate a sandwich; and a Spotted Flycatcher flew across and perched on a high dead branch. It spent five minutes looking about, twisting its neck remarkably, but making no sallies. When I was a boy I saw them in the garden every summer; now they’re really something special, like, er, Starlings and House Sparrows.
Meadow Grasshopper
The sandy heath paths were full of little holes dug by Ammophila Sand-Wasps, and others made by Philanthus Bee-Wolves (or Bee-Killer Wasps). Both are called digger wasps (“Sphecidae”) in most books, and it’s certainly a good name, but the family has been split up, so Philanthus is now in the Crabronidae, which contains most of the old “Sphecidae” (we’ll have to say sensu lato for this); the new Sphecidae (sensu stricto) only contains what used to be the Sphecinae, which includes Ammophila. Rich scope for confusion. Sphex is the ancient Greek word for wasp, and it’s interesting that Linnaeus chose this word for a digger wasp rather than the social wasps, which have the Latin name Vespa for the hornet, and Vespula, little wasp, for common wasps.
Bee-Wolf (Bee-Killer Wasp Philanthus triangulum)
Bee-Wolf carrying a bee into her burrow to provision her nest.
Sand-Wasp Ammophila pubescens. She too digs a burrow which she provisions with a caterpillar or two. The sand is dotted with angular lumps of iron pan.
Out of a low bush of willow and gorse right beside a boardwalk came a strange, quiet but insistent squawky chatter of alarm. Peering in between the branches, a small slim dark bird with a long dark tail could be seen hopping about anxiously: a Dartford Warbler. It was extraordinary to be within a few feet of this shy, rare and retiring bird, and watching it for several minutes. There are actually quite a few on the heaths of Surrey and the south coast, but they’re never easy to see—most of my views have been of disappearing rear ends, diving into gorse bushes.
After a chilly grey start, the clouds dispersed and it turned into a brilliant winter’s day, the sky crisp blue, the air clear. I grabbed the telescope and went down to Wraysbury to see if the winter ducks had finally arrived.
Snapped tree (Poplar) over path
The first thing I saw was a sign of the violence of the recent storms; a Poplar, always a fast-growing and short-lived tree, had snapped off and fallen over the path. But a way had already been cut beneath it.
Soapy Pollution in River Colne
The next sight was a sad one: for the first time I can remember, the River Colne was obviously polluted, with lumps of foam drifting rapidly by, or caught on branches in the normally clean water. The river supports Kingfishers, wagtails and assorted waterfowl, so I hope the cause is a brief one-off event.
On the lake were four or five Goldeneye, the males waving their heads up and down to signal to the females – or to warn off rival males – the bold white patches on the sides of their heads visible without binoculars.
A little further on was a small party of Goosander, a male and two redhead females, their long serrated hooked bills and distinctive long bodies instantly recognisable, a sign of winter in this part of the world as they come down from their chillier breeding grounds.
Then, just as I was moving on, the bold whiteness of a male Smew caught my eye. With him was a redhead female, both ducks far smaller and shorter than the rather big Goosanders. A few grebes and tufted ducks vied unsuccessfully for my attention.
Ramalina lichen on Poplar
Some of the poplars, half-fallen, offered normally out-of-reach branches for close inspection. Along with the usual Common Orange Lichen and the grey leafy lichens (Parmelia sulcata and such) were a few bristly tufts of Ramalina, easily told for being rather stiff, slightly forked, and the same grey-green on both sides. You’ll probably have seen the genus on rocks just above the high-tide mark by the sea, or on big old stone-age megaliths. It’s a lichen that demands clean air, so it’s rather a nice surprise to see it so close to Heathrow Airport. Perhaps the prevailing Westerly winds keep most of the atmospheric pollution away. There is no doubt, though, that London’s air quality is far better than it was a generation ago: hardly anyone burns sulphurous coal any longer, and while there are hotspots of nitrogen oxides (Heathrow for one, Oxford Street for another) and diesel particulates, these aren’t as harmful to lichens as sulphur dioxide was.
Red Kite
Around the corner into the area of wet grassland and scrub, I was delighted to be surprised by two Red Kites circling silently overhead against the brilliant blue, their long wings and forked tails a welcome sight that would have been familiar to Shakespeare but was missing until their recent reintroduction to lowland Britain. There was plenty of professional angst about whether the new Chiltern population should be encouraged to interbreed with the remnant Welsh population: but in the event, the birds easily dispersed the couple of hundred miles involved, and soon the gene pools mixed all by themselves.
Ponies and Hay
Up on the smooth green hill that was the old rubbish mountain and is now home to a dozen ponies and horses, the distant chack-chack of Fieldfares drifted to my ears. At least fifty of them were standing, watchful but constantly feeding, on the bare grass, flying up and chattering at the least warning. A solitary Mistle Thrush stood big and grey with its boldly spotted breast among them; a flock of a hundred Starlings moved flightily between trees and grass. A Wood Pigeon panicked and all the Fieldfares flew into the trees, still chacking. I splashed through the ankle-deep mud and puddles on the somewhat flooded path to the road.
The English seem unemotional … except for their passion for nature
