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January
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| Starling murmuration Walter Baxter |
Starling
murmurations: There was a quite unforgettable photo in a
broadsheet newspaper today, of a starling murmuration in the Costa Brava - in
itself forming the image of a giant bird in the sky… Can’t show the original
cos of copyright, but here’s another lovely image…
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| Short-eared Owl Bex Roth |
Estuary snippets: Along the estuary, a
friend had picked up the
carcass of a Snow Bunting which he showed me – just
the pretty white-barred wings joined at the breastbone. He said it looked like
a young bird taken by a falcon – probably a merlin or peregrine…
As dusk approached at the Aust Motorway Services
by the old Severn Bridge, a Song Thrush was
singing, and about eighty Pied
Wagtails came in to roost in the five small trees each side of the Services’
entrance – such a pretty sight.
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| Snow Bunting in Winter HenrichMuhlichen |
Attitudes
to a Migration Watch: Last Autumn’s early morning Migration Watch at New Passage
was attended reluctantly by a friend who is an active bird club committee
member and who felt duty-bound to show his face on this occasion. How different
our attitudes were – him, disliking the early hour, the cold and dark, the
standing about – me, thrilled by the early hour, the separation from the hoi
polloi, and the sense of being part of this exciting adventure that is a bird’s
migration...
The End of the Certain World: Recently a
cousin told me that Google’s ‘Doodle of the Day’ had just celebrated my
maternal grandfather, the quantum physicist Max Born (1882-1970). A pioneer in
quantum mechanics, Born belatedly won
the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954 for his much earlier
fundamental research in
Quantum Mechanics, especially in the statistical interpretation of the wave
function. He is well known for his 'Born Rule,' a quantum theory that uses
mathematical probability to predict the location of wave particles in a quantum
system. The Born rule provides a link between the mathematical formalism of
quantum theory and experiment, and as such is almost single-handedly
responsible for practically all predictions of quantum physics. Born, along
with fellow German scientist Fritz Haber, formulated the Born–Haber cycle, that
calculates lattice energy or the energy needed to form a crystal from
infinitely-separated ions. His other notable works include Born–Oppenheimer
approximation, the assumption that the motion of atomic nuclei and electrons in
a molecule can be separated, and Born-von Karman boundary condition which
imposes the restriction that a wave function must be periodic on a certain
Bravais lattice. (Physicas facts from an
associated ‘The Hindu’ article) He had a life-long friendship with
Einstein and their letters have been published. He also has an excellent
biography, ‘The End of the Certain World’ by Nancy Greenspan.
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| Max Born biography |
A
hedge-full of Robins: At New Passage a roughly 150m length of hedgerow held eight
Robins! A
bird friend responded: ‘Is a 'hedgeful' of Robins a new collective name? As opposed to
this list from 'Bird Lovers': a
blush, a bobbin, a breast, a carol, a gift, a reliant, a riot, a rouge, a round,
a ruby – of robins.’!
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| Robin. TtB |
Hidden
Cribbs: On the way back from
New Passage, I stopped on the side of the busy dual carriageway in the populous
Cribbs Causeway retail estate where I had recently been surprised to see moorhens
on the grass verge (moorhens are generally quite shy and retiring, and not
found in a busy site like this). I wanted to explore further, and found just
behind the verge, sunken and hidden by hedgerows and disguised by reeds, a
free-flowing small river, presumably culverted both ends but bordered and
crossed by paths and ornamental bridges. Two moorhens were happily feeding
there – so I must explore further again…
Slow learner… I have been reading through the
latest ‘Avon Bird Report’ (the
extremely impressive report compiled annually by local expert naturalist groups
and members), and finding I get increasingly more from it - for instance from
headings like 'Scarce autumn passage
migrant’ or
‘Common winter visitor’.
But it is extraordinary how slow I am to notice or learn quite basic things,
such as -that teals are generally only found here in the winter... or that many
species are only here in the summer for breeding. And because there can be such
a narrow window between the last of the spring migrants and the first of the autumn
migrants - I frequently don't realise that some birds just pass briefly through
on their way elsewhere…
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| Young Shelduck |
But contributing… However, to my pleasure, every
now and then I could see an ABR entry and think – that was my sighting! – Like
the shelducks I reported with their adorable young, pottering along the Severn
mud particularly at Oldbury Power Station; which turn out to be quite important
sightings as ABR gets relatively few reports of shelduck young…
Hidden Cribbs continued: I returned to the
site of the unusual moorhen sighting at Cribbs shopping
estate, and found nine
Moorhen along a half-kilometre stretch of what I now understand is the Hazel
Brook, which rises at the top of Cribbs and enters the River Trym at Blaise
Castle Estate. You don’t see the stream running through this commercial area because
it is sunken and full of reeds, but it has a fair flow of water down it at this
time of year (though it might almost disappear with the reeds in summer). I
walked up it along quiet paths besides big superstores, and there were moorhens
everywhere - they love it! I wonder, as I have done before, if their success down to
lack of dog walkers? (I sometimes wonder if dogs aren't worse than cats for
bird life…) – for though I am a
regular retail visitor at Cribbs, I certainly never thought of going for a
stroll here after shopping, and presumably that also holds true for dog
owners...
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| Hazel Brook at Cribbs Causeway |
The head of the brook, like so
many along this area, mysteriously emerges at the highest point of the
landscape – presumably because of artesian groundwater pressure…
Pete
Rock talk on Urban Gulls: Pete Rock is a recognised international specialist
on the habits of urban gulls. I have been communicating with him online for many
years with my own gull observations, so it was good to finally meet him in
person when he gave a talk to local club. Some of his most striking points
included:
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| Gull. Geoff Sheppard |
·
However it is the warmth and the good safe nesting
sites, rather than the food pickings, that gulls like in towns – and logistically there isn’t actually nearly
enough waste to support the numbers of birds
found, even though most of us seem to think they are here just to
scavenge!
Gulls can
ignore virtually all measures taken to deter them – they can stand on spikes,
ignore fake owls, build nests on cross-wires, build nests under (but also get
cruelly tangled in) netting; and if they are deterred they will just move close
by. (…my
favourite photo in Pete’s talk was of the gull nest actually built on a web of gull-prevention wires which
formed the perfect sprung bed for it...) And the ruse of substituting their eggs
for inert ones which they still try to hatch, has been found to barely dent the
population…
·
Gulls can spend up to half their time just reconnoitring
- flying over possible food sources in their chosen patches such as suburban
gardens. They know everything about their areas!
Great
Northern Diver: A friend and I ended
a walk along the Sharpness Canal (which runs close to
the Severn Estuary
between Gloucester and Sharpness Docks), at the docks themselves. It’s a
strange, forgotten-feeling place, oddly informal and with little apparent
security, well-kept little houses randomly sitting along greens… Within the
docks at the far end we saw a Great Northern Diver, a magnificent
bird with its neck
stretched out low in front of it resting on the water – apparently a literal
method of keeping a low profile…
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| Sharpness Docks Andy Dolman |
St Anne’s Churchyard, Oldland: I made my way to this rural area of Bristol, the
church (where hawfinches had been seen) beautifully placed down a lane in a wooded
valley and above Siston Brook, The brook has a lovely footbridge, almost like a
classic clapper bridge with a flat unguarded footway made of large flags, but
proper arched supports below. An older woman was walking her pair of small
poodle-cross dogs there: she wore an
iridescent purple puffa jacket, and the
dogs had coats to match…!
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| St Anne's Church & newer bridge Gordon James |
Taxonomic banter: For many
years I have been sending the list of the birds I see out walking to our
wonderful blog, ‘Avon Birds’, a resource entirely staffed by volunteers which
daily publishes bird sightings and photos from across the county. Recently they
thanked me for always sending my lists in the correct taxonomic species order;
I replied how under the stern whip hand of one of our main collators,
I have been putting them in correct order for the last few years, while under the
whip hand of another mainstay I have been Capitalising bird names for the last
year or so – both lessons initially angrily resisted as almost unbearable
restrictions, and then knuckled under with a poor grace… but now second nature.
So I told them that ‘their wish was my command! - with a certain amount of
grumbling thrown in...’ The mainstay subsequently confessed that he still
doesn’t put his own lists in order – I was so
shocked!
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| Avon Birds Blog |
More
Hazel Brook… My drive to a weekly Pilates class takes me through the northern Bristol
suburbs of Henbury by Blaise Castle Estate, where the main road literally
runs through what I now know is the Hazel Brook (see above). Here the stream is
allowed to run across the road, and a sign tells you how to take a little
bridged detour if it’s in spate and too deep to cross. I’ve passed here scores
of times over the years, but today with some violent downpours was the first
time ever I saw it flooded and took the tiny detour – most exciting! Many cars
were still
ploughing through the main floods and sending out great sprays of
water…
 |
| Hazel Brook ford across main road in Henbury |
…Memories: A birding
colleague who used to pass that way as a young aerospace apprentice in the
1960s added: ‘I've been over that stream and you have finally put
a name on it. I'm afraid I used to go over it when I had an old Mini, and
water used to come in via the various holes in the floor, but great to make a
big splash. Always had to go flat out, as that car suffered from water getting
into the distributor and stopping the engine. Happy youth! All the BAC
apprentices used to go there to make a splash!’
 |
| ...and in flood... Des Bowring |
Another friend sent recent
photos: ‘The piece
on Hazel Brook in Henbury was interesting - such nostalgia! The brook seems to
symbolise my life coming full circle from callow Henbury Comprehensive School
pupil (oddly,
Lois also did her A-levels there…) to Bristol
Regional Environmental Records Centre volunteer at Blaise Castle up the road! A local landmark from my schooldays was Henbury ford where
the Hazel Brook occasionally flooded, inundating the road quite dramatically. I
pass this spot on a Monday morning and there was a lot of the wet stuff today.
'Dam' I thought....'
February
 |
| Fox Laubenstein Ronald |
Fox
silhouette: At a farmyard behind Easter Compton I saw a fox sneaking its head into view, and the next
time I looked it was standing on top of a great pile of tyres in the yard,
grandly silhouetted against the sky and watching me for a few minutes before
moving away... Like a coyote in those majestic paintings of the Wild West…
Rooks: Today I saw about thirty Rooks in the tiny isolated northern
suburb of Charlton adjacent to Filton Airfield, in
front gardens along the main road. And I have also seen them throughout
this winter on a large local sports field and along the high street in Henbury,
all on a similar line along the northerly edge of Bristol. I asked our local
Rook expert where their rookeries might be as I’m
unaware of any local ones .
He replied, ‘The story of Rookeries within the Bristol city boundary is a
fascinating one. Last year a new tiny rookery was established next to the
Portway in Shirehampton
(on the River
Avon as it runs to the Estuary), and a year or two back there were four
nesting on Clifton Downs. Some years back there was a rookery in a tree off
Fishpool Lane. (adjacent to my sightings). Their
key requirement for breeding is access to worm rich grassland. In winter
they often join with Crows and Jackdaws, and will feed anywhere that has a good
supply of soil invertebrates, or where they are fed by someone. They move back
to rookeries from now on, so keep your eyes skinned for new nests.’
 |
| Rooks in winter trees at Charlton |
Chirp: Male sparrow
on our eaves were making that very loud chirp – that special territorial,
nesting chirp…
Fieldfares
in the snow (Marshfield area, Cotswolds uplands): We first saw the large flock of 200
Fieldfare as we
were driving past in blowing snow. They were in a field of winter wheat, all
facing into the snow, feeding and then scuttling forward more like partridges
than winter thrush… On our return, most of the flock was up and wheeling round
in tight formation - this time more reminiscent of Golden Plover than winter
thrush – so much so we had to stop again and check...
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| Fieldfare Si Griffiths |
Rock
folding: Recently I went on a geology field trip in Devon and Cornwall, an area
of extensive but often subtle folding and metamorphosis resulting from
near-continental collision and other tectonic activity during the Devonian to
Permian some 400 million-plus years ago. One small thing brought home the
magnitude of some of the forces involved: east of Plymouth we were looking at a
cliff face containing what initially I thought was a small area of very
finely-banded rock beds which had been turned sideways so they ran vertically.
However our tutor told us that what we were looking at was actually folding – tectonic forces had steadily
crushed the land sufficiently to force it into folds, that then got compressed
ever tighter and tighter, thinner and thinner – so a hundred miles or even two
or three, would be squashed into one mile... and this was the mute record...
Cloudscape: Late last year
birding in South Devon, there were some majestic and unusual cloudscapes. Though
of the scale of cumuli, these clouds were built of the daintiest substance - as
though thistledown had been gently stroked upwards and upwards into towering
hammerheads... I should have written about them then, but only remembered their
beauty just now…
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| Jackdaws roosting Bob Jones |
Jackdaws
to roost: Late this afternoon about 200 Jackdaw in pairs were flying north-east
over our house - to that mysterious destination that I have watched them travel
so often. My best guess is they roost round Latteridge somewhere, but would
love to know more...
A friend replied: ‘I'm repairing my daughter’s roof and the
Jackdaws come over in the evening - so low, it’s almost hair parting! 200-odd
go off to roost in the elm trees up the road - they were still coming over in
the dark…’
Snippets
from Uphill below Weston: There was a Black
Redstart in the same place we’d seen it last year, on a limestone slope - a very
light grey female which blended totally with the pale grey rocks… On the salt
marsh seen from high above, Teal were swimming and feeding along tiny runnels and
inlets... Back in the village, Sparrows were making a ‘wall of sound’ along the
high street near the beach…
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| Oil Beetle Gail Hampshire |
March
March snow... I observed: ‘There
have been bitter sub-zero wind-chill easterlies for days now – labelled ‘the
Beast from the East’, with some fine snow. However on the first of March it
snowed seriously: the snow is incredibly
fine and light (I suppose what they call ‘powder snow’), and drifts erratically
with the harsh wind so some areas are totally clear while others are drifted to
a couple of feet depth; you can see fine layers building up like the beds in sand
dunes or sandstone. However this snow will not
make a snowball or a snowman – if you squeeze a handful i
t just disintegrates
like trying to squeeze dust – and you can watch children frustratedly trying
and failing to form it!’
 |
| Snowy Filton from a window |
…and banter: Posted on the Bristol
Wildlife e-forum, this prompted discussion of seeing cat and fox prints in
gardens, other cats avoiding the snow, and pet shops selling extra numbers of
cat litter trays for these house-bound felines, as other shops were selling
sleds… One friend suggested, ‘A litter tray would make a great sledge for the rare
snow-loving cat.’ And another added: 'Also convenient if they lose their nerve
part way down...' – thus, we agreed, lowering the tone of the discussion to
irretrievable depths…
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| Catkins. Tony Hisgett |
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| FLASHING Teal... fokusnatur |
Catkins: Catkins are
abundant and spectacular this winter/spring, showing ‘heather mixture’ colours
going
all the way from burnt orange to dark and lighter mauve...
Spring Courtship: At Pilning
Wetlands, four pairs of Shoveler adjacent to each other in the water were each
performing a dance with their other half, created of tightly turned circles - apparently a feeding strategy adapted to form
part of their courtship ritual.
 |
| Shovelers Kuribo |
And I heard
my first full-on blackbird song - Spring!
Rookeries turnaround: Literally within a week or so from the start of March there has been a
complete turnaround in the two rookeries along the main road to Severn Beach
from Easter Compton to Pilning. Earlier there was so little activity that I
thought the rooks must have moved their nesting sites elsewhere - though the
flocks themselves are nearly always in evidence walking the lanes behind the
road. However in just a few extra days, a whole clutch of fresh nests has
appeared in the trees... thank goodness! Our rookeries expert commented: ‘There
is a long history of rookeries in various places around Pilning. And nesting
activity is influenced by temperature (which is why a warm October often sees a
lot of activity at rookeries). But day length is almost certainly another key
factor into bringing birds into breeding condition, and it is also surprising how
rapidly Rooks can build nests.’
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| Celandines Anne Burgess |
…Muntjak? Apparent small ungulate
footprints in the snow in our back garden – could it possibly have been a
muntjak??!!
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| New Moon Andrew MacMillan |
a New Moon, low in the dusk sky to the west. The next evening it was still most dainty, a lovely pale apricot against a deep clear night sky…
Severnside north of Shepperdine: The wind ostensibly from the south-west still felt very cold. There had
been an exceptionally high tide recently with a tide line running to within just
two foot of the embankment top, and looking inland made one envisage how very
far the sea would pour over the flat fields there should the embankment ever be
breached…
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| Shepperdine |
Driving back, we saw a sign by a donkey
sanctuary on the main road advertising: 'Donkey Easter Egg Hunt' - I can just
imagine their little hooves stamping on creme eggs and the fondant yolks
running out...
A friend commented: ‘Equines and eggs do
not go together. I was always puzzled when all the King's horses and all the
King's men couldn't put Humpty together again. Horses are not known for their
manual dexterity and probably made the situation far worse…’
Silence of
the Plants: A depressing recent New Scientist article (‘Silence of the Plants’
17.2.18)
discussed how virtually all modern human air pollutants destroy or
disrupt the natural communicating chemicals of the plant world – whether scents
to communicate and attract insects or warnings about predators broadcast to
other same-species plants. ‘Scents that could once be picked up kilometres away
now travel only metres.’ From a human aesthetic point of view this means that
roses truly don’t smell as sweet or as strong. But for the natural kingdom as a
whole this has massive repercussions on the plant and insect world in
particular, and on all the other creatures dependent on them – including birds
of course.
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| Dog Rose. SuperJew |
The
Underdog:
I was in a shop queue in front of a little girl and her parents. She held a
soft-toy
chicken, cuddly but very realistic with a beak and legs hanging down.
I admired it and was allowed to stroke it, and said I’d never seen a cuddly
chicken before. He parents said, ‘She always supports the underdog. When she
saw none of the other children wanted Henny she decided that was the one for
her...’ Gotta love that!
 |
| Soft Chicken Aukland Museum |
Bee
backlash: My friend wrote: ‘For
many years, various environmental groups have been championing the honey-bee to
the point where it is now a 'green' icon, singlehandedly saving the planet from
starvation and providing us with wonderful honey as a sweet by-product of its
pollinating power. Hardly a day goes by on Facebook without some well-meaning
eco-warrior posting apocalyptic warnings of honey-bee declines and the end of
honey-loving human life as we know it. Thankfully, some entomologists on
Facebook - including leading lights in the Bees, Wasps & Ants Recording Society
- are starting to question the naïve assumptions of the green lobby when it
comes to honey-bees. They assert the importance of bumblebees and solitary bees
(not to mention hoverflies and beetles) in the pollination process and perhaps
more importantly warn of the possible impact honey-bees might be having on wild
bee populations through competition for food resources.
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| Solitary Bee orangeaurochs |
It would be great to have some recognition for less
fashionable pollinators among 'green' campaigners. Instead of being fixated on
'farmed' honey-bees, perhaps we should be celebrating their Earth-saving wild
cousins more.’
April
Parakeet: We were surprised to find a Ring-necked
Parakeet in urban St Andrews Park today
– on April Fools’ day!
Oldbury Power Station to
Shepperdine: The
Oldbury Naite Rhine was fuller than I’ve ever seen it
– almost to the top of
the banks… as were all the smaller ditches…
 |
| Oldbury Power Station Sharon Loxton |
Walking back from Shepperdine along the estuary, I
thought I could see a porpoise stranded and struggling on gravel on a falling
tide, just below the upper tidal reservoir wall. I reported it to the OPS guard
who sounded doubtful as apparently there is debris there that gets mistaken for
animals; but said they would check and report as necessary. I never heard more,
but felt suspicious of the guards who didn’t seem that aware of events outside
their immediate territory…
Ancient plants: I did a geology field trip to Lower
Writhlington Colliery Tip just outside Radstock where spoil from local coal
mining was dumped. This was mainly from the late Carbonifereous ‘Farrington
Formation’ about 300 million years ago, which turned out to contain a huge
amount of important plant fossils - mainly giant clubmoss and horsetail trees,
and ferns - and some uniquely important insect fossils including the world’s
earliest known damselfly,
and Britain’s largest collection of Carboniferous
insects including cockroaches, spiders, millipedes and crustaceans. The site is
a Site of Special Scientific Interest open to the public, and the spoil heaps
are occasionally re-turned by involved organisations to expose fresh material. I know it's not for
everybody, but if you use your imagination it is extraordinarily exciting to
split a soft piece of mudstone and find beautiful fresh impressions of parts of
these huge early plants which have never seen the light of day since they were
immersed in an ancient delta lagoon...
 |
| Lower Writhlington Fossils - my collection |
Nesting behaviours: A pair of flying calling ravens (very unusual
round here!) were being chased away by other crows and jackdaws. And the jackdaws
are fighting like demons for nesting material: for instance, some are doing
their best to steal the ultra-tough roofing felt left marginally exposed above my big loft rooflight – inside
the room it sounds like workmen violently jackhammering a pavement!
 |
| Shepperdine way Ken Wilkins |
Shepperdine way: I spent the last
three days painting ‘plein air’ between Shepperdine and Hill, just northeast of
Oldbury Power Station. If you don't know it, this is a stunningly unspoiled area
forming part of our 'South Gloucestershire Levels'. Probably partly
because of the influence of the nuclear power stations as well as being so
low-lying, there seem to be no buildings younger than about a hundred years,
and the many small farms are old-fashioned-looking, many organic. There
is virtually no traffic and what there is usually agricultural; and the
whole area so quiet... As a result there are many lovely birds - yesterday I
saw 3 Pheasant, 3 Buzzard, 2 Moorhen, 1 GS Woodpecker, 1 Green
Woodpecker,
1 Kestrel, 3 Skylark, 15 Swallow, 5 Chiffchaff, 1 Mistle Thrush, 2 Pied
Wagtail, flock c.30 Meadow Pipit, flock 12 Linnet, 1 Yellowhammer.
 |
| Great Spotted Woodpecker Jason Thompson |
In the back garden beyond the room where
I was staying, a Great Spotted Woodpecker was hammering on timber telegraph
poles supporting a small metal substation – intentionally to obtain an
excellent metallic reverberation!
Redbrook: I attended a botany
walk starting from the small village of Redbrook on the River Wye below
Monmouth. This was once a dirty, noisy centre of industry with massive copper
and tin-plating works eating up the valleys; yet now it is a quiet hamlet with
virtually no signs of this industrial heritage…
We found some
‘real’ wild English daffodils – they are bigger than I
expected and quite pale,
spilling down the valley meadows from the woods above. There were Scarlet
Elf-cap fungi, Lady’s Smock in woods and on the banks of the fast stream, and Golden
Saxifrage.
 |
| Redbrook Pauline Eccles |
Rooftop squirrel: For the
second time recently, there was a grey squirrel on the rooftops of the two-storey
terrace houses opposite our Filton house - I hadn’t trusted my eyes the first
time, especially as it was dusk. To my knowledge there aren’t eaves-height
trees near these houses, so the squirrel must have climbed vertically up the
walls and over the eaves… clever devil.
 |
| Dandelions Peter Fiskestrand |
Apparently 1.00pm on St George’s Day
(23rd April) was traditionally the best time to pick dandelions for
dandelion wine. I’d just talked to a friend who was the first person I've met
who'd actually made dandelion wine, but had found it unpleasantly bitter. So
yesterday I experimentally sipped a flower face - nice, sweet nectar; and then
chewed the petals - not nice and as bitter as the leaves or stem…
Song recognition problems on my Ingst Breeding Bird
Survey: I will never be good at birdsong recognition (I
started too late and now my memory and my hearing are deteriorating…) but so many
birds just don’t make it easy! I had enough problems distinguishing a Dunnock
from a Whitethroat song; and then I actually watched a Great Tit produce
a perfect replica of the Yellowhammer’s metallic little ‘chank....chank’ call…
 |
| CharltonCommon |
May
Spring
snapshots, Charlton Common: In this urban fringe scrubland by Filton airport - Brimstone,
Orange Tip, Holly Blue and Speckled Wood butterflies. St Mark’s Flies
(unsurprisingly late – 25th April is their expected date). A fox. The first
year I have known apple and lilac blossom to
be barely out by the start of May.
 |
| Juvenile Tawny Owl Hugh Venables |
Spring at Conham: We walked
along the River Avon from Conham Park where it leaves Bristol going east
through woodland to Bath. The willows were shedding such abundant seed fluff
that it was like a snow storm for metres around, with the ground covered with a
foamy film.
A fluffy
juvenile Tawny Owl sat placidly on top of a ten-foot tree stump just feet away
from us; and
just below it bees were emerging from a nest hole in the stump.
Upriver, juvenile Herons sat tall and gawky in their big stick nests in the trees
in a riverside heronry. A Mallard couple swam by with their four young; a Comma
butterfly sunbathed.
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| Heronry Brian Robert Marshall |
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| Water Crowsfoot Hans Hillewaert |
Graceful
white and yellow Water Crowsfoot runs abundantly in the wet pools along the base
of the embankment.
At Severn Beach,
House Martin were returning to their nesting sites.
White-flowering trees: ‘Tis this season of white-flowering trees – mainly hawthorn, then
rowan,
horse chestnut, guelder rose, white lilac... and flowering hedge parsley
just starting to erupt along all the verges...
 |
| Guelder Rose Wouter Hagens |
Red-headed
Cardinal Beetle: Along the sheltered side lane at Pilning Wetlands,
I found a handsome insect that I managed to identify as a Red-headed Cardinal
Beetle – a friend said ‘widespread but always good to see, with a black-headed
version which is more local.’
An eaten-out rabbit was another lane inhabitant…
 |
| Red-headed Cardinal Beetle Sharp Photography |
Fledgling
calls:
The fledglings of many small birds make a wonderful particular soft bright
call, and today the back garden trees were full of it – probably blue or great
tits...
‘Sullen’: From a learned
Botany article I learnt that Vita Sackville-West (of Bloomsbury group and
garden design fame) thought that Fritillary flowers appeared ‘sullen and
foreign-looking’. I fear that for me, this throws her whole plant judgement
into question: I love Fritillaries with a passion – Nature’s only checked
flower! – nodding their heads with a mien too gay to call sombre or 'sullen'. And
one senses that 'foreign' is xenophobic rather than exotic?
 |
| Snake's-head Fritillaries David Short |
Shiny
Buttercups: Truly, is there a single flower that can vie with buttercups for
shiniest petals? We are blasé about it partly because of the childhood ‘Do you
like butter?’ trick of reflecting a blossom under the chin - but it has a hard,
brilliant gloss equal to a ceramic glaze that may be unrivalled in the plant
kingdom... Recent research by Casper van der Kooi & colleagues shows that:
‘Buttercup
(Ranunculus spp.) flowers are exceptional because they feature a
distinct gloss (mirror-like reflection) in addition to their matte-yellow
coloration. We investigated the optical properties of yellow petals of
several Ranunculus and related species using (micro)spectrophotometry and
anatomical methods. The contribution of different petal structures to the
overall visual signal was quantified using a recently developed optical model.
We show that the coloration of glossy
buttercup flowers is due to a rare
combination of structural and pigmentary coloration. A very flat,
pigment-filled upper epidermis acts as a thin-film reflector yielding the
gloss, and additionally serves as a filter for light backscattered by the
strongly scattering starch and mesophyll layers, which yields the matte-yellow
colour. We discuss the evolution of the gloss and its two likely functions: it
provides a strong visual signal to insect pollinators and increases the
reflection of sunlight to the centre of the flower in order to heat the
reproductive organs.’
 |
| Buttercup flower Arne Nordman |
Young
Coots:
On the Pilning Wetlands pools were sixteen adult Coots and their many young,
the latter showing their delightful red beaks and orange head-fluff...
 |
| Young Coots Barry Skeates |
Delicious: Our neighbour put out
some breadcrumbs soaked in oil and the neighbourhood birds went crazy with
pleasure, including three adult starlings with about twelve young who swooped
down to feed - the adults eating a bit themselves,
then feeding some to the youngsters with
great chirrings before they scattered into the trees…
Aust
Warth salt marshes: Many Meadow Pipits out and about, some displaying with their
‘parachute’ flights – dropping from a height with wings and tail outspread, others
bringing food down into the grass where there must be youngsters in nests…
 |
| Meadow Pipit Ian Grieg |
Crow’s
nest:
From my loft room I can peek into the foliage of a large ash in the park behind
the houses opposite – where I can see a crows’ nest with the youngsters visible
and moving about...
Norway –
plants & geology: I went on a geology trip to Norway, staying on the coast
north-west of Trondheim.
Plants: Being so far north and on an
Atlantic coast (albeit protected by endless islands and peninsulas) we were all
rather stunned by the beauty, softness and delicacy of the vegetation without
the apparent wind damage you’d expect... Though we roughly
recognised many
plant families and species, some like their violets and dandelions had extra
size and oomph as though on steroids, while there were much greater varieties
of other groups – something my borrowed
book on Norwegian wild plants
confirmed. Some lovely plants were strange to our eyes - Dwarf Cornus, Fir
Clubmoss, Trientialis europaea, and Cloudberries in flower.
 |
| Cloudberry flower Rob Burke |
 |
| Norway Gneiss |
Geology – is often serendipitous... as when we
drove to a small town still further west of our very westerly guest house, just
a ferry and a Co-op... and backing the yard behind the shop we found an
incredible outcrop of marbled gneisses that neatly summarised many important
geological issues... Or unexpected – in a quiet little outpost of suburban
houses on the Trondheim fjord we looked at one home’s garden walls consisting
of rocks from an ophiolite – that rare phenomenon when the forces of subduction
scrape ocean crust and mantle onto the adjacent continent for future humans to
discover…
June
We had a heat wave that lasted almost the whole
of June and July…
Fledgling
Jackdaw:
Three fluffy jackdaw fledgling fussing about a chimney stack with their parents,
across the street from us...
 |
| Swift Ken Billington |
Small Eggar Moth: A couple of days ago in the side lane by Pilning
Wetland, I saw a very large
cocoon. It must have been about a foot wide maximum
and somewhat nightmarish in appearance as it seemed to have a lot of structure
in it like some alien object. Initially misidentified as the similar Brown-tail
Moth which can be invasive and irritating, our local expert named it the Small
Eggar Moth which also form ‘nests’ of caterpillars with silk protecting the
larvae from birds. The UK Moths site says, 'Formerly quite common,
this is now a scarce and local species, due mainly to the gradual destruction
of its favourite habitat, hedgerows. The adults, which fly in February and
March, are seldom seen, but the larvae, when present, live gregariously in
silken webs on the foodplant, hawthorn and blackthorn. It is now
restricted to a few scattered colonies in England and Ireland, and a few
localities in Wales.' Our expert said, 'We
are a national stronghold for the species in Somerset and along the coastal
strip in ‘Avon’.' – so I felt pleased to have found it.
 |
| Small Eggar Moth Cacoon |
More Swift groups: Today I saw four low-flying Swifts
come screaming along an inner-city residential road near St Andrew’s Park –
another encouraging sign of Swift groups establishing nesting where they may
not have been before…
 |
| Young Jackdaw |
Confiding
young Jackdaw: I was watering our back garden early in the morning, with a very
young fledgling jackdaw sitting on the fence adjacent - less than two foot away
at my closest approach. Fluffy, with a bit of a baby gape, it sat there
placidly the whole time looking on with curiosity and giving a hoarse little
practice ‘chack’ every now and then. Its parents were watching from trees above
but didn’t seem agitated, and eventually called it to a neighbouring shed roof
to be fed…
Birding
in Anglesey:
 |
| Southstack Mary Jessop |
Islands: Anglesey is an island
off the north-west of Wales; we stayed on Holy Island at its far north-west end
- which is technically another island as you cross a dividing estuary to reach
it. And when we visited Southstack just north of our hotel, we saw that its
precipitous cliffs and stacks with a lighthouse on one, reached by a flimsy
bridge - is a final island, full of nesting Guillemots and Razorbills, with Shearwaters
cutting by. We went there in a dramatic storm, and slowly descended the cliff
path to the bridge, becoming more and more as one with the birds wildly
swirling all about us as they fished… the Razorbills have a particular quality
of electric energy, enthusiasm, daring - that I find irresistible…
 |
| Holyhead Harbour Joe Jones |
Westbury
on Severn: We visited Westbury Court on the west side of the Severn Estuary, with
its delightfully domestic-formal Dutch-style gardens dating from the 17th
century. We found scarlet-flowered Pheasant’s Eye – a rare old-fashioned
cornfield ‘weed’; and many other old plants and trees like Wild and True
Service Trees and Medlar. By a stream in fields towards the Severn were fine
tall Black Poplars – dark, curved and rugged with diagnostic galls forming
green
lumps where the stem joins the leaves...
 |
| Pheasant's Eye Krzysztof Ziarnek |
On the Severn as we climbed the Garden
Cliff (a lower version of the famous Aust Cliffs on the other side of the
estuary) – an obviously distressed female peregrine continued to hover above
us, calling, so we agreed to turn back… (I later learnt there is a well-known
nesting site here...)
Echolocation: There was an
interesting programme on Radio 4 about echolocation in animals, particularly
bats. Their calls, translated into human-range decibels, go far into
painful-to-damaging loudness; and I had never before considered the problem of
protecting yourself from your own calls while still being able to hear the
responding echo. Elegantly, bats produce these calls by using their flight
muscles to help power air through the vocal cords; while using an ear bone
structure to block their ears at the moment of emission, reopening microseconds
later to hear the response.
Bats evolved after insects, so most insects
have no sonic hearing and are still at the mercy of the bats’ stealth attacks.
However it has been an arms war ever since, and some have evolved an insect
version of ears which can hear bat calls; and toxic tiger moths can produce
their own sonic calls which may warn or jam the echolocations systems of their
hunters…
 |
| Moon Moth Dinesh Valke |
‘Insect Pollinators’
field walk, Wills Hall, with entomologist Richard Comont:
We learnt that a multitude of flying insects are
significant plant pollinators besides the honey bee; and of the UK’s roughly 27,000 insect species, about
1500 are considered significant - in fact, the honey bee is a poor pollinator
as it gathers and retains pollen too efficiently! In contrast, solitary bees
are generally about 30 times more efficient as they zigzag more to reach more
varied plants and leave more pollen on the flowers, and the red miner bee is
about 300 times more efficient! Also honey bees can’t reach into long-tubed
flowers whereas many other bees and insects can.
Trouble with Wigeons: The retired regional bird
recorder queried a sighting of 25 Wigeon in eclipse on the
Severn foreshore, that I had
innocently sent to our Avon bird blog: ‘Are you sure about this? In most
years they are quite scarce in summer as they do not breed in the area.
If it is right then it would be a very unusual record.' I replied with some
corroborating details (as well as wondering if the extreme hot weather had
driven them here) which satisfied him – ‘This
does all seem OK, so a good record and as I said an unusual one.’ But
the whole experience was stressful and nerve-wracking, as it has been every
time I have had sightings queried! Much of my problem is, that the gap
between the last winterers or migrants of a species that can be seen at the end
of Spring, and the first 'Autumn' arrivals of the same species, can be so small
that they practically overlap; so there are many species that in my ignorance I
never even realised left in summer - I thought
they were here all the time and I just hadn't seen them! Furthermore, many a
bird's 'Autumn' starts in what we experience as high summer, making the
potential confusion even greater…
 |
| Wigeon (not eclipse!). Estormez |
 |
| River Thames at Datchet Darren Smith |
July
Solitary
wasps: We have just taken
down an old wooden shed, and removed what I thought were
three beautiful
solitary wasps' nest from the ceiling. The best was 35mm across, a
double-walled sphere with an 18mm diameter opening showing a group of hexagonal
cells within, all made of pale paper (picture). Our local invertebrate expert
suggested that ‘rather
than solitary wasps these sound like queen social wasp nests which have been
abandoned. The queen has to start the colony off each year but if killed or
disturbed for some reason the initial nest she makes often gets abandoned.’
 |
| Wasps' Nest |
Hedgehog
Surprise: A friend was in the
garden late at night a couple of nights ago. In the dark he brushed against
something prickly - a hedgehog! The first we have seen here for many a year.
Walking the Stroud Canal behind Thrupp (the village
that sounds like an ailment?), in its full July glory of land and water plants
in flower, and young birds – abundant tender-leaved Pellitory of the Wall;
Moorhens with babies trotting across the water plants; dipping Grey Wagtails
giving that splash of bright yellow; the young of some Mallard / farmyard duck
cross, with odd white ‘spectacle’ lines round their eyes; Blue-tailed Damselflies
zipping about
including some of the orangey ‘Rufescens’ form...
 |
| Blue-tailed Damselfly - rufescens Charles J Sharp |
More belated learning: I wrote with some frustration
to a birdy friend that - ‘It's taken me long enough to realise that I can check the unusualness
of seeing a species by month and place, from the Avon Bird Report - I am such a
slow learner sometimes, but I will
do this more often. Yesterday I became all anxious that the relatively large
flocks of Lapwing and Linnet I’d reported from New Passage would turn out to be
another anomaly like the Wigeon I reported in June. But I checked local blogs
and the latest Avon Bird Report, and such flocks now are perfectly common. So
it would be sensible if I did this before
rather than after sending in
reports...’
Peachy
young:
Juvenile Black-headed Gulls at Sea Mills showed pretty patterning, and a touch
of peachiness on some...
Linnet
song at Aust: It seems to me that one rarely hears a proper song from Linnets,
rather than
their many smaller calls – to such an extent that the couple of
times I have heard full songs this year I’ve been completely temporarily flummoxed!
– what was that bird?! Today at Aust
Warth was one of those times, until the penny suddenly dropped - and then I could
see the Linnet itself performing on a hedge... Yet the expectation is of
abundant lyrical song from this bird that used to be caged for its singing as
well as its beauty…
 |
| Linnet Bj Shoenmakers |
Bleached: Early this morning I
looked out to the far hills of Dundry on the southerly skyline. The fields of
grain (cut or uncut) are now so bleached with weeks of heatwave that they are
parched to paleness and glowed a pale pink...
 |
| Stone Parsley John Curtis |
Car-camping in the Somerset Levels
I went
car-camping in the Somerset Levels east of Burnham on Sea, starting at the
Huntspill River. It was still powerful heatwave weather, becoming
overwhelmingly hot by midday each day…
The Huntspill River from
the sea to eight kilometres inland, has been artificially straightened, and widened
to nearly 60 metres. I camped in the little fishermen’s carpark just below the Gold
Corner pumping station; upriver from here the Huntspill narrows to its end near
Glasonbury (the Tor visible in the distance…) It’s very quiet and remote, full
of watery interest and wonderful for swimming…
Dragonfly studies: I used
this riverine opportunity to study dragonflies with my field guides: I saw my first
Brown Hawker, interacting with a Southern Hawker on a small rhine-
end pool next
to the big river. Both species patrolled up and down, and once they collided
and their wings made that sinister electrical 'zzzz' noise... There was a
Black-tailed Skimmer low on the reeds of the river – it’s so dry that the banks were indeed quite
bare as I understand this species prefers. And abundant Demoiselles and blue
Damsels.
 |
| Brown Hawker Tony Hisgett |
There were so many
water boatmen and
other water-walking insects that they freckled the river surface into intricate
patterns... Water plants: Arrowhead,
Frogbit, Lesser Water Parsnip
The huge willow on the river bank had high pendant
branches that bounced and undulated in the breeze, strangely evoking images of
jellyfish and elephants...
A Magic swim: In the evening the sun hung low
directly above the north-westerly line of the river,
flooding it with liquid
gold. There was a single fisherman out of sight upstream but otherwise it was completely
quiet and solitary. The water was deliciously warm, no swans were bothering me
with aggressive intentions, and it felt like there was infinite room to just
strike out into the gold and swim and swim...
 |
| Huntspill River Roger Cornfoot |
The River Brue inland – looked and felt older, winding,
lined with tall trees, the water surface covered with pondweed and moving almost
imperceptibly slowly ...
Highbridge and Brue
Estuary to Huntspill Estuary:
An embankment bouquet: pale purple sea lavender, darker
purple teasel, white-green wild carrot, dark green rock samphire...
Raven size: Theoretically I know that ravens are
considerably larger than other corvids, but seen on their own this doesn’t
really register, and even flying near other corvids the difference isn’t
necessarily that noticeable. But on the embankment a raven sat on a stile post
with a crow perched just below it – and oh it was noticeable there! What a
brute, and that bulky down-tipped bill...
Cow rescued from mud: Standing on the River Brue’s final
sluice gate before its small tidal estuary
into the Bristol Channel, I and
other watchers saw a cow stauck fast low down in the tidal mud, only head and
shoulders visible, and many of us phoned the fire service. I carried on walking
round the coastal embankment to the Huntspill Estuary – I met the farmer who
said this cow was probably one who’d done it before! Gradually we could see
emergency vehicles arriving... Two hour later I arrived back – there were eight
emergency vehicles on the salt marsh, four more in a meadow behind, and the
farmer’s tractor pulling out the limp-looking cow. She looked half-dead, yet as
soon as her hooves got a grip she scrambled up and trotted up the grass as
though nothing had happened – so tough animals are! If the tide had been rising
not falling she would have been dead...
 |
| Brue Estuary Ken Grainger |
Swift Song: Swifts are declining, so local
enthusiasts are encouraging us to install nest boxes, and play Swift calls to
encourage them to new nest sites. Last year I got some expert advice on an
installation for my attic room, and this year my electronics friend helped my
put it together – so early and late each day since May, a half-hour recording
of screaming Swifts has burst into my room…
August
 |
| Llansabbath memorial |
The little church by
Llansabbath, on the
Usk below Upper Llanover where I had started re-walking the Brecon Canal - held
some fine eccentric and grandiose grave monuments – especially this turned
granite memorial straight out of an Alice in Wonderland chess game! (pic)
I slept over in Mynnydd
Llanganidr, the
less-frequented Brecons above Bryn Mawr – spartan and wild, crossed only with
sheep trails, pocked with quarries, blueberries ripe for eating... On a natural
limestone pavement was an odd accidental display of animal droppings in neat
groups: one group small and dark and close together, an adjacent group paler
and more separated, then larger and paler still – like a crazy board game...
The Usk at
Llangynidr: Knowing nothing about it, I targeted
the little village of Llanganydir for its access to the River Usk. My first
view of the magnificent eighteenth century stone bridge that crosses the wide,
wild, rocky, untouched river – was so
beautiful I could have cried - somehow the river appearing bigger here than
lower down, with more volume of water. It has carved a wide flat valley with
steep wooded sides that prevent access by roads or other human development, and
once within, it is intensely private, a symphony of carved Devonian sandstone
rocks, flumes, deep pools, powerful falls, shallows and willows... With dippers,
grey wagtails, kingfisher, herons, a pair of goosanders snoozing on a rock...
and a mink hunting on the bank and river...
 |
| Llangynidr Bridge Phillip Halling |
 |
| Black Darter Charles J Sharp |
A riverside glade: under the tall overarching oaks and
ashes, spotted wood butterfly pairs danced in the sun dapples...
 |
| Talybont Reservoir Owen Herby |
 |
| Rock Samphire at Clevedon |
Red-veined Darter: Online I wrote that I was fairly
confident I had just seen a (scarce) Red-veined Darter in the red male form, in
the side lane at Pilning Wetlands; with its striking blue-yellow thoracic
spiracle. I didn’t catch the diagnostic red wing-veins, yellow basal wing
patches or the yellow pterostigma; but hopefully the reddish eye tops over blue
undersides were diagnostic too. Also the place and habitat seemed correct –
close to the coast, and some of the newly-remodelled pools surely qualify as the
‘shallow open pools in early successional stages’ that the ‘Dragonflies &
Damselflies of the Bristol Region’ describes as favoured habitat.
Our expert said, ‘I have seen them there a couple of times before (although
not this year, yet!) so quite
likely - and the eye colour is a very good
feature. Nice find!’
 |
| Red-veined Darter Peter Nijland |
Froglet: Today – a very small frog in our
front garden, notable because of the gradual disappearance of amphibians
locally when they used to be abundant…
Tiny larvae: At Northwick Ouse saltmarsh were a
couple of shallow pools (presumably brackish) containing hundreds of tiny
larvae. They were slim, brownish, about 3-4mm long, and hung near the surface with tail up and
head down, and every now and then giving a powerful wiggle to propel themselves
elsewhere. ID suggestions were for mosquito, midge, hoverfly – but I wondered
whether all or any of these hatch in salty water?
Unexpected Colours: Bringing an unexpected note of
frivolous colour to the industrial Avonmouth road between Wainwrights Asphalt
and Veolia: sky blue Chicory flowering abundantly along the verge, and satin
orange Californian Poppies further north…
 |
Water Dock
AnRo0002
|
Snapshots from the
Stroud Canal: Doing
botany at Stroudwater Canal & Eastington, west of Stroud – we saw a wasps’
nest constructed in a pile of dead leaves lying under a grove of trees… a ‘genuine’
Small Copper butterfly shining bright on
the verge along a stretch of unrestored canal (as opposed to the extra-bright Gatekeepers that I so often
try and turn into Small Coppers…)… and where the natural stream wound along the
canal bottom - huge Water Docks with leaves pleated at right angles to the
central rib...
September
Close-ups: I saw six Southern Hawker and four
Ruddy Darter dragonflies at New Passage/Pilning
Wetlands today. Up close, the
Ruddy Darter’s dark-red pterostigma patterns on the wings, outlined in black, are
as lovely as stained glass; while its rounded frons ‘nose’ area is tinted pink,
giving it a comically clownish look at the right angle...
 |
| Ruddy Darter Quartl |
On the saltmarsh, a juvenile pied wagtail showed a
black crescent breast band and pale yellow throat…
Durdham
Downs: Ivy ‘trees’ are taking over some of the isolated shrubby islands on the
Downs. One striking example has encapsulated a struggling low ‘real’ tree,
creating a flowering mound about eight foot high and ten foot across, covered
with feeding insects on the sheltered side.
 |
| Autumn Lady’s-tresses Ian Capper |
The Autumn Lady’s-tresses
orchids are still pushing through conspicuous new stems with their
inconspicuous pale flowers spiralling slightly upwards, in the cut hay-area of
grassland. Adjacent, the abundantly-fruiting whitebeams by Peregrine Point
are a beautiful sight – the stems of both leaves
and fruit the same pale
green-white as the leaf undersides, with the fruits merging from cream to light
orange...
 |
| Whitebeam on the Downs |
Majestic Rainbow: Early this morning, looking due
west from my loft window there was a magnificent huge rainbow – very wide and majestically high as they are when the
sun is low...
Sheltering Pigeons: It was a wildly stormy day as I
stopped at Sea Mills for a quick bird watch. The metal railway bridge crossing
the River Trym where it enters the Avon, is always home to many feral pigeons;
but today there were over a hundred and fifty of them, all sheltering on the
leeward side and huddled and pushed as close together as possible with not a
bit of room between them!
 |
| Sea Mills Railway Bridge |
Natural energy: In one of her books the
self-sufficient solitary and wild wanderer Hope Bourne of Exmoor wrote that
every day she awoke ‘full of boundless energy and zest for the day ahead’,
words that have been an aspirational shock-wave to me since I read them. But I
am also sure this is how all natural creatures live and experience their lives...
 |
| St Andrews Road station car park & bird feeders |
Fiery: Our house in Filton is on a plateau
forming some of the highest ground in the area, and my loft room gives an
extra-high viewpoint. However this evening when the sun was already below the
horizon in Filton, new university buildings a mile or so eastwards were still
catching the light, windows glowing with an intense copper fire as though from
an incandescent blaze within. Strangely, this radiant vision was not ephemeral
but lasted for many minutes...
 |
| A Shy Albatross - far from land Ed Dunens |
Far from Land: I have just read ‘Far from Land –
the mysterious life of Seabirds’ by Michael Brook (a curator of ornithology at
Cambridge) 2018, which describes the flood of new information about pelagic (ocean-dwelling) birds resulting from modern miniturised tracking devices - in the past these creatures being almost impossible to study. Very thought-provoking…
A line of Shelduck: In the sea along the embankment
south of Clevedon were about 130 Shelduck in one continuous single-file line,
running parallel to the shore a hundred metres out and for over half a
kilometre. The local patch expert had seen the same phenomenon the day before
but had no explanation for it…
October
 |
| Briony |
Bryony: Translucent red bryony berries
wreathed through yellowish flowering ivy – bees busy, pollen sacs heavy on
their legs...
New Passage migration
watch:
I felt privileged to be invited for a migration watch on
the Severn Estuary with two noteworthy birdwatchers, meeting at first light on
a clear morning but with a very cold north-westerly wind. As usual, to be out
so early sharing the elements just with travelling birds felt a privilege in itself… As day broke and
migration lessened,
we walked up to the wetland pools where hundreds of Dunlin, Knot and Blacktailed
Godwits were packed close together snoozing in the shallow water. Briefly
disturbed, flocks of Knot rose just a few
feet into the air and hovered, before
settling again...
 |
| Grey Plover Zeynel Cebeci |
A Grey Plover landed nearby,
showing its lovely grey spangled back plumage and legs that also looked chicly
pearly-grey. My companions had earlier been alerted to its presence by its cry
– like a Curlew having an off day - and tried to lure it closer with imitations
for better photo-opportunities...
November
 |
| Common Gull NotfromUtrecht |
‘Mirrors’: Visiting Marshfield,
we saw about forty Common Gulls wheeling and settling on upland farmland. For
the first time I noticed their strikingly lovely wing-tip patterns - a strong
slash of black with large white circular spots called ‘mirrors’. Only gulls’
spots have this name, and expert birders can apparently make fine species
distinctions from subtle differences in these spots…
 |
| Kingfisher hovering Tony French |
 |
| Black-tailed Godwit Ian Stapp |
Close-ups: As usual, the Pilning Wetlands side
lane is a sheltered oasis of tranquillity compared with the exposed Severnside
coast, where insects love to come right into the winter. The furthest pool has
been flooded so it comes to within metres of the lane; crowds of Black-tailed Godwits
mingled with Wigeon there, allowing me privileged close views of their natty
half-pink bills…
December
 |
| Variegated Thistle rosette Graham Horn |
Rotting logs in nearby woods held the soft little
suedy yellow fungus Tremella mesenterica or Yellow
Brain. I like the no-nonsense
descriptive accuracy of such fungi common names - Yellow? Check! Looks like a
brain? Check! And effusively shaggy moss…
 |
| Yellow Brain fungus |
Metamorphism: I sometimes have to revert to asking
really basic, ‘stupid’ questions (in fact one needs to do this in all fields of
enquiry, as the human default is to take things as given without asking WHY…).
This time I asked – had I missed something? – did all folding processes like
the Variscan cause some form of metamorphism? (This was triggered by learning
that virtually all of Devon and Cornwall, and considerable areas of Exmoor and
the Quantocks, have low-grade regional metamorphism from the Variscan Orogeny (mountain-building folding resulting from the collision of tectonic plates); while
further north to Bristol and beyond, there is still terrific folding but
without such alteration) Our tutor gave this simple answer: only when rocks are
taken down sufficiently deeply for temperature and pressure to alter them. This
paints a vivid picture of the profound scale of Variscan forces…
 |
| Lush verge at Easter Compton this December |
Lush verges: Generally in spite of some cold snaps, there seems to be much lush soft
fresh green growth in hedgerows and verges all about... Noticeable today were plants of
the geranium, bedstraw and sow thistles tribes, hogweeds, and deadnettles and
veronicas flowering prettily…
Gnats: Clouds of gnats along the
sheltered wetlands side lane, thought the south-easterly wind was sharp up on
the salt marsh.
The farm
of Hell:It
was my first return to Ingst (a tiny hamlet in the isolated South
Gloucestershire levels) since I learned of the full background to Ingst Manor
Farm – ‘the farm of hell’. It always looked frighteningly disordered and run
down as one drove past to access the start of my bird survey square, and an
ecologist friend had been traumatised having to survey across it and coming on
half-buried animal heads some years ago. But the full story emerged recently
when the owner and her collaborator were finally being brought to justice –
look it up if you need to know more. This time attempts had obviously been made
to tidy up the perimeter, yet there were still suspect looking characters
hanging around… What must it have been like to be a neighbour in the village
and see the owner return over years and decades to perpetrate the same horrors
again?
 |
| Almondsbury arched rhine bridge |
Below
Almondsbury – the rhines on Christmas Day: Winter quiet, Christmas day quiet… I
was charmed as ever by the tiny arched stone bridges that span the small rhines
beside the lane – just two metres long, and mostly no longer in use…
Tiny golden apples still clinging to a
tree above a rhine…
The beauty of bare oak silhouettes above
another rhine…
Marshfield
Gossamer: Under a low sun you could see the landscape was covered with a layer of
gossamer spider silk; particularly visible on short grass looking directly
towards the sun, which lit up this dainty white silken coverlet, shuddering
gently with any small air movements. It would be easy to take this phenomenon
for granted, yet the logistics seem staggering: if the silk comes from
spiderlings, what sort of hatchings could cover kilometres of ground so
completely and so evenly?
 |
| Gossamer at Marshfield |
Winter
Flower Hunt: I attended a Winter Flower Hunt at Burnham with about sixteen other botanists
– very competitive! Started by the Botany Society of Britain & Ireland eight
years ago, the simple rules require a team of people on foot to search one area
for three hours for any plants in flower. With 74 species found, we were head
of the British and Irish leaderboard by the end of that day! Even with so many
expert botanists it still seems an extraordinary count for the depths of
winter, and it was eye-opening to see the tiny plants with tinier flowers that
were discovered…
Yet counts were expected to be lower
than previous years – one expert suggesting that flowers were scarcer because
brightness of light may have as much influence as warmth of temperature. So
we’ve had a mild month, but some very gloomy days…
 |
| Black Poplar trunk Rosser |
Black
Poplar:
As we drove through Burnham, my colleague pointed out the third Black Poplar
specimen I’ve now seen – a magnificent roadside tree with the distinctive
powerful rugged outline, deeply fissured dark bark, and heavy boles.
END
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| The Severn Estuary |
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