Helping The Early Birds

Something was different today as I opened the back door to check the bird feeders and fill up our makeshift bird table – all along the back fence sat a row of little birds. They were waiting! Almost overnight it seems they have taken to using the bird feeders, almost emptying the seed feeder in the space of 24 hours. Robins, wrens and blackbirds fidgeted impatiently, and whizzing through the air blue and coal tits cheeped and twittered. I’m sure I saw a song thrush too, but it was extremely shy and flew behind the fence when I appeared. Not so the robins, who could barely wait and had already stormed the table before I’d reached the fire escape.

Robins are highly territorial birds and they are extremely bad at sharing – the fact that these two were able to tolerate each others presence shows just how desperately hungry they were. Eventually the bird on the right muttered “get lost” (which to human ears sounds like an incredibly sweet and lovely song) and the bird on the left, losing it’s nerve, flew into a rose bush to wait it’s turn.

I’ve only recently begun to feed the birds and it’s suddenly feeling like quite a responsibility, having all these small lives dependant (to some extent at least) on me. But it’s also an honour, the thought that I can actually help. Seeing that little fidgeting group of birds waiting in the thickly falling snow brought home to me their plight, and how easy and simple it is to do something about it.

RSPB bird feeding advice

Feed The Birds:- my do’s and dont’s list

…And don’t forget your fellow humans

As I have just written about the responsibility of saving lives I feel it would be a crime if I signed off from this post without mentioning the terrible earthquake in Haiti. If you don’t feel moved to feed the birds, please do not forget your fellow humans in their hour of need. If just one person who reads this feels moved to donate, that could mean a human life saved.

Oxfam Uk Haiti Earthquake Appeal

American Red Cross

Unicef

To read more Nature Notes, why not visit Rambling Woods – in fact, why not write a Nature Notes post of your own?

Summer on the wing

At the risk of being corny, I’m amazed at how time flies. Two weekends ago (it seems a lot longer somehow) I spent a perfect summer afternoon investigating a small bramble hedge in the middle of Hampshire. Who knows how long I spent there; I was utterly absorbed, but I do know that I could barely see past the butterflies. There were clouds of them! I was astonished at how intently they foraged, as many fiercely territorial species sat calmly together and drank deeply from the bramble flowers. Perhaps it was the heat, perhaps it was the end of the breeding season; maybe it was just that they were getting drunk on good nectar, but I’ve never had so many butterflies sit so patiently for me.

First up was Polygonia c-album, or the Comma, a lovely amber coloured creature with attractively raggedy wings. Wondering how it got that name? Look at the bright marking on the underwing in the picture below – you should be able to tell!

At first I thought this Argynnis paphia, or Silver Washed Fritillary was a Comma too, but its larger size and calligraphic markings gave it away. Although this particular individual is very much past its best you can still see what an impressive and beautiful creature it is.

Let’s take a closer look at its wonderful green and orange furred body and spotted eyes

A little further along I found a Pyronia tithonus, or Gatekeeper – these sprightly butterflies were very active and though I saw many in the hedgerow this was the only one that would sit for me. I think it’s a female.

Time passed, and I realised that most butterflies had drunk their fill and moved on. I stalked the perimeter of the field and found nothing else that would sit still for me. Time to try the garden (we were staying at R’s parents house) which has many plants beloved of butterflies. Sure enough, there was an Aglais urticae, or Small Tortoiseshell on the lavender.

And the Gonepteryx rhamni, or Brimstone butterfly looked well on this striking blue flowered shrub. They particularly liked this plant, which seemed quite poetic given how the fizzy yellow of the butterfly looked against the improbably blue flower.

I had been anxiously hoping to find some Inachis io, or Peacock butterflies, having seen a colony of their caterpillars on nettles much earlier in the summer. They couldn’t all have been killed, surely? It seemed wrong that I hadn’t found an adult yet. Then, on a trespassing bramble I saw this…

What a showstopper! It was worth a bit of mild anxiety just to see this glorious insect – a male, fresh and glossy and presumably just emerged from its pupa.  I intend to write a little more about peacock butterflies, but I’ll leave that till another time.

What do we know

I saw so much that day, but it’s the ephemeral things that I can’t get out of my head.

Pine tree tops
In the blue night
frost haze, the sky glows
with the moon
pine tree tops
bend snow-blue, fade
into sky, frost, starlight.
The creak of boots.
Rabbit tracks, deer tracks,
what do we know.

                   Gary Snyder

Work Day On The Marshes

Last Sunday I took part in my first volunteer work day for the Friends of Tottenham Marshes – clearing an area of scrub to make space for beehives. I barely knew a soul, so it was a confusing day of forgetting peoples names, not knowing where to sit for lunch and generally being the one constantly having to play catch-up. To add to the confusion it was a shared work day with Lea Bridge Conservation Volunteers, who seemed to completely outnumber the Tottenham lot and who I constantly mistook for them. The confusion didn’t matter one bit though as LBCV were a friendly bunch and I think I’ll be joining in with some of their work days in the future.

The area of wooded scrub we were working in was chest deep in nettles and brambles which we mainly cut down using tools with the satisfying name of slashers. The work was sweaty, stingy and thorny but with about a dozen of us working it wasn’t so bad. The picture above shows the area I was working in – wish I’d taken a “before” picture as you can’t really tell from this how much vegetation we shifted. Blackcaps sang all around us as we worked, and not long after we started someone found a nest with two blue eggs in it. It was a blackbird nest, possibly already deserted as it is so late in the year – the eggs were cold. We left it and it’s tree untouched though, just in case.

The day was hot and sunny and I was glad to be working under the shade of Hawthorn and Elder scrub. Out in the bright sunshine a small work party dug over and prepared a flower bed outside the meeting rooms, and there in the fresh turned soil was a tiny newt.

After a leisurely lunch by the banks of the river we went back to the clearing and worked with pitchforks to pile up the vegetation we had cut back. Those tall compost piles will provide a wonderful invertebrate habitat, quickly rotting down to take up less and less space, until it is time to put in the bee hives. We’d got most of the work done before lunch so there was a chance to lean on our tools and look around, a few of us discussing wildlife on the marshes and identifying trees and shrubs in the clearing. Many were laden with fruit, like this bird cherry.

The bank I had been working on was smothered with cascades of fat, sweet sunwarmed brambles which I had spent the morning eating greedily before cutting the thorny branches back. Before calling it a day we combed the remaining bramble thickets and were rewarded with a tasty wild grown treat.

Everything But What I wanted

Summer is moving on apace and as I don’t want to waste a single sunny day when it crops up, I grabbed my camera and binoculars and cycled up the River Lee after the first good forecast this week. The idea was to go dragonfly spotting, something I’ve been aching to give a whole day to, but the day itself had other plans for me.

I had a particular spot in mind, Gunpowder Park, near Waltham Abbey. I’d been there many years ago and had a vague memory of myriads of dancing insects, so having for once a specific destination in mind I set off at a brisk pace.

The towpath was deserted, surprisingly so for such a lovely day. I usually cycle the towpath slowly, mindful of pedestrians and dogs, but on this occasion there was not another soul to be seen, and I sped along. Due to my haste I will have missed a lot – I know it – just from the tantalising things that I only glimpsed like the plums glossy and ripe and good spilled across the gravel as windfall, the skulking herons, the bright flash of wildflowers. The horse meadow with it’s bright garlanded hedgerow coaxed me to pull up and drink in it’s beauty, the scent of buddlea and wild sweet peas heady and intoxicating.

Usually I’d stop alongside those pylons to search for Little Owls (at one point I was seeing so many and so regularly there that I just called them “pylon birds”) but this time I was on a mission, and thinking that I could easily stop there on the way home I hurried by. A bank of honeysuckle flowers tempted me to pause, but I was uncharacteristically hasty in getting back in the saddle.

Ever feel like you’ve jinxed yourself?  All those things I told myself I’d stop and look at properly on the way back never did get looked at after all, which proves to me that being in a hurry to get anywhere is just a great big waste of NOW.  Hurrying discourages curiosity, blinkers us to the unexpected.  And on I sped, intoxicated with the swift breeze and the scrunch of gravel under my tyres. The towpath finally emerged from beneath the roaring M25, ducked under one more road and rolled out into parkland. Was this Gunpowder Park? I wasn’t sure, and a quick rummage in my saddlebag confirmed that I’d forgotten to bring a map. No problem! It would surely be signposted and besides, I could always ask for directions.

I got off the bike and strolled slowly along the riverbank in hope of spotting a dragonfly or two, but the wind was strong and I could not find the sheltered places where the dragons and damsels would be patrolling. Still, the river was beautiful, a slow, sinuous dancing river, and the weeds under the water swayed slowly like mermaids tresses. So many wildflowers I did not recognise! I got down on my belly to take pictures, to the mild alarm of strolling families who couldn’t see anything special about the clump of weeds I was prostrated by.  I’m truly glad I spent a bit of slow time here, because when I got up and got back on my bike in search of Gunpowder Park and dragonflies, I realised something wasn’t quite right. Oh no – no WAY. I had a puncture. Normally this would not be an issue but I think you can guess what else I’d forgotten. That’s right -  I’d set out to cycle miles out of London over relatively rough ground and not even brought a pump with me. And as I’d forgotten my map, I had no idea where the nearest train station was. Where was everybody? Now that I needed to ask directions the park seemed suddenly deserted. In search of directions or even a sign I followed the nearest road and stumbled upon a very unfriendly looking gated community on the edge of town; big ugly houses with big ugly cars parked in all the drives, completely sterile and unhelpfully deserted. But here I found a genuine and lovely surprise.

A flowering ornamental shrub was by some magic growing wild at the side of the path, and on it’s flowers danced an astonishing number of Painted Lady butterflies. The nectar laden flower heads tossed in the strong breeze and the insects clung to the blossoms determinedly, everything moving back and forth as if being pulled by a tide. Bees hummed industriously between the butterflies – everything was so intensely involving that the mystery of how I was ever going to get home seemed very far away.

I know most people in the UK have been seeing these lovely butterflies in great numbers since their mass migration here earlier this spring, but I’ve been singularly unlucky and seen hardly any. To find dozens of them all in one place was plenty consolation for the lack of dragonflies and the long, hot, unpleasant slog home.

Next Page »