Flea Beetle (Altica sp) (Photo One)

Dear Readers, this week I have decided to have a little break from the quiz: it may be that once a week was too much for people to fit into their increasingly busy lives. Tell me if I’m wrong, though! I do hate to disappoint.

Instead, I wanted to tell you about an insect that I had never knowingly met in my entire life. As I arrived home from the Post Office (always something of a palaver) I noticed something running down my neck. I gingerly reached behind me and pick it off and there, just about the size of a lentil, was a very shiny black beetle.

I lifted my hand to get a better look, and the creature launched itself into the air, with the kind of distinct ‘ping’ that I associate with fleas. I was so surprised that, there and then, I googled flea and beetle, and here we are.

Now, you allotment holders have probably made the acquaintance of flea beetles in your battles to preserve your brassicas, because the RHS website describes how some species of flea beetle munch on everything from turnips to cauliflowers. These are largely members of the Phyllotreta or Psylliodes genuses (genii??). Have a look at the splendid back legs on the beetle below.

Cabbage stem flea beetle (Psylliodes chrysocephaus ) Photo Two

And here is a lesser striped flea beetle (Phyllotreta undulata).

Striped flea beetle (Phyllotreta undulata) (Photo Three)

But how good are they at jumping? My new favourite beetle book, ‘Beetles’ by Richard Jones in the New Naturalist series, has this to say about flea beetles and their jumping prowess:

‘...a flea beetle achieves a take-off velocity of 2 m/s (10 kilometres per hour), accelerating at more than 270g, and can easily jump 100 times its own body length (Brackenbury and Wang 1995).

I looked to see if there were any videos of the little darlings performing their acrobatics, but sadly all there are are various films to ways to exterminate them. According to Jones, the beetle’s jumping ability used to be a way of controlling them:

‘A traditional method of controlling Phyllotreta nemorum flea beetles on turnips, cabbages and kale was to push a light wheeled framework of heavily tarred boards along the edge of the crop; the startled beetles jump and are caught on the sticky tarred surfaces (Anon 1895)‘.

But all is not lost, because Jones is sure that the beetles don’t just randomly ping into the air, but may have a targeted landing spot – as we saw a couple of weeks ago, beetles are among the many insects that have hidden wings and can fly.

Turnip flea beetle (Phyllotreta nemorum)  hard at work (Photo Four)

Some flea beetles can be very pretty, too. Have a look at the Willow flea beetle (Crepidodera aurata) with its golden carapace.

Willow flea beetle (Crepididera aurata) (Photo Five)

And not all flea beetles are pests – the beetle below feeds on mallows and is Nationally Scarce. How smart it is, with its orange head and teal-green wingcases!

Podagrica fuscicornis (Photo Six)

These days, many gardeners look for kinder methods to deter flea beetles. One is to grow radishes as a kind of ‘bait’ for the insects, because larval flea beetles don’t feed on roots, and so they will be unharmed. Companion planting of mint, thyme and catnip is supposed to disguise the smell of the brassicas (though with catnip you might not have any cabbages left anyway once the local cats have had a good role). Tachinid fly larvae also eat the beetles, and the adults are useful pollinators. In other words, put that tar-covered board down, people! There are better ways of resisting the excesses of these extraordinary invertebrates.

And finally, here’s a thing. On the island of Lundy in the Bristol Channel, there is a species of cabbage which only grows on this tiny scrap of land. The Lundy cabbage (Coincya wrightii) is not a particularly attractive plant (it looks rather like oil-seed rape) and, fortunately for it, it is not particularly toothsome – it has been said to taste of ‘triple-distilled essence of brussels sprout’ and we can all imagine what I think about that.

Lundy Cabbage (Coincya wrightii) growing in captivity in Bristol Zoo (Photo Seven)

Now, living on the Lundy cabbage are several insects that are completely dependent on the plant and who live nowhere else. And one of them is the Lundy Flea Beetle (Psylliodes luridipennis), a tiny metallic beetle that has been isolated from all those other West Country flea beetles for long enough to become its own separate species.

Lundy flea beetle (Psylliodes luridipennis) (Photo Eight)

I love the way that island plants and animals often go their own way and, over time, become separate species, but there is a high level of risk involved: if the Lundy Cabbage becomes extinct, so will the Lundy flea beetle (and several other insect species as well). The whole island is managed by the National Trust and the Landmark Trust, and they are well aware of the risks of alien species such as rhododendron, which at one point threatened to overwhelm the whole island (as it does). Fortunately, there has been much uprooting, and some burning, and it looks as if the Lundy Cabbage and its dependents are safe for the time being. It all goes to show how tightly linked natural communities are, and how removing one pillar, even in the form of a particularly noisome cabbage, can bring the whole lot tumbling down.

Photo Credits

Photo One by gailhampshire from Cradley, Malvern, U.K / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Photo Two By Udo Schmidt – Flickr: Psylliodes chrysocephalus (Linné, 1758) converted to .jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20047623

Photo Three byAfroBrazilian / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

Photo Four by gailhampshire from Cradley, Malvern, U.K / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Photo Five By TristramBrelstaff – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18917102

Photo Six by James Lindsey at Ecology of Commanster / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)

Photo Seven By Rodw – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4535009

Photo Eight by Roger Key from https://www.flickr.com/photos/roger_key/2677474521

Watership Down by Richard Adams with illustrations by Aldo Galli (Photo One)

Dear Readers, I only have one and a half books to go to finish the Wainwright shortlist (though note that Dara McAnulty’s ‘Diary of a Young Naturalist‘ has already won). However, I have got a bit bogged down in ‘The Frayed Atlantic Edge’ by David Gange – not that it’s not good, but it is long, and rather dense. i will review it soon, I promise, as there’s much there to enjoy. However, in the meantime let me share with you another old favourite.

if Black Beauty was the first book to make me cry, Watership Down is the first book that I can remember staying up all night to read. I’d promised Mum that I’d snuggle down and go to sleep but at 3 in the morning there I was, agog to see if General Woundwort would survive an attack by a dog. ‘Just one more chapter!’ I would think to myself, as the sky lightened and I realised that the whole night had gone in the company of Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig and the black-headed gull Kehaar.

What sets Watership Down apart from its many imitators is, for me, the complete realisation of a world, with its own mythology, culture and ways of seeing. It has been seen as everything from a riff on the Odyssey to a tale about the founding of Israel. Latterly it was criticised for concentrating so much on the male rabbits. It is certainly a work of its time, and yet for me once you’re down amongst the bunnies, everything else seems irrelevant. Will they survive? Will things work out?

I also think that few other books capture the helplessness of animals at the mercy of changes that they cannot understand, such as the destruction of a warren or their being ‘harvested’ for meat and fur. One of the saddest things about humanity seems to be the way that we betray the trust and good faith of other sentient creatures.

It’s clear that Watership Down was something of a one off. The book was rejected by seven publishers before being picked up by a one-man publisher, Rex Collings, who wrote to a friend

“I’ve just taken on a novel about rabbits, one of them with extra-sensory perception. Do you think I’m mad?”

But it was an immediate success: Newsweek noted that

“Adams … has bravely and successfully resurrected the big picaresque adventure story, with moments of such tension that the helplessly involved reader finds himself checking whether things are going to work out all right on the next page before daring to finish the preceding one.”

I’m sure I wasn’t the only child pretending to be asleep and then reading the book under the covers. I probably wasn’t the only person who winced at the animated film, either: I see to my chagrin that the film came out in 1978 when I was (ahem) 18 years old, but I still found the violence a bit much. Still, I am the child who cried in Pinocchio when the whale got hurt, and don’t talk to me about Bambi as I am still traumatised. i can take death and misery in a book (just) but don’t show it to me.

Movie poster for Watership Down

Incidentally, the theme song for the film, ‘Bright Eyes‘, was sung by no less a star than Art Garfunkel, although Richard Adams hated it and it’s a bit too candy-coated for me too. Have a listen though, just in case.

Perhaps the most moving part of the book is the end, where the Black Rabbit comes to take Hazel to that great warren in the sky. I re-read it for this piece, and I still love it. Who knew that a book could recognise the heroism in a bunch of rabbits, and reduce a sixty year-old woman to a blubbering wreck? Well, that’s the power of a good story. If you’ve never come across Watership Down and fancy a few hours in another world, I can heartily recommend it.

Photo One from https://oneworld-publications.com/watership-down.html

Dear Readers, the starlings are back in some numbers after a brief interlude for moulting in August. Most of them have their fine adult feathers everywhere but on their heads. They are independent now, and seem to be trying out the haws and the rowan berries to see what’s edible.

Maybe it’s something about this year, but I feel very tenderly inclined to the creatures in the garden this year. I confess to a lump in my throat as I see these youngsters considering what to eat, or surveying the sky in case of danger. Since Mum and Dad have died I have been horribly aware of our fragility and the ephemeral nature of our life on this earth. The Norse tale about life being like a bird flying out of the darkness and through a long-house, where everyone is feasting and shouting, and then flying out of the window and into darkness again has never seemed more apt.But what an extraordinarily beautiful year it has been. Spring seemed so exuberant, so full of promise. The summer was languid and sun-kissed, and the autumn seems likely to end in a crescendo of bright berries and autumn leaves. Did I just never notice it before?

I hear a strange clicking sound from the white-beam and see a squirrel coming down from one of the two dreys built in the treetop. This is quite a well-grown youngster now, and it has learned the trick of getting the sunflower seeds from the feeder.

And how had I never noticed that the tail of a grey squirrel looks like a monochrome image of a candle flame?

And then I hear a starling practicing his song, with all the usual whistling and tsscking that I associate with adult birds. I hope you can hear it over the background noise.

And so, I have come to trust that the garden will always provide something sustaining, something to make me feel less bruised and vulnerable. Whenever I sit there alone and don’t distract myself with my phone or a newspaper, whenever I just allow myself to become still and my senses to tune in to what’s going on, something will appear. Something that was there all the time, but I was just too busy to notice. And therein lies a lesson, I think.

Dear Readers, it’s the time of year when, pandemic or no pandemic, we have to tidy up the pond. The hornwort has done so well that we pull kilos of the stuff out of the water and pile it on the bank so that any invertebrates can wriggle back to safety. The frogs are always less than impressed, and stick their heads up to see what fresh hell is being enacted. Fortunately there is still lots of cover and so they soon relax.

The weather has gone from cold enough for me to take a hot water bottle to bed to an estimated 84 degrees tomorrow, which is most unseasonal. And as if to point out that summer isn’t quite over yet, a trio of common darter dragonflies were soon zipping above the pond, with one of them repeatedly bobbing down to the water as if laying eggs.

Common darter (Sympetrum striolatum)

These are very confiding dragonflies and are difficult to spook – a few years ago I was sitting beside a pond when a common darter actually landed on my arm, giving me a chance to have a good close look at those amazing dark red and green eyes. I felt very privileged to be used as a perch by such a splendid creature.

I spent a bit of time cutting back some of the hemp agrimony (though I will leave some for the birds and for hibernating insects). A hummingbird hawk moth popped in for about five seconds to feed on the remaining flowers, so I will leave the rest for a few weeks. At some point I’ll have to take out the waterlily leaves as well, but they can wait for a while. My next priority will be to get my bulbs planted – as usual I have bought way too many, but I never could resist a special offer. I am going to give honey garlic a go this year (on the recommendation of my Gardening For Wildlife book), plus some more fritillaries and a raft  of grape hyacinths who don’t seem to mind the shade at the back of the garden. Plus I have bought some more cyclamen coum and hederifolium for my woodland border, which currently looks as if a bomb has hit it. Who else is planting bulbs? Any recommendations for spring bulbs for shade? Bluebells would be an obvious choice, but after trying numerous times with English bluebell bulbs I am going to try to plant them in the green in spring.

Honey garlic (Nectaroscordum siculum) (Photo One)

So, the year has turned, regardless of our little human concerns. I rather like September – it has always felt more like a beginning than January to me. I got married in September, we moved to this house in September (ten years ago now), and of course the school year starts in September. Although nature is getting ready, in the Northern Hemisphere at least, to tuck itself in for the winter, I always feel more energised and up for a challenge as the nights draw in. It will be interesting to see what unfolds.

Photo Credits

Photo One by David J. Stang – source: David Stang. First published at ZipcodeZoo.com, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61178086

Riggit Galloways (Photo One)

Dear Readers, my post on Native by Patrick Laurie had me thinking about native breeds of domestic animal, and how varied and beautiful they are. And so, this week, our mission is simple – can we match the animal to the country that it comes from? And, to make life a little easier, this week I am going to experiment with giving you a whole week to submit your answers, so they will be published next Saturday, and to be ‘marked’ you need to get your answers into the comments by 5 p.m. UK time on Friday.

So, you will get one mark for the correct country, and a second mark if you can actually name the breed. As normal, if you don’t want to be influenced by those who have gone before, write your answers down on a piece of paper before you pop the answers into the comments.

So, if you think that the piggy in photo 1 is from Australia, your answer is 1) a)

And before you ask, the Riggit Galloways in Photo One are from Scotland.

Onwards!

a) Australia

b) Iceland

c) France

d) Turkmenistan

e) Hungary

f) Norway

g) USA

h) South Africa

i) Democratic Republic of Congo

j) Ireland

k) Turkey

l) India

m) Scotland

n) Belgium

o) Russia

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

8) The rabbit please (though one extra mark for the breed of dog…)

9)

10)

11)

12)

13)

14)

15)

Echinacea

Dear Readers, can it really be nearly eight months since my last visit to the garden centre? This year has seemed interminable and yet simultaneously the days have sped past. Today, I went to the Sunshine Garden Centre in Bounds Green with my friend J, and it lived up to its name. I have never met such friendly staff as the people at this place, and it really lifted my spirits to see all the plants. The restaurant was also open with a little bit of outdoor seating and vegan chocolate truffle cake. It was so satisfying to do something that felt the tiniest bit normal, even though with Covid rates doubling every eight days in the UK at present we could all be back in lockdown soon I suspect.

Pink Salvia

The mood of the autumn seems to be ‘shades of pink’. I’d never seen a pink salvia before, but here we are. My garden is a bit too shady for salvias to be really happy, but they are splendid bee plants, and a few queen bumblebees were buzzing about here. As regular readers will know, I like to let the bees choose what I buy, but I have to be sensible too about what will actually survive in the garden.

Lovely heathers, but they don’t like my garden either, even the ones that don’t need ericaceous soil.

And as foxgloves are biennial, these will die after they’ve flowered. Maybe I’d get some self-seeded ones, but I suspect not.

I have always been fond of the ornamental cabbages, but again I have to resist. There is no room in my garden for anything that can’t punch its weight for at least two seasons.

But sometimes I have my preconceptions tested, and today was just such a day. My friend is very fond of cyclamen, and was buying some for her pots.

‘Gosh’, I said, ‘There’s a honeybee on that cyclamen’.

I have always written cyclamen off as far as pollinators go, but it seems I was wrong. Common carder bees were going mad collecting the pollen, and there were queen bumblebees too. I am sure that I have never seen this before. Is it just this particular variety, I wonder, or have I just never noticed?

My Gardening for Wildlife book doesn’t give cyclamen a single mention. Gardeners, what do you think? Is it just that the bees of North London have learned a new skill, or has something else changed? Whatever the reason, I shall consider giving cyclamen some more room in my garden going forward.

Black Beauty by Anna Sewell

Dear Readers, I believe that the books that we read when we’re growing up can change the way that we look at the world, and so today I wanted to mention one of my favourites, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty.  I was an urban child who grew up in the East End of London, and I swear that I had never seen a real live horse , but  this didn’t stop me being completely and utterly obsessed by them.The man in the corner shop, Mr Battel,  had a plastic model of a horse that advertised White Horse whisky. It took pride of place in the big window, illuminated by a single spotlight, and I would gaze at it with such love that one day Mr Battel took pity and gave it to me.

White Horse Whisky (Photo One)

This was the start of a collection of plastic model horses. I had just  learned to knit, so I made them not only full sets of medieval chainmail(for jousting)  but trouser suits for as well (and if you’ve never seen a plastic horse in a cerise flared trouser suit then I have to say that you’ve never lived). The horses used to share the bed with me , in spite of their being cold and rather unyielding.  Thinking about it now, I suspect that I just wanted to keep everything safe and snug. I have always hated it when someone or something is omitted from the proceedings: I was familiar even at this early age with being the ‘odd one out’, so it felt important that everyone was included, even if they were a bit difficult to cuddle.

And yet, it wasn’t until I read Black Beauty that the idea of the horse as a creature that might have complex emotions, just like me, began to coalesce. What a difficult read this book is for a sensitive child! I know people sometimes complain about the issues raised in Young Adult books these days, but the animal cruelty and the realism about the short, hard lives of working horses was devastating to me. And, indeed, Sewell didn’t write the book for children; she wanted adults to know about the mistreatment of the horses that she saw on the streets eveery day. Sewell wrote ‘Black Beauty’  in the last months of her life when she was confined to her house as an invalid; as a child she had broken both her ankles in an accident and the medical care she received afterwards was inadequate, leaving her with a permanent disability that became worse towards the end of her life.  It’s difficult not to see Sewell’s injuries as parallel to those that occur when Black Beauty has a fall, which damages his knees and brings him into a cycle of harder and harder work. This book has been called the ‘most influential anti-cruelty novel’ of all time.

Anthropomorphism has a bad name these days, but anyone who has ever owned a pet, or worked with animals, knows that although they aren’t the same as human beings, they can feel many of the same things. I have seen my cat afraid, befuddled, curious, anxious, relaxed, , happy and mischievous, often in the space of half an hour. I find it difficult to comprehend how, knowing this, people can torment animals or ignore their similarity to us, although I suppose it the cruelty isn’t that surprising, considering how easy it seems to be to put aside the desperate need of members of our own species. I wept when Black Beauty sees his friend Ginger’s body passing on its way to the knacker’s yard, and it filled me with such rage that, aged eight, I wrote and illustrated a little book on ‘riding and stable management’, full of advice on how to tie a halter and full of information about  what proportion of oats were appropriate at what times of year.

No, I still hadn’t seen a horse.

But then, when I was about ten, we went on holiday and Dad noticed that there was something that might interest me nearby. So, we all crammed into the Ford Popular and headed off. It wasn’t until I saw the sign for Shire Horse farm that I realised that my Dad (who never did anything by halves) had found somewhere that had the largest horses in the world. I will never forget the way that the ground thundered as the horses galloped around the paddock, the feeling of fear as one approached, looming larger and large, and the joy as he delicately took an apple from the palm of my hand and crunched the whole thing in a single bite. I remember how delicate the skin on his neck was as it twitched to get rid of the flies, and the size of his feet, bigger than dinner plates.

And somehow I still loved horses, but the idea of riding them no longer appealed. It seemed to me that these creatures were somehow too magnificent to be used to carry lumpen humans around. They seemed too good for us, somehow. How blessed we are to live on this planet and to be surrounded by such extraordinary creatures, and how easy it is to take it for granted. I sometimes think that if we saw the true wonder and complexity of the world that we live on, it would cleave us in two like lightning.

Photo Two

Photo Credits

Photo One from https://www.hemswell-antiques.com/antiques/advertising-collectables/kelsboro-ware-white-horse-scotch-whisky-figurine-70146.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIwtyx5v7e6wIVR5nVCh2IsAFKEAQYBSABEgJIR_D_BwE

Photo Two from https://www.globetrotting.com.au/horse-breed-shire-horse/