Alpine Accentors (Prunella collaris) (Photo by Mike Hawtree)

Dear Readers, in my Magic Animals post last week I asked to hear about the animals that you most enjoy when they visit your garden, and today I have two very different sets of critters for your delectation. First up is Mike, who lives in the beautiful Valais area in Switzerland. Mike blogs at Alittlebitoutoffocus and his posts are always full of splendid photos of flowers and butterflies, so when I find myself pining for the mountains (which has been a frequent occurrence this year) I can pop over and cheer myself up.One bird that Mike sees regularly that we don’t get in the UK is the Alpine Accentor (Prunella collaris), a bird closely related to our dunnock, and with a similarly intriguing sex life. The birds hang out in groups of 3-4 females and a similar number of males. The females will attempt to mate with all the chaps, and the males will aim for similar success with the ladies. However, one of the males is likely to be more dominant and so will try to prevent the other males from mating if he can. It all sounds a bit ‘Abigail’s Party’ to me, but it just goes to show that even a non-descript little brown bird can have a whole lot of fun.

Alpine accentor – photo by Mike Hawtree.

And then there’s a bird that I’ve never seen in East Finchley: though it’s a British native, it loves the coniferous forests of Scotland. What a cracking photo this is!

Crested tit (Lolophanes cristatus) Photo by Mike Hawtree

Crested tits survive through the winter by winkling out the insects that  hide in pine cones and in bark. It’s a very distinctive and talkative little bird (allegedly since I have never been lucky enough to hear one  🙁 ) and apparently it is ‘easily approached’. No chance of finding one in my garden, I fear, but how lucky we all are that Mike is a dab hand with the camera.

And now to the other end of the world: Anne blogs every single day from her home in South Africa, and she has a garden bird list that is easily six times the length of mine. Her blog, Something Over Tea, is a fascinating insight not just into the wildlife of the area, but into the community as a whole. And she has some truly spectacular birds visiting her garden – how about this African Harrier Hawk (Polyboroides typus)?

African Harrier Hawk (Polyboroides typus) Photo by Anne Irwin

What a spectacular bird! And apparently it has double-jointed knees, so that it can reach into inaccessible cracks and crannies for prey – it will hang from a weaver bird nest with one foot while searching inside with the other one for nestlings. Its ability to climb and its omnivorous eating habits (it eats the fruit of the oil palm as well as all the usual small creatures) make it a successful and adaptable bird.

I was even more jealous about this visitor, although I can understand that I might be in a minority.

Puff Adder (Bitis arietans) Photo by Anne Irwin

This is a puff adder, responsible for more deaths from snakebite in Africa than any other species. This is for a variety of reasons: it’s a widespread and relatively common snake, it can turn up in heavily populated areas, and apparently it has an ‘aggressive disposition’. When I visited the Kruger, our guide told us that the snake likes to sleep on the paths at night because they’re warmer, which is not good when combined with a local populace who often go barefoot. However, as they have especially long fangs which can penetrate soft leather, even your shoes might not protect you. Nonetheless, like most snakes attacking is a last resort: the snake will puff up and hiss continuously, while deciding whether to strike or to retreat. I love the matter-of-fact way in which Anne describes the encounter:

‘This Puffadder had been seen in our garden for several days in a row and
then one evening decided to venture into our house. Needless to say it
was bundled out forthwith!’

So there we go. Gardens vary so much from place to place, from country to country, and yet we all love to see the wildlife that visits. If you have photos of creatures in your garden, drop me a line on viv_palmer_1999@yahoo.co.uk and I’ll feature you in one of my future posts. In the meantime, do drop in on Mike at Alittlebitoutoffocus and Anne at Something Over Tea for a taste of drops in to visit gardens in other parts of the world.

Danish Scurvygrass (Cochlearia danica)

Dear Readers, I do love finding a ‘proper’ new weed. Danish scurvygrass (Cochlearia danica) is a member of the cabbage family, and used to be found at the seaside, scattered on rocky shores or dangling from cliffs. However, since the 1980’s it has spread along roads that are salted during icy periods, and so it has popped up in the cemetery, right next to where the traffic roars along the North Circular Road. Salt spells the end of the game for most plants, but where they are already adapted to briny coastal conditions they have a great advantage: they can grow where not much else will. And I just learned that the name for a plant or animal that enjoys salty conditions is a halophile, so that’s another new word.

The speed of the traffic wafts the seeds along the road and Danish scurvygrass can often be spotted under the crash barriers in the central reservation of a motorway, and for a view of the plant in all its roadside glory, have a look here.In Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey reports how the plant seems to be spreading along main roads at a rate of about 10 to 15 miles per year.

‘In March and April, its profusion of low-growing, small white flowers can look like a layer of hoar-frost on the edge of the central reservation’

The name of the plant might make you think that it had been brought over by the Vikings but in fact this is a native plant, although Scandinavians might well have chewed on a handful during their voyages because it is very high in Vitamin C. The leaves are tiny though, so you’d need to pick quite a lot to stop your fingernails from dropping out. Pliny the Elder(23-79 A.D) first described a disease that sounds a lot like scurvy and mentioned that there was a Herba Britannica that could cure it. In 1662, the Rev. George Moore suffered so much from scurvy that he devoted himself to the plants that could cure it, publishing Cochlearia curiosa: or the curiosities of scurvygrass ‘ in 1676. There are various species of scurvy grass in the UK, and common scurvygrass (Cochlearia officinalis) was the one most commonly used medicinally. This species is a real coastal plant, though it is also taking to the (salted) roads in the South West.

Common scurvygrass (Cochlearia officinalis) on Bear Island in Norway, with Guillemots

What is astonishing is that although the cure for scurvy is fruit and vegetables, this was forgotten over and over again during the history of mankind – in fact it took until 1747 before James Lind, a naval surgeon on HMS Salisbury, conducted trials of different kinds of foods to see which actually worked, concluding that citrus fruits were the best at preventing the disease. Sadly he was ignored, and during the 18th century more sailors died of scurvy than from enemy action. These days scurvy can still be found, even in the UK, particularly amongst those with alcoholism, mental illness or who are suffering generally from malnutrition. In the world as a whole it is a disease of the most desperate, and can frequently be found in refugee camps.

The leaves of Danish scurvygrass are said to taste like horseradish, with a mustardy, peppery flavour, and have featured in the dishes of Rene Redzepi, formerly owner of Noma, voted the world’s best restaurant on multiple occasions. Redzepi forages for food in his native Denmark, so it’s no surprise that Danish scurvygrass should crop up as an ingredient. The buds can also be eaten, apparently, by those who don’t mind their ‘explosive’ taste. As someone who accidentally ate a chunk of wasabi paste the other day and spent ten minutes with their nose on fire and their eyes watering, I think I’ll pass, but let me know how you get on. Several sites describe the plant as ‘an acquired taste’ and having a ‘punch in the face flavour’, and in fact one site actually mentions that it can be used in place of wasabi, or in pesto. However, for sheer fun have a look at this clip from The Social, a Scottish TV show, where you can find out how to incorporate scurvygrass into your bangers and mash. And in case you still have a whole road-side of scurvy grass to use up, here’s a recipe for scurvy grass ale which also incorporates senna pods, surely not a good idea.

The flowers are said to have a sweet smell, at least on South Uist where the plant grows on the cliffs.

And finally, a poem. John Clare had such an understanding of the countryside in which he roamed, and I especially love his attention to the small, unnoticed flowers of hedgerow and field. This poem, by Susan Kinsolving, seems to me to sum up the tragedy of the enclosure of England, and the how the world was changed. It won an Individual award from the Poetry Society of America in 2009, and well-deserved too.

Susan Kinsolving

PARLIAMENT PASSES THE INCLOSING LANDS ACT, 1809

The open-field system would end. Every acre was enumerated
in a way John Clare could not comprehend. Why should footpaths
have fences, streams be made straight, why fell trees, wall a field
and lock it with a gate? No longer could he drink from Eastwell
spring;
the bubbling water was penned by scaffolding. No Trespassing

at every turn, posted over scurvy-grass, loosestrife, vetch,
clover, and fern. Clare doffed his cap and wept for his right to
roam;
in chicory, thistle, briony and buttercup, he’d always been at
home.
Or coming upon a gypsy camp (fires and tambourines!) he’d
share
his fleabane, borage, parsley, some beans. Once again the
labouring-class

had lost to the well-to-do, those new proprietors of blackberry,
hemp-
nettle, toadflax, and meadow rue. Clare questioned his sanity,
fearing
a familiar hell, but tramped on to say his farewell to mallow,
teasel,
oxlip, and pimpernel. He knew this ramble was one of his last;
every
field, farm, and forest would be enclosed. The open world was
past.

Horse looking in the mirror (Photo by Baragli, P., Scopa, C., Maglieri, V. et al.
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2271945-horses-may-recognise-themselves-in-a-mirror-hinting-at-self-awareness/#ixzz6ppWpi6L3)

Dear Readers, every time we get a glimpse into the cognition of animals, it seems that we feel a need to raise the bar higher. So it has been with the Mirror Test. In a traditional Mirror Test, an animal is anaesthetised and then a mark is put on a part of the body that can only be seen in a mirror. When the animal revives, it will ‘pass’ the test if it investigates the mark, which scientists believe means that the animal recognises that it sees itself in the mirror, rather than another animal.

Animals that have ‘passed’ this test include great apes, one single Asiatic elephant, dolphins, orcas, the Eurasian magpie and cleaner wrasse, little stripy fish who pick the parasites off of larger fish. Animals that have ‘failed’ include sea lions, a wide variety of monkeys, octopuses and some birds that are renowned for their intelligence, including the New Caledonian Crow (famed for its tool-making abilities) and the African grey parrot (one of which, Alex, had a vocabulary of thousands of words and the ability to sort items into categories by colour or shape). It’s therefore clear that the Mirror Test is not a test of intelligence, but scientists believe that it indicates self-awareness.

So, to the horses. Paolo Baragli of the University of Pisa in Italy released 14 horse one at a time into an area with a large mirror. After an initial period of being aggressive to, or curious about, the horse that they saw in the mirror, Baragli reports that they started to do things like stick out their tongues and watch their reflections as they moved their heads from side to side. When a mark was put on their faces, 11 out of the 14 horses spent time trying to remove it by rubbing their heads.

Pretty conclusive, huh? Not according to the developer of the Mirror Test, Gordon Gallup at the University of Albany in New York. He disagrees that the horses recognised themselves in the mirror before the mark was put on, and none of them used the mirror to look at a part of their body that they couldn’t normally see. For Gallup, this is a fundamental part of the process, that is then verified by the use of the ‘mark’.

There have been many criticisms of the Mirror Test. For one thing, dogs don’t pass, largely because they use their sense of smell and hearing much more than their sense of sight. Cats, predictably, fail because they just aren’t interested. Pigs have passed a version of the test in which they use a mirror to find food, but don’t seem especially interested in looking at themselves. Gorillas have repeatedly failed the test, but this might be because eye-contact is seen as an aggressive act and so the apes tend not to spend much time investigating what looks like another gorilla at first glance.

Furthermore, even in animals where individuals display the ‘correct’ behaviour, others may not. Three Asian elephants were given the mirror test at the Bronx Zoo in 2006 – one of them ‘passed’ but the other two did not. This seems to me to say more about the personality of the elephants involved than their cognitive abilities or sense of self.

It’s very common for humans to set up parameters for a test which animals can then ‘pass’ or ‘fail’, without taking into consideration not only the inner worlds of the creatures being investigated, but their physical abilities and the environment in which they lived. I remember the view of Noam Chomsky, who maintained that humans were the only animals with language ability, and remained unimpressed by the chimpanzees and other great apes who were taught, and used, sign language in the 1960’s, even after the chimps started to make up their own nouns (Washoe, the most famous of these apes, made the phrase ‘water+bird’ on seeing a swan. We insist on dragging animals into our world rather than meeting them where they are, and looking at what’s important to them. Our science often shows a cataclysmic failure of imagination.

Nonetheless, it looks as if horses *might* have passed the Mirror Test, and so can be admitted to the pantheon of creatures who are self-aware. This is probably not, however, news to anyone who has spent any time with these animals.

You can read the whole article here 

Dear Readers, I’m sure that for all of us there are animals that, when they appear in our gardens or we bump into them during a walk in the countryside, fill us with awe and joy. For example, my garden is regularly visited by foxes at night, but seeing them in broad daylight always sets me up for the day. This little vixen popped in on Thursday morning  for no apparent reason other than to check if there were any suet pellets for the birds that she could hoover up.

Another creature that always makes me run for my camera is the rose-ringed parakeet. No doubt I would be a lot crosser if they visited every day and dismantled my birdfeeders, but as they only stop by about once a year I am more than happy to see them.

Then there is the grey heron who visited for a few days during 2019 and seemed to spend most of his time eating the frogs in the pond. What a shock he was! And how reading this piece takes me back to those days just after Mum had died, and when Dad was still adjusting to life in the nursing home.

And while we’re on the theme of unexpected visitors, the sparrowhawk always brings a frisson to the garden. To be confronted by the struggle for life that is taking place every day in the natural world is a challenging thing, but I am still stunned by the audacity and the strength of these birds. This visit in 2017 summed it all up for me…

And finally, I would hardly be Bugwoman without having a love for the insects that visit the garden, especially the more unusual ones. This female Emperor Dragonfly absolutely made my day as she tried to lay her eggs on the wooden steps, and I now have some rotting wood permanently placed in the pond just in case she comes back.

And this beautiful rose chafer beetle made my day in 2020, on a hot August afternoon when it felt as if lockdown would never end.

And how about this beautiful Jersey Tiger moth, now being seen in some numbers every year?

So, over to you readers! What are the animals that make you gasp when they make an appearance? What of your garden visitors make you happiest? Pop your answers in the comments, and let me know if you have photos – I’d love to make a ‘favourite garden animals from around the world’ post in a few weeks. I bet we’ve all got some stories to tell!