Common toad (Bufo bufo) (Photo One)

Dear Readers, I love my garden pond. I love the frogs and the tadpoles. I love seeing the occasional newt (though I haven’t seen one recently). But what I would love to see most is a toad. They are long-lived creatures (in captivity they have lived for up to fifty years) and even in the wild they can reach fifteen years. They move around slowly and deliberately, and they always seem to me to be slightly wiser than their flibberty-gibbet froggy relatives (I know, I’m an amphibian snob). But toads have I none. On the other hand, my friend J, who has a garden pond literally the size of a dustbin lid in her Islington garden has just seen seven.

Seven toads! It’s like a fairy story.

It is true that frogs are rather less fussy about their ponds than toads – they have been known to deposit their eggs in temporary ponds (and even large puddles), where the water heats up quickly and the tadpoles develop quickly. Toads, on the other hand, return to their ancestral ponds to lay their eggs, so I think we can assume that there has been a pond in my friend’s corner of the garden for quite some time. But surely there must be a first ‘ancestral toad’, or, indeed, two, who discover a pond for the first time and decide that it will do?

I am going to put out little road signs at toad eye-level up and down my street, I think.

Another interesting, recently discovered fact, is that toads can climb. My friend noted that when  her neighbours cut down a long-established ivy, it was full of toads, all of whom were located to her garden (though she’d had toads before then). And a dormouse monitoring scheme run by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species in the UK found 50 reports of amphibians, mostly toads, using bat boxes and  hollow trees. Toads are a favourite food of grass snakes (most other predators will only eat a toad once because they have toxins in their skin), and grass snakes are not great climbers, so this could be one reason. Another is that toads are parasitised by the larvae of the Toad Fly (Lucilia bufonivora), which kill adult toads, so maybe they are more protected by being hidden away.

At any rate, one thing that I’m not going  to do is to ‘borrow’ one of my friend’s toads – although they look splendid, there is no knowing if they have a fungal disease, and I wouldn’t want to spread it to my frogs. Moving spawn about is another excellent way of spreading disease from one location to another, tempting though it is. Having the pond has taught me that, pace Kevin Costner, if you build it they will (mostly) come. Maybe one day a toad will decide that the pond is a perfect place to breed. Until then, I shall just have to enjoy my friend’s toads vicariously.

Common toad (Photo Two)

Photo Credits

Photo One by Bernie, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Two by Kuebi = Armin Kübelbeck, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Gasteranthus extinctus, rediscovered in the cloud forests of Ecuador (Photograph by Riley Fortier, article from here)

Dear Readers, in what seems to be becoming a theme, a plant that is actually named ‘extinctus’ has been rediscovered in Ecuador. Last seen over 40 years ago, Gasteranthus extinctus is a low-growing plant with heavily-veined leaves and bright orange flowers. Botanists had extensively surveyed the cloud forests in the Centinela region of Western Ecuador, and had discovered dozens of species of plants that were believed to be unique to the area. Sadly, by 1990 it was thought that the entire cloud forest had been destroyed to make way for farmland, and that these endemic species had also been destroyed. The extent of the deforestation was so great that the biologist E.O Wilson coined the term ‘Centinelan destruction’ in 1992, to describe plant species which are driven to extinction before they can even be described by science.

However, the most recent study has shown that a number of supposedly extremely local plants, including Gasteranthus extinctus, were not quite as local as was thought. ‘Our’ plant has been found at no less than five other sites, all fragments of the cloud forest that have not been destroyed. Although these are undoubtedly degraded habitats, they are enabling not only plants but other forest inhabitants to cling on, including the Ecuadorian Mantled Howler Monkey ( (Alouatta palliata aequatorialis), listed as Vulnerable by CITES.

Ecuadorian mantled howler and juvenile (Photo by Charles J. Sharp)

Little is known about Gasteranthus extinctus, but its bright orange colour and strangely-shaped flowers has suggested to some botanists that it may be hummingbird-pollinated, not unusual amongst the cloud-forest dwelling plants of the region.

What the rediscovery of this ‘extinct’ plant points up to me is a variety of things. Firstly, how resilient nature can be, and how plants and animals can cling on in even in degraded and fragmentary habitats – there are lessons for us here in the UK, where some of the rarest insects are living in brown-field sites that seem most unpromising from a human perspective. Secondly, how much greater the chance of survival for a variety of species could be if these fragments were joined up – the risk of isolated populations is always that the genetic diversity is reduced, leaving species much more vulnerable to disease/climate change/human interference. And finally, we should never give up. The world is much more complicated, and astonishing, than we can comprehend.

The short article from the Guardian is here. For more detail and background, the scientific paper is here.

Spring lamb – photo by Tim Pokorny at https://www.flickr.com/photos/soppyfrog/3931666786

Dear Readers, spring is such a lovely time of year – if you live in the Northern Hemisphere as I do, there’s such a sense of the days getting longer and everything coming into bud. And in the UK, this is Easter Weekend, and most of us are lucky enough to have Friday and Monday off. This holiday is such a mixture of the Christian and the Pagan, with its lambs representing Jesus Christ, its eggs as symbols of new birth, and the Easter bunny as a symbol of fertility. And so, I thought to myself, why not do a three part quiz on these symbolic animals?

Below are photos of five rabbit species, five chicks, and five lambs, from around the world. “All” you have to do is match the name of the animal to the photo. Simples! as that very irritating meerkat on the television says. Pop your answers into the comments by close of play next Friday (5 p.m. UK time on Friday 22nd April) and the answers will be published on Saturday 23rd April.

So, if you think the animal in Photo One is a pygmy rabbit, your answer is 1)A)

Have fun, and I hope you’re having a peaceful and relaxing weekend, wherever you are.

Rabbits (and hares 🙂 )

A) Pygmy Rabbit (Brachylagus idahoensis)

B) European Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus)

C) Snowshoe Hare (Lepus americanus)

D) European Hare (Lepus europaeus)

E) Cape Hare (Lepus capensis)

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

Chicks

F) Woodpigeon (Calumba palumbus)

G) Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus)

H) Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea)

I) Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus)

J) Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus)

6)

7)

8)

9)

10)

Lambs

I am taking quite a loose definition of ‘lamb’ to include the offspring of wild sheep and goats as I think this is a bit tricky…

K) Rocky Mountain Goat (Oreamnos americanus)

L) Chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra)

M) Mouflon (Ovis gmelini)

N) Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis)

O) Alpine Ibex (Capra ibex)

11)

12)

13)

14)

15)

Dear Readers,  we had two teams playing this week – Rosalind and Mark Atkins got a very respectable score of 7.5 out of 10 but it was the redoubtable Fran and Bobby Freelove who got ten out of ten, so well done Fran and Bobby! Are they unbeatable, I wonder? Let’s see with our Easter quiz tomorrow…..

1). Stinking iris (Iris foetidissima) – its leaves are said to smell like roast beef if crushed.

2) White Bryony (Bryonia diocia) – yes, a member of the cucumber family!

3. Musk Mallow (Malva moschata) – the plant was believed by St Simeon to have cured his blindness

4. Great Mullein (Verbascum thapsis) has soft, hairy leaves, much favoured by carder bees (and people in need of toilet paper, allegedly)

5) Creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia) – its leaves are thought to resemble coins, and of course it has golden flowers.

6) Meadow Vetchling (Lathyrus pratensis), eaten by the caterpillars of the wood white butterfly.

7) Sweet Woodruff (Gallium odoratum), used as a bedstraw, and to flavour the beer Berliner Weisse, and a German drink called May Wine.

8) Sorrel (Rumex acetosa), the leaves of which are, indeed, lemon-flavoured.

9) Bird Cherry (Prunus padus) – birds do eat the ‘cherries’, but the stones are full of cyanide.

10) Danish Scurvygrass (Cochlearia danica) – spreading along the side of the road where there’s run-off from salting for ice.

Ivory-billed woodpeckers – photo taken in Louisiana in 1935 (Photo from By Arthur A. Allen – http://extinct-website.co.uk/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=12&products_id=528, 

Dear Readers, we could all do with some good news at the moment I’m sure, and so it gives me great pleasure to let you know that the ivory-billed woodpecker, one of the largest woodpeckers in the world, might not be extinct after all. As elusive as the Loch Ness Monster, this bird has been the Holy Grail of birdwatchers since its last universally accepted sighting in 1944. Since then it has been declared extinct, but as it lives in the dense swamps and wetlands of the American Deep South it’s always been thought possible that it might be going about its business unobserved.

A three-year project in the area, however, has involved setting up camera traps and audio recording equipment. Steve Latta, who is leading the research, said that every member of the team had heard the bird’s call (which apparently sounds like a child’s tin trumpet). But Latta also had a close encounter with the bird:

“Latta himself saw the bird fly upwards in front of him, showing the distinctive white edges to its wings. “It flew up at an angle and I watched it for about six to eight seconds, which was fairly long for an ivory-billed woodpecker,” he said. “I was surprised. I was visibly shaking afterwards. You realize you’ve seen something special that very few people had the opportunity to see.”

The size and the markings of the bird captured in the photos is strong evidence that it is not another woodpecker, such as a pileated or red-headed woodpecker, Latta said. “It reinforced to me that, yes, this bird does exist and left me feeling a sense of responsibility to protect it for the future,” he said.”

Ivory-billed woodpeckers as illustrated by John James Audubon in ‘Birds of America’

The poor old ivory-billed woodpecker has suffered from habitat destruction and being shot, so no wonder it wants to keep a low profile. Apparently it flies as soon as it sees human beings, and who can blame it? Even Audubon, doyen of bird illustrators, often shot his subjects. I would love to believe that this bird still exists, though doubters say that the researchers are seeing pileated woodpeckers, a similar species. In a way, our insistence that it is extinct and not merely hiding is yet another example of our arrogance. How could a bird this big possibly escape our notice? It reminds me a little of when Western scientists ‘discover’ an animal that local people have always known about. Anyhow, fingers crossed, and let’s let scientist Geoffrey Hill, who also led an expedition to try to find the bird, have the last word.

“People who are into birds are fascinated by them. Ivory bills couldn’t care less, though. They hate all people.”

For the whole article, and some more photos, have a look here.

Dear Readers, we went for the first litter-pick of 2022 in Coldfall Wood yesterday. You might remember how I really like a bit of litter-picking – after a long day of sitting hunched over my laptop it gets me moving, gives me some fresh air and a new perspective, and makes me feel useful. It’s also good to compete inconspicuously with your fellow litter-pickers – we haven’t quite come to blows over who gets to ‘bag’ a crisp packet, but it can get pretty exciting, let me tell you. Anyhow, yesterday we rewarded by masses of blackthorn, whole bushes of it. It looked as if there had been a late snowfall, there was so much frothy white.

And, actually, there wasn’t too much litter – we haven’t had many warm days, but it has been the Easter Holidays so I was pleasantly surprised that there wasn’t much debris. Apart, that is, from along the fence-line between the playing fields and St Pancras and Islington Cemetery. Honestly? This is all piled up on the Cemetery side of the fence. We are in discussion with the management at the Cemetery so hopefully it will be removed soon, before it cascades down the slope and brains someone.

There are lots of baby horse chestnuts popping up in this area – I love their leaves. They remind me of little green hands.

We got several bags full of rubbish and then, as we crossed back across the ‘Everglades’ (the wet part of the wood), we saw this very confiding crow. At first I thought that he or she had some white feathers in her wings, but when we looked more closely, it’s clear that there’s some feather damage there. The bird can fly a bit, but it’s rather worrying. S/he looked at us with a curious eye, and hopped/flew over to the next stump when we seemed to be too close.

It’s always sad when you see a wild creature that’s been injured in some way – sometimes you’re able to catch them so that you can take them to a vet or a sanctuary, but sometimes they’re just about agile enough to evade your advances. My friend A may well pop back today to see how the crow is doing, so watch this space. At the very least, these are intelligent and adaptable birds, so fingers crossed.

Wayfaring Tree (Viburnum lantana)

Dear Readers, it’s always fun to ‘meet’ a new native plant, and so I was very chuffed to come across this wayfaring tree in Camley Natural Park on Saturday. It’s one of those plants that I think I’ve walked past a hundred times, but have only just noticed. It has a kind of dusty, straggly look about it, but close up it reveals many beauties.

At first glance, I thought it was a guelder rose, but the leaves are clearly different, being oval and heavily veined. Plus, where guelder rose has flowers that look like mini-hydrangeas, the wayfaring tree has waxy flowers with a sweet scent, though the jury is out on whether it’s delightful or cloying.

The wayfaring tree was named by the herbalist Gerard, who noticed that it grew alongside the paths on the road from London to Wiltshire and so,if you saw one, you knew you weren’t far from civilisation. Another old name for the plant was ‘hoarwithy’ – hoar meaning ‘silvery-grey’, and referring to the hairs on the underside of the leaves, and ‘withy’ meaning ‘a pliable stem’. The stems of the wayfaring tree were used to tie up bundles of hay and straw, and also to make whip handles, leading to yet another name  – ‘twist wood’.

The wood was also used to make arrows: poor old Ötzi, the bronze age man found dead in the Austrian Alps in 1991, had a whole quiver-full of arrows made from the wayfaring tree, but presumably he didn’t get a chance to use them before he was murdered.

The berries are very attractive, shiny red and black, but they are also mildly poisonous, although this doesn’t deter the birds. Waxwings and thrushes will eat the fruit, but as it isn’t their favourite food it will often linger into the winter, so it’s available when everything else is gone.

Berries of the Wayfaring Tree (Photo One)

The berries and in particular the bark contain high levels of tannins, which have been used to treat asthma, sore throats, gingivitis and smoker’s cough, usually as a gargle. In Eastern Europe it has been used to produce a yellow dye, and as an ink.

The wayfaring tree can be found right across Europe and Asia, and here it features in a Japanese print, featuring a rather splendid magpie.

Magpie on viburnum (Public Domain)

And finally, a poem. Although it isn’t directly about the wayfaring tree, it is about wayfaring, and I can think of several of our leaders for whom this would be most apposite. It’s by Stephen Crane, the American poet best known for the novel The Red Badge of Courage. See what you think….

The wayfarer, by Stephen Crane

The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
“Ha,” he said,
“I see that none has passed here
In a long time.”
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
“Well,” he mumbled at last,
“Doubtless there are other roads.”

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Georg Buzin – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=109258436

Dear Readers, one of the highlights of the summer holidays when I was a child was heading off to Wanstead Flats to feed the ducks. Off we’d go with a plastic bag full of stale Mother’s Pride, and I remember feeling so happy as the mallards and tufted ducks hurried over to partake of our offerings. I was always less happy to see the Canada geese, with their hard serrated beaks and habit of hissing, and the swans were always very daunting when they waddled out of the water, as I seem to remember them  being bigger than me at the time. But I always felt that, by sharing our food with the animals, we were somehow helping them. We were a very poor family, and so we never had much to give them, but at least we were sharing what we had.

Sadly, life doesn’t seem to be quite as simple these days. A friend of mine pointed out that there are signs in Hampstead Heath alongside the lakes, asking people not to feed the waterfowl. I am pretty sure that you are also not allowed to do this at Walthamstow Wetlands. And there are many clear reasons not to through the sourdough into the nearest pond, as the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust points out on their website. However, the issue is not so much feeding the ducks, as the kinds of things that we feed them.

The general message seems to be that bread is fine for ducks, so long as it’s in moderation, and herein lies the rub. During lockdown many people visited their local parks and ponds and became very fond of feeding the birds, so there were much higher volumes of visitors than usual, and most of them were feeding bread. Sadly, it seems that birds can get ‘hooked’ on bread, but if that’s all they eat they lose muscle mass and may be reluctant to forage for their natural foods, such as waterweeds and small invertebrates. It’s like being fed a diet of cake and then being asked to go back to salad – it might be good for us but it’s a bit of a wrench.

Protein inbalance and excess fat can also cause the Angel Wing syndrome in ducks and geese, so bread is implicated here too.

Plus, if there is a lot of feeding of bread an unnaturally high population of waterfowl can survive, which puts them at risk if, for example, a waterside cafe closes, or if people no longer visit (as I imagine has happened a lot as people drift back to work after lockdown). Excess numbers of birds can cause mess from their faeces, and uneaten food can attract rats and create the conditions for algal blooms.

So, what should we be feeding the ducks? The WWT recommends chopped or ripped up green vegetables, wheat grain and specialist foods, while the Canals and Rivers Trust suggests sweetcorn, frozen peas, oats, seeds and cooked or uncooked rice. I can’t help thinking that some of these foods would be a bit expensive for the average family, but lots of people have rice or oats knocking about. And it’s a shame that you can’t buy food for ducks when you buy your coffee at some of these places – it would be a great way to encourage people to feed something more healthy.

So, on balance we need to ease up on the bread, but I do think that for most people, especially children, feeding the ducks is a great way to get close to nature, and to start to be curious about the natural world. If we are a little bit more informed and mindful about our relationships with animals, everyone will benefit.

Dear Readers, you might remember that I made an autumn visit to Camley Street Natural Park in Kings Cross not long after it opened, and that I was very impressed by the tranquillity of the site. I was a little worried that, on a beautiful spring day, it would be extremely busy but it manages to retain its serenity even when there are more people about. We had a coffee and watched the coots chasing one another up and down the canal for a bit – they use their huge feet like little outboard motors. I was much struck by this graffiti too. Is Egg a human, or is this simply a declaration of culinary appreciation?

Then it’s off for a meander around the meadows and ponds. The reserve is adjacent to Coaldrops Yard which is now a very fancy shopping mall, but previously this whole area would have been used for loading and unloading coal, brought down from the Midlands by train and barge, and used to create town gas, which would have been stored in the gas holders in the first photo. The site was derelict by the 1970s, but was acquired as a nature reserve by Camden Council in 1985. This is its second incarnation as a reserve, and very nice it is too.

The meadow/bog area features all kinds of plants – green alkanet (which I am quickly coming to think of as the London Weed, it seems to be everywhere, three-cornered garlic with its triangular stems,  teasel for the goldfinches, and some red deadnettle for the bumblebees.

Green alkanet (and some sedum/hylotelephium with its brown heads to the left of the photo)

Three-cornered garlic

Red dead-nettle

Teasel

There was also a herd of wheelbarrows, just waiting for some volunteers who want to do some weeding or pond clearance.

There is cow parsley and alexanders: cow parsley is the earliest of the umbellifers to flower around here, and alexanders is becoming more common, I would say.

Cow parsley

Alexanders

There are some bluebells too, hybrid I’d say but pretty nonetheless.

Then it’s along to the pond proper – I rather liked this view of the tree trunks reflected in the water.

There are a few moorhens around, disappearing shyly into the reeds. I have heard tell of some reed buntings too, but didn’t see any today, though I did hear the call of a chiffchaff. I love wandering along the paths through the woodland, and they have some willow fencing, so they don’t have the same problem with trampling that some sites do. Plus, they have a London Wildlife Trust volunteer on site who patrols the paths to answer questions and make sure that people aren’t careering through the undergrowth.

There is some early hawthorn blossom….

And the wayfaring tree (Viburnum lantana) is in flower – it occurs to me that I have never done a Wednesday Weed on this plant, so watch this space!

And so it was a very pleasant meander around Camley Street. It is, of course, busier at the weekend, so there was no heron this time, but wrens and long-tailed tits buzzed through the branches. It feels like a real oasis in this bustling area, which is still full of cranes and builders and general development. If you are in need of a nice coffee and a chance to reconnect, or if you have business in this part of the world, I recommend a visit here to recharge your batteries, and to see how even a very small area can punch above its weight in terms of biodiversity.