Dear Readers, this quiz foxed a lot of you two years ago, so let’s see how we get on this time.  How good are we at identifying the various pigeon and dove species that you can find in the UK, not only by sight but also (gasp!) by sound.  So, without further ado, tell me what species of pigeon we’re looking at, and then have a listen to the calls and see if you can match the call to the pigeon.

Answers in the comments by 5 p.m. UK time on Friday 29th April please, and the answers will be posted on Saturday 30th April.

Have fun!

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

And now for the tricky bit. Below are the calls of the five species shown above. Can you match the call to the bird?

6. This is a very ardent individual, but which pigeon is it?

7. How about this little lot?

8. This is an amazing sound, but have you ever heard it?

9. And who is this?

10. And finally, who is this?

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

Dear Readers, the redoubtable Fran and Bobby Freelove were the only players this week, but they got 15 out of 15, so congratulations and well done! As you might have seen from my post on Friday, I am now in Canada, so tomorrow I’m going to run one of my old quizzes, mainly because last time around nobody got it perfectly right :-). Let’s see how we get on this time….

Rabbits (and hares 🙂 )

1) C) Snowshoe Hare (Lepus americanus)

2) E) Cape Hare (Lepus capensis)

3) B) European Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus)

4) A) Pygmy Rabbit (Brachylagus idahoensis)

5) D) European Hare (Lepus europaeus)

Chicks

6) H) Grey Heron (Ardea cinerea)

7) I) Lapwing (Vanellus vanellus)

8) J) Great Crested Grebe (Podiceps cristatus)

9) G) Moorhen (Gallinula chloropus)

10) F) Woodpigeon (Calumba palumbus)

Lambs

11) N) Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis)

12) M) Mouflon (Ovis gmelini)

13) L) Chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra)

14) K) Rocky Mountain Goat (Oreamnos americanus)

15) O) Alpine Ibex (Capra ibex)

Photo Credits

Photo One  By D. Gordon E. Robertson – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24071225

Photo Two By Shah Jahan – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37679801

Photo Three By JJ Harrison (https://www.jjharrison.com.au/) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8283824

Photo Four By United States Bureau of Land Management – [1], [2] (Archived link – [3]), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=188133

Photo Five by By Jean-Jacques Boujot from Paris, France – , CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37547558

Photo Six is public domain

Photo Seven by Frank Vassen from Brussels, Belgium, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Eight is public domain

Photo Nine By Artemy Voikhansky – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40090094

Photo Ten by nottsexminer, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Eleven by By Philipp Haupt from Zug, Switzerland – , CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11249430

Photo Twelve by Cloudtail the Snow Leopard from https://www.flickr.com/photos/blacktigersdream/48624971158

Photo Thirteen from https://wilderness-society.org/keep-5-of-slovakia-wilderness/slovakia-wilderness-0670/

Photo 14 from https://www.irishnews.com/magazine/daily/2018/07/16/news/watch-as-this-baby-mountain-goat-proves-her-incredible-parkour-talent-1383748/

Photo Fifteen is Public Domain

Dear Readers, last year there wasn’t a single leaf of duckweed on the pond. This year, however, it’s back with a vengeance. Where does it go, I wonder? And why is it so much more all-encompassing during some years? At any rate, today my husband set to getting as much of it out as possible, because we are shortly off on an adventure (of which more tomorrow), and we rather fancy not having it all over the pond when we get back.

It’s tricky to remove without catching up the new tadpoles, but we inspected it carefully as it came up. Unfortunately, most of the figwort came up as well, so then I spent some time throwing that back, and very popular with the tadpoles it is too. There must be thousands of the little wrigglers in the pond this year.

So, after much sweeping and pulling and rather a lot of bad language, we managed to clear at least some of the pond surface. I am under no illusion that we’ll get rid of all of it, but some light needs to get through to the oxygenating plants under the surface, and  hopefully this will give them at least some respite before the blooming duckweed gets going again.

In other news, green alkanet is everywhere this year: it’s easy to forget that, although it’s a weed, it is very popular with pollinators, as this honeybee would attest if it could talk.

And the flowering currant has just about reached its peak. It is such a splendid plant, and the hairy-footed flowerbees are all over it. At the moment it seems to be just the black females, though I did see a male on my geraniums. They come and go, these lesser-known bees, and are often unremarked, or described as ‘black bumblebees’. These are actually solitary bees, and very splendid they are too.

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.