Dear Readers, what would a birthday be without a pile of new books? It’s true that I still have a tottering ziggurat of books to read after Christmas, but then clearly I need to have some to take me through to, say, about March, and so a few more turned up, and very welcome they were too.

First up was Alan Bennett’s slim volume ‘House Arrest – The Pandemic Diaries’. I find him extremely readable, whatever the subject, and this little book is about the same size as the Ladybird books that I loved as a child. I can’t help but think of it as ‘The Ladybird Book of Covid’ or something similar. His close attention to his own foibles and those of others, his occasional waspishness and much more frequent generosity make for a thoughtful read. I don’t always agree with his conclusions about life, but I always understand them.

Then, here’s a cheerful birthday read…

I find myself more and more fascinated by death and the things that surround it. I picked this volume up in Waterstones, and was instantly intrigued – Rupert Callender is no ordinary undertaker. As the blurb at the front of the book says:

‘Ru has carried coffins across windswept beaches, sat in pubs with caskets on beer-stained tables, helped children fire flaming arrows into their father’s funeral pyre, turned modern occult rituals into performance art and, with the band members of the KLF, is building the People’s Pyramid of bony bricks in Liverpool – all in the name of creating truly authentic experiences that celebrate those who are no longer here and those who remain’. 

How could I possibly resist? I shall let you know how I get on.

And here is a blast from the past.

I studied ‘The Rainbow’ for my A-levels, and read most of Lawrence’s work when I was doing my BA in English Literature. I loved him then, but haven’t read him since. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found his ideas about so many things difficult to take, although what I loved as a young woman was his tumultuous vitality, the sense of life tumbling out of him. Some of his scenes feel so true to human nature, uncomfortable as they are. So, this book, where Lara Feigel decides to re-read Lawrence during the pandemic, feels like both a challenge and a provocation. I wonder if it will incite me to start reading Lawrence again? Let’s see.

It wasn’t all books though…I got a huge box of chocolates from Hotel Chocolat, with the flavours based on different kinds of patisserie. When I tell you that I ate the custard tart flavoured one before breakfast you’ll have some idea of my degree of self-control.

And my lovely friend A bought me these! I shall be firing them off to all and sundry.

And because the only way to truly celebrate a birthday is with a trip to the garden centre, off I went with my friend J to the Sunshine Garden Centre in Bounds Green, where she bought me this:

This is a Kilmarnock willow – a form of goat willow which is a bit better behaved than they usually are, but which has those invaluable early spring catkins that provide pollen for all manner of bees. I will pot it up at the weekend, and as it’s in full sun in the front garden I hope it will be appreciated. I honestly didn’t think I’d find one, but here it is. I could not be more excited.

Buds on the Kilmarnock willow

And so here I am, 63 years old and wondering how on earth I got here. Last time I looked I was 36. But I rather like being in my sixties – things I would have worried about don’t matter so much, and I’m starting to truly appreciate the things that do matter – good friends, a loving partner, the buds on a willow tree, an interesting book. It’s true that I have less time for nonsense and might even be a bit more grumpy than usual on occasion, but that’s what comes when you realise that you don’t have forever. And today was full of lovely moments, and surprises. And chocolate. Don’t ever underestimate chocolate.

Dear Readers, there are a number of exciting plans for Coldfall Wood and the neighbouring Muswell Hill Playing Fields this year, including a much-delayed meadow on the edge of the Fields (watch this space for more details). But today was cold and sunny, and it was good to have a walk and to see what was going on at this quietest time of the year. First up was this little chap.

How fluffed up he looks! It’s easy to forget that ring-necked parakeets are quite used to cold weather across their range – it can get extremely cold in parts of India at night, for example. These individuals were already looking at nest sites and generally making a racket.

The crows love to hang out in the trees on the edge of the fields, watching in case someone drops some food, or if there’s something or someone to play with. They seem to catch up on all the local gossip as well.

The trees seem bare, but there are already buds, and the beauty of their structure is revealed best at this time of year.

This brown rat seemed very at home along the edge of the stream – I know that people don’t like to see them, but they are extremely interesting and intelligent creatures, and very adaptable. They also ‘follow the food’, so if people didn’t drop their food, there probably wouldn’t be as many rats – anecdotal evidence suggests that the population increased during lockdown, when the woods were the only places where many people could get outdoors.

I love the way that the ice crystals on the handrails of the boardwalk form a kind of miniature forest…

and the boardwalk records the footprints of the people and animals who have crossed it. Don’t dogs get cold paws? Their pads must be warm to melt the ice underfoot.

Then it’s back home, and the squirrels have clearly discovered the bird table, which I’ve been keeping topped up in the very cold weather. They seem very well insulated against the chilly temperatures, and they don’t hibernate as such – they might sleep out the very coldest days, but will usually be out and about regularly, presumably haunting the bird feeders of everybody on the street, and trying to remember where they buried the peanuts that they collected earlier in the year. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of ‘my’ squirrels digging up a cache, so maybe it’s just easier to hunt out the fresh stuff provided by us humans. I don’t begrudge them, anyway. As I think I’ve said before, when you have a wildlife garden you don’t get to be too choosy about who turns up.

Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata) Photo by Ferran Pestaña at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ferranp/5739279356

Dear Readers, a long time ago I was walking along a beach on the mainland of Orkney when I found a skull, light as paper, with a long, delicate, curved bill attached. I could not believe the fragility of it, the precision of the two mandibles – they were more like surgical instruments than something that was once attached to a bird. It was the beak of a curlew, our largest wading bird.

Curlew skull (Photo by Mr John Cummings)

That beak is there to enable the curlew to probe deeply into the mud for worms and other invertebrates, more deeply than any other bird in the country, and so it relies on the pattern of tides for its food. Its chicks, however, are incubated and hatched in the barest of scrapes in the ground. It’s been noted that curlews sometimes nest close to kestrels, so that the birds of prey will help to keep winged predators from their chicks, even though the kestrels are not averse to an occasional curlew snack.

Curlews are amongst the most widespread of waders – they turn up in coastal areas from Europe to as far east as Japan, and as far south as Cape Town in South Africa. Nonetheless, the curlew is Red Listed here due to a decline in the UK breeding population – as over 30 percent of European curlews breed in the UK, this gives serious cause for concern. What’s to blame? The usual suspects, and a more unusual one. The intensification of agriculture and the way that moors have been converted to forestry are factors in the decline of many species, but curlew chicks and eggs are heavily predated by foxes in particular. Many of the conservation organisations that are trying to save the species point at the shooting industry. The biomass of pheasants and red-legged partridges released into the British countryside solely for people to shoot is the equivalent of a quarter of British wild bird biomass annually, and as much as half in August. All these semi-tame fat birds wandering about has led to an increase in the fox population, and so the system is unbalanced – there are more foxes about, and therefore less curlews. Of course, the causes of the decline of a particular bird are many and various, but I would be looking very hard at these figures. Incidentally, the shooting industry were asked to reduce the number of gamebirds released this year because of avian flu, but the majority of birds were still released as usual.

If I sound even more angry than usual this week, it’s because curlews could be heard all across the UK when I was growing up – we used to stay in a caravan in Whitstable in Kent, right next door to the famous oyster beds and mudflats. The curlew’s call would mix with the cries of the lapwings and the other waders, and it was the very sound of being on holiday. The sound of curlews sends a shiver up my spine even now. The call was recorded at Wexford, County Cork by Irish Wildlife Sounds

Photo by Mike Pennington

All endangered species need a champion, and the curlew found one in the form of Mary Colwell, who is chair of the Curlew Recovery Project, wrote a well-received book called ‘Curlew Moon‘ about a 500 mile walk that she undertook to visit the sites in Ireland, Wales and England where the birds can be found and who founded World Curlew Day, which takes place on April 21st each year. Rather than just getting angry, she got busy, and has arguably galvanised more action to conserve these remarkable birds than any other single individual – she was named as one of the BBC’s Top 50 Most Influential Conservationists in the UK, and, with Green MP Caroline Lucas, managed to get a Natural History GCSE onto the UK curriculum. Largely thanks to her activism, Downing Street announced that the curlew was ‘the panda of UK conservation’. Let’s hope that her drive and passion, her ability to engage with farmers, gamekeepers, landowners and members of the public, can yet turn the fate of the curlew around.

Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata)  at Borit, Gojal, Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan Photo by Imran Shah (gilgit2,)

Anole lizard (Anolis cristatellus) Photo by Postdlf,

Dear Readers, living in the city is always a bit of a challenge if you’re used to the country – all those wide open spaces, all that concrete, all that fast food and the ever-present danger of getting squished by a bus (and that’s just for us humans). Imagine, then, the difficulties that a city environment presents to these little chaps – this Puerto Rico crested anole lizard (Anolis cristatellus) is normally found in the forests of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, but has set up home on many other Caribbean islands. Increasingly, the lizards are moving into towns and cities, and scientist Kristin Winchell and her colleagues wanted to investigate how these urban animals differed from their country cousins.

First up, Winchell’s team discovered that city lizards had longer legs, presumably to enable them to navigate the pavements and squares at speed without being trodden on or picked off by predators. Secondly, those famously sticky toe pads were larger and stickier than usual, probably to enable them to climb glass and other shiny surfaces in search of their insect prey.

Winchell did some genetic analysis of city lizards from three different cities, and discovered that all of them had changes in the genes that controlled leg and skin development – this is a fine example of parallel evolution, where unrelated animals change in similar ways because the environment provides similar challenges. She also discovered that there were changes in a group of genes that affect immune function and metabolism – lizards in cities may be eating a non-optimal diet, and may also be subject to injuries that wouldn’t befall them in a forest, so a robust immune system would be a clear advantage.

However, the group of genes that have mutated to allow the lizard’s legs to grow longer, and their feet to grow stickier can also cause limb deformities in humans – it’s interesting to consider how many lizards ended up unable to function, and also what the knock-on effect might be on their offspring. In evolution there are always trade-offs, especially on the way to the best solution for a species. Plus, things never stand still – what works in one environment might have to be fine-tuned to work in another.

Incidentally, for a short while I had a pet anole – a different species to this one, with a pink crest under his throat. He mostly lived a very quiet life, but on one occasion I saw him flicking the little flag under his chin at an uncomprehending skink. I was entranced, but I quickly realised that keeping these little creatures in captivity for my own amusement was depriving them of most of the things that they needed to thrive – a mate and a rich and complex environment. How much better to observe wild creatures in their native habitat!

You can read the whole article here.

Photo by Postdlf,

Dear Readers, every night at about 3.30 p.m. there’s a gathering of starlings in the back garden, as they try to decide whether it’s safe to descend for a last feed before roosting. Some days I see the flock wheel over the house, bank and fly straight to the top of the hawthorn tree, where they sit for a while, chattering amongst themselves and checking the garden out for predators. There are a couple of cats who hang around inconspicuously, at least to me, but there are enough pairs of eyes to spot them. Plus it’s very cold today, so most self-respecting cats are looking for a spot of sunshine to sit in.

At this time of year, you can really see why the birds are called starlings – look at those silver triangles on their breasts and bellies! The sun doesn’t get into the garden much at all at this time of year, but it does burnish the very top branches, turning the iridescence of the plumage into greens and purples.

The birds are particularly reluctant to come down today because two squirrels are having a row. There is much tail-twitching and growling. Times are hard, and there are a lot of nuts stashed in the garden. Generally things are resolved after a quick chase, but there’s a lot of sound and fury before it gets to that stage. You can see the two squirrels with their tails thrashing in the first little film, and one on his or her own in the second one.

Elsewhere, the chaffinches are eating the sunflower hearts – the starlings aren’t keen on these, so they only have to fight off the goldfinches, and an occasional robin. I love their mothy flight, and the males are looking particularly dapper at the moment, in their livery of deepest pink. When a female took flight I noticed for the first time that their backs are greenish-yellow – it just goes to show that however familiar a creature seems, it can always surprise you.

Two female chaffinches

Male chaffinch

It’s going to be cold for the next few days (though we aren’t expecting snow this far south). Still, it feels like a time of slim pickings, and I shall be keeping the feeders topped up. I often wonder how these frail creatures make it though the winter, and the answer is that lots of them don’t. How much more precious, then, are the ones that survive.

A pair of parakeets

Dear Readers, today I noticed that the pair of parakeets who’ve been visiting the peanuts have swelled to four. At this rate of exponential growth I won’t be able to get into the garden for small green parrots by the end of the month, but they are most welcome at their current numbers, especially as they prefer the peanuts to anything else, and they are the only ones who eat them. Even the squirrels prefer the sunflower hearts. Go figure.

Today I have mostly been involved in writing up my assignment for my cell biology OU course – it’s due on 24th January but as it’s my birthday on the 20th I didn’t want to spend all of next weekend plugging away when I could be sitting on the sofa, sipping champagne and generally being decadent. To be frank, my brain has pretty much exploded with all the new things I have to learn on the subject of enzymes and DNA and mRNA and tRNA but I have enjoyed pretty much every minute, in spite of having to work like billy-o to catch up after my illness before Christmas. One more push and I’ll be on top of everything, I reckon.

Anyhow, this is a short one today as it’s been pouring with rain and I’ve barely  looked outside the door, except to note that the Christmas trees have not been collected yet and so they’ll probably be cluttering up the place for the next week. However, my lovely readers have contacted me to tell me of some innovative ways that other places are using their Christmas trees – Anne Guy tells me that her local wildlife reserve was putting old Christmas trees in the lake to act as a refuge for the fish, and Kaydee Rouge tells me that her local yarn producers Whistlebare have been feeding the trees to their angora goats, who seem very happy with the forage.

Goats enjoying the Christmas trees at Whistlebare farm

I just hope that no one has sprayed their trees with fire-retardant/fir perfume/any of the other strange potions that you can use these days, but I’m sure that the people collecting the trees will have asked. And, in the case of the goats, what a great way to convert plants into soil nutrients!

Dear Readers, here in East Finchley the absolute end of Christmas is marked by the appearance of the discarded Christmas trees outside every other house, as far as the eye can see, waiting for Barnet Council to take them away. To qualify for collection, it’s suggested that all the decorations and lights are removed (not always as easy as you’d think – in my experience there’s always some stray angel or elf or (in my case) Christmas Beetle that gets spotted at the last minute). Then, the tree has to be cut in half, which I imagine might be the source of some hilarity – certainly a chorus of Monty Python’s Lumberjack Song might be required in the houses of the over-60s.

And finally, the trees have to be put ‘at the boundary of your property’ by January 13th ‘to be collected over the next two weekends’.

I can’t help thinking that if the trees are not collected on the 14th they are going to be a right blooming nuisance for those with prams/wheelchairs/mobility issues/sight impairment for another week, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the County Roads are early on the list.

The Archers Christmas Tree from outside Budgens, waiting for collection.

One sad sight is the big Christmas tree from outside Budgens waiting to be collected. For a few years, there was a growing fir tree here, which was decorated every year, and which formed the centrepiece for the Christmas carols and the turning on of the Christmas lights. Alas, the tree sickened and died, for who knows what reason – a fairly shallow bed on a main road is probably not the best environment for a large-ish conifer, but at least everyone tried. This year there was a temporary tree. I shall be interested to see what happens for Christmas 2023.

So, what happens to all those ‘used’ Christmas trees? They are put through the chipper, allowed to compost for a bit, and then used as mulch in municipal parks and gardens, and even for things like running tracks. A tree that is recycled in this way reduces its carbon footprint by about 80% (to about 3.5kg C02e). If it ends up in landfill, a 2-metre tall tree emits about 16kg C02e, which is because a decomposing tree emits methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas than methane. If you have an artificial tree, it will ‘pay for itself’ in terms of carbon after 7-20 years, depending on how it was manufactured (so I can feel nice and smug about my 30 year-old plastic tree). Probably the very best option is a potted tree which lives outside for most of the year and is brought in for a few weeks at Christmas, but that requires a fair amount of brute strength to lug it in and out of the house (and somewhere to put it for most of the year).

According to the Carbon Trust, the pot or stand should be re-used every year, as all that metal or plastic can radically impact on a tree’s environmental cost.

And so Christmas really is over, and it’s time to get stuck into 2023. Who knows what excitement it will bring? Now that the cough that has lasted nearly two month feels like it’s finally on the wane, I can’t wait.

Christmas trees outside Tony’s Continental in East Finchley at the beginning of their lives.

Mother sloth and tiny baby in Costa Rica

Dear Readers, on Fridays I try to share something that I’ve read that has cheered me up, and so this week I am turning my attention to the sloth, that ‘languid dangler’ of Central and South American forests. I was lucky enough to have a trip to Costa Rica a few years ago and fell in love with these animals, partly because they always seemed so relaxed. I especially loved this one. The only view that we got of her baby was this little limb poking out, but it could not have been more adorable.So it was with some delight that I read that sloths have been found to have a pound-for-pound grip stronger than humans, chimps or even gorillas. Researcher Melody Young, who was working at the Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica, noticed how strong (and sometimes painful) the grip of the sloths was when they clasped on to the side of her torso, and she got to thinking. She invented what sounds like a rather Heath Robinson kind of device, which consisted of a bisected broom handle and a force-measuring plate. The sloths were encouraged to dangle from it, and it was found that they exerted a force equivalent to 100 percent of their body weight, with some even getting up to 150 percent. This is twice as much force as a human or a chimp.

Sloths don’t have the musculature of primates, but their feet are extremely well-muscled, and this probably relates to their lifestyle – sloths are not agile animals, so if they lose their grip they can’t just skip merrily to the next branch like a monkey can, and so their ability to hang on becomes their main defence. There are many stories of hunters having to cut down trees to get to a sloth, and of the corpses of sloths that have been attacked by jaguars being found still clasped to a branch.

Sloth in Costa Rica

The scientists investigating the sloth think that even these grip estimates are probably much lower than the sloth is actually capable of – as one of them says, you can’t say to a sloth ‘grip that stick as hard as you can’. But there is another related mystery. While primates are predominantly right-handed/footed, sloths have a very strong left-handed bias, with the left side being consistently stronger than the right-hand side. Does anyone have any theories? I am scratching my head.

You can read the whole article here (you might need to register but you don’t need to pay anything).

And here is Finlay, one of the sloths who had his grip measured at the Sanctuary. Just look at that little face! And also look at those claws. If I was a jaguar I’d think twice about trying to eat an animal with such splendid weapons.

Long-tailed duck (Clangula hyemalis) Photo By Wolfgang Wander

Dear Readers, to see these impressive ducks at this time of year you need to be bobbing about in a boat turning gently green, preferably in the far north of Scotland, Orkney maybe, or Shetland. In the summer, long-tailed ducks breed in Iceland and Greenland, the tundra of Canada and the taiga of Russia, but they flee the extremes of cold in these parts to winter at sea in (slightly) warmer climes. What grace they bring to a mid-winter boat trip!

These are marine ducks, capable of diving up to 55 metres below the surface in pursuit of small fish, crustaceans and molluscs. Alas, they are not just becoming rare in UK waters, but are red-listed because they are globally threatened – their deep dives lead to them becoming entangled in fishing nets, and trawling and over-fishing are damaging the food reserves upon which they rely.

Female long-tailed duck and ducklings in Iceland – Photo By Ómar Runólfsson

Long-tailed ducks are raucous and boisterous ducks. In the Crossley Guide to British and Irish Birds, Richard Crossley and Dominic Couzens describe their antics thus:

“Groups often chase one another around in agile pursuit-flight, twisting from side to side. Makes a belly flop and big splash in water when landing. Very vocal, with beautiful yodelling call”.

As you can see from the illustration below, long-tailed ducks come in a whole variety of colours and patterns, depending on age and sex. Most ducks only have a ‘breeding’ plumage and a ‘winter’ plumage, but the long-tailed duck has three, with an additional ‘supplemental’ plumage.

Long-tailed ducks at sea (illustration from the Crossley ID Guide https://crossleybooks.com/species/long-tailed-duck/)

And you can hear that yodelling cry below, recorded by Jarek Matusiak. To me, it sounds like the quintessence of the northlands. In Iceland, the duck is called ‘hávella’, after its call, and a particularly raucous gathering is thought to indicate wild weather to come. On the Birdnote blog, it mentions that the call has led to a variety of names for the bird, including ‘John Connally’, ‘My Aunt Huldy’ and the Cree name ‘Ha-Hah-Way’. See what you think.

Long-tailed ducks are hunted across much of their range – their gatherings must seem extensive, though I’m sure that even the hunters might realise how their numbers have declined over the years. Fortunately there is an agreement on the shooting of migratory waterbirds which has banned lead shot (waterfowl that aren’t shot are often poisoned by ingesting lead pellets), and which works to conserve birds like the long-tailed duck which cross international boundaries during their migrations.

What an extraordinary bird this is! It spends about four times as long under the water as it does on the surface, it yodels and it changes its plumage about as often as we change our outer garments in a week in winter in the UK. There are a variety of projects going on to try to save the long-tailed duck, including one by the RSPB which involves equipping gill nets (which catch not only long-tailed ducks but all manner of other marine life, including dolphins and porpoises) with a googly-eyed device that scares the birds away from the nets. However, I am in broad agreement with this blog by Simon Mustoe, which argues that this is a bit back-to-front – scaring the ducks away from their food source is no way to preserve them and the whole ecosystem. Surely controlling and limiting fishing would be a better idea?

The many plumages of the long-tailed duck (Crossley ID Guide https://crossleybooks.com/species/long-tailed-duck/