Dear Readers, January can seem like a very uninspiring month in the garden, unless you keep your eyes open for ‘small beauties’, as a friend of mine calls them. They’re all the lovelier for being accidental, as is the case with these hazel catkins. When I first moved in I put in a mixed hedge (just a tiny one), but what I’d never realised (doh) was that if you don’t trim the plants that make up the hedge regularly, some of them decide that they’re going to be saplings instead. Such was the case with a couple of the hazels, but their lemon yellow catkins are such a joy that I don’t begrudge them. If you look very carefully at the photo above, you can also see the tiny red female flowers on the stems, to the left of the catkins themselves. I will have to trim some of these plants, but not until later on now that they’re flowering and so clearly having fun.

Elsewhere the duckweed which has usually disappeared by now has found the mild weather much to its liking, and is still going strong. I shall have to have a good old clearout at the weekend, otherwise it will be impossible come the spring. I did hope that the big freeze of early December would slow it up a bit, but it’s very happy. I think it’s the water temperature that determines growth rate (says she with her scientist white coat on), and it takes a long time for water to cool down, so imagine a week at sub zero won’t have affected the ambient temperature much.

And what is this emerging from the depths? I’m hoping its my marsh marigold, but I have a horrible feeling it could be the bog bean, which is lovely but can be a bit vigorous for a smallish pond. Ah well, only time will tell.

In other news, I have a new enormous seed feeder, which has proved immensely popular with all the little birds, as I’d hoped – whole flocks of goldfinches arrive to feed, along with great tits, blue tits and of course the squirrels. My dilemma is that if I put a tray underneath it to catch the fallen seeds, the pigeons will scoff it all (and I already have a feeder with a tray that the woodpigeons and collared doves use). As it is, there’s just a seedy mess underneath the feeder, and no doubt a crop of sunflowers at some point if any of them germinate.

Great Tit on the new seed feeder

Seed feeder debris

And finally, I was never going to buy another amaryllis after Dad died – he loved them so much, and I thought it would be too painful. But in a twist of fate, the pot plant subscription that I started during lockdown (a new plant every quarter) sent me two amaryllis bulbs, and every time I walk into the kitchen I am astounded by their beauty. I have put them on a cat-proof spot (amaryllis pollen can be toxic to cats, like lily pollen) so that I can enjoy them without worrying, and every time I see them, I think of Dad, so that’s no bad thing. When they were growing he always called the long green stems with a bud on the end ‘Martian Willies’, but that’s Dads for you. How I miss that terrible sense of humour.

Brown-banded carder bee (Bombus humilis) Photo from Bumblebee Conservation Trust website, photo by Roy Reeves at https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/ginger-yellow-bumblebees/brown-banded-carder-bee/

Dear Readers, it’s always heartening to see that a bumblebee that was thought to be extinct in an area is now present, and such is the case with the brown-banded carder bee (Bombus humilis) which has turned up on the Devon coast at an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) between Berry Head and Wembury (near Plymouth). This is the rarest of the little ginger carder bees – the common carder is a regular visitor to the garden, but this species has that distinctive brown band at the top of the abdomen and the thorax is really very, very ginger. The bee loves the areas of open grassland that you sometimes get along the South Coast, and feasts on bird-foot trefoil, clover, and other grassland plants. It makes its nest in the open in long grass, and there can be as few as 40 to 50 workers in a colony. Alas, the area of unspoiled, uncontaminated land in the UK is getting smaller by the year, but this AONB is the subject of a project called ‘Life on the Edge’, which involves Buglife, the National Trust, the managers of the AONB, the South West Coastal Path Association and Torbay Coast and Countryside Trust. The plan is

“to save species; giving them a safer long-term future by expanding and reconnecting the traditional coastal landscapes on which they depend. Restoring wildflower-rich cliff tops and highway verges, carefully managing scrub mosaics, strategic hedgerow connections, and more wildlife-friendly parks, churchyards, school grounds and private gardens.”

It’s hoped to improve the survival chances not only of the brown-banded carder bee but of 29 other species, including the six-banded nomad bee (Nomada sexfasciata) which is known from only this site and from nowhere else in the UK. How easy it would be to mistake this little bee for a wasp! I’m sure they benefit from the similarity unless they turn up at a picnic.

Six-banded nomad bee (Nomada sexfasciata). Photo by Steven Falk from https://www.flickr.com/photos/63075200@N07/14543793634/in/album-72157633464339681/

This bee is a cuckoo bee, which lays her eggs in the burrows of yet another endangered bee, the long-horned bee (Eucera longicornis). The larvae of the cuckoo bee then eat the pollen stores that the long-horned bee has been lovingly storing up, but the fact that the cuckoo bee is now so rare is a bad sign – it means that there are now no longer enough long-horned bees to support it. And why is the long-horned bee so rare? Because it’s a specialist that only feeds on the flowers of legumes such as everlasting pea and kidney vetch. The interwoven populations in an area such as this AONB goes to show how important it is to save and restore habitat as a whole, rather than just targeting one species. These relationships have developed over millenia, and if you pull out one species, lots more go tumbling down.

The long-horned bee really is a beauty. Have a look at the male in the photo below. This species is an important pollinator of bee orchids, which the male tries to mate with under the misapprehension that they’re females. You can see why he might be confused.

Male long-horned bee (Eucera longicornis) Photo by By Cheryl Cummings – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=70289788

Bee Orchid (Ophrys apifera) Photo Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE

You can read more about the Life on the Edge project here – it’s hoping to secure funding from 2024 after this tranche of money ends, and the discovery of the brown-banded carder bee can only be a positive and hopeful sign. The sighting was confirmed on 19th December, and I can just imagine what a wonderful Christmas present it was for everyone involved in the project. Fingers crossed that it continues to deliver such positive results, and many thanks to Ann Bronkhorst for pointing me in the direction of the story.

A pair of parakeets

Dear Readers, have you ever read something and thought ‘why did I never think of that?’ My Open University course has moved on to looking at natural selection and survival, and in particular what it is about the behaviour of different species that adapts them to pass on their genes as efficiently as possible.  There is a lot to unpack here, but one thing that had never occurred to me was why birds tend to stick with one partner, while mammals usually don’t.

Now, first let’s define terms. Monogamy is where individuals have one partner over a time period – sometimes just for one breeding season, and sometimes for life. Polygamy is where an individual has more than one partner, so a female might mate with many males (polyandry – unusual but not unknown) or a male might mate with many females (polygyny – extremely common). In birds, many, many species are monogamous for at least one season, with a male and a female working together to raise their young, though of course there are many exceptions, including that little brown job the dunnock, where everyone seems to mate with everyone. However, I am hard pushed to think of many examples of mammals where a pair of animals look after their young – red foxes do this and some primates (and you might be able to think of lots of other examples), but the normal pattern seems to be for the male to mate with as many females as possible, and for the females to raise most of the young.

Dog fox and vixen in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, 2016

The answer for why monogamy works better for birds than for mammals is all down to basic biology. In birds, the eggs are outside the body of the female, and so can be incubated by both partners. If it’s done by the female alone, it’s in the male’s interest to provide her with food, otherwise their offspring won’t survive to hatch because she’ll have to leave them at risk of chilling or being eaten by predators. Once the chicks are hatched, both partners can provide food. If you are a blue tit with an average brood size of ten nestlings, it’s clearly advantageous to have both parents looking for caterpillars.

Fledgling blue tit (one of a group of six in 2020)

The male bird is invested in the offspring, and they can only survive if he participates in their care. The story is different with mammals. Once a male has mated with a female, she has to carry the offspring until they’re born, and then she has to feed them for the first part of their lives, whereas he is free to go off and mate with as many females as possible, in the hope that at least some will survive to pass on his genes. The energy of many male animals goes into fighting off other males and trying to monopolise as many females as possible. You won’t see a male elephant seal providing his harem or offspring with fish, and you won’t see a male squirrel providing his babies with nuts, however cute they are.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule in both birds and mammals. The female jacana (an American bird of the moorhen family) for example, practices polyandry – she rules a large territory and entices as many males as possible to mate with her, whereupon she lays her eggs in a nest that the male has made, and leaves him to get on with the chick rearing. She spends most of her time beating up other females and, in a change to the usual rule, she is 60 percent larger than her male equivalent. However, in these watery habitats nesting sites are extremely rare and are often highly predated (by crocodiles and turtles amongst other animals) and so it’s in the interests of the species for the female to lay as many eggs as possible, and to have an opportunity to replace those eggs if they’re destroyed. The males will call to the females if they’re threatened and the females will race over to protect them, like feathery versions of Wonder Woman.

Northern Jacana (Jacana spinosa) Photo by By Telegro – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114908102

In mammals, the beaver is an interesting example of an animal with flexible behaviour. In Europe, beavers are largely monogamous, with a pair of adults raising their kits and often staying together for life. In the American beaver however, although beavers pair up and raise kits together like the European beavers, genetic analysis has shown that roughly 50% of beaver kits are not related to the male who is looking after them. This might be because the population of the North American beaver is much higher than that of its European counterpart, and so the females are coming into contact with more males. Combine this with the lower aggression of the North American animal and you have a recipe for a bit of genetic mixing that’s probably not unhealthy for the population as a whole.

European beaver and her kit photographed by the River Tay in Scotland – Photo By Ray Scott

And so, in short, in birds monogamy, at least for a season, is fairly common as it needs both parents to provision the young and ensure that they survive – the female has no milk to feed the youngsters and so she can’t do it alone. In mammals, the female carries the young inside her body, and can then provide them with their sole food, sometimes for months, so they have a good chance of surviving in many species without the involvement of the male, who can sow his ‘wild oats’ and improve his chance of passing on his genes that way. What’s interesting is all the many, many variations on this theme that have developed over the millenia, and how different species adapt to different situations.

Another interesting question concerns who gets to mate with who, and why, but that is definitely the subject of another post.

Dear Readers, after my December post yesterday, which mentioned how London Plane trees have a mass of seedballs on them at the moment, I thought I’d check out the trees on our local high street, to see what was going on. They look very bare and well-pollarded at this time of year, and I love the way their twigs are silhouetted against the sky. Not all the trees are planes, however – just sneaking in on the right is a solitary lime tree (you might remember that I mentioned that on one of the East Finchley ‘County Roads’, Lincoln Road, the majority of the trees are limes and indeed, further up the road to the north there’s a whole row of them, with a single ginkgo popped in for a bit of variety). I also love the way that the trees are leaning out from the buildings, as if trying to grab every bit of light that they can.

At the crossroads there’s a particularly mature tree, and most of the trees on the way down to East Finchley Station are truly magnificent, and very much appreciated on a hot day, when this side of the road is notably cooler than the other side with its smaller, younger trees. And you can see the ‘achenes’, the seedheads, up in the branches. It’s interesting that only some of the plane trees have them, and I’m guessing that this depends on how recently they’ve been pollarded. Incidentally, councils are obliged to do this because otherwise they can be sued if there’s any subsidence or root intrusion. Fortunately the planes seem to tolerate it.

And here’s a quick shout out to our local cinema, the Phoenix, pictured here behind an offshoot of a plane tree that I suspect will be pruned off fairly soon, before it starts bashing the passing buses. The Phoenix was opened in 1912 as the East Finchley Picturedrome, and in its time it has also been The Coliseum and The Rex. After a shaky lockdown period it’s still going strong, and is a great place for arthouse films (though it also shows films like Star Wars). And having had a look on the London Tree Map I have just noticed that the tiny little tree to the right of the Phoenix is also apparently a lime.

And finally, here is a rather arty image of one of the planes on the final run down to East Finchley Station, showing the fruits. Or, in fact, the catkins – I always think of the lemon-yellow ‘lambs tails’ of hazel, or those lovely furry numbers produced by some species of willow, but these balls are the London plane equivalent, and are stuffed full of small hairy seeds which are often blamed for exacerbating asthma and hay fever. In some places, finches have taken to eating the seeds but sadly not in London, where I suspect they’re all eating sunflower seeds in my garden. However, I’ve noticed a great many birds enjoying these trees – flocks of goldfinches sing from the high twigs, woodpigeons seem to enjoy doing their courting from the stout branches, crows and magpies make their nests at the top and there’s a tree in East Finchley that I think of fondly as the starling tree – at this time of year there’s a mini-murmuration as the starlings argue over who is going to roost where. So, although often condemned as a plant without much wildlife value, I suspect that the London plane is a friend to more animals (and humans) than we sometimes give it credit for. Here is a little film taken in December 2015 of starlings in ‘the starling tree’.

And here is the starling tree itself. This has been pollarded recently, so I suspect the starlings might have moved on to another tree but there are plenty to choose from.

December 2022

Dear Readers, much like a snake swallowing its own tail we’ve arrived at December 2023 when we’ve only just left December 2022, which is most confusing (for me anyway). But I’ve enjoyed looking forward, and reminding myself of the changes that are likely to happen over the next twelve months. I will republish each of the almanac posts a week before the end of the previous month, as suggested by several readers, and will update them for anything that I’ve found out since they were first published. And if you can think of anything that should be included, be it an event or a natural occurrence, let me know and I’ll pop it in.

Things to Do

• It’s a little bit early for most places to have posted their Christmas 2023 activities, but some of the best things to do at this time of year are free – a brisk walk in some green space during the brief days always lifts the spirits.
• With the leaves gone from the trees, it’s well worth borrowing some binoculars and going out for a spot of birdwatching – there are a lot of winter visitors to see, including the brambling which crops up in parks and gardens all over the place.

A brief visit from a brambling in the garden

• Have a look at the plant catalogues and sites online, early December (before the Christmas mayhem starts) and after the Big Day are great times to think about what’s worked and what hasn’t, and to start making some plans. If money is tight, seeds are always a good bet for cheering the place up, and if you or someone you know is a member of the RHS you can get up to 15 packets of seeds gathered from their gardens for a tenner.

Plants for Pollinators

• The RHS’s plant for December is Mahonia, and I can see why – it flowers for a long time in the middle of winter, it smells great, and although it’s an awkward, spiky plant it’s very forgiving of heavy soil, shade and neglect. In particular they are recommending Mahonia japonica, but I’ve seen bees on the other varieties too.

Mahonia

• Winter-flowering honeysuckle should still be in flower, along with stinking hellebore, and gorse may be in flower too.

Bird Behaviour

• December is the moment when all sorts of unusual birds might pop into the garden if there’s bad weather – I only ever see siskins when it’s snowing, for example (they’ve become ‘snow birds’ to me.

Siskins in the snow in 2017

• The first winter for many birds is the crucial time – if they can get through to spring, they will probably go on to breed. It can be a sad time, though, with many birds succumbing to cold and lack of food, especially those who don’t visit gardens. This is a peak month for finding dead birds in the garden (though with bird flu this year, it’s been terrible for many areas)
• That song that you hear on an iron-hard morning is probably a robin – robins establish their pair bonds during December (normally), although they won’t actually breed until the spring. How do you know that you’ve got a pair of robins? If they’re feeding within a few metres of one another without beating one another up.
• If you’re able to get out to some wetlands, December is the best month to see goldeneye ducks, surely some of the most handsome of our winter visitors.

Common Goldeneye – Photo by S. Bern at https://www.flickr.com/photos/sbern/

• Similarly, if you’re close to the Wash or Morecombe Bay, the number of knots (small wading birds) can put on a show that’s every bit as exciting as the more well-known starling murmurations, as they take to the air to avoid the incoming tide that covers the mudflats where they feed. You can have a look at a lovely film of them here. Worth a trip to Norfolk, I think!
• The bad weather seems to bring wagtails into closer contact with people too – there’s a pied wagtail that I only ever see in bad weather outside our local Kentucky Fried Chicken, and there was a grey wagtail beside the pond a few winters ago. These birds prefer to be close to water in the summer, but the pied wagtail in particular is spending more time in town, and there are massive roosts in the street trees in some parts of the country.

Pied wagtail in East Finchley

Grey wagtail at the Barbican of all places

Same grey wagtail

Plants in Flower

• Precious few, but around these parts (North London) you might see hazel catkins, winter jasmine with its yellow flowers, witch hazel, some varieties of daphne with their exquisite scent, and the 365 days-per-year flowers of the daisy family and yarrow.

Things to Watch/Listen Out For

• The tiny muntjac deer is inconspicuous for most of the year, but with the foliage so sparse you might catch a glimpse in December. There are rumours of a muntjac in East Finchley, so watch this space!

• If you look at a London plane tree, you should see that it has its very own Christmas baubles, in the shape of the round fruits (technically called achenes). The fruits are full of tiny seeds that are prone to irritate the nasal passages of anyone with hayfever, but for now they just hang there, looking festive
• Look out for masses of hibernating snails (bless them), all sealed up in their shells and just waiting for the warmer weather. I often find them tucked away under the overhanging edges of my cheaper flower pots. Slugs, on the other hand, bury themselves away underground.
• Cemeteries are great places to look for hibernating ladybirds, who often find the crevices in old gravestones or tombs a perfect place to hide from the weather. Some, however, seem to like the public conveniences – not so picturesque, but presumably a few degrees warmer.

Blurred photo of harlequin ladybirds hibernating in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery toilets. You’re welcome 🙂

• It’s not a good time of the year for mothing, but you might see December moths attracted to light – they don’t feed at this time of the year (so don’t have to worry about flowers) but they are looking for a mate.

December moth (Poecilocampa populi) Photo by By Walter Schön – http://www.schmetterling-raupe.de, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2822349

• Very few UK animals turn white in the winter, but if you’re out and about you might, if you are very, very lucky, see a stoat that’s turned into an ermine (i.e. white with a black tip to the tail). I recently saw a ceremonial robe edged with ermine, and there must have been the skins of fifty of these little animals, judging by the tail tips.

Stoat (Ermine) in winter – Photo by By Mustela_erminea_winter.jpg: Steven Hintderivative work: Guerillero (talk) – Mustela_erminea_winter.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14519034

• Another animal that goes white is the mountain hare, now only found in the Highlands and parts of southern Scotland, the Peak District and a few islands. The animal was widely culled as a threat to grouse moors (don’t get me started) but this was banned in 2020. Hopefully this will give this enigmatic animal time to recover.

Mountain hare in winter coat . Photo by Bouke ten Cate

• The December full moon is on 27th December, and is known as the Oak Moon, the Full Cold Moon or the Moon After Yule.

Holidays/Celebrations

• 7th December – Hanukkah (Jewish Festival of Lights) begins at sundown
• 22nd December – Winter solstice (the shortest day of the year)
• 25th December – Christmas Day
• 26th December – Boxing Day/St Stephen’s Day
• 31st December – New Year’s Eve

Crow in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, November 2020

Dear Readers, by the time November rolls around there’s usually no doubt that it’s winter, what with the long nights and the morning chill, and often the rain. All the more reason to make the most of the few bright hours. While we were in lockdown we’d go out for a walk every single day – somehow the fact that we were only supposed to go out once a day made it imperative that we took advantage of the opportunity, whereas now, when we can walk whenever we like, I’ll sometimes sit at my desk all day. Still, there are many subtle beauties to be enjoyed in November, and if all else fails it’s a chance to snuggle up with a good book.

Things to Do

• November is really the kick-off month for Christmas in London (though some shops have been selling mince pies since September), so many gardens and stately homes will be launching their light trails. It’s an interesting way to experience places at night, though I do wonder about the impact on wildlife. I’m not sure I’d want a bunch of people marching through the undergrowth if I was a roosting wren, but hopefully most of these places are big enough that the animals can find somewhere quieter. There’s no denying that they’re often magical. One of the best is at Kew Gardens, but in 2022 there were also trails at Kenwood, Syon Park and and the London Wetlands Centre at Barnes.
• Personally, I always get in the Christmas mood by having a look at the completely free Christmas light and window displays around Piccadilly, New Bond Street and Regent Street. I also have a great fondness for the Dickensian alleyway that is Camden Passage (in Islington), though most of the antique shops are foodie destinations these days.

Plants for Pollinators

• Most bees are tucked up for the winter by now, but you may well see common carder bumblebees buzzing about well into November, and overwintering queen bumblebees will wake up on a mild day and look for nectar to top up their internal reserves. The RHS plant of the month is winter-flowering honeysuckle, and I’d have to agree – it’s often alive with bees on a warmish winter day.

Queen buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris) on winter-flowering honeysuckle

Other recommended plants are Fatsia japonica (otherwise known as Japanese aralia or false castor-oil plant), which is also a queen bee magnet.

Fatsia japonica and bee

The RHS also recommends sweet box (Sarcococca confusa), autumn-flowering crocus and Elaeagnus x submacrophylla. I’ve personally seen bees on the first two plants, but haven’t yet stumbled across the Elaeagnus – let me know if you’ve had any success with it.

Ivy flowers might still be about if it’s been mild, but if there are already berries they will attract other animals, such as blackbirds and wood mice.

Bird Behaviour

• November brings a time for settling down – as the nights get longer, the time for foraging gets shorter, and so a small bird like a coal tit can spend ninety percent of its waking hours just trying to get enough food to last through the night. All the more reason for making sure that bird feeders and tables are stocked, especially as most of the berries will have gone by now.
• Many birds store food in their crops overnight in winter – pigeons are often full to busting, but finches do this too.
• If you have nestboxes, you might notice them being used as overnight roosts, especially by tiny birds like wrens who might cram together to preserve body heat.
• However, the long nights favour one type of bird – the owl. The tawny owl eats everything from mice and rats (hence the need not to poison rodents) to earthworms – you might, if you have a lawn, spot a tawny owl digging for worms after a wet day.

Plants in Flower

• In addition to the plants for pollinators mentioned above, you might see the odd wildflower such as yarrow, daisy, ragwort or even dandelion. In general, though, this time of year is all about the last berries and autumn leaves, and some of the seedheads on the traveller’s joy and the spiky heads of teasel.

• Ash tree seeds (‘keys’) are at their most evident in November
• Spindle, with its pink and orange seeds, can brighten up the dullest November day

Spindle berries

Other Things to Watch/Listen Out For

• Ring-necked parakeets will be pairing up in November, and will start looking for nesting holes in trees, which can lead to some very noisy arguments. They can start to breed as early as January
• If you are lucky enough to live close to a wetland or coastal area, November brings whooper swans, turnstones, barnacle geese, purple sandpiper and migrant pochard in huge numbers, to join the waders and wildfowl who have already arrived. In a few lucky marine sites you might also see grey seal pups, who are mostly born during November.

Grey Seal Pup at Donna Nook in Lincolnshire – Photo by Aaron Bee at https://www.flickr.com/photos/91425144@N04/31522282822

• This is still a great month for fungi – a walk in the woods might bring the typical red and white toadstool (fly agaric), or even an earthstar.

Collared Earthstar in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery

• There’s still a lot of young fox activity, as this year’s cubs leave their parents’ territory and try to work things out for themselves. But on a cold night you might hear the first yips of the adults as they start the breeding cycle all over again.
• Full moon is on 27th November, and is known as the Darkest Depths Moon, the Mourning Moon, or the Moon Before Yule

Holidays and Celebrations

• 1st November – Samhain (beginning of winter) – Gaelic/Pagan
• 1st November – All Saints Day (Christian)
• 2nd November – All Souls Day (Christian)
• 5th November – Guy Fawkes Night (check those bonfires for hibernating hedgehogs)
• 11th November – Martinmas. St Martin of Tours was the 4th century patron saint of beggars, drunkards and the poor, and also of wine growers and innkeepers.
• 11th November – Armistice Day/Remembrance Day
• 12th November – Remembrance Sunday
• 13th November – Diwali – Festival of Lights (Hindu/Sikh/Jain)
• 16th November – Beaujolais Nouveau Day
• 23rd November – Thanksgiving (USA)
• 26th November – Stir-up Sunday (when Christmas puddings/Christmas cakes/mincemeat are supposed to be started). And also, my Mum’s birthday.
• 30th November – St Andrew’s Day (patron saint of Scotland)

Raywood ash trees in St Pancras and Islington cemetery

Dear Readers, October can be a glorious month, full of crimson and gold and rust and scarlet, or it can be a grey, drizzly month. Whichever it is, it’s important to make the most of it, before the clocks go back in the UK at the end of the month and we start to hunker down for the winter. There is a lot to see – fungi springing up, migrant birds arriving, leaves turning – but for Bugwoman it marks the last month when I’m likely to see our invertebrate friends in any numbers. Still, the season turns, and we’re none the worse for it.

Things to Do

• 8th October marks the World Conker Championships, held annually in the grounds of the Shuckburgh Arms in Southwick, near Oundle (the closest big town is Peterborough). The event raises money for charities that work with the visually impaired (over £420k so far), and also for the local church and village hall in Southwick. It sounds like a lot of fun, but no doubt the contenders take it very seriously.
• On 1st October, NASA will (hopefully) be launching the Psyche mission. The plan is to visit and orbit an asteroid where the metal-rich core is exposed – this may give useful information about the history of the Earth and of other planets in the Solar System. You can read more about it here, and keep an eye open for when the livestream of the launch will be shown. Arrival at the asteroid is likely to be about 100 days after launch.
• Our old friends Rosemoor Gardens in Torrington, Devon, have courses on autumn photography and autumn gardening (on 14th and 12th October respectively). For autumn colour, many sites recommend Hyde Hall in Essex, Winkworth Arboretum in Surrey and Stourhead in Wiltshire but I’m sure there are many more, and even your local park or woodland (or cemetery) should be wonderful at this time of year.
• The London Natural History Society are planning a Geotrail walk (provisionally scheduled for Saturday 14th October). However, if you fancy taking yourself off on a walk to discover the geology of various London areas, you can download a map and details from here.

Plants for Pollinators

• One of the very best plants for pollinators at this time of year is flowering ivy – I’ve spent lots of time scanning the wasps and bees, and if you’re lucky you might see some ivy bees (Colletes hederae), stripey little chaps who first arrived in the UK in Dorset in 2001, and who have been moving north ever since.

Ivy bee

Other RHS – recommended plants include devil’s bit scabious, bistort, our old favourite Bowles’s Mauve perennial wallflower, Abelia x grandiflora and the strawberry tree. I am definitely planning on getting some of the first two to try in the garden, especially as bistort is said to be shade-tolerant. This is also the season for Japanese anemones which seems popular with some bees.

Abelia x grandiflora ‘Confetti’

The flowering season for wild plants is definitely coming to an end, but the Michaelmas daisies are often still going strong, and you might see holly in flower, along with yarrow, cyclamen, daisies and brambles, so there is still food around for any laggardly pollinators.

Bird Behaviour

• Redwings and fieldfares should be starting to arrive by now, attracted by the crop of berries. If you stand outside on a cold, crisp night you might hear them calling as they migrate overhead – listening for the sounds of nocturnal migration (or nocmig as it’s called) became a very popular pastime amongst birders during the lockdown. There is something magical about hearing the flocks of birds pass overhead when you can’t see them.

Redwings have a very piercing, high-pitched call…(recording by Paul Kelly in County Meath, Ireland)

The call of the fieldfare at night is much more of a chuckle (recorded by Irish Wildlife Sounds in County Wexford, Ireland)

• You might be lucky enough to spot a waxwing, especially if you live along the north-east coast of Scotland and England – the birds irrupt from Scandinavia and will drift west and south over the coming months
• Starlings and other birds, all animosity dropped, will start to gather in huge flocks. If you’re lucky, you might spot a starling murmuration
• If you are even luckier, you might see a Palla’s warbler – these tiny birds are rare but they are being seen more often in the east and south of England, and October is the prime month for them to arrive. They move from China to south east Asia for the winter, but there are about sixty records in the UK every autumn, and probably lots more that go unnoticed. It’s hypothesised that either they get blown off course during their migration, or simply that they are enlarging their range.

Pallas’s warbler (Photo By 孟宪伟 – 个人拍摄,)

• This is also a great time of year to spot goldcrest – the resident birds are joined by birds from mainland Europe. In my experience you can often find them foraging for tiny insects in yew hedges and trees, though they’re so fast that you’ll have to be patient to get a good view. I’ve been trying to get a photo of the ones in the cemetery since I started the blog in 2014 and haven’t managed a good one yet.

Plants in Flower

• In addition to all the pollinator plants mentioned above, keep your eyes open for all the prairie favourites who really come into their own in October – rudbeckia, helenium, single dahlias, chrysanthemums.

• But really, October is the month for foliage and berries – Japanese acers will be at their best, smoke bushes (Cotinga) may be covered in fluff, and every plant, shrub and tree that produces fruit, from crab apples to cotoneasters, from the acorns on the oaks to beech mast, from rowan to sloe, should be bursting with energy-rich food for birds, small rodents and even foxes.

Other Things to Watch/Listen Out For

• It’s the height of the deer rut, so whether you live close to the Scottish Highlands or within walking distance of Richmond Park, stags will be full of testosterone and up for a fight. Well worth observing from a respectful distance.
• Wildfowl start to arrive from Russia – our native populations of teal, wigeon, pintail, tufted duck and pochard are all boosted by great flocks from further east. Scaup visit in the winter, as do the common and velvet scoters, though they are largely sea ducks, unlikely to turn up on a pond. A visit to the coast or to local wetlands is highly recommended at this time of year.
• This is also a great time of year to hear tawny owls – this recording is lovely, it’s a male and female calling to one another from opposite sides of a lake. The recording is by Regina Eidner, and it was made in Brandenburg, Germany.

• Having said earlier that there weren’t many invertebrates around, you might still see shieldbugs (the juveniles change colour from bright green to brown before overwintering as adults – the colour change means that they’re better camouflaged against the twigs and dry leaves. Some bush crickets are also around, and are attracted to light, so you might find one of these surprising insects in the house as late as November.

Hawthorn Shield Bug

Southern Bush Cricket

• Another late-flying insect is the batman hoverfly (Myathropa florea), so named for the pattern on its thorax that looks like the bat signal in the films. What a handsome creature it is! Well worth looking out for, and often found on ivy or on sedum/hylotelephium.

Batman hoverfly

• October is also the start of fungi season, check your local parks and wild places to see if there are any walks or ID sessions. Depending on the weather, the fungi can be spectacular – below are just a few from my local cemetery last year.

• The October full moon is on 28th October and is known as the Hunter’s Moon or the Blood Moon

Holidays and Celebrations

• 1st October – Harvest Home/Ingathering (Traditional)
• 1st October – Start of Black History Month
• 1st October – Start of English pudding season (I have no idea what this is, but it sounds worth celebrating)
• 11th October – Old Michaelmas Day, when the devil is said to spit on the blackberries so they shouldn’t be eaten after this date
• 21st October – Apple Day
• 29th October – British Summertime and Irish Standard Time end, and the clocks go back one hour
• 31st October – Halloween

Dear Readers, September is probably my favourite month of the year – it feels much more like the start of something than January does, probably because it’s the start of the school year, and because both I and my parents got married in September. It’s that point of the year upon which everything starts to turn, as we move past the Equinox and into autumn proper. And as the clamour of spring and the relative peace of summer pass, there’s a sense of gathering in and of preparation that suits my character somehow.

Things to Do

• The Open House Festival is from Wednesday 6th to Sunday 17th September 2023, and while this might not appear to have much to do with nature, it’s a chance to look at some of the most interesting buildings in London, and there are lots of examples of sustainable development, in both new buildings and old ones. Open City run tours throughout the year too, which are well worth attending if you’re interested in the architecture of London.
• The British Science Association will be holding its festival from Thursday 7th to Sunday 10th September 2023, and is at the University of Exeter this year. It’s Europe’s longest running science festival, and sounds like a lot of fun, for science nerds and the mildly-interested alike.
• RHS’s Rosemoor Gardens at Torrington in Devon have a course on ‘Late Summer Evening Light – Flower and Close-up Photography‘ on Friday 8th September, which sounds really interesting. It’s all happening in the West Country this year!
• And here’s a shout-out for the London Natural History Society library, housed at the Natural History Museum, and open multiple times every month – members can browse the books, borrow them, explore the Natural History Museum’s wildlife garden, and socialise with others who are interested in natural history. If you’re in London, joining the LNHS really is a no-brainer – there’s so much knowledge, so much going on, and so much help at hand for the amateur naturalist. The library timetable for September (and the rest of the year) is here, and details of how to join are here.

Plants for Pollinators

• For bees, the RHS is recommending salvia, especially Amistad with its velvety purple flowers – the deep tubular shape of the blooms is best suited to long-tongued bumblebees such as the garden bumblebee (Bombus hortorum) but many cheeky bees from other species will bite a hole in the base of the flower to get to the nectar.

Salvia ‘Amistad’ – Photo by Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz

• Other flowers recommended for bees include our old friend Verbena bonariensis (also good for butterflies as we know), single-flowered dahlias (a bit ‘hit-and-miss’ in my garden) and Ceratostigma plumaginoides, otherwise known as blue-flowered leadwort, and a very striking plant with bright blue flowers against foliage that goes red as it matures.

Blue-flowered leadwood (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides). Photo by Wouter Hagens

• I am a bit surprised to find no mention of sedum (or Hylotelephium as some species are now known). In my experience it’s a great plant for hoverflies, butterflies, moths and bees during September when other plants are on the wane. Those prairie specialists Rudbeckia and Echinacea are also popular with our six-legged friends right into the autumn.
• Michaelmas daisies are also coming into flower now, and again are popular with hoverflies and all manner of other small pollinators.

• And this is about the earliest time that you can get stuck into the bulb planting. Every year I do some, and every year I forget what on earth I’ve planted until it comes up, which is a lovely surprise.

Bird Behaviour

• There should be a bit more activity in the garden now, as moulting adult birds start to move about again, and everyone realises that winter is on the way.
• The first of the birds moving south may turn up in the garden – willow warblers are often seen briefly at this time of year, along with any blackcaps who have decided to migrate rather than stay put. Chiffchaffs will also be leaving, but good luck with telling the difference between them and the willow warblers, unless they call and tell you their name.
• You may see swallows and house martins massing and chattering, getting ready to leave for Africa. By the end of the month, only the most tardy of our summer visitors will remain.
• Robins may well be the only birds singing, as they hold territories for the whole year – a pair of robins might combine their territory during the breeding season but will knock ten bells out of one another once that truce is over.
• September is a peak time for little rodents, and so it’s also a peak time for the birds that prey on them, such as kestrels and owls. Kestrels hold a territory for the whole year too, but young birds will be trying to find a patch for themselves, and can often be seen close to the coast.

Kestrel in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery

• Jays are beginning to gather acorns and cache them for the winter – they can be exceptionally noisy and feisty with one another at this time of year.

Jay, also in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery

Plants in Flower

• All the pollinator plants mentioned above plus canna lilies, autumn crocuses, crocosmia (or montbretia as my Dad used to call them), cyclamen, white bryony, bittersweet, our old friends Himalayan balsam and Japanese knotweed, yarrow and red, white and henbit deadnettle, hops and vervain and evening primrose.

Canna lily

Other Things to Watch/Listen Out For

• Wasps! Their nests are breaking up and the workers, having provided protein for the larvae all summer are now drawn to sugar. You’ll find them all over the windfall apples and the ivy flowers in a month’s time, but for now they can be seen foraging like any normal pollinator.
• Spiders! A healthy garden should be full of webs as the orb web spiders get big enough to notice.
• Harvestmen and craneflies – harvestmen are likely to be minding their own business on walls everywhere, while craneflies are starting to emerge from lawns everywhere, providing a late summer bonanza for birds and bats
• September can be surprisingly good for dragonflies too – the common darter in the photo below turned up in the middle of September 2020. The males are red, the females are golden, and they are completely unperturbed by humans – I remember one using my arm as a perch for about twenty minutes a few years ago. I have rarely felt so useful.

Common darter

• While there are still dragonflies about, keep your eyes open for the hobby (Falco subbuteo) – it is a summer migrant but it specialises in catching dragonflies on the wing. I caught the slightest glimpse of one in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery in autumn 2020, and have been watching out for them ever since.

Hobby (Falco subbuteo) Photo by Rodrigo de Almeida

• This is probably the noisiest time for foxes, surpassing even the carry-on of the breeding season – in my garden it regularly sounds as if the young adults, just leaving their home territories and trying to establish their own, are murdering one another.
• The first of the autumn fungi will be putting in an appearance – I have made it my personal mission to see if I can see a parrot waxcap this year. Let’s see how I get on!

Parrot waxcap (Photo by Stu’s Images)

• The full moon is on 29th September, and is known as the Harvest Moon – this year it will also be a supermoon (i.e. appearing especially large and bright)

Holidays and Celebrations

• 7th September – Krishna Janmashtami (Krishna’s birthday) (Hindu)
• 15th September – Rosh Hashanah – Jewish New Year – begins at sundown
• 18th September – Ganesh Chaturthi (Ganesh’s birthday) (Hindu)
• 23rd September – Autumn Equinox (day and night is of equal length) and the Pagan festival of Mabon
• 24th September – Yom Kippur – Day of Atonement (Jewish) begins at sundown
• 27th September – Prophet Muhammad’s birthday begins on sighting of the crescent moon
• 29th September – Michaelmas Day (Christian/Pagan). It’s one of the quarter days of the Christian church, and also the day when harvest needed by tradition to be completed. Old Michaelmas Day isn’t until October, but traditionally that’s the day when the devil spits on the blackberries, making them inedible. You have been warned.

Blackberries at Walthamstow Wetlands

Common toadflax

Dear Readers, first a belated Happy New Year – I hope that 2023 brings everything that you need most, with a good helping of joy along the way. Thank you for reading along and for your support and appreciation over the years, I value it more than I can possibly say.

But now, August. This can feel like the tipping point of the year – some plants are still in flower, while berries are already appearing on many more. The birds will mostly have done their breeding for the year, and the garden may seem strangely silent. There should still be lots of insects about though, and maybe even the first orb spider webs – the spiders have been in the garden for ages, but this is the first time that they’ve grown big enough to be noticed. Let’s see what else is in store for us….

Things to Do

• As we get into the second half of 2023, a lot of organisations haven’t yet posted any events. However, I did discover that the Royal Parks have a selection of self-guided walks for you to download – some, such as ‘Music for Trees’ (which has pieces of music to be listened to under particular trees) have an app to download, while others, such as the ‘More Than Bugs’ trail and the St James’s Park Tree Walk have maps for you to follow. Just the thing if it isn’t too hot.
• The London Natural History Society has two interesting walks. The first, ‘Looking at trees around St Paul’s Cathedral‘ could not be more central, and I know from my street tree walk in the area that there are a lot of very interesting specimen trees to be examined. The walk takes place on Saturday 12th August from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
• The second LNHS walk is at Richmond Park, and will be looking at the ecology and entomology of this very interesting area.

Plants for Pollinators

The RHS guide to Plants for Bees (in January’s RHS magazine) suggests Field Scabious as the ideal plant for the month – it provides food for two specialised species (the small scabious mining bee (Andrena marginata) and the large scabious mining bee (Andrena hattorfiana), plus many other species, including the beautiful red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarious) and a whole host of hoverflies and beetles.

Field scabious (Knautia arvensis)

Large scabious mining bee (Andrena hattorfiana) (Photo By Hectonichus – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14540871)

Red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) Photo Image credit: Tom Ings

Other suggested plants include greater knapweed, globe thistle, catmint (though not if you have feline visitors to the garden as it will most likely get squashed), fuchsia (so good for hawkmoths of various kinds) and my favourite, wild carrot.

Bird Behaviour

• As I’ve noted before, August can be a very quiet time in the garden – many adult birds are moulting and so are keeping a low profile, and there is starting to be plenty of food in parks and woodland and hedgerows, from acorns and beech mast to berries and rosehips. This is the start of the big autumn feed-up, both for birds who stay in the UK and need to endure the lean months, and for those who are planning to migrate.
• Juvenile birds may well be forming mixed flocks – tits and finches in particular do this, and it can be fun to see if there’s anyone unusual in amongst the ‘usual suspects’. You might get a brief glimpse of an unexpected young nuthatch or even a lesser spotted woodpecker that has been ‘caught up’ in a flock. There’s strength in numbers, and more eyes means more chances to spot food and avoid predators, plus the pressure to form territories and find partners is off until the spring.
• The swifts, the last to arrive in the UK in May, are also the first to leave, and you will be lucky to spot any after the end of this month.
• You might find that your local house sparrows have disappeared, too – they often ‘take a holiday’ in August, if there are seeding plants around. They won’t usually go more than a mile, and will be back by September, homebodies that they usually are.
• And this is the prime month to see goldfinches feeding on thistles and teasel. The males have slightly longer beaks, and so are more able to cope with the long spines that protect the teasel seeds, leaving the females to eat the thistles.

Juvenile goldfinch on a seedhead at the Olympic Park, Stratford

Plants in Flower

Judging by my posts from previous years, Japanese anemones are putting in an appearance now, along with agapanthus, the small hardy geraniums (such as hedge cranesbill), common toadflax (as in the first photo), bristly oxtongue and nipplewort, and Japanese knotweed (ahem). Buddleia might still be in flower, and so will the more showy hydrangeas. Hemp agrimony and purple loosestrife are both resplendent alongside the pond.

What is really noticeable though is the amount of fruit – everything from elderberries, brambles and rosehips on the dog roses to conkers and acorns, through sea buckthorn and pyracantha. No wonder all the birds have gone AWOL. By the end of the month, most of the haws on my hawthorn tree will be gone.

Hawthorn berries

Other Things to Look/Listen Out For

• If you’re on a seaside holiday, spend some time watching the gulls and their antics. Many a café owner will be patrolling the seafront with a water pistol to try to deter some of the herring gulls. Good luck with that!
• Six of the nine species of British blue butterfly will be on the wing.

Holly blue butterfly sunning itself

• The larger bumblebees will be a bit less in evidence, but the common carders will be out and about for a few months yet. In my garden they are late to appear, but are also the last bumbles to be on the wing.

Common carder on Michaelmas daisies in October!

• Keep an eye open for the sycamore moth caterpillar, a very flamboyant creature. As the name suggests, you’ll find it on sycamore trees, maples and horse chestnuts.

• Juvenile green woodpeckers might be independent, but they might also be being ‘shown the ropes’ by their parents, as was the case with the one below. The adult was hammering into an ants’ nest when it was ‘seen off’ by a magpie. What outrageously cheeky opportunists they are.

Adult green woodpecker being ‘seen off’ by magpie

Juvenile green woodpecker

• Keep your eyes open for clouded yellow butterflies – these are migratory, and if conditions are right, you might see them in some numbers in high summer. The last big ‘Clouded Yellow Summer’ was in 2006, so we are well due for another one.

Clouded yellow (Colias croceus) Photo By Charles J. Sharp

• Generally a quiet month for foxes, but make the most of it – as autumn approaches it can sound like all hell has broken loose in the garden.
• There are two full moons this month. The first, on 1st August, is known as the Grain Moon or Lynx Moon. The second, on 31st August, is the Wine Moon or Song Moon. When two full moons appear in the same month, the second one is known as a Blue Moon.

Holidays and Celebrations

• 1st August – Lammas (Christian)/Lughnasa (Gaelic/Pagan) – first harvest festival
• 7th August – Summer Bank Holiday, Scotland and Ireland
• 20th August – Women’s World Cup Final in Sydney, Australia
• 26th to 28th August – Notting Hill Carnival
• 28th August – Summer Bank Holiday, England, Wales and Northern Ireland