Dear Readers, a spider has been spinning a new web outside my kitchen window every day for the past few weeks, and I haven’t given it much heed. When the sun sets, it’s lit up for twenty minutes, and so I pay it a little more attention then. And then I noticed something. If you look very closely (and ignore my dirty window, ahem) you’ll see that at about 11 o’clock there’s a whole sector missing.

And this got me very excited, because it means that the web was made by none other than the missing-sector orb spider (Zygiella x-notata). This is actually an abundant and widespread spider, so you might have some in your vicinity too – they usually spin their webs in the upper corners of windows, so this one is behaving exactly as the textbooks predict. Furthermore, when young the spiders make a new web every single night, which is why when I look for the web during the day I can’t see it – the spiders either eat or cut the web loose and then remake it. During the day, the spider itself lives in a retreat, usually in the window frame, but at night they appear at the centre of the web. I saw the owner of this web last night, and although I couldn’t get a photo, I was surprised at how small it was, and how shiny.

Missing Sector Orb Web Spider (Photo By Dariusz Kowalczyk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74486272)

The back of the spider is coated in a chemical called guanine, which is the same as the stuff that makes fish scales shiny. In fish, this might help to disguise them from predators in the shifting light of the upper ocean, but who knows why a spider sparkles? I love that the abdomen looks like a little leaf too.

Why, though, does the web have a missing sector?

Better photo of a web with a missing sector (Photo by By Andreas Eichler, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45149922)

Well, during the day as we know the spider hides away out of sight, but there is a single strand that runs through the missing sector and into the spider’s refuge. The spider sits with her front legs on the sector and the slightest vibration will see her running into the web to catch her prey. She can do this very quickly as she’s just running on a single thread, rather than having to find her way through the complicated structure of the web itself. You could say that the missing sector is a design improvement, developed over literally millions of years. Interestingly, the less food there is to be had, the larger the web that the spider spins. However, Missing Sector Orb Spiders are also capable of building ‘proper’ orb webs if the location isn’t suitable for a missing sector (say, where the sector would be obscured or the angle is wrong), so it’s clear that these animals are far from being little robots, incapable of adjusting their behaviour when things change.

Missing Sector Orb Spider in her refuge (Photo Dariusz Kowalczyk, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons)

So, I was absolutely delighted to see this new-to-me spider, and I’d be willing to bet that if you’re in the UK you have a good chance of finding one too. The only downside is that my windows, already home to a laceweaver at the front, some noble false widow spiders in the kitchen and now a missing sector orb spider at the back, are even less likely to be cleaned in the near future. I think my induction into full-on cronedom, with a bunch of froggy, spidery, buggy familiars, is getting every closer ever day. Bring it on!

Dear Readers, with just a few weeks to go until I retire there is a lot to do at work – I am eager to make sure that everything that should be documented is documented, and that there aren’t any fires smouldering that might burst into flames as soon as I’m out of the door. But on a day as beautiful as today, after so many days of rain, I was determined to spend half an hour perusing my garden for invertebrates, like you do. I’m not called Bugwoman for nothing, you know! And once the buddleia is going over, the best place to look for interesting insects is definitely the patch of hemp agrimony beside the pond. It’s a bit of a blousy plant, and it goes from looking neat to looking as if it hasn’t had its hair brushed for a month in the space of twenty minutes, but everybody with six legs loves it, so that’s good enough for me.

In the photo above there’s what I think is an Eristalis hoverfly – my goodness it’s a good honeybee mimic, even down to the way that the abdomen moves when it’s feeding. It even had me fooled for a minute, and I am wise to the ways of hoverflies. The key thing to look for to distinguish them is the eyes: big fly-ish eyes for a hoverfly, dark little olive-shaped eyes for a bee.

Note the eyes! This is a hoverfly

And here’s a honeybee

Below there’s an Eristalis hoverfly on the bottom of the flower and a Syrphus hoverfly on top – I wrote about the latter a few days ago, but today there were a dozen in the garden, which makes me think that maybe, like the marmalade hoverfly, they’re migratory, whizzing over the Channel to feed in the UK. Apparently such migrations can be so dense that they show up on radar, and the flies are called ‘angels’. As they pollinate a whole range of flowers, and as many of their larvae eat aphids, I agree.

Here’s a Syrphus hoverfly having a rest after its long journey.

And here’s a Gatekeeper butterfly. There was a Holly Blue and a Red Admiral passing through as well but I was too busy looking at flies to capture them in all their glory.

But it isn’t all fun and games. There was a wasp patrolling the flowers – I half expect them to be carrying searchlights, they’re so diligent in their hunt. I’ve watched them find a caterpillar and pull it off of a cabbage plant, and on one occasion a wasp was actually going into an ants’ nest on my patio and stealing the ant larvae, so they shouldn’t be underestimated. But then neither should this tiny chap/pess…

Jumping Spider

This is a tiny jumping spider, hidden away amongst the flowers, and there were lots of others too – ‘ordinary’ orb weavers with their silk slung between the blossom, and several other species – last year I found a candy-striped spider and was very pleased with myself.

So, although the birds have quietened down a bit there is still plenty to see in the garden. I recommend taking a break if you possibly can, there’s always something exciting going on, and it’s so good to get the knots out of your neck and stretch your legs. Look after yourselves, lovelies!

Oh, and here’s the backside of a leaf-cutter bee. Never let it be said that I don’t indulge you all.

Dear Readers, I first wrote about the late summer disappearance of our feathered friends back in 2020, when we were mostly locked down and I had lots of time to cogitate on such things. But this weekend someone asked me, with some concern, about where the birds had gone – he had returned home from holiday to find his garden apparently deserted. Never fear! This happens every year. Read on to see my original post.

Dear Readers, the hubbub in the garden has stilled, the suet feeders swing empty, the mornings are bereft of birdsong and the most excitement that we have at the moment are a couple of woodpigeons beating one another up on the seed feeder. The change is so sudden, so extraordinary, that it’s easy to forget that this happens every single year, and in a way it’s good news – it’s proof that birds aren’t completely dependent on us, and that they can still find their own food when they want to.

But why does it happen?

Firstly, for most birds, the breeding season is pretty much over, the youngsters have literally ‘left the nest’ and the parents no longer have to worry about provisioning them. Even my live mealworms are left wriggling on the bird table, and I suspect that a fair few escape to freedom which is only fair. I think it’s no coincidence that the only birds who stick around in my garden are the ones who breed all year, such as the collared doves and the aforementioned woodpigeons. These birds can feed their offspring on ‘milk’ that they generate themselves in their crop, so are not so reliant on seasonal food and so can reproduce whenever the fancy takes them (which is frequently judging by ‘my’ birds, who spend most of their time chasing one another around with a lustful glint in their eyes).

Woodpigeons beating one another up.

Secondly, there is a lot of ‘natural’ food around for the next few months. Many insects are out and about, the hedges are already full of brambles, and there will be a positive feast available for younger birds to learn about. Fledglings need to learn where the other food sources are locally (and sometimes not so locally – blackbirds, for example, often have a place where they breed and a place where they overwinter). Plus, many young birds will be off finding territories of their own, which will push them further afield. All in all, it’s holiday-season for many creatures, and unlike us, they don’t have to worry about the impact of Covid-19 on their planned destinations.

But finally, many birds will be in moult at this time of year. Feathers don’t last forever, and they are of such vital importance to everything from insulation to flight that they have to be looked after and eventually replaced. For many birds this is a slow process, as the bird needs to retain enough feathers at any one time to make sure it can keep warm and make an escape if necessary. The birds tend to stick to a well-protected area with plenty of food available, and something like a bramble hedge is perfect. No bird wants to risk fluttering to a feeder if there is insufficient cover to pop back into. Plus, creating new feathers takes a lot of energy, so birds tend to do this after breeding and before the need to migrate or to put on fat for the winter.

If you are lucky enough to see a baby starling at this time of the year, you might notice that it has some juvenile, dull-brown plumage, and some of the darker, more iridescent adult plumage.

Starling with full adult plumage

One type of bird that has a particularly tough time of it during the moult is the duck. Ducks, geese and swans lose all their feathers at the same time, which means that they can’t fly but have to stick to the safety of the water. To reduce the vulnerability of the more brightly-coloured drakes, they lose their brightest feathers first, which can lead to a variation on our main question: where have all the male ducks gone? The rather dowdier- looking drakes are said to be in their ‘eclipse plumage’ and this, my friends, is why identifying duck species at a wildfowl reserve is something of a challenge in the summer months. Female ducks, who may still have ducklings to care for, often lose their feathers later. One species, the shelduck, actually makes a ‘moult migration’, leaving their breeding grounds all over Europe to descend in vast numbers on the German Waddensea coast. Hundreds of thousands of shelduck arrive in July, and will leave to migrate to their wintering grounds once the process is complete. Although most European shelducks head to Germany, some spend the moulting period much closer to home, in Bridgewater Bay, Somerset.

Shelduck in January looking very pristine!

And so, although our gardens might be empty of birds, it’s a relief to know that they haven’t deserted us because they’re fed up with the quality of the food that we provide, or the way that we always seem to be at home these days. They are going through a perfectly natural process and, believe me, when the weather takes a turn for the worse they’ll be back, en masse, looking for mealworms. We just need to turn our attention to the other, smaller, less obvious critters in our gardens: keep an eye open now for queen bumblebees of many species, fattening themselves up prior to hibernation. And of course, the slow reddening of the berries, and the ripening of the blackberries. It looks as if it might be a bumper year!

Two siskins and a chaffinch in the garden in December 2017

Scene in May

Dear Readers, when we think about pollinating insects we often fixate on bees and butterflies, without thinking about the many other pollinator groups, from beetles to wasps to flies in general. But one group that always fascinates me are the hoverflies, with their wide range of sizes and patterns. Some are wasp mimics, like this species (Syrphus sp. I think but happy to be corrected), and very convincing they can be too – this one even moves its abdomen in a particularly waspish way. I love watching the way that they clean themselves by rubbing their ‘feet’ together.

This individual is a female – you can tell because there is a broad band between the eyes, whereas in males the eyes are very close together. The larvae feed on aphids, and the adults can often be seen feeding on honeydew (as here) or on broad, open flowerheads (my hemp agrimony is a great favourite with many species of hoverflies).

In some Syrphus species, the males have hairy eyeballs, which is quite something, though you’d have to get up close and personal to spot them. I have absolutely no idea why.

Now, this particular genus of hoverflies is obviously mimicking a wasp, and doing it with a fair degree of accuracy. I wonder if anyone else has noticed real wasps chasing other insects this year? I watched one wasp harassing a gatekeeper butterfly for over five minutes this morning, following it from flower to flower with definite predatory intent. Many wasps’ nests will be at their maximum size by now, with lots of mouths to feed, and so the workers will be keen to get their jaws around any protein that they can find. If there are not many caterpillars about they will certainly turn their attentions to other kinds of invertebrates, or even human food – I remember one returning again and again to the remains of a salmon sandwich, slicing off tiny slivers of fish and flying back and forth to the nest.

Soon, of course, the nests will break up and the wasps will only have to feed themselves – their preferred food at this stage is nectar, so you’ll often see them on windfall apples or ivy flowers in the autumn. It’s hard to begrudge them something sweet at the end of their lives. May we all be so lucky.

Wasp on ivy flower

Dear Readers, although it’s been a cool and wet couple of weeks, I have been enjoying watching the butterflies on the buddleia outside my office window. My perception was that there has been a huge uptick in the insects this year – as I’ve mentioned, at one point there were no less than six Red Admirals on the plant at the same time. Even as I look out of the window on this wet and windy afternoon, there is a Red Admiral perched on the flowers, hanging on as the whole bush shifts through about 120 degrees backwards and forwards. But individual anecdotal information, though it tells an interesting story, is not as solid as data collected by a whole range of people, and the information coming through from Butterfly Conservation Trust’s Big Butterfly Count (which ends on Sunday 6th August) is utterly compelling. So far, over 170,000 sightings of Red Admirals have been recorded, a 400 percent increase on last year. So, what is going on?

Some  Red Admirals have always overwintered in the UK  – you will get occasional reports of people finding the insects in their sheds or lofts, and you can see Red Admirals feeding on mild days throughout the winter. However, the historically the vast majority of the butterflies have been migrants – Red Admirals used to spend the winter in the milder parts of southern Europe every year and then, when their foodplants dry up in the spring(their eggs are laid on the stinging nettles upon which the caterpillars feed) they start to move north, reproducing as they go. Peak numbers arrive between July and September.

In August/September, the adults start to head southwards back towards mainland Europe, feeding on ivy, windfall apples and damaged soft fruit and sap. I am tempted to try my ‘rotten banana’ experiment again this year – just as in tropical butterfly houses, UK butterflies (especially those fattening up for a migration) are sometimes glad of some easily digestible sugar. By the time they start their journey home, female Red Admirals in particular are full of fats, for good reason – they are already carrying next year’s unfertilised eggs, and when they reach southern Europe again they will look for a mate, so that the whole cycle can begin again.

Why, though, are there such huge numbers this year? One explanation is that, with the milder winters due to climate change, more Red Admirals are staying put, especially in the warmer south of the UK, and the chances are that more of them are surviving. Red Admirals seen early in the year are likely to be ‘homegrown’, either because they’ve over wintered as adults or hatched from eggs laid much earlier in the year. Numbers are then swollen by migrants from Europe, and my (untested) hypothesis is that, with the very high temperatures and fires right across southern Europe and North Africa, the butterflies are being driven north because their larval foodplants are either dry or burnt. I have a suspicion that more insect species, previously confined to mainland Europe, will arrive on our shores over the next few years/decades, and creatures previously confined to the south of England will be able to make their homes further and further north. What will happen to cold-climate and high altitude specialists remains to be seen, as they run out of places to live as the temperature rises. All I do know is that the situation will be complicated and difficult to predict.

I will be fascinated to see the final results of the Big Butterfly Count. I am sure there will be more surprises. Personally, I have seen far fewer Comma butterflies this year, and very few Small Tortoiseshells, though I am pleased to have seen plenty of Peacocks and a few Painted Ladies. Let me know if you’ve noticed anything unusual, or if you’re also seeing a lot of Red Admirals. It’s interesting to see what’s going on around the country, for sure.

Peacock butterfly

Dear Readers, the denizens of East Finchley have become very adventurous with their tree pits just lately. At first glance, the one above seems to be mainly home to some Mexican Fleabane, but a closer look shows us some tomatoes and some very fine courgettes, with the flowers looking just ready to open.

I must admit that with all the dogs about I might be a little nervous about eating them, but I am still very impressed that someone is managing to grow not only plants but actual food in an area less than a metre square.

Just up the road is another tree pit, this time showing some opium poppies on one side….

…and what I’m fairly convinced is some redshank on the other (this is a form of bistort or Persicaria – it’s in the same family as Japanese knotweed, but is a very inoffensive little plant with none of the bad manners of its relative)

Another tree pit has been lovingly planted up with some begonias – not great for pollinators but very pretty nonetheless.

And sometimes things just plant themselves. In this tree pit we have some great willowherb on one side, and one of the smaller willowherbs (probably square-stalked willowherb) on the other.

Great willowherb

Square-stalked willowherb (probably)

But then I have to stop and admire this fantastic stand of lavender, still going strong a good month after mine (on the south-facing side of the street) has gone over. There are a dozen bumblebees on it, and many of them are queens. The one below looks most likely to be buff-tailed bumblebee queen, even though her ‘tail’ looks pretty white – the colour is a bit richer than I’d expect on a white-tailed bumblebee queen, but there is a lot of variability within both species.

No doubt about this one though: this is a red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) queen. She was much larger than I’d have expected the very similar red-shanked carder bee (Bombus ruderarius) to be. It’s lovely to see so many harbingers of next year’s bumblebee colonies already on the wing – although it’s only August many of this year’s colonies have already broken up, and the new queens are feeding up to put on weight for their hibernation.

And finally, as I was about to walk back through the front door I was interrupted by an enormous emperor dragonfly, easily the size of my finger. I didn’t manage to capture it on camera, as it was zooming about, possibly trying to hunt the butterflies and bees on my buddleia. I have been visited by one before, though, and you can read all about it here. To see a creature like this really is an event worth celebrating.

Female Emperor dragonfly (Anax imperator)

Gatekeeper (Pyronia tithonus)

Dear Readers, here I am, back in East Finchley after a visit to University College Hospital to check out my thyroid again. Regular readers will remember that I’ve been for a raft of tests on various things that were kicked off back in March when I was referred for a CT scan following a persistent cough. It found all kinds of things, including a congenital heart defect, but I have been waiting for a second ultrasound and possible biopsy on my poor old thyroid gland, which apparently has many nodules. Who knew that you could even get nodules in your thyroid? This health stuff is an education for sure.

There is nothing more humbling than waiting for tests in an NHS hospital. I was seated next to an elderly lady who had been referred for an emergency biopsy today. She was with her daughter, who had an appointment elsewhere in the hospital coming up, and was therefore very anxious about the timing of the procedure, as she wanted to be there with her Mum. The older lady was very relaxed about the whole thing, though, as people often are when they’ve spent a lot of time in the medical system and have pretty much seen it all. She was doing a word search puzzle, while her daughter was getting more and more anxious.

Just up the way were three generations of a family – a toddler, a young mother, and her mother. It was the young mother who was going in for an ultrasound scan. There was a brief flurry of excitement when her first name was called, but it turned out there there was more than one person with the same name, so we all settled down again. There were not quite enough seats so we were all swapping around and I was checking how long I could squat for (answer, not as long as I used to be able to). The baby was charming everyone who looked at him, beaming and grinning as if each new person was the most wonderful thing that he’d ever seen. Then the young mother was finally called, so gran looked after the baby. When the young mum came out, she was crying. As they walked to the lift, all I could here was the anxiety in gran’s voice as she tried to find out what had happened. Then the lift doors shut, and that little family and that story were gone, and none of us will ever know the end of it.

We all looked at one another, and then I was called. The doctor performing the ultrasound was brisk but efficient, and with the waiting room full of anxious people I could see that he wanted to get through as quickly as possible.

Five minutes later he pronounced my nodules benign, a biopsy not necessary, and no need for any further investigations. As I was wiping ultrasound lubricant off my neck, I ventured that it must be good to be able to give a bit of good news.

” We are the centre of human misery here”, he said. I wondered if he was thinking about the young woman who’d been in before me. What a toll it must take, being the bearer of bad news over and over again.

As I walked back, I gave the thumbs up to the elderly lady and her daughter as they stood up to go through for the biopsy.

“Good luck”, I said, and the elderly lady gave me a thumbs up back. It’s extraordinary to me how quickly camaraderie grows in these waiting rooms and queues and wards. We seem to become humbler,gentler, kinder versions of ourselves when we’re exposed to our own mortality and that of others. And after all, today I was lucky, and I am grateful to be able to wander into the garden and admire the butterflies, but  each of us is only a diagnosis away from something that changes our lives utterly. How precious it makes this sunny summer evening as the soft light makes the red brick of the houses opposite glow, and the bees browse drowsily on the buddleia below my office window.

Dear Readers, you might remember that I was celebrating the release of the James Cropper Wainwright Prize longlist a few weeks ago (and lamenting that the shortlist follows on so quickly (on 10th August). Well, I have made a start, and have really enjoyed the two books that I have managed to get under my belt so far. When the shortlist is published I will probably try to get through that, and then return to the rest of the longlist. In the past, some of my favourites haven’t made the final six, so there will be no hardship in that!

First up was ‘A Line in the World – A Year on the North Sea Coast’ by Dorthe Nors, translated by Caroline Waight. I can’t remember a translated book ever being shortlisted before, and I am a great fan of the Pushkin Press, who publish a lot of works in translation. This book introduced me to a part of the world that I don’t know at all – the rugged western coast of Denmark and Germany, down into the Netherlands. This is where Nors grew up, and there is such a strong sense of place. Here Dors discusses the beach at Vedersø dune:

” It was there, one day when I was eleven, that I was nearly dragged out to sea by a wave. I was holding my mother’s hand: it was August. In those days I wasn’t familiar with the currents, and I didn’t appreciate their strength. But as we walked along the beach, letting the waves splash around our ankles, one of them dragged me out. My mother grabbed my leg and we both skidded on the shingle until it let us go. Afterwards we sat and cried a bit. Grazes on our legs, blood. My mother was clutching my hand and wouldn’t let it go. Since then I’ve called them Valkyrie waves, the kind that rove in from the North Sea in long elegant swells on otherwise mild days. They’ll take you to sea if they can. I’m afraid of them, and everytime I see them I remember love”.

She also gives a strong sense of what it’s like living in one of the small farming and fishing communities that pepper the coastline. After a wolf wanders into the area from Germany, the local people are terrified of it, and when Nors is interviewed on Danish radio and says that you’re more likely to be mown down by a tractor than eaten by a wolf, she becomes persona non grata overnight:

“And then I disappeared. So did the man who was painting my woodshed. The woman at the end of the sunken lane didn’t give me any biscuits for Christmas. People stopped saying hello when they passed in their cars. I asked a nice old lady nearby how long I would be invisible before my sentence was served. I said it as a joke, but she answered, ‘A year and a half.’

She is a very close observer of nature. I loved this:

“Some birds use their sense of smell to navigate and I have seen the waders’ long bills, the way they bend, double over, and operate in sandy beds like sewing needles.”

I can give this book no higher praise than to say that it not only made me think, about memory and place and how the two are intertwined, but it made me ache to go to those grey, windswept shores, to gaze out to sea and see what happened (hopefully without being grabbed by Valkyrie waves).

And then, howabout ‘The Swimmer – The Wild Life of Roger Deakin’ by Patrick Barkham? Certainly if you think all there is to Roger Deakin was ‘Waterlog’ and ‘Wildwood’, you’re in for a surprise, as I was. Deakin was an endlessly energetic man, full of ideas and schemes and plans. He worked for several advertising campaigns, and came up with the slogan ‘Come home to a real fire’. He was an eccentric but much-loved teacher of English in Diss in Norfolk, where his corduroy trousers and Byronesque curls were the talk of the school. He completely renovated Walnut Tree Farm, and he fought a long and ferocious battle to save the hedgerow at the back of his property. He was heavily involved in the ‘Save the Whale’ campaigns, made a number of documentaries, fell in and out of love repeatedly, and packed more into his short life than most of us will if we live to be a hundred (Deakin died of a brain tumour aged 63).

The biography is largely written in Deakin’s own words, and the words of his friends and family – Barkham has worked very hard to let Deakin and the people who knew him tell their story. This results in some very interesting juxtapositions, especially with regard to Deakin’s love life – sometimes he and his lovers have extremely different opinions about what was going on. Deakin sounds like a man who could be difficult: selfish, single-minded and determined to get his own way. And yet, what comes across most is a sense of how much he was loved, and there could be no greater tribute. I found Barkham’s account completely compelling, and although I knew how it would end I confess to still being greatly moved at the last chapter, telling of Deakin’s death and memorial.

Two very different books, but both highly recommended.

Next up: ‘The Flow – Rivers, Water and Wildness’ by Amy-Jane Beer, followed by ‘Why Women Grow’ by Alice Vincent. One on rivers, one on gardens – let’s see how we get on!

Alpine Chough in Switzerland – PhotoBy Jim Higham from UK – Alpine Chough, Schilthorn, Switzerland, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11377415

Dear Readers, anyone who has ever seen a flock of Alpine choughs ( Pyrrhocorax graculus) in the mountains of Austria or Switzerland will know what social, excitable, energetic birds they are. I’ve loved watching them playing in the wind (and ‘playing’ is the only possible word, as they tumble and dive, seemingly for the sheer hell of it). You can get the idea from the recording below by Stanislas Wroza, taped in the French Alps.

And how about this thoroughly dizzying short film of them flying?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOC-_z2Hppg

Choughs are members of the crow family, with all the intelligence that that usually indicates, but there are only two species in the genus. While we are not quite mountainous enough for Alpine choughs, we do have a few small populations of the Red-billed chough (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax) – there are some on the Isle of Man, some in North Wales and some in Cornwall, plus some on the west coast of Scotland, largely living in the rockiest possible places. In total there are probably about 400 breeding pairs, making them the rarest UK crows. Some populations, like the Cornish choughs, are probably now becoming genetically inviable, with not enough variation to support the birds going forward.

Red-billed Chough (Photo By Ken Billington – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12342398)

Enter the Kent Wildlife Trust and the Wildwood Project, where the aim is to reintroduce Red-billed Choughs to the south of England, where the habitat is suitable but the birds haven’t been seen for over 200 years. Young birds from other parts of the chough’s range have been creche-reared, a special type of rearing which involves feeding the birds as a group so that they get to rely on one other rather than imprinting on the humans. The aim is to release up to 50 birds over the next five years, with the hope of establishing a breeding population which will eventually move west and bring some genetic diversity to the Cornish group. It would be wonderful to see these birds performing their acrobatics over more of the country, and it always gives me hope that people are prepared to spend so much time and effort to try to improve our nature-deprived land. Good luck to the choughs! You can read about them here and to learn more about the science, and about how the scientists are hoping to keep an eye on the choughs once they’re free, have a look at the film here.