Dear Readers, four years ago today (31st March 2020) my father passed away, and I became a middle-aged orphan. Today, I think about how I used to phone my parents every Sunday, and how I sometimes thought of it as a chore – Dad would speak to me for about five minutes, but he never really knew what to say. Then he’d pass the phone onto Mum. If talking had been an Olympic sport she would definitely have got a gold medal, so I was rarely on for less than an hour. Mum had to tell every story verbatim, in real time – it was as if every detail was of equal value, every exchange, even the most humdrum, worthy of attention and retelling. Only later did I understand how diminished her life had become, how small her world, so that every incident grew to have an almost Homeric importance, though if a wooden horse had ever turned up in Milborne St Andrew I imagine that we’d still be on the phone now.

Yet, after they passed away, the time when I would have phoned them gave me a physical pain, every week for months and months. For a while I would ring their number, just to hear Mum’s telephone voice announcing that ‘Neither Sybil or Tom are able to take your call at the moment’. How I yearned to have one of those long, meandering, infuriating calls again. I would have loved to hear a verbatim report of Mum’s argument with the milkman, or to have a blow-by-blow account of the adorable thing that the cat did. I suppose that it’s often not the big things that we miss so much when someone dies, but the day-to-day familiarity of a voice, or a touch, a turn of phrase that no one else has.

Dad, on the other hand, was a very taciturn person. He was, however, easily exasperated by inefficiency and lack of planning, even after he moved into the nursing home because of his dementia. When I went to visit, Dad would often throw up his hands as he recalled some mishap or source of confusion.

“It was chaos, utter chaos!” he’d say, with a roll of the eyes. Sometimes, if the nursing staff were within hearing range, he’d lean in and say, sotto voce

“And that one” (jerk of the head), “he’s the worst”.

I’d turn to see some poor gentleman trying to manoeuvre his walker through a space that was clearly too small, or someone carrying a plate full of cake at a precipitous angle.

Dad was quick to judge other people as idiots, but he was easily conned or bullied, even before his dementia. However,  Mum took over the phone calls as Dad’s faculties diminished, and she was more than able for any scammers. One ill-advised chap was trying to persuade Dad to give him his credit card details when Mum snatched the phone and gave the scamster such an earful that he told her she was ‘a very wicked woman’ and put the phone down on her. Clearly her way with words was not always a disadvantage.

And so, as the years go by, I find myself thinking less and less about the last few years and the challenges that they brought, and more about what special people Mum and Dad were, and what a good team they made. They always presented a united front in public, and both of them hated it when they were with couples who were contemptuous of one another, or who spoke to one another with a lack of respect. Of course, things could be different in private – my brother and I used to call them ‘Stadler and Waldorf’ after the couple of old men in The Muppets – but basically they had one another’s backs, and were on the same team, for the best part of sixty-five years.

I once asked Mum what the secret of a life-long relationship was.

“Luck”, she said.

I was surprised. I’d expected ‘unconditional love’ or some such notion.

“When you’ve known one another since you were fourteen years old,” she said, “You’re bound to change over the years. The question is, do you change in ways that your partner can deal with? Can you still love one another? We were lucky, because we did, and we grew old together. But sometimes people can’t, and in that case it’s best that they find someone that they can love, rather than spending the rest of their lives miserable”.

I have no idea what happens after we die. Part of me would love to think of Mum and Dad still being together in some way, their essence mingling like smoke. But what I do know is that they were so much part of one another that Dad was always looking for Mum, in some way or another, until his dying day, even though he didn’t really understand that she had died. And now his searching is over, and if nothing else, he has some peace, even though I miss both my parents more than I can say. My heart is heavy today, but I am full of memories, and of gratitude for what they gave me, and who they were.

 

Dear Readers, in previous years I’ve put together a collection of autumn poems, but in a strange oversight I’ve managed to forget all about spring. No more! Here are a few of my favourites, do feel free to let me know which ones you like.

First up, William Wordsworth, in a pensive mood. He’s not wrong, though.

Lines Written in Early Spring
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?

And I rather love this one….

“Feuerzauber”
BY LOUIS UNTERMEYER

I never knew the earth had so much gold—
The fields run over with it, and this hill
Hoary and old,
Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill.

Such golden fires, such yellow—lo, how good
This spendthrift world, and what a lavish God!
This fringe of wood,
Blazing with buttercup and goldenrod.

You too, beloved, are changed. Again I see
Your face grow mystical, as on that night
You turned to me,
And all the trembling world—and you—were white.

Aye, you are touched; your singing lips grow dumb;
The fields absorb you, color you entire . . .
And you become
A goddess standing in a world of fire!

I confess to a great fondness for Billy Collins. Some people complain that he’s ‘too accessible’ or ‘too sentimental’ but sometimes he just nails it. See what you think.

Today
BY BILLY COLLINS

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary’s cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

And if that was too sentimental for you, can I recommend Edna St Vincent Millay? The last few lines have me chortling every single time. She rather reminds me of ‘Johnny Nice Painter’ from ‘The Fast Show’. If you haven’t met him before, have a look here.

Spring
BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

And here’s a little gem by Thomas Nashe (1593 – 1607), He was a prolific writer of prose and poetry but is best known for this one, and for ‘In the Time of Plague‘, and  two poems could not be more different in tone. Let’s stick to this one for now. It’s so full of joy!

Spring, the sweet spring
BY THOMAS NASHE

Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king,
Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a ring,
Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The palm and may make country houses gay,
Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day,
And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!

The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet,
Young lovers meet, old wives a-sunning sit,
In every street these tunes our ears do greet:
Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to witta-woo!
Spring, the sweet spring!

Incidentally, the four birds singing are the cuckoo, the nightingale (jug-jug which seems a little prosaic), pu-we (the peewit) and the tawny owl (to witta-woo). How happy I would be to hear them all in one place!

And finally, with no apologies, here is the poem that I chose when we interred my Mum under the cherry tree in the graveyard of St Andrew’s Church in Milborne St Andrew. I loved it then, and I love it now.

The Trees (1974)

PHILIP LARKIN

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Dear Readers, when you’re trying to photograph California Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) it presents something of a problem. How can a photograph possibly do justice to a tree that, at its largest, can be 380 feet tall, 29 feet in diameter and can live to be 2000 years old? Well, lots of people have tried, but I honestly think you need to be standing next to one to really appreciate that these are not just any old tall trees.

However, the history of the California Redwood is not a happy one. Beloved of loggers they have been cut down until they survive naturally  in only a few isolated patches of the California coast. Although they actually need forest fires in order to reproduce, changes in forest management and the increasing frequency and ferocity of the conflagrations means that the redwood seedlings that germinate following a fire are quickly crowded out by other plants.

Interestingly, although the California Redwood is a mighty fine tree, the largest tree by volume in the world is the Giant Redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum). It isn’t as tall, but ‘General Sherman’, a tree living in the Sequoia National Park in California has a diameter of over 37 feet. It is subject to the same problems as the California Redwood, and is even longer lived (given the chance) – the oldest known individual is over 3,000 years old. It’s thought that the tannin in the bark helps to give protection against pests and fungal diseases.

Now, the Victorians get the blame for a lot of things (Japanese Knotweed, Giant Hogweed) but they did plant a lot of California Redwoods and Giant Redwoods on their estates, and for once this has proved to be a good thing, because the trees appear to be thriving, just as they are under threat in their native ranges. About half a million Giant Sequoias have been planted since the 19th century, along with vast numbers of California Redwoods. A recent report in New Scientist suggests that the trees are doing every bit as well in the UK as they did at home in California, sequestering an estimated 85 kg of carbon every year, and apparently loving our more stable climate. The author of the report, Matthias Disney of University College London, does point out there’s no current evidence of the trees reproducing – maybe their need for fire in order to germinate might be a bit tricky to, well, reproduce. Disney also wants to look at the relationship between the redwoods and the native ecosystem to see what impact, if any, the trees have.

Interestingly (and I feel a mini-trip coming on) there is an avenue of Giant Redwoods in Edgware, on the approach to the North London Collegiate School – the school was once a fine country house, and the trees were planted in 1910. Paul Wood (of London’s Street Trees fame) says that they are doing extremely well, and if you’re a North Londoner and fancy a trip they’re on Canons Drive. Wood reports that there is also a younger group of Giant Redwoods in Kilburn (Fernhead Road and Kilburn Lane) – these have apparently been planted right into the pavement, not into a verge as in the case of the Edgware trees, but they seem to be doing fine. So you don’t have to go to Kew, or to Scotney Castle (where the tallest redwood in the UK can be found, 55 metres tall) to see these magnificent trees. Turns out, they’re everywhere! Long may they prosper.

A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Dear Readers, the idea of Hanami – cherry blossom viewing – seems to have taken off over the past few years. In Japan, where the idea originated, it’s very much a social thing, a chance to view the blossoms, meet friends, maybe picnic under the pink and white canopy. In Toronto (much on my mind as my trip approaches) they have Cherry Blossom season in High Park, with weekly updates on how the blossom is progressing (you can read all about it here). In the UK, the National Trust are currently publicising ‘the best places to see blossom‘ (and this isn’t just cherry blossom, but also some of their magnificent magnolias which should be reaching peak condition round about now). And in fact, here in the County Roads in East Finchley we have some very fine cherry trees of our own.

Here’s a lovely pink one at the junction of Durham Road and Creighton Avenue….

I love the way that the fallen  petals look like confetti…

And then there’s my favourite tree on Leicester Road…

And then there are some on Huntingdon Road. Apparently the pink rings at the base of the stamen indicates that the flower has been pollinated. Who knew?

And this one has blossom growing out of its trunk in a most intriguing way…

As Rebecca Warren points out in ‘Nature’s Calendar’, cherry trees became popular as street trees because they are small in stature (with a correspondingly small root run), and because they not only produce blossom but often have stunning autumn foliage. They really punch above their weight, both in a small garden and alongside a suburban road. But (whisper it) my favourite cherry tree species is not one of these cultivars, but the tree after which I suspect Cherry Tree Wood here in East Finchley was named – the bird cherry (Prunus padus) with its firework-tail flowers. It doesn’t flower until May, when  all the other cherries are pretty much over, and so it is a late-spring pleasure.

The delight of cherry blossom is that it is ephemeral – some years it feels as if you could blink and miss it. And the weather doesn’t help. On a blustery, wet day (of which we’ve had way too many just lately) you can watch the flower petals being torn from the tree  and sticking to the damp pavement. But what a pleasure it is to see it, after the long dark days. It feels important to stop and drink it in, however busy we are. And who said it better than A.E. Housman? He seems to capture the transience of both the blossom and the lives of humans so well here, in all its poignancy and resilience.

A Shropshire Lad 2: Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

BY A. E. HOUSMAN

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Interestingly, what Housman is talking about is our native wild cherry (Prunus avium), which, as it grows to nearly sixty feet tall, is not a popular street tree. As Paul Wood says in his book ‘London’s Street Trees‘, a wild cherry can ‘give most of the Japanese cultivars a run for their money’ when in bloom. What a beautiful sight it is, and it shows how accurate Housman’s line about ‘the cherry hung with snow’ is.

Dear Readers, one of the joys of being retired is that it gives me a chance to explore a bit more of London, and bask in its history. And so, on Monday, I took a trip to Ham House in Richmond, to get an eyeful of the 17th interiors and to admire the Stuart-era gardens. It’s a very imposing building, and there’s a very imposing chap in the middle of the lawn. It makes a real change to see a statue of a naked man given such prominence, as opposed to the usual women who look as if their clothes have dropped off. This is Old Father Thames, very appropriate considering that the river runs a few hundred metres away.

But first, a quick trot around the gardens, as the house doesn’t open until midday. There’s a whole lot of geometry going – not my favourite style of garden, but extremely impressive nonetheless.

Interestingly, there appears to be no evidence that the gardens were like this originally, but even so it was decided to keep them, and they’re certainly a talking point! At the back of the house is ‘the wilderness, a series of intersecting paths and lawns absolutely busting with bulbs, and with strategically-placed conservatories and other places to sit. Much more to my taste.

The grape hyacinths and some species tulips are out at the moment, and a few bluebells are just coming into flower – they look very like English bluebells to me, so it will be spectacular in a few weeks.

And here’s a view of the back of the house. I can just imagine the Stuart carriages pulling up, and hear the sound of the horses’ hooves on the gravel.

A lot of attention is now being put into the kitchen garden, which grows a wide variety of fruit and veg, and lots of flowers for the house and the essential National Trust café.

There are all manner of espaliered fruit trees along the wall…

And there is the most magnificent wisteria along the wall of the café, just waiting to burst into bloom. What a photo opportunity that will be! Wisteria Hysteria, anybody?

Anyhow, now it’s midday and time to go into the house itself. It was built in 1610 and was first occupied by William Murray, 1st Earl of Dysart. He was a close childhood friend of Charles I, and might have been his ‘whipping boy’ – this was a child brought up alongside a royal child, and  who took all the punishments meant for the monarch to be. I imagine that the house was something of a compensation. However, this was a time of change, and being a Royalist sympathiser wasn’t such a smart move after Charles I was executed. William shrewdly signed the house over to his wife Katherine, who somehow managed to keep the house from being handed over to the Parliamentarians after paying a 500 pound fine. You can still see the words ‘ Vivat Rex’ over the very impressive front door.

Then you go into the Great Hall, probably used for dining and entertaining.

The staircase is astonishing, with individual carvings of everything from horse armour to cannons. I was very sorry that my military-history buff husband wasn’t there to explain all the details. Historian Christopher Rowell described the staircase as ‘without a close parallel in the British Isles’. It’s thought to date back to the 1630s.

I have always had a great fondness for marquetry, which is surprising as I am hardly a dab hand with a chisel. But look at this cabinet! It wasn’t open when I visited, but the interior is full of little drawers and niches and cubby holes of all kinds. It’s made from ebony, stained bone, walnut, stained fruitwood and (alas) ivory.

There’s a fine portrait of Charles I by Van Dyck. Whenever I look at these portraits, I always wonder at which point he realised that he was doomed.

And this is a bit of a mystery. It depicts Elizabeth Murray, the daughter of William and Katherine, who rose to prominence when Charles II came to the throne. She married the Duke of Lauderdale, Lionel Tollemache and Ham House became a centre of Restoration intrigue. But what of the black child? The portrait doesn’t mention him at all, so we have no idea if he was part of the retinue of the house, or if the artist brought him along as a ‘prop’, which according to one of the guides was not at all unusual.

Apparently, although when the house was first built the family were likely to have dined at a single long table, later the fashion was for smaller individual tables, as if you were in a restaurant.

And this is Elizabeth’s bedroom, but at the moment it’s showing a Stuart reclining chair rather than her bed.

Downstairs is the bathroom, which has both a round Stuart bath, and a nineteenth century rectangular one. Being so close to the bedroom would have been very handy!

Downstairs, via a very narrow and plain staircase, is the servants’ quarters. I like that some of the details of the people who worked in the house are stencilled onto the walls, the dates and job titles gleaned from the accounting records of the house. A very knowledgeable guide told us that laundress would have earned three pounds per year, while the mole-catcher earned four pounds and ten shillings.

When the house was first built, there would have been no interior staircase linking the kitchen and servants’ quarters to the rest of the house, so all the food would have been walked around the outside of the building. But latterly the servants had a way of taking the food upstairs without braving the elements, though it’s thought that maids and kitchen boys used to sleep under the table when there was something that needed to be watched overnight, such as bread baking or possibly meat roasting.

Ham House remained in the Tollemache family until 1948, when the house was given to the National Trust and the contents to the Victoria and Albert Museum (later they were brought back to the property). It is a remarkable survival from Stuart times, and the National Trust have done a great job of preserving it and of putting it into context. I recommend a visit if you’re in London, and the café does a great cheese and onion marmalade toasted sandwich if you’re in need of a bite.

 

Dear Readers, you might remember a recent Red List post about the Cirl Bunting  in which I mentioned that although it was a conservation success story, it wasn’t found outside the West Country at the moment. Well, much to my surprise, one was found on 18th March at Barnard Castle in Durham, several hundred miles north of its usual homeground.

You might remember that Barnard Castle was visited by Dominic Cummings, special advisor to Boris Johnson, during the first lockdown, when the rest of us were confined to quarters. He was said to be visiting the area for ‘an eye test’. Fortunately there’s no question about this ornithological observation as there is photographic evidence for any sceptical folk. The question is, what was the bird doing there?

There is some discussion about whether the bird originated in mainland Europe – historically the south of England was the northern-most range of this little bird, but with climate change it could well be that it’s moving north. Only time will tell if this was a one-off, with a bird maybe blown off course by our recent poor weather, or a particularly adventurous bird heading north in search of pastures new. What it does suggest is that there is great value in just birding a particular local spot, because you honestly never know what’s going to turn up.

Dear Readers, yesterday we were lucky enough to get a preview of the new reptile and amphibian exhibit at London Zoo. The old reptile house hasn’t really been fit for purpose for a long time, and amphibians in particular are a major conservation focus at the Zoo. They developed the concept of EDGE species – animals which are genetically or behaviourally distinct in some way, and which are  critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable. Over 13% of amphibians fall into this category, not only because of the usual habitat destruction, but also because of diseases, such as fungal chytrid infections or ranovirus. The Zoo has been trying to concentrate on EDGE species, both to provide an ark for species threatened with extinction in their native range, to get a better understanding of how the animals live, and to hopefully reintroduce them back into the wild if a safe habitat can be found. The new reptile and amphibian house has 33 species, 15 of them EDGE species.

The new building has eleven distinct climate zones to accommodate the needs of the different species, and the enclosures have places where shy reptiles and amphibians can hide, where they can sun themselves and where their needs for burrowing, climbing or just hanging around can be met.

Fortunately, some of the surviving frogs on Dominica were taken into a captive breeding programme involving zoos such as Gerald Durrell’s zoo on Jersey (which is so worth a visit if you’re on the island) and London Zoo, and it was there that the extraordinary life cycle of this frog was revealed. The females create a foam nest and lay a small number of eggs. When the tadpoles hatch, she continues to lay eggs, but these are infertile, and the tadpoles rely on them as a food source until they metamorphose, with the female and the male standing guard over them the whole time. They then spend a few days under the care of their parents before they leave to start their own lives. It’s thought that this brooding behaviour was the main reason for the ‘Mountain Chicken’ name, though when they were plentiful they were certainly a protein source for local people.

With perfect timing, some of the Mountain Chicken frogs have bred since they entered the new building, and we were shown a slide of a mother surrounded by tiny froglets. It’s hoped that once the captive population is big enough, some frogs will be able to be released into a semi-wild protected enclosure in Montserrat – the water there is heated to 31 degrees by solar panels, which is too high for the chytrid fungus to survive, but not too hot for the frogs.

Some species have managed to develop some immunity to chytridiomycosis (the disease caused by the chytrid fungus) so it’s hoped that over time the various frog species will do the same. You only have to look at the list of EDGE amphibians to see how endangered and vulnerable so many frog species are.

And now, who would like to see a Lake Titicaca frog (otherwise known as a Scrotum frog)?

These can be huge frogs, growing up to 2 feet long, and as you can see they are very wrinkly – because Lake Titicaca is the highest freshwater lake in the world, it doesn’t have as much dissolved oxygen in the water as a lake at lower altitude would have. The extra surface area of the skin means that the frogs can absorb more oxygen, and it sometimes bobs up and down to get the water flowing over its skin. It’s very well adapted to its home, but not very well adapted to anywhere else and, unfortunately, trout have been introduced to the lake, and they eat frogspawn. This, plus increased pollution, the taking of frogs for the pet trade, for traditional medicine and the ever-present risk of disease has meant an 80 per cent decline in species numbers. Again, it’s hoped that this enigmatic frog will be happy enough to breed in the new building, as it has done in several other zoos.

London Zoo’s conservation programme works extensively with early-stage biologists in the countries where these frogs live, and helps to train and resource research into understanding the species and the threats that they face. They also help to set up education programmes so that local people can learn a bit more about how important the animals that they live with are, and how, so often, they aren’t found anywhere else in the world.

It’s not all about the frogs though – how about the Chinese Giant Salamander? This is one of the largest of all amphibians, with the largest animals weighing over 110 lbs and reaching 6 feet in length. They are functionally blind and depend on sensory nodes that run along their body to pick up vibrations from their prey, which includes practically anything aquatic, with a slight preference for crabs. They are territorial and have a complex series of mating displays with all kinds of chasing, rolling, posturing, inviting and general shenanigans.

Sadly, Chinese Giant Salamanders are critically endangered. In collaboration with Chinese scientists, one of the biggest species surveys ever undertaken was performed to try to find these animals in the wild, and the results were frightening – it took the equivalent of one year to find a single specimen. However, there are millions of captive Chinese Giant Salamanders, which are kept in crowded conditions with poor water quality until they are killed and eaten as a delicacy. They don’t breed well in these conditions, so they have historically been taken from the wild. Now, they have run out.

To complicate matters further, scientists think that there could be as many as nine different species, which can hybridise. As the giant salamanders sometimes escape, they are cross-breeding with the few remaining wild Chinese Giant Salamanders. What a mess!

There are four giant salamanders at London Zoo, rescued from a post office in Coventry where they were being illegally smuggled. In fact, quite a lot of the reptiles and amphibians that arrive at UK zoos are victims of the illegal trade in the animals for collectors. Five salamanders were rescued, but one of them didn’t survive, a sad indictment of the way that living creatures are so often seen as commodities. Let’s hope that all the reptiles and amphibians survive and thrive in their new habitats.

The exhibit opens to the public on 29th March.

Dear Readers, many dog owners are convinced that their dogs understand every word they say, but proving that dogs can link words to objects has proved to be more difficult than you’d think. There has been some interesting work with what are known as ‘Gifted Word Learner dogs’, which involved teaching the dogs the names of their toys, and then seeing if they would fetch a particular toy on command, even after a period of time. A group of six border collies were tested over a few months, and each one could clearly remember up to twenty-six different toys.

The trouble was replicating the experiment in a controlled laboratory setting. There was no way to know if owners were accidentally giving off indications of which toys they wanted, and as anyone who’s been around animals knows, they are exquisitely attuned to the tiniest nuances of our body language.

And so, Marianne Boros at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest came at the problem another way. She tested 18 dogs of different breeds, including Labrador retrievers, toy poodles and those Einsteins of the dog world, Border collies. The dogs were wired up for an EEG, which measures brainwaves (like wearing a little hat, so not invasive), and the owners then showed each dog five objects that they were very familiar with. Sometimes they would say the correct name, but on other occasions they would say a wrong name – for example, holding a ‘stick’ but saying ‘ball’.

Boros hypothesized that the dogs’ brainwaves would be different if there was a mismatch between the name spoken and the object, and this was indeed the case, with the results being strongest when the object was very familiar to the dog. The same effect has been noted in humans, when there is a mismatch between what the viewer expects and what’s actually said – such things confuse our brains, and clearly they confuse the brains of dogs too.

Interestingly, no breed had ‘better’ results than any other in this test, suggesting that pretty much any dog can learn the difference between the word for ball and the word for stick, and what each word represents.

I don’t believe that dogs understand every word that we say (and to be honest that’s probably a great benefit for the dog considering how much most of us rattle on) but they are likely to be more attuned to us, and more capable of demonstrating that attunement than any other animal that we share our lives with. What remarkable animals they are!

You can read the whole article here.

A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Dear Readers, as I sit in the office gazing out of the window idly and trying to work out where the squirrel that just crossed the road is going, I often startle as a bumblebee flies headlong into the window, before recovering and heading off over the roof. What chunky chappesses they are! At this time of year, most of them are queens, coming out of hibernation and gathering nectar for themselves, and pollen for the larvae hatching out of the first of their eggs.

At this time of year, you might also see a bumblebee who seems to be ‘grounded’. What to do? First up, just watch for a minute unless the bee is in immediate danger of being trampled on or squashed. The one below looked as if she was dead, but when I approached her she stuck out a leg in a ‘don’t mess with me’ gesture. Research by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust has found that the queens spend a lot of their time hanging out in the grass and having a rest, so you only need to intervene if the bee has been hanging  out for more than an hour and a half.

If you absolutely have to move a bee, I would look around to see if there is anything in flower that you can pop her on to – nothing beats natural nectar. If she starts to feed, job done. So many plants are not bee friendly though, especially bedding plants such as petunias and bizzy lizzie and pelargoniums, so if there’s nothing about, make up a 50/50 solution of water to white sugar (not brown sugar, and definitely not honey) and offer that on a spoon or a bottle top. Bumblebee Conservation are very keen that you don’t bring the bumblebee indoors ‘to warm up’ (I must admit that I didn’t appreciate this) – rapid heating is very bad for a bumblebee, which is adapted to living in the tundra, and is more in danger from over-heating than chilling.

By the way, I’m sure that all of us (me included) have done ‘the wrong thing’ when trying to help a bumblebee, so this article is very helpful.

Another thing that people often get very excited about when they see bumblebees are the little mites that are often clinging to their fur. Sometimes people even get a paintbrush to try to remove them.

But these little guys are actually just hitching a lift – they’re known as phoretic mites, and they hang around on flowers waiting for a bumblebee to bumble past. Once one arrives, they all run on (much like me getting on the 102 bus) and disembark on arrival at the bumblebee nest, where they eat the wax and detritus that accumulates. They also munch up some of the tiny insects that live in the nest, but don’t harm the larvae or the adult bees. Then, when the mites ‘come of age’ they jump back onto another bumblebee to be transported back to a flower, where they wait for another bee to come along.

One of the many things I learned from Kiera Chapman’s piece in Nature’s Calendar was that bumblebee queens don’t lay their eggs in the same place that they hibernated. This actually makes perfect sense. The bees tend to choose north-facing sites that are safe from flooding for their hibernation spot – they don’t want to be woken up by it getting too hot as this will waste their fat reserves, and they need those to get through the winter. Once active, she finds a site such as a mouse barrow on a south-facing slope, builds a ball of wax and pollen and lays her eggs (fertilised during the previous year) into it. She then broods these eggs just like a chicken, using her body heat. It takes about 5 weeks for the larvae that emerge to become adult bees, and at this point they can go out and start foraging for nectar and pollen, so that more worker bees can be nurtured. An average bumblebee nest has only about 500 members, compared to the tens of thousands in a honeybee hive. Towards the end of the season, some of the eggs will turn into males and new queens, so that the cycle can begin all over again.

It’s all very well being adapted for tundra, but climate change poses a particular threat to bumblebees – overheating. As winters get warmer, they are emerging from hibernation earlier, and often can’t find any food, as we’ve seen. This is a great reason to get planting early crocuses, mahonia, muscari, fritillaries and other early-flowering plants, and to leave the dandelions alone. What it’s more difficult to manage, though, is the soaring heat of summer. Scientists have predicted that many bee species will move northwards or to higher altitudes, but the importance of decent bumblebee habitat – lots of flowering plants and places to hibernate and nest – can’t be overstated. Bumblebee Conservation has been running its ‘Bee The Change‘ campaign for a while now, with lots of suggestions for ways to help out even if it’s just through a windowbox or encouraging a change in verge management or municipal planting. There’s lots of useful information on the site, so it’s well worth a look!

Dear Readers, well, here I am on the 9.13 from Dorchester South to London Waterloo, heading home after my time in Dorset. It’s a misty morning, and already I’ve seen roe and sika deer in the flooded fields as we gallop past. Nothing wrong with flooded fields of course – as I’ve mentioned before, much of the land around Dorchester has been water meadow for generations, with seasonal flooding, and the fields were managed for grazing on the new young grass when it appeared after the waters had subsided. There has been a long-standing plan to build housing on or close to the floodplain, which seems like madness to me. And what of the poor souls who would buy those houses, only to find themselves flooded out? Our meadows and wetlands are often the main protection from rivers breaching their banks or a storm surge piling in.

On the subject of housing, though, I am sometimes shocked by how the words ‘social/affordable housing’ are whispered by some folk in Dorset, in much the same way as my Nan used to mouth ‘Cancer’. I sometimes say “Yes, and that’s exactly the kind of housing that my family would have been glad of when I was growing up”. This equivalence between poverty and crime is invidious, especially as there is already council housing in Milborne St Andrew, and many of the carers, nurses, car mechanics and other people that provide such needed services live there, often helping the very people complaining about the new houses. I guess that nobody ever wants change, and the media and the government don’t help with their messaging about skivers and ‘illegals’. Plus austerity left many folk, who would otherwise have been inclined to be generous, to feel that there wasn’t enough to go round, even for the people who were already here. I also think so many good, kind people are actually afraid of what might happen to their beloved village if new folk moved in. Yet they were so welcoming to my Mum and Dad when they arrived, and in truth the vast majority of people that I meet are not Dorset born and bred, but moved here from London or some other metropolis. How do you fold new people into an existing community? Making them feel welcome would be a good start, but it’s difficult to do that if you feel terrified of what they represent. And yet, many of the villages have largely ageing populations, and you need new people to keep the schools open and to go to the community and the sports centre, and to shop locally. We desperately need new housing, but nobody wants things to change. It’s something of a conundrum.

In other news, I passed the house where a jackdaw was making a nest last year.

But it won’t be making a nest this year. I guess the wall needed repairs, but it does seem like a shame, especially as jackdaws reuse their nest sites. Still, at least there are other sites in the village, and no shortage of jackdaws, with their chuckling cries and acrobatic shenanigans.

There does seem to be a theme about hospitality, and welcome, running through this piece today though. It’s strange how pensive a two and a half hour train journey can make a person. I should probably do this more often.