Dear Readers, every so often I read something that shows me a whole world that I didn’t know  about, and so it was in an article in this month’s British Birds magazine. The author, Sula Brookes, explains that many common bird species do not have a specific sign in British Sign Language, the language used by many deaf people. Brookes, who is a trained BSL interpreter, realised that this made it much more difficult for people who go on nature walks, or who want to communicate what they’ve seen – so often, the only way to explain is to laboriously spell out the name of the species letter by letter. And so, working with the British Birds Charitable Trust(BBCT), and the Scottish Sensory Centre (SSC), Brookes set out to see if signs for some of our commonest species couldn’t be agreed. She feels that it’s more difficult for deaf children and adults to communicate about nature if there isn’t a way of explaining what they’ve seen, and that this is key to an appreciation of the natural world.

There are signs and descriptions for some birds: the Robin, for example, is ‘the Christmas Bird’, the Snowy Owl usually involves a reference to Harry Potter, and the Magpie is the bird of Newcastle United. There are generic signs for ‘owls’ (‘big eyes’), eagles (‘hooked beak’) and duck (‘flat beaks’) but a dedicated birder is going to want to know if we’re ‘talking’ about a mallard or a tufted duck. And so, Brookes documented the signs that already existed, but, as a hearing person who had BSL as a second language, she turned the design of the signs over to the SSC BSL glossary team, who will work collaboratively to come up with ideas for the new signs – there will be 20 new signs on the SSC website shortly.

The new vocabulary will need to represent the birds visually, so that they’re easy to remember and learn – Brookes describes how the sign for flamingo includes a representation of a bird standing on one leg, and that for the peacock involves a tail fanning out. It will be interesting to see what birds have been chosen, and how BSL reflects their individuality. But already, Brookes has found that the people that she interviewed are excited at the prospect of being able to describe what they see easily, and becoming part of a wider community of bird watchers and nature-lovers.

And here are some of the existing signs for birds. I love the ingenuity and creativity involved in capturing the essence of the creature in a few gestures. I can’t wait to see the new ones! And having once been chased by an ostrich ( I was in a jeep I should add), I find the sign for that creature particularly apt.

Dear Readers, once upon a time Samhain/All Hallows Eve was about rather more than pumpkins and spooky silliness. It was seen as the time when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was thin enough for spirits to cross over into our world. On farms, animals were driven into barns between fires, to protect them from the evil eye. It was the time when our beloved dead were closest to us, and there was a tradition of setting a place at table for them. It occurs to me that, these days, I would need a rather bigger table than the one that I have to make room for all those who have passed in the last few years.

But here are two poems that I like. First up is ‘The Witch’ by Elizabeth Willis. It’s worth reading slowly, to allow each image to sink in before you move on to the next.

The Witch

By Elizabeth Willis

A witch can charm milk from an ax handle.

A witch bewitches a man’s shoe.

A witch sleeps naked.

“Witch ointment” on the back will allow you to fly through the air.

A witch carries the four of clubs in her sleeve.

A witch may be sickened at the scent of roasting meat.

A witch will neither sink nor swim.

When crushed, a witch’s bones will make a fine glue.

A witch will pretend not to be looking at her own image in a window.

A witch will gaze wistfully at the glitter of a clear night.

A witch may take the form of a cat in order to sneak into a good man’s
chamber.

A witch’s breasts will be pointed rather than round, as discovered in
the trials of the 1950s.

A powerful witch may cause a storm at sea.

With a glance, she will make rancid the fresh butter of her righteous
neighbor.

Even our fastest dogs cannot catch a witch-hare.

A witch has been known to cry out while her husband places inside her
the image of a child.

A witch may be burned for tying knots in a marriage bed.

A witch may produce no child for years at a time.

A witch may speak a foreign language to no one in particular.

She may appear to frown when she believes she is smiling.

If her husband dies unexpectedly, she may refuse to marry his brother.

A witch has been known to weep at the sight of her own child.

She may appear to be acting in a silent film whose placards are
missing

In Hollywood the sky is made of tin.

A witch makes her world of air, then fire, then the planets. Of
cardboard, then ink, then a compass.

A witch desires to walk rather than be carried or pushed in a cart.

When walking a witch will turn suddenly and pretend to look at
something very small.

The happiness of an entire house maybe ruined by witch hair
touching a metal cross.

The devil does not speak to a witch. He only moves his tongue.

An executioner may find the body of a witch insensitive to an iron spike.

An unrepentant witch may be converted with a little lead in the eye.

Enchanting witchpowder may be hidden in a girl’s hair.

When a witch is hungry, she can make a soup by stirring water with
her hand.

I have heard of a poor woman changing herself into a pigeon.

At times a witch will seem to struggle against an unknown force
stronger than herself.

She will know things she has not seen with her eyes. She will have
opinions about distant cities.

A witch may cry out sharply at the sight of a known criminal dying of
thirst.

She finds it difficult to overcome the sadness of the last war.

A nightmare is witchwork.

The witch elm is sometimes referred to as “all heart.” As in, “she was
thrown into a common chest of witch elm.”

When a witch desires something that is not hers, she will slip it into her glove.

An overwhelming power compels her to take something from a rich
man’s shelf.

I have personally known a nervous young woman who often walked in
her sleep.

Isn’t there something witchlike about a sleepwalker who wanders
through the house with matches?

The skin of a real witch makes a delicate binding for a book of common prayer.

When all the witches in your town have been set on fire, their smoke
will fill your mouth. It will teach you new words. It will tell you what
you’ve done.

And this one, by Louise Glück, is deeply mysterious. I’m not sure what’s going on, but I’m sure it’s not good. See what you think….

All Hallows

By Louise Glück

Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

Dear Readers, I think of starlings as being fairly opportunistic birds, but when a whole flock of them zoomed past my office window yesterday, I was surprised to see them feeding on the seeds on the cabbage palm next door. I have written about this plant and its attraction to pollinators before, but I have never seen birds feeding on it. However, in a way I’m not surprised – I’ve had goldfinches and sparrows feeding on my Buddleia, so it’s clear that birds are learning to take advantage of a whole range of non-native plants. Funnily enough, I’ve never seen birds feeding on my teasel, which are meant to be the crème de la crème of bird food, but then again, birds, like people, are individuals, with their own preferences and culture.

A little digging about on the interwebs turned up this Youtube video, of starlings feeding in a cabbage palm, presumably in Kensington Gardens, so it seems that plenty of other starlings have realised that this is tasty food.

It’s a short post today, as I’m shortly heading off for my big adventure. At the moment I’m not sure what I’m going to do about blogging while I’m away: there will be a lot of travelling around, and I’m not planning to take my laptop. There might be a chance to post a few photos and notes on what’s going on, but that will depend on wifi availability. So, I might just post some of my greatest hits, or I might put up the equivalent of a ‘gone fishing’ sign. Watch this space!

Dear Readers, as Halloween approaches, it seems like just the right moment to talk about something that often goes unnoticed, or is mistaken for the work of a particularly industrious squirrel – witches’ brooms. The tree in the photo is a hornbeam, but unlike the trees around it, it’s covered in dozens of masses of tangled short twigs – the Royal Horticultural Society describes them as ‘disorganised’, which is putting it mildly. The lateral buds of the tree, which make the side stems, suddenly go berserk, creating this ‘birds nest’.

Although they look impressive, witches brooms are thought not to harm the tree – although the leaves in the ‘brooms’ are often misshapen, and so don’t photosynthesise very well, there will be other areas of the tree that are perfectly normal. But what causes them in the first place? One culprit, particularly in birch trees, is the fungus Taphrina betulina, and in Hornbeams it’s a close relative, Taphrina carpini. Technically, witches’ brooms are galls – the plant itself produces the twigs as a result of the fungal infection, and the fungus probably benefits as its spores are spread by the wind, so being higher up probably provides an advantage.

However, fungi are not the only reason that trees and other plants might develop this particular growth pattern: viruses, other pathogens and even genetic mutations can also cause this particular kind of chaotic growth. In fact, in some spruce trees the genetic mutation is stable, allowing the development of cultivars with a particular growth pattern. One such is the Little Gem cultivar of the Norway Spruce, which grows low to the ground and is often seen in rock gardens.

Now that I’ve seen these witches’ brooms, I’m sure I’ll be noticing them everywhere – it’s unusual to see a tree with such an impressive crop, but there are lots of trees with just one or two, which are very easily missed. I’m always intrigued by the way that a pathogen can ‘persuade’ a plant to provide a shelter, or a way of reproducing, by hijacking the plant’s own biology. Now, that is really quite a trick.

Dear Readers, I have already mentioned that this year is a mast year for acorns, but you couldn’t really miss it if you’ve been out in the woods of North London in the past few weeks. We are positively crunching through the acorns, and it has not gone unnoticed by the animals that feed on them. Certainly the grey squirrels are in for a nice feed during the winter, but you might have also seen one of our most spectacular birds, the Eurasian Jay.

These birds have a very distinctive, bounding flight, and the white flash above their tails also gives them away as they disappear through the trees. They are also not the most musical of birds (ahem) as you can tell from this recording by Arjun Dutta. I bet most people in the UK have heard this, but it’s sometimes hard to work out what the hell is making all the racket. It’s no surprise that in Wales the bird is known as ‘the shrieker of the woods’.

Overall, the abundance of food this year is likely to mean that more jay fledglings survive the coming winter, with a knock-on effect on the creatures that jays eat – they are omnivorous but have a particular taste for the invertebrates that live on oak trees and feed on acorns, which will also be superabundant next year. These invertebrates will feed not just jays, but lots of other woodland birds as well. Jays sometimes rob nests and kill young birds – I well remember one hammering its beak into a fledgling starling on the shed roof opposite a few years ago – but come next winter there are likely to be far fewer acorns about, and so the numbers of jays will probably fall again. The relationship between the different levels of the food pyramid is constantly changing and rebalancing.

Whenever I’ve put out peanuts, I’ve had visits from jays, but they don’t seem interested in anything else. How do they know that I’ve put the peanuts out? Are they watching, like something from Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds?’ I think we underestimate the patience of birds, and their ability to discern what we’re up to with the most minimal of cues. Fortunately, this year the jays will be fine without any intervention from me, so I can make sure that the little birds have a bit of extra sustenance without having to buy peanuts as well, which no one else seems interested in.

Seeing all the acorns on the ground in our local North London woodlands also reminds me of a magical visit to the New Forest many years ago. We were sitting outside our tent when we suddenly heard a grunting, squealing noise.  A spotted sow and no less than twelve tiny piglets scurried through the camp, poking their noses through the leaf litter and munching on the acorns. The owners of the pig were exercising their right of pannage, which goes back to the Middle Ages and allows ‘commoners’ to turn out their animals to feed in the forest. As we watched, the owner wandered over, whistled to the mother pig, and the whole family started to follow him – the pigs and piglets go back to their sties overnight, to keep warm and to avoid being run over by one of the more careless drivers who race through the roads of the New Forest. Pigs seem to be immune to the effects of eating too many acorns – green acorns have a very high tannin content, and ponies are sometimes poisoned following a storm which blows down the unripe acorns. How wonderful to see pigs roaming free and doing their part to keep the forest fertile and biodiverse – their rooting around loosens up the soil, and their dung fertilises it. Plus, we should probably remember that ‘the gardener’s friend’, the robin, was likely to have been following wild boar around long before we came on the scene on our forks and spades.

Dear Readers, in this month’s copy of British Wildlife there’s a wonderful tale of creativity and sustainability which brought a smile to my face, and I hope it will do the same for you. The sandstone roof tiles of churches in the Welsh Marches are home to some of the UK’s rarest mosses, and in particular St James church in Llangua has the UK’s largest population of the Nationally Rare Fringed Hoar-moss (Hedwigia ciliata var leucophaea), along with the Nationally Scarce Hoary Grimmia (Grimmia laevigata) and Flat-Rock Grimmia (Grimmia ovalis).

The church was purchased by Friends of Friendless Churches, who restore closed historic places of worship in England and Wales. I imagine they were delighted to learn that their conservation work was going to be impacted by a bunch of mosses, but to their eternal credit they worked together with local ecologists, Monmouthshire County Council, the conservation architect Andrew Faulkner, and the conservation builders Jones and Fraser to preserve the mosses.

The church needed to be re-roofed, and during this period it would be covered with a large tent. The rare mosses need direct sunlight, and in its absence all sorts of other plants would grow up in the damp, dark atmosphere, and the mosses would be overwhelmed. After a bit of head-scratching, it was decided to build a wooden frame for 200 of the moss-covered tiles, which would be positioned at the same slope and aspect as the original roof.

The mosses thrived in their new ‘home’ – they are drought-resistant so they were basically allowed to just get on with their lives. Then, when the roof was ready to be retiled, mossy tiles were positioned at various places. As the mosses reproduce vegetatively, in a few years the whole roof should be mossy again.

The whole story of the restoration of St James, Llangua, can be found here, (and do look at the Repair Scrapbook) and it was a truly fascinating story of conservation, both of a building and of its ecosystem. Our churches and graveyards are often havens for the natural world, and places of great peace. It’s wonderful to see them being restored and looked after in such a considered way.

Dear Readers, a while back I wrote a post about the Orcas who live around the Straits of Gibraltar attacking sailing boats, and I thought it might be interesting to revisit the subject in the light of some more recent research. At the time, there were a lot of stories along the lines of ‘orcas taking revenge on rich people with yachts’ following the sight of some scars on a matriarch orca called White Gladis – these were thought to be the result of a boat collision. Alas (because this was a most excellent story), the scars are now thought to be the result of a little ‘tooth-raking’ within the orca pod, which is almost the equivalent of a hug.

However, the theories that remain suggest the complexity of these human/whale interactions. You can watch a fascinating film about the way that this saga has developed here, but the first theory relates to the food that the orcas eat. The Iberian orcas feed more or less exclusively on blue-fin tuna, and they hunt them in a very particular way, by corralling an individual tuna and then ramming it with their snouts. This behaviour seemed to some cetacean experts to be very similar to the way that adult orcas will bring adolescents up to the boats and watch while the youngsters try to ‘ram’ the rudder, and the theory is that the adults are teaching the young whales how to kill the tuna by letting them practice on the rudder.

One expert, however, suspects that it’s more complicated than this. Fishermen used to shoot the orca, because the number of blue fin tuna was going down and the whales were inclined to ‘steal’ them. However, from 2005-2011 the numbers of tuna went down so much that there was a moratorium on hunting them. The tuna recovered, the fishermen were allowed back if they caught the tuna on a line, and the orcas would come along and steal the tuna, but the difference this time was that a whale-watching industry grew up, worth millions of euros. So, the fishermen learned to endure the attention of the orcas, the tourists were delighted, and, after all, no one is going to shoot a whale in full view of a boat full of children.

The side effect was that the orcas became very familiar with boats, and people, and were no longer afraid of them. So, they started to ‘play’ with the rudders, simply because they could. There’s one film of a whale swimming around a boat with a rudder in its mouth, as if to say ‘see what I did!’ And we know that orcas love to play – see this story about them wearing fish on their heads, or this one about them bringing humans gifts. So I can fully believe that the whales are just being curious and mischievous.

Of course, we can’t rule out other possible explanations – the Strait of Gibraltar is one of the busiest in the world, and the noisiest, and we know that underwater noise can cause whales to strand, and probably to show other behavioural changes. Persistent chemicals also accumulate in orcas, as they are top predators, and this too can cause neurological damage. So, the Iberian orcas will certainly be suffering from a range of stressors, and the boat ramming may well be the result of a whole combination of factors. However, boat attacks are down in 2024 and 2025 due to two simple pieces of advice given to sailors:

• You’re safe in water less than 50 metres deep
• If you see killer whales approaching, run like mad – they don’t seem to attack moving boats, just ones that are at anchor or moving slowly.

It was heartening that even people who had had their boats attacked by orcas were still full of respect for them, and saw them as an important part of the ocean’s ecosystem, rather than a nuisance. Some described it as the most amazing experience of their lives. This definitely gives me hope.

Dear Readers, I have long loved the Poems on the Underground series – the poems have often brought me up short, and I’ve sometimes seen someone look up from their phone and stare, transfixed, at the words. There are six new poems for this autumn, and here are my favourites.

The W.H Auden poem above could not be more apposite for the times we live in, and neither could the Benjamin Zephaniah poem below. Once a Londoner, always a Londoner.

And here is a poem by local East Finchley poet Fleur Adcock who died last year.

And I love this one. So powerful.