Robin singing

Dear Readers, there is a very interesting  article in my British Birds magazine this week, about the prevalence of song in female birds, and how understudied it is. I often use Xeno Canto for examples of bird song, but Mark Constantine and Lucy McRobert, the authors of the piece, point out that only 0.01% of the bird songs were labelled as ‘female’ back in 2016. However, Constantine and McRobert’s project, The Sound Approach, has recordings of female sounds for 41% of Western Palaearctic species. There seems to be an assumption that any bird that sings is a male, but this is increasingly being shown to be untrue.

Why do birds sing? It can be done to attract a mate, but it can also involve territorial defence (we know that when a territory-holding male blackbird ceases to sing for more than three days, another male is likely to move in), warning off rivals (the volume and complexity of song can give an indication of the aggression and size of the bird) and pair-bonding (many birds sing ‘duets’).

In Robins, for example, both male and female birds sing, with no difference in vocal performance between the male and female outside the breeding season – females are as adept at the complicated parts of the song as males are. Robins are intensely territorial throughout the year (though it reaches a peak in breeding season) – often a female and a male will hold adjoining territories that are combined when the time to pair off and nest arrives. The Sound Approach team are trying to gather more examples of female song, to see if there are differences in the sounds that can be used to identify the sex of the singer. As male and female Robins look identical, this could be useful in the field.

One interesting case is that of the Alpine Accentor (Prunella collaris), a close relative of our Dunnock (Prunella modularis). In the Alpine Accentor, females sing to attract males, and often solicit copulation as soon as the male arrives, often mating with multiple males. Older females who lay the largest clutches of eggs have the most elaborate songs; having several males who think they may be the father of the nestlings means several sources of food provision and defence.

Alpine Accentor (Photo By Paco Gómez from Castellón, Spain – Acentor alpino (Prunella collaris)-2, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10653904)

In the Greater Painted-snipe (Rostratula benghalensis) not only is the female the principal singer, but she is also the more brightly coloured sex – the male is more cryptically-coloured, and takes care of the eggs and young.

Greater Painted-snipe (female) Photo By Afsarnayakkan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81947019

Greater Painted-snipe (male) Photo By Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE – Day 20 : Greater Painted-Snipe (Rostratula benghalensis) male …, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=138683408

In the UK, it wasn’t until 2020 that female song was identified in the Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica). Wilkins et al discovered that females sing at the beginning of the breeding season, and, furthermore, they sing over the top of their mate’s song, preventing him from advertising his availability to other females.

Barn Swallow (Photo By Andreas Trepte – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40877458)

And finally, male and female Common Swifts (Apus apus) duet with distinctly different calls, usually at dusk.  It was described by scientist Erich Kaiser back in 1997. Usually, the call consists of a series of short screams, given  alternately by each sex. The higher ‘swee’ sound is made by the female, the lower ‘ree’ sound is given by the male. Amazing! And something to listen out for over the next few weeks in the UK before the Swifts leave to head south. I wish I’d paid more attention when they were zooming up and down the road yesterday.

So, paying more attention to female birds is opening up all kinds of questions, and is starting to help us understand the complexities of the lives of different species, some of them very close to home. I wonder what else we’ll discover, when we  put aside our assumptions and come to look at birds with an open mind?

Common Swift (Photo By Alexis Lours – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=170916976)

Dear Readers, it feels like the tail-end of summer even though July isn’t even finished yet – everything is a bit tatty and dusty, the bird feeders hang (largely) neglected, and the Buddleia has nearly gone over, but not quite, hence the Peacock butterfly above. Today it’s humid and the clouds are low, and as I look out of the window I see the swifts are barrelling past, shrieking – maybe the insects are lower at the moment, or maybe the birds are thinking about their long journey south. There’s a kind of hectic energy in the air that feels very close to exhaustion,  or  maybe it’s just me. Anyhow, I stood on the doorstep and  tried to capture the flight of the swifts, and I suspect that the result is closer to something avant-garde than to a nature film. Anyhow, let’s see what you think 🙂

Female Gatekeeper (the males have a brown stripe on the upper wing)

Dear Readers, there are a couple of opportunities to get out and about over the next few weeks, should the urge take you! First up, it’s the Big Butterfly Count until 9th August – I shall be doing mine soon, so let’s see what we can see! My Buddleia has practically gone over, so I shall have to be quick.

You can read all about it here.

And secondly, this looks like a lot of fun, and I may well give it a go myself. The BSBI 100 Plants in 2026 combines citizen science with plant education – it’s encouraging beginning botanists to find 100 plant species in their neighbourhood, and to record them on iRecord. The BSBI provide excellent materials to help identify plants, and this feels like a very nice way to cure the ‘plant blindness’ that so many people have. I have learned so much from doing the Wednesday Weed blog, but still have more to learn than I can possibly pack into a lifetime.

Let me know if you’re trying either challenge, and let me know how it’s going! Anything that both encourages us to pay attention to the natural world and collects data has got to be a good thing.

Feverfew – a favourite ‘weed’

The cherry trees of Door County, Wisconsin in full bloom.(Photo by Elvis Kennedy at https://www.flickr.com/photos/elviskennedy/8836223408

Dear Readers, I really loved this – can’t you just see the poor cherry farmer shuffling away? Ah, the foolishness of youth….

The Woman Who Turned Down a Date with a Cherry Farmer

By Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Fredonia, NY

Of course I regret it. I mean there I was under umbrellas of fruit
so red they had to be borne of Summer, and no other season.
Flip-flops and fishhooks. Ice cubes made of lemonade and sprigs
of mint to slip in blue glasses of tea. I was dusty, my ponytail
all askew and the tips of my fingers ran, of course, red

from the fruitwounds of cherries I plunked into my bucket
and still—he must have seen some small bit of loveliness
in walking his orchard with me. He pointed out which trees
were sweetest, which ones bore double seeds—puffing out
the flesh and oh the surprise on your tongue with two tiny stones

(a twin spit), making a small gun of your mouth. Did I mention
my favorite color is red? His jeans were worn and twisty
around the tops of his boot; his hands thick but careful,
nimble enough to pull fruit from his trees without tearing
the thin skin; the cherry dust and fingerprints on his eyeglasses.

I just know when he stuffed his hands in his pockets, said
Okay. Couldn’t hurt to try? and shuffled back to his roadside stand
to arrange his jelly jars and stacks of buckets, I had made
a terrible mistake. I just know my summer would’ve been
full of pies, tartlets, turnovers—so much jubilee.

Musk Mallow on the County Roads

Dear Readers, I am feeling a bit tired and at odds with myself today – my ankle still hurts and I am wondering whether to go and get it X-rayed or just put up with it and hope it improves./ And the cat has been sick, so there’s that. But then I look back through the blog, and remember how the seeds that I threw around 18 months ago turned into a mass of Musk Mallow and Red Campion this year, and I feel strangely lighter. Sometimes the littlest things are worth making the effort for, even if it’s just opening a packet of seeds, or waving to a neighbour, or re-reading a poem, like the one at the end of this blogpost.

And sometimes, your eye is distracted by a blur in the Buddleia outside the window…

…and you realise that a Hummingbird Hawk Moth has popped onto the last of the Buddleia blossom for a drink of nectar. My Mum insisted that she had been visited by a hummingbird, and nothing would dissuade her, until the two of us were sitting in her garden one day, and the moth hovered long enough for her to see it properly. What a blessing!

And now, here’s my original Musk Mallow post, from 2021.

Musk mallow (Malva moschata)

Dear Readers, what a delicate and pretty plant this is! I’ve seen it twice in the past few weeks, once on Hampstead Heath and at the weekend in the woodland grave area of St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, where I suspect it’s been planted as part of a wildflower mix. You can distinguish it from Common Mallow (Malva sylvestris) by its pale pink petals and very fine, feathery leaves. Common mallow is much darker in colour (it can often look almost purple) with dark-coloured veins.

Common mallow (Malva sylvestris)

Musk mallow is so-called because it is perfumed, though you can smell it much more strongly in an enclosed space. The plant is native to Europe and south-west Asia, and is said to have been used by the Ancient Greeks to decorate the graves of their friends. The Anglo-Saxons also planted it on graves, and in Austria it still seems to be a favourite graveyard plant.

All parts of the plant are said to be edible, and in Egypt you can eat Melokhia, or Mallow Soup, made from the young leaves (see here for a recipe). I suspect, though, that the leaves of this species are rather too fine and delicate to eat in anything other than a salad, along with a sprinkling of the flowers. The seedheads of musk mallow turn into little round ‘cheeses’, which are added to many Russian dishes, including borscht.

Musk mallow is also known as St Simeon’s herb, and it has a long association with eye health – St Simeon is said to have cured his blindness by bathing his eyes in a solution made from the plant, and credited it with enabling him to recognise the baby Jesus as the Messiah. It’s said that if you dig up a mallow root on St Simeon’s Day (October 8th) before sunrise, you can use it as an amulet against eye disease, or make a tincture to cure blindness or cataracts.

In the Middle Ages it was also said to be a test for fertility and, conversely, for virginity. The woman in question peed on a mallow. If it dried up in three days, she was either infertile or no longer a virgin. If the plant survived the dousing, the maiden was either, well, a maiden or capable of bearing children (or presumably both). Being a woman in the Middle Ages was clearly fraught with peril.

Like all mallows, musk mallow is rather mucilaginous, and as such its medicinal uses include many ways to soothe. It’s an ingredient in many recipes for cough medicine, and was historically used to soften boils (indeed the word mallow comes from the Greek malakos, meaning ‘soft’). No wonder then that in Christian symbolism the plant came to represent forgiveness, the softening of the heart towards a hardened soul. Galen also considered it to be anaphrodisiac, a plant that cooled the passions.

In the Victorian Language of Flowers, musk mallow is said to represent being consumed by love, persuasion and weakness, so be careful if you pop it into a bouquet for your loved one.

And finally, a poem. I love this, of course I do. Wherever I look, people seem to be losing their loved ones, one way or another. This is for you, brothers and sisters.

Joy
by Ann Gray

When I let the chickens out, I hurl mixed corn
in a golden arc across the frosted ground.
I know it’s junk, they shouldn’t have it, they don’t
need it, but everyone deserves joy somewhere.
I’ve been looking for something I once had and miss
and want again. I meet him in the beach café.
He has soup. I sip tea. He has over-wintered
vegetables on his allotment. I see it on his hands.
I imagine all that soil on my body. Sometimes
you know what’s bad for you, might be good.
I phone my mother every morning to start her day
– the way she knows it’s me, the way she says,
hello dear, before I’m speaking. She needs someone
to complain to. A mother is a precious thing. I know that
now I’m sure to lose her. She’s losing nouns and I have
to rummage in my brain to help her find them. I tell her
yesterday I thought I’d lost a dog and lost my voice calling.
I found her back at home, shaking, not sure if coming home
was good or bad, or neither, or both. There’s no reward
for coming home if no-one’s there, no one you love, no-one
to put out a hand, or smile to see you. My mother knows
and tries to hold me in her voice. Mothers do what they can.
Sometimes they don’t get much to work with. She knows
I’ll chase that golden arc, hoping for the joy in it.
I hope so much, hope the wine, the food, will taste
as it’s supposed to, hope that friends will stay,
their elbows on the table, The Low Anthem singing
To Ohio across the garden, where all those flowers
I fell in love with will be just a promised on their packets:
night scented stock, musk mallow, lunaria, pale phlox.
In this falling dark, when hens shuffle on their perches,
I hold my breath, listen to the sound of my loud heart.

Dear Readers, I was very excited when I got home from Austria to discover that my trailcam had recorded nearly 3000 photos. However. About 200 of them were photos of my husband taking the washing backwards and forwards to the dryer in the shed. And about 2800 of them were photos of a piece of Greater Willowherb which had grown up in our absence and was waving its fronds in front of the camera. Every time it passed in front of the sensor the camera took another photo. Sigh.

Still, I did get a few shots of foxy activity. I love the fox cub standing on his or her back legs and checking out the table – the plant has even managed to act as a fig leaf so I can’t be sure of the sex.

And then, last night there was a lot of gekkering coming from the garden (that irritable chattering noise that foxes make when they aren’t happy with one another) and the camera actually caught them fighting. I’m not sure if this is the mother and cub getting irritable with one another (it’s about the time when fox cubs disperse) or if it’s two youngsters, but I shall clear away the foliage and hopefully get a bit more information. Actually, looking at the photo again it could well be an adult telling a youngster what’s what.

So, what’s happening in your garden?  I am definitely going to pivot  towards drought-resistant plants, particularly in the front garden which is south-facing. As I mentioned before, we have a hosepipe ban now (not unexpected) so I’m glad that the pond is fairly shaded in the back garden. But of course we never know what’s going to happen next!

Abbie the Cat incognito…

Well, Readers, it’s fair to say that those of you in the South of England have been having a bit of a hot time (ahem) – when we flew back from Austria yesterday (no diversions to Munich this time) the fields and parks were all parched yellow. My lovely neighbour has been watering the plants with the watering can (we’ve now got a hosepipe ban) but at least my dahlias have survived. Incidentally, do you call them day-le-as or dar-le-as? I’d only ever heard them pronounced the first way until about a year ago, when there seemed to be an epidemic of dar-le-as going on. No judgement, but I’m curious.

Anyway.

As we know, the real question is how did my new foster cat Abbie get on, and was she happy to see us? Our (male) neighbour looked after her for the first week, and in spite of his being the kindest, most gentle chap you can imagine, she spent most of the time hissing every time he looked at her and then retreating to the attic like someone from a Daphne du Maurier novel. However, in the second week the cat person that we had for our previous cat, Willow, came in, and by the end of the week she was allowed to stroke Her Majesty, so progress.

Now, some cats I’ve fostered/owned (inasmuch as you ever really own a cat) would punish me if I went away. One once took a crap in the middle of the duvet. Another would sit with her back to me for several days until she decided that I’d suffered enough. Willow would spend the first night walking into the bedroom, letting out an ear-splitting wail every couple of hours.

Abbie, on the other hand, has decided that if she doesn’t leave my side everything will be okay. She’s helping me with this blog as I type.

It’s hard to believe she’s the same cat as the one that spent best part of a week hiding behind the litter tray, but there we go.

Next week she’s off to the vet for a quick once-over. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes, but apart from being a bit stiff she seems fine to me. At fourteen, there will be no invasive procedures or other stuff unless it’s strictly necessary for her comfort. I want her to have a bit of peace and quiet after losing her previous owner and having a very traumatic few months.

On the Mountain

By John Haines

We climbed out of timber,
bending on the steep meadow
to look for berries,
then still in the reddening sunlight
went on up the windy shoulder.

A shadow followed us up the mountain
like a black moon rising.
Minute by minute the autumn lamps
on the slope burned out.

Around us the air and the rocks
whispered of night . . .

A great cloud blew from the north,
and the mountain vanished
in the rain and stormlit darkness.

Well, Readers, the centre of Obergurgl has been taken over by all sorts of inflatables and men shouting into microphones in German: yes, it’s the Gletscher Trail Run 2026. On Friday night, some people will be running 62 kilometres up and down the local peaks, with the race starting at 2.00 a.m. Last year the winner was North Macedonian runner Aleksander Stojkoski, and very impressive that was too. There are lots of shorter races, but this one is the one everyone wants to win. The fastest woman was Austrian Edith Zell, who came home in 8 hours 59 minutes, and what impresses me about her is that she’s in the 40-44 age category. In fact, looking at the results overall there are lots of folk aged between 40 and 55 – maybe endurance peaks in middle age? I also have great respect for the person who finished last, Timo Hornig of Germany, who arrived at the finish after 13 hours and 45 minutes, alongside another German, Marc Metzger, who arrived just a second earlier – I imagine these two had been keeping one another company for all those hours. You can see all the results here. It would have taken me about 24 hours to even walk the route.

Anyhow, after our ambitious walk yesterday we decided to take a more reasonable walk through the meadows, with only a slight deviation from our first day walk to cross a terrifying (well, slightly scary) bridge. It’s always interesting to see how flowers that were just tight buds two weeks ago are now in full flower, like these Melancholy Thistles.

There was a thunderstorm last night, and everything is looking very green…

And here is the scary bridge! Normally you can’t reach it, but some kind soul has popped in a new path, and so you can walk back across the Gurgl. This also eliminates a steepish climb, so I shall have to remember it for next year, when we’ll be looking for an easy early walk.

There were some tiny birds twittering away in the willows by the river but I’m not at all sure what they were – help! Slightly smaller than a sparrow and feeding on grass seeds. I’ve seen Linnet several times, so that’s one thought…

And then some real excitement – the kestrel who has been hanging around our hotel put in an appearance, and was roundly mobbed by a spotted nutcracker who was not at all impressed.

On we go, to the frog pond, which was seething with tadpoles two weeks ago. Now there are far fewer tadpoles, but lots of larger ones, many with their back legs appearing. You have to grow up fast in the Alps – the season is short, and many ponds dry up. Not this one, fortunately.

And then I spotted this flower, which is rather special – it’s Clustered Bellflower (Campanula glomerata), and it’s an Alpine specialist. It is the most extraordinary deep indigo colour, as so many bee-pollinated plants are.

And then it’s on a bus and off to the Giggisjoch for lunch – you might remember the splendid homemade grapefruit ‘lemonade’ and soup from a few days ago. Today, it was fresh strawberry lemonade….

and this very splendid ‘bread pudding’ – actually more like Queen of Puddings, plus custard (of course!) and berries. It was really tasty!

And tomorrow it’s off home. Let’s hope that Easyjet gets us to the correct country this time, that the trains from Gatwick are running, and that the temperature isn’t too much of a shock.

Dear Readers, regulars will know that one of my favourite places in the whole world is the Rotmoos Valley here in Obergurgl – indeed, this time I was suggesting to my poor long-suffering husband that he could scatter some of my ashes here (not that I’m planning on being cremated any time soon, but it’s good to plan). Alas, to get here involves a pretty steep climb, although the Schonweisse Hut (the little brown building on the left of the photo above) does a pretty good Apfelstrudel.

This year the whole village has been a bit of a building site, as they are building a new reservoir, which looks to be about three times the size of the one in the photo above. This is partly because conditions are getting drier, but also to provide water for the snow-blowing machines in winter, now that, even here, the snow is not reliable.

Building site for the new reservoir

It’s illegal for a lift to operate over a building site, for obvious reasons, so instead the first stage lift (which we usually take to avoid several hundred metres of rather boring uphill) has been replaced by an electric shuttle bus. Babies, toddlers, parents, grandparents and us all pile in at the bottom of the hill, in the village, and then go up the precipitous road to the second stage lift, dodging earth movers and all manner of trucks in the process. The bus was crammed to busting both ways today, and goodness only knows how they’ll cope in high season. But it was kind of fun, in a masochistic way, and then we were off, and all you could hear was the sound of huffing and puffing. My ankle was well bandaged, and behaved impeccably. And in less time than I thought, we were here.

I just love it in this valley, in all its moods. We’ve been pelted with snow here, soaked, sunburned and everything in between. Today, it was surprisingly quiet, with just the sound of the Northern Wheatears, who have a couple of fledglings…

We could hear marmots whistling, but didn’t see any this time – everywhere seems extremely green, and so most animals are making the most of this sudden largesse after yesterday’s rain. Even the Hangerer (the highest peak around here) is greening up.

The bowl carved by the original Rotmoos glacier is really apparent in this shot, but the glacier itself has retreated further and further, even in the twenty years that we’ve been visiting. People used to be able to walk down from the Hohe Mut (on the left) and cross the glacier. Now it’s practically disappeared.

But somethings are the same, like these gentians for example, with what I think is Alpine Milk Vetch in the background. The lichen is pretty cool too.

And here are the little ‘hairdos’ of the Mountain Avens (Geum montanum)

And the Haflinger horses are here – I don’t know what happened to the ones that were hanging out in the centre of the village a few days ago, but these horses were having a wonderful time…

And then, fortified with strudel and Almdudler, it was time to head back down to catch the scary electric bus. The weather has certainly brightened up, and there’s time for one last look down the valley before we leave.

On the other side of the river, there’s the Seene Platte – we managed to get up there about twenty years ago, and have never managed it since, what with one thing and another. Maybe next year….

So, one more day to go before we head back to London, and the heat, and the crowds. I love it, but this fortnight always feels like a real chance to re-group and re-fortify, even if I do seem to insist on falling over. Maybe it’s nature’s way of telling me to slow down, and it’s certainly worked.