Dear Readers, merry Christmas/happy Chanukah! This year, it occurred to me that in spite of being called ‘Bug Woman’ my posts about invertebrates are actually quite few and far between. So this year, I’m going to be looking at the little creatures that perform such important roles in the world, with a focus on Christmas/winter. Let’s see what we find out! 

To start with, this is my favourite Christmas video. I think even the mildly arachnophobic might like it (after all, peacock spiders are about as far from those hairy-legged critters who live in the shed as I am from a marmoset).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYFQQB9vqPw

Peacock spiders are from the jumping spider family – remember this little chap? This is a fencepost jumping spider (Marpissa muscosa) who was living under the stairs on some deckchairs. He isn’t as colourful as the peacock spiders (who all live in Australia by the way, and are only the size of a grain of rice) but he is pretty cute all the same.

And if you are after some proper biological background on the peacock spiders, there’s a clip from a BBC documentary below. Beware, it features dancing, sex and violence, so it all depends what you enjoy at the festive season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qkzwG2lLPc

And, my copy of the British Arachnological Society magazine this month had a very interesting story about Zebra Jumping Spiders – these are the little stripy critters that you often see on walls or doors. An arachnologist found a female and two males, a big one and a small one, and he made them all a microhabitat so he could observe them. The big male displayed to the female, but she was supremely uninterested and hid in the corner. Then, the small male tried to creep up on her, but the big male scared him away, and at this point she became fascinated with the big male, and eventually mated with him. Part of me can almost see her fluttering her eyelashes and saying ‘my hero’, but that would be very anthropomorphic. Nonetheless, it seems that the macho/protective behaviour of the big male spider was something of a turn on. Maybe he proved that he would provide the female with lots of big, fearless offspring? The lives of these creatures are much more nuanced than we might think at first.

Female Zebra Jumping Spider (Salticus scenicus)

Dear Readers, this year I have some mistletoe hanging from the back of my front door. It’s not that I want to ambush everyone who comes to the doorstep (though I do find myself full of Christmas cheer) but it’s there for anyone who is in need of a cuddle. And when I was in Namibia, I noticed that a lot of trees had what looked like mistletoe on them – the species that I saw lives on Acacia trees, and is known as ‘bird graft’, because the flowers send out a puff of pollen that attaches itself to the feet and feathers of the birds that pollinate them. The seeds are also eaten and spread by bulbuls and thrushes. As soon as a seed is excreted onto a branch, it germinates, and it also forms a strange structure called a ‘wood rose’. There’s clearly more to the mistletoe family than snogging, as we can see from my original mistletoe piece. And for everyone in the last throes of sorting themselves out for Christmas, breathe! And maybe hug someone. We need all the endorphins we can get at this time of year. 

Bird-graft (Tapinanthus oleifolius) Photo By Brian van der Spuy – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48123349

Wood Rose – Image from https://www.namibian.com.na/meet-the-trees-of-namibia-the-mistletoe-or-lighted-candles-tapinanthus-oleifolius/

Mistletoe (Viscum album) in Somerset

Dear Readers, as Christmas is just around the corner I thought I’d share a few thoughts about mistletoe. What a strange plant this is! It’s associated with Christmas because it stays fresh and green even after the trees lose their leaves, but it has a longer association with fertility: the branches, foliage and seeds are said to resemble various sexual organs, though I must admit that I am having to squint to see much of a likeness, innocent soul that I am.

Mistletoe fruit (Photo One)

Nonetheless, mistletoe has been used as a ‘cure’ for infertility (though as it’s toxic one would have to be very careful), as a charm for young women seeking to find husbands, and, of course, as an excuse for kissing. My latest issue of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) magazine has an article on mistletoe, which mentions that the kissing business probably started in the southwest Midlands, which is where mistletoe is commonest, and spread out from there, probably as a commercial enterprise, with the plant being taken to other parts of the country by the rapidly-growing railway network.

What intrigued me most in this article, however, was the story of how the mistletoe is spread. Mistletoe is a hemiparasite, which means that it derives its water and nutrients from its hosts, although it can photosynthesise itself. The plant seems to prefer hawthorn, apple, poplar and linden trees, though it has been found on hundreds of other species. The name ‘mistle’ comes from the plant’s association with thrushes, in particular the mistle thrush, which loves the fruit. It was long believed that mistletoe was spread by the birds wiping their beaks on twigs to get rid of the sticky substance that coats the seeds. However, it seems that mistle thrushes don’t do this, but simply excrete the seeds, only some of which will fall onto the correct type of branch and stick.

Sticky mistletoe seed (Photo Two)

Mistle thrush (Turdus viscivorus) (Photo Three)

However, over the past few decades there has been a large increase in the range of mistletoe in the UK, and the reason cited in the RHS article (by Graham Rice) is the blackcap. These little warblers used to migrate in winter, but an increasing number are staying in the UK all year round. Not only do they love mistletoe, but they do wipe their beaks after eating the fruit.

Although mistletoe feeds from its host trees, it’s not generally seen as dangerous to them. Indeed, there is advice in the RHS article on how to persuade mistletoe to colonise your trees. So this seems like quite a happy partnership between the mistletoe and the blackcap.

Male blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) (Photo Four)

Female blackcap (Photo Five)

Mistletoes belong to the sandalwood family (Santalaceae), and I’d never really given any thought to whether there were other species. And of course, there are. In Southern Spain there’s the red-berried Viscum cruciatum or red-berried mistletoe.

Red-berried mistletoe (Viscum cruciatum) (Photo Six)

In central and southern Europe there’s the yellow-berried mistletoe (Loranthus europaeus) which favours oak trees. The plants in the Loranthanceae family are known as ‘showy mistletoes’. I can see why.

Yellow-berried mistletoe (Loranthus europaeus) (Photo Seven)

Another ‘showy mistletoe’ is the Western Australian Christmas Tree (Nuytsia floribunda). This is a hemiparastic tree, of all things – it draws nutrients from the roots of any nearby plants that it can reach. Almost all species are susceptible to attack, but normally the tree only takes a small amount from each individual plant. It will even infiltrate underground cables. This is an extraordinary tree, revered by some of the Aboriginal peoples of the country, who used the bark for shields and harvested small amounts of the sticky gum that it exuded. The flowers, which can grow to up to a metre long, are favourites with pollinators

Western Australian Christmas Trees (Nuytsia floribunda) (Photo Eight)

Nuytsia floribunda flowers abuzz with bees (Photo Nine)

And finally, there are the dwarf mistletoes, which are more closely related to ‘our’ mistletoe than the showy mistletoes above. These can be more serious pests of trees because they are considered to be disease-vectors. They don’t rely on birds to spread their seeds, but can shoot them at up to fifty miles an hour after building up thermostatic pressure within the plant. The species below, Arceuthobium oxycedri, grows on juniper, and can cause problems where the shrubs are being grown commercially (for example, for their berries to flavour gin).

Dwarf mistletoe (Arceuthobium oxycedri) growing on juniper in Lebanon (Photo Ten)

So there is a lot more to mistletoes than just our species, but of course, the plain old white-berried one is closest to my heart. And of course, it needs a poem. So how about this one, which is actually a song – the words are by Barry Cornwall, and the poem itself comes from a book called ‘Christmas with the Poets’ by Henry Vizetelly, published in 1851. It’s rather a rambunctious way to finish this post, but as winter comes we need to ‘banish melancholy’ in any way that we can, I find. I hope you enjoy it!

The Mistletoe

Words: Barry Cornwall

Source: Henry Vizetelly, Christmas With The Poets (London: David Bogue, 1851).

When winter nights grow long,
And winds without blow cold,
We sit in a ring round the warm wood fire,
And listen to stories old!
And we try to look grave (as maids should be),
When the men bring in boughs of the laurel tree.
O, the laurel, the evergreen tree!
The poets have laurels, and why not we!

How pleasant, when night falls down,
And hides the wintry sun,
To see them come in to the blazing fire,
And know that their work is done;
Whilst many bring in, with a laugh or rhyme,
Green branches of holly for Christmas time.
O, the holly, the bright green holly!
It tells (like a tongue) that the times are jolly!

Sometimes — (in our grave house
Observe, this happeneth not;)
But at times the evergreen laurel boughs,
And the holly are all forgot;
And then — what then? why, the men laugh low,
And hang up a branch of —— the mistletoe!
Oh, brave is the laurel! and brave is the holly,
But the mistletoe banisheth melancholy!
Ah, nobody knows, nor ever shall know,
What is done under the mistletoe.

Photo Credits

Photo One By Agnieszka Kwiecień, Nova – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=752332

Photo Two by By Fir0002 (talk) (Uploads) – Fir0002 (talk) (Uploads), CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32885953

Photo Three By Yuriy75 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8897596

Photo Four By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=104326583

Photo Five By Vogelartinfo – Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13276336

Photo Six By Nbauers – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77809079

Photo Seven by Stefan.lefnaer, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Eight  By enjosmith – Flickr: WA Christmas Trees, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30325757

Photo Nine  By Photographs by JarrahTree…commons.wikimedia.org, CC BY 2.5 au, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29752289

Photo Ten by By Elie plus – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27859735

Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella) Photo By Andreas Trepte – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=38974913

Dear Readers, the yellowhammer is the quintessential farmland bird, but over the past decades it’s been disappearing from the countryside – I outline some of the reasons in my post here. But here’s some good news! In my earlier post, I mention Hope Farm, which is owned by the RSPB, and which has been doing some excellent work to help to bring back this species.

It started off by creating more hedgerows and leaving insect-rich boundaries at the edge of fields – this resulted in a doubling of the yellowhammer population, but the main problem seemed to be poor winter survival, not just in the farm but in a much wider area. Changes in farming practices have meant that there’s much less food available for all sorts of farmland birds during the winter months, so Hope Farm, along with a number of other farms, have started supplementary seed feeding over the coldest time of year. This draws in farmland birds from a much wider area. When the programme started, it was unusual to see more than 9 or 10 yellowhammers, but in recent years numbers have climbed to an average of 200, with a peak count of 723, which is a tremendous success.

Yellowhammers have also benefitted from the statutory requirement to leave hedge-trimming until 1st September – this species breeds late, and can be actively rearing young as late as August.

Let’s hope that more of us will soon be able to hear the distinctive ‘little-bit-of-bread-and-no-cheese’ call of the yellowhammer. I’m not sure I can actually hear that sentence in the call – it sounds more like somebody very cross berating a waiter to me. But as the male bird can utter this phrase 3000 times per day during the breeding season, I imagine it soon gets a bit monotonous even to the yellowhammer. Here’s a recording of a French yellowhammer  by Martin Billard.

And is it too early to remind everybody in the UK about the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch on 23-25th January 2026? Personally I can’t believe that it’s almost that time again, but here we are. This annual event has collected so much useful information on birds and their population trends over the past decades, and it’s well worth supporting.

Photo By AWeith – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51548912

Dear Readers, a dear friend of mine has recently had a baby, and it feels like such a wonderful reminder of the circle of life. I wasn’t able to have children of my own, but that  doesn’t mean that I don’t need outlets for my maternal instincts, and it seems like I’m not the only one. You may have read that a polar bear mother in Northern Canada was originally spotted with one cub, but now seems to have acquired another one – it’s not clear whether the mother of the new cub has died, or if the little one has just somehow gotten lost. However, having a mum to teach it how to hunt will be an important factor in the cub’s survival. Sometimes the maternal instinct is so strong that it overrides all that pesky stuff about genetic inheritance that social Darwinists are so fond of. Polar bears normally have twin cubs, so this extra mouth to feed shouldn’t overtax the mother too much.

Photo from https://animalia.bio/polar-bear#google_vignette

Interestingly, domestic cats will often rear their kittens alongside other mothers. When I was fostering for Cat Protection, one of the most extraordinary stories was of a ‘mother’ cat who had been caring for three young kittens. On closer examination, the ‘mother’ turned out to be a tom cat – he obviously couldn’t feed the kittens on milk but he cleaned them, protected them and found them food. He wasn’t the father of the kittens, but clearly he had a well-developed paternal instinct.

Primates will sometimes ‘adopt’ young members of their own species, and sometimes even other species: back in 2004, a capuchin monkey was found looking after a young marmoset, which she carried around. She cracked open nuts for her ‘baby’ and fed it the small pieces. Locals said that the marmoset had been with the capuchin for weeks, and that it the marmoset was not a pet or a tame animal, but a member of a troop of the small monkeys who shared the habitat with the capuchins.

Photos from https://bioone.org/journals/neotropical-primates/volume-13/issue-1/1413-4705.13.1.29/Extraordinary-Observation-Of-Wild-Capuchin-Monkey–Marmoset-Association/10.1896/1413-4705.13.1.29.full#:~:text=The%20capuchin%20held,capuchins%20were%20feeding

So, there are many, many ways to put all that nurturing instinct to use. So many youngsters, of all species, need a good mother, and so many of us have a lot of love to give. For me, at least, it’s worth thinking about how to put those feelings to good use.

New growth on pleached lime on Durham Road this morning

Dear Readers, at this time of year it’s very easy to keep our heads down, what with all the shopping/decorating/visiting/cooking, but even in the middle of winter it’s worth looking up and stopping occasionally. Look at the extraordinary colour on these lime twigs! I suspect the trees are a variety of our native broad-leaved lime (Tilia platyphyllos var Rubra) – this is a smaller, better behaved variety than the native tree, which can grow up to 40 metres tall and wouldn’t be ideal for a narrow residential street.

Plus, my winter-flowering honeysuckle is living up to its name…

Winter-flowering honeysuckle with bumblebee…

And it’s always worth keeping your nose on high alert for Christmas box – someone locally has a whole front garden full of it, and every winter I make a deliberate detour to get a nose full of its sweet scent.

Chtistmas Box

It’s always worth keeping an eye open for alder, with its cones and catkins…

Alder (Alnus glutinus)

And then there’s the silver birch, which has these wonderful magenta twigs.

Silver Birch in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery

And today is the Winter Solstice (technically it’s at 3 p.m. here in the UK) – so Sunday night is the longest night of the year, and from now on, the days will gradually get longer until suddenly spring is here. When I used to work, I loved the first time that I left the office only to notice that it was still just about light. The year turns, and soon the buds will be bursting again.

Dad December 2017 (post nap, before G&T)

Dear Readers, I first published this in 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, but it feels as appropriate in the run-up to Christmas/Chanukah/ other celebrations as ever. Sending any of you who need it a hug. I see you, doing your best in difficult times. Let’s be kind to one another. You never know what’s happening in other people’s lives. 

Dear Readers, it’s 6.30 a.m. on a Saturday morning and I’m sitting in the office, listening to the thin, sweet song of a robin. Outside it’s still dark as pitch, but a runner has trudged past, taking advantage of the quiet street to jog up the middle of the road. And I have been thinking about Christmas, and how different it will be this year, not just for me but for many of us. This is my first Christmas as an orphan, and the idea is taking some getting used to.

Until a few years ago, the weeks before Christmas were frantically busy for me as I tried to get everything in place for Mum and Dad’s visit. We already had the stairlift so that they could get upstairs, but there was the commode and the reclining chair to get, the temporary registration of the pair of them with my doctor, not to mention the food and the presents and the cleaning. The wheelchair had to be rented and popped into the hall, ready for action. The night before they arrived I would be nervously eyeing up everyone who parked outside our house – we don’t have a car, but it’s a long tradition that you can ‘save’ a parking space by popping a couple of wheelie bins into the road, and with Mum and Dad unable to walk very far it could save a lot of worry.

And then they’d arrive, usually driven down by my brother, and the work would really begin. Everything had to be perfect, of course, just as it had to be perfect when Mum used to be in charge. I wonder why I didn’t learn from the way that she often had a migraine on Christmas Day from sheer stress? I remember one day when Mum was in a particular tizzy about something. Dad was sitting in the armchair with a purple paper hat slightly askew on his head, a gin and tonic in one hand and the cat on his lap.

‘Syb’, he said, patting the chair next to him, ‘Just come and sit down for Gawd’s sake. The brussel sprouts can wait for half an hour’.

‘No they can’t!’ she said, and burst into tears.

And so by the time Christmas was over, Mum was worn to a bit of a frazzle. So maybe it’s no surprise that I remember the days after the big event with particular fondness – the days of eating cold turkey, hot potatoes and pickle, playing Trivial Pursuit and watching the obligatory James Bond film with Dad.

And, strangely enough, it’s not the big things that I remember about the Christmases that I hosted either.

It’s the afternoons when Mum and Dad both had a doze, Dad in his recliner, Mum on the sofa, both of them snoozing along peacefully.

It’s the morning that the great spotted woodpecker turned up on the feeder and I gave Mum my binoculars so that she could see him properly.

It’s the night that the International Space Station went by on Christmas Eve, and Mum and I watched it go sailing past.

This year will be the first Christmas in a long, long time where I don’t have anywhere to go, or anyone apart from my husband to cater for. I am lucky to have him, I know.

The losses pile up, and the difference between the Christmas gatherings on the television advertisements and my quiet, subdued bittersweet Christmas could not be starker.

But I know that I am not alone – for so many of the people reading this, there will be an empty space at the Christmas table that can never be filled. And so this is to say that I see you, and I’m holding you in my heart. Grief is the tax that we pay for loving people deeply, but  bereavement is a bitter path to walk, and attention must be paid to what we’re feeling at this time if we’re to bear it. There is a time for distraction, and a time for weeping, and only you will know which you need at any given time, but my advice would be to make room for both.

And unlike so many, many people, I don’t have agonising choices to make about who to see and how. I have not spent the year worrying myself sick about elderly relatives that I can’t see, children who haven’t been able to go to school, or who have gone and then been sent home because of a Covid outbreak. I’m still in work, and still housed. I see you too, trying to make this very different Christmas work because other people are depending on you. Please be kind to yourselves. The brussel sprouts will wait for thirty minutes while you have a cup of tea and watch something ridiculous on the television.

Outside there’s the slightest hint of a lightening sky, and the robin has stopped singing, duty done for another morning. In a few days time we’ll reach the winter solstice, the longest night for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, and the light will gradually come back, until one day we wake up at our usual time and hear the dawn chorus, not a solitary robin. The world turns whether we want it to or not, the bulbs are already starting to stretch and yawn in their loamy beds and life will carry on. Let’s take things both lightly and with deep seriousness, with a sense of fun and with a sense that what we do matters, because it does, more now than ever.

‘Tree with a robin’ drawn by Dad December 2019

The New Tree – a Prunus padus var ‘Pandora’

Dear Readers, a few years ago the Shadberry/Amelanchior just up the road from us was blown over in high winds. Judging by the angle at which it was leaning, this wasn’t surprising…

..and in July 2023, the inevitable happened.

Since then, we’ve had the very welcome implementation of some EV charging points along the road, so I wasn’t expecting to see another street tree. Imagine my surprise, and joy, to see a new tree planted. This is a cherry tree, variety ‘Pandora’, and it’s actually a cultivar of the native Bird Cherry. In the spring it should have pink-flushed white flowers, and deep crimson leaves in the autumn, so although it doesn’t look very exciting at the moment, it should be lovely once it becomes established. As it has several seasons of interest, it’s the perfect street tree, and hopefully the bees will like it just as much as they do its older relatives, as documented here.

Prunus pandora flowers from https://www.crocus.co.uk/plants/_/prunus-pandora/classid.4635/sku.TR30000766/

Street trees bring so much joy and interest to our towns, and if chosen wisely can provide a biodiversity boost as well. Fingers crossed that this one has been planted properly and does well.

Photo By Edoardomiola – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60235568

Dear Readers, it’s dark at 7 a.m. and then it’s dark again by 4 p.m. here in London, and it can all get a bit wearing and depressing. I seem to spend great swathes of time putting on layers of clothing and then taking them off, and although the Christmas lights are cheering it’s still a strange time of year. But then I remember that from the Winter Solstice on Sunday 21st December, the days will gradually get longer. Spring will be here before we know it. But in the meantime, here are a few winter poems, all new to me. See what you think.

This poem, by Scott Cairns, is so atmospheric – it captures the way that winter seems to dampen down all the high spirits of spring and summer, as if everything is just about hanging on.

Early Frost

By Scott Cairns

This morning the world’s white face reminds us
that life intends to become serious again.
And the same loud birds that all summer long
annoyed us with their high attitudes and chatter
silently line the gibbet of the fence a little stunned,
chastened enough.

They look as if they’re waiting for things
to grow worse, but are watching the house,
as if somewhere in their dim memories
they recall something about this abandoned garden
that could save them.

The neighbor’s dog has also learned to wake
without exaggeration. And the neighbor himself
has made it to his car with less noise, starting
the small engine with a kind of reverence. At the window
his wife witnesses this bleak tableau, blinking
her eyes, silent.

I fill the feeders to the top and cart them
to the tree, hurrying back inside
to leave the morning to these ridiculous
birds, who, reminded, find the rough shelters,
bow, and then feed.

Photo by By (vincent desjardins) CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64374743

I like the gentle melancholy of this poem by Michael Ryan.In Winter

By Michael Ryan

At four o’clock it’s dark.
Today, looking out through dusk
at three gray women in stretch slacks
chatting in front of the post office,
their steps left and right and back
like some quick folk dance of kindness,
I remembered the winter we spent
crying in each other’s laps.
What could you be thinking at this moment?
How lovely and strange the gangly spines
of trees against a thickening sky
as you drive from the library
humming off-key? Or are you smiling
at an idea met in a book
the way you smiled with your whole body
the first night we talked?
I was so sure my love of you was perfect,
and the light today
reminded me of the winter you drove home
each day in the dark at four o’clock
and would come into my study to kiss me
despite mistake after mistake after mistake.

Photo by Anna reg, CC BY-SA 3.0 AT <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/at/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons

And, actually, I do know this poem: it always reminds me of my Dad, up every morning to get the fire going when we were children, though the ‘chronic angers’ in our house were more likely to be acute, short and sharp. The last two lines always make me pause.

Those Winter Sundays

By Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Photo By Sean Tipp Ryan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42651327

And here’s a rather fine poem about Winter Solstice itself…

The Shortest Day by Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive,

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, reveling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us—Listen!!

All the long echoes sing the same delight,

This shortest day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome Yule!

Photo by By JovanCormac – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6317862

And here’s the last word, by Wendell Berry. He’s not wrong, you know…

To Know the Dark by Wendell Berry

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings.

Parsnips (Pastinaca sativa)

Dear Readers, the humble parsnip cropped up (no pun intended 🙂 ) when I did The Twelve Plants of Christmas a few years ago. I am aghast to realise that with Christmas only a week away, I have no idea what my theme is going to be for the Twelve Days this year. I am sure I am going to be every bit as surprised as you are, but I’m sure inspiration will strike soon. In the meantime, all opinions on parsnips welcome!

Dear Readers, I’m not sure when roast parsnips became a part of our Christmas feast in the Bug Woman household, but it feels like a relatively recent thing. I’m pretty sure that we didn’t eat them when we lived in East London, so we would have been parsnip-less until about 1975. Then when we moved to the dizzy heights of Seven Kings (still in London but very slightly more Essex-y) parsnips started to crop up when we had roast beef, debuting at Christmas in about 1978. What about you, UK readers? Were parsnips ever a Christmas thing for you or was it just us?

At any rate, the parsnip is a member of the carrot family, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in flower. From the photos, it looks as if it could have a future as an ornamental, with very pretty umbels of yellow flowers which would no doubt attract clouds of hoverflies. As the gardeners amongst you already know, parsnip is a biennial like so many of the umbellifers, producing a rosette of leaves in year one, followed by the flowers in year two.

Parsnips in flower (Photo By Skogkatten at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56154151)

The parsnip comes originally from Eurasia, but has been in the UK since the Romans brought it (though there is some confusion between carrots and parsnips in Roman literature). Its sweetness meant it was used as a substitute for sugar before sugar beet came along, and indeed there are still lots of recipes out there for parsnip cakes. Don’t do what I did and try to make a swede (rutabaga) cake though – the one that I created had a kind of satanic sulphurous undertone that no amount of cream cheese icing could disguise.

In his column in The Guardian, Nigel Slater mentions a dish called ‘parsnips Molly Parkin’ –

“The recipe sounds somewhat unlikely, as it involves layering browned parsnips and tomatoes with brown sugar and cream, and baking it slowly till the sliced roots have softened and the cream is a rich, sweet sauce. In fact, the result is much less sweet than you would suspect. I have recently done the same with beetroot and it works a treat.”

Well, I’m not sure, I have to say. Maybe one for if you have a glut on your allotment?

This spiced orange and parsnip cake looks as if it could work, though, and it’s by no less a a personage than Nadiya Hussain, probably my favourite Great British Bake Off winner of all time.

Spiced orange and parsnip cake by Nadiya Hussain (from https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/parsnip-and-orange-spiced-cake/)

Here at Schloss Bug Woman though parsnips are generally roasted (no pre-boiling, they’re fine as they are). While watching Masterchef The Professionals this year I was astonished to hear Monica Galetti say that you didn’t need to cut out the core, which I have been doing religiously since 1978, as my mother taught me. Turns out that Monica is correct, and the core cooks down to softness in the same time as the rest of the vegetable, plus less waste, which can only be a good thing. You live and learn, as they say. The ones below have been roasted with honey and mustard, which sounds a tad too sweet to me, but who knows?

Roast parsnips with honey and mustard (Photo By Takeaway – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19289587)

Not everybody appreciates the ways of the parsnip, however. In France I believe that they are considered only fit for animal food, and in Italy they are fed to the pigs that are used to make parma ham. There’s a saying on the island of Guernsey (one of the Channel Islands) that ‘the little pig gets the biggest parsnip’, meaning that the youngest child is the one who is most spoilt. It also points up that it’s not just Italian pigs who get to feast on this root vegetable.

The ancient Romans considered parsnips an aphrodisiac, and the Emperor Tiberius accepted part of his tribute from Germania in ‘white carrots’.  On a more domestic note,  my Uncle Roy used to make the most migraine-inducing cloudy wine with them. Every Christmas we were given a glass of his latest brew, and I regret to say that most of it ended up in the pot that the rubber plant lived in, lest we return home in no state to eat our Christmas turkey. Strange to say, the rubber plant thrived, which just goes to show what ideal plants they are for dysfunctional households.

Rubber plant (Ficus elastica var Robusta). Photo By Mokkie – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31954353

Interestingly though, who would have thought that the  humble parsnip could be dangerous (and not just in my Uncle Roy’s wine?) Like many umbellifers (Giant Hogweed comes to mind), the wild parsnip plant contains compounds which are phototoxic – they cause blisters when skin that has been in contact with parsnip sap is exposed to the sun (photodermatitis). They can also cause these effects in poultry and other livestock, so hopefully the Parma ham pigs don’t ever get the chance to eat the leaves or stems of the plant. Nigel Slater also mentions that old, woody specimens of parsnip were thought to induce madness, and that one time it was known as ‘the mad parsnip’.

The harmful chemicals don’t, however,  deter the caterpillars of several rather lovely moths and butterflies that feed on parsnip leaves, who instead use the toxins to deter predators.  In North America we have the parsnip swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes)…

Female parsnip swallowtail (Photo By Spinus Nature Photography (Spinusnet) – Own work: Spinus Nature Photography Black swallowtail, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46117206)

and in Europe there’s the Common Swift moth (Korscheltellus lupulinus) and the Ghost Moth (Hepialus humuli), where there is a marked difference between the sexes. The male Ghost Moth performs an aerial display coupled with pheromones to attract a female.

Common Swift Moth (Photo By © entomartIn  https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=295454)

Male (left) and female (right) Ghost Moths (Photo By Ben Sale from UK – Ghost Moth pair, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46076336)

And here, to finish, is a proverb and a very short poem. First up, ‘fine words butter no parsnips’ – this dates back to about 1600, and even then it had the sense that ‘talk alone won’t improve anything’. Here’s no other than Sherlock Holmes expounding on the statement:

“I tried to reason with her, but she insists she will be at her wits’ end until she knows the truth about her husband,” Lestrade sighed.

“Fine words butter no parsnips,” Sherlock replied. “While your intentions are admirable and your speech no doubt soothing, it is no substitute for the truth she seeks. That is why it is imperative for us to find that truth, and as quickly as possible.”

And here is Ogden Nash, on the parsnip:

The Parsnip

The parsnip, children, I repeat
Is simply an anaemic beet.
Some people call the parsnip edible;
Myself, I find this claim incredible

Clearly Ogden has never had Parsnips Molly Parkin.

Parsnips Molly Parkin from https://www.riverford.co.uk/recipes/parsnips-molly-parkin

Female sparrowhawk in the garden, 2017

Dear Readers, I am an avid reader of British Birds magazine, so I was fascinated to see an article about sparrowhawks in this month’s issue. A study of sparrowhawks in Edinburgh has shown that the prey taken by these predatory birds has changed over the past thirty years, in line with changes in the garden bird population. Sparrowhawks take more wood pigeons, feral pigeons and (gulp) magpies (I’d have thought it would be an ambitious ‘sprawk’ that took on a magpie, but there we go). These are all birds whose populations are increasing, in part due to supplementary feeding by humans. Sparrowhawks take fewer starlings, greenfinches and chaffinches, all of which have declining populations. This has led to an increase in the number of sparrowhawk eggs laid per clutch of one egg, which probably indicates that the females are well-fed, but this doesn’t translate into additional surviving nestlings: feeding an additional hungry mouth may put too much pressure on the parent birds. I did wonder if there’s a ‘chicken and egg’ thing going on here (sorry) – only the larger females are able to take on a bird the size of a wood pigeon, so maybe nature is favouring birds that are bigger, who are in turn able to take larger prey. At any rate, it’s good to see that sparrowhawks are so adaptable – having one in the garden is the North London equivalent of hosting a tiger, so, sad as it is for the victim, it’s always good to see one.

Lesser Spotted Woodpecker – from the Crossley Guide

The second article that caught my attention was about one of our rarest forest birds, the Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. This is a fiendishly difficult bird to locate, and has been something of a conundrum to conservationists: if you can’t find the birds, how can you get an idea about numbers, and whether their populations are stable, declining or even growing? This is where passive acoustic monitoring comes in. In the blogpost linked above, I mention the Woodpecker Network, a group of dedicated volunteers who have collected data on the bird since 2015. This year, they used recording devices which were placed in known Lesser Spotted Woodpecker territories and left to record for 5 days at each site. Then, each memory card was lovingly analysed manually – the spectrograms from the cards, plus the sound, would show a distinct pattern for each time the woodpecker drummed.

This was far from a straightforward exercise. The birds are most active in March and April, but this is of course a windy, wet time of year, and ‘weather noise’ can completely obscure the drumming sounds. Plus, LSWs drum very early in the morning, at the height of the dawn chorus. It was clear that the researchers needed something to help them, so they ‘trained’ some software to pick out anomalous sounds, using our old friend the Xeno Canto website. This has over 1100 ‘foreground’ recordings of the bird, and 478 ‘background’ recordings at last count, and so it provides a rich and varied selection of drumming sounds for the software to learn. By the end of the ‘training’ it was 95 percent accurate in identifying sounds, and picked up over 90 percent of the LSW sounds.

But what does it sound like? Have a listen below…

This is a French LSW, recorded by Stanislas Wroza….

And here is a rather closer Swedish LSW recorded by Lars Edenius….

And finally, here’s one from the UK by Jason Anderson, recorded in Burley, Hampshire

Anyhow, after all the recordings were analysed, it’s clear that the LSW is probably more widespread in Hampshire, Sussex and Somerset than was previously realised, and they were detected at sites where they hadn’t been observed for many years. This may mean that the population of the bird is better than was thought, but further investigation is needed: the authors of the report suggest a wider survey, to include a number of woodland sites where LSWs haven’t been recorded recently. They also point out that the devices could be used to detect other birds that are difficult to observe, including the Hawfinch, a notoriously tricky bird and another Red List species.

All in all, this sounds like an excellent way of gathering data on elusive species, with the minimum of disturbance. My only concern would be people stealing the recorders, otherwise I’d see if we could put one in Coldfall Wood. When we did our last bird survey, a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker was detected, but as far as I know, no one has heard them since. Or have we simply not known what to look for? There is always much more going on than we notice.