Dear Readers, when I was complaining about the heat a few days ago, one of you lovely people told me to be careful what I wished for. Well, last night the weather finally broke. The thunder was so loud that it made it me drop my Kindle, and the poor cat crept up to the bedroom and lay between us, as flat to the covers as she could possibly get. What with the random letting-off of fireworks (people round here seem to celebrate anything with pyrotechnics) plus the terrifying vacuum cleaner, she’s had a nerve-wracking time of it lately, and the storm was almost the final straw. However, the coolness afterwards was delicious, and so I was looking forward to my walk this morning to see what had happened.

Which brings us to the pan. Before the storm the water level was well below the rivets that hold the handles on. This morning it’s well above them (and that’s without the obvious splashage. I reckon we had about an inch of rain in 45 minutes.

The pond is practically full and the purple loosestrife is leaning at a most peculiar angle.

The hemp agrimony looks damp but undefeated.

And so we head off to Cherry Tree Wood, the ‘tamer’ of the two woods within walking distance. This one has a children’s playground, tennis courts, and is generally more of what you’d expect from a municipal park, though it does still have some chunks of ancient woodland. A family of crows were digging for worms at the entrance, something they can finally do now that the rain has softened up the soil a bit.

I suspect that this was Mum and Dad with one of their two youngsters in the background. The adult crows pretty much rule the wood, and I once saw them on the rails of the Northern Line at East Finchley station, trying to eat a dead rat that seemed to have expired during an ill-advised trip across the live rail. I was worried that they’d be mown down by an approaching tube train, but they were happy to fly up and let the weight of the carriages do a bit of squashing for them. Sorry. I do love the way that they take every opportunity, though. The fledglings will learn a lot from their parents.

And then we go into the wood, and I start to notice what the rain has really done.

If you look closely, you can see all the rivers and streams that last night’s rainfall has carved through the fallen leaves. It gave me a real sense of the lay of the land and helps to explain why the grassy area to the right of this photo gets so sodden during years of heavy rainfall.

Apologies for the shaky photo! I don’t think I changed the settings after my dusk photos on Thursday. Doh.

It might not be the last of the rain either – according to BBC weather we have an 88% chance of another storm tonight between 21.00 and 22.00. I shall clutch my Kindle tightly and try to warn the cat.

Dear Readers, as we know I’m currently reading my way through the shortlist for the Wainwright Prize, and Dark, Salt, Clear by Lamorna Ash  was a good, cooling read for the middle of a heatwave. The author spent about three months in Newlyn in Cornwall, a week on a trawler, and some time on the other fishing boats. Admittedly her mother is Cornish, and Ash had spent time on holiday in Cornwall as a child, but was this enough time to really get to know an area, and to write about it? Plus Ash is young, a Londoner, by her own definition ‘posh’. In truth, I was prepared to hate the book – I was worried that it was yet another example of someone who drops in on a culture, harvests a few pages and moves on.

However, several things save it. One is that Ash recognises herself as a ‘fish out of water’ when she first joins the trawler, and her greatest fear is that her seasickness will be so bad that she won’t be able to continue. She is brutally honest about her naivety – she asks the Captain of the Filadelfia for the wifi code, and he laughs, asking her if she knows how much it costs at sea? She is determined not to just sit around writing and taking photos and joins in the fish gutting, graduating from lemon sole to monkfish to rays, and eventually the highest skill of all, filleting. She desperately wants, at first, to belong, but gradually realises that this is impossible, and also that it’s ok, that there are many ways of relating to a place:

‘Though the town felt a huge experience for me, I was a blip, barely even that, in the long lives of most of its residents: a kid with a smart London accent who stuck out like a sore thumb, who asked a few questions and then left again’.

Secondly, she sees both the good things about Newlyn, and the things that are problematic, both its tight-knit, celebratory culture and the alcoholism, depression and insularity.

‘Sat there in the backroom office amongst half-inflated lifeboats, Lofty provides me with a list of some of his favourite ‘Newlyn’ phrases. ‘Good as gold’ is one he uses all the time to describe other members of the community, the goodness in this case simply meaning kindness and not needing to mean anything more than that. I can’t believe so many people in one place can be good as gold. One of my friends back home suggested that calling someone nice is practically an insult; when any of us gives a person a compliment, it is always that they are interesting, or smart, or cool, in recognition of some external factor rather than an innate quality or the way they treat others.‘

‘When I tell people I’m from London, I often get responses like:’There’s too many people. It’s filthy. And no one speaks to you; no one speaks English, even’. 

More than anything, though, Ash can write. I had a real sense of what it might be like to be at sea on a trawler, and I enjoyed some of the images she conjures up immensely.

‘Every time they come across small sharks wriggling out of the pile and snapping their strong jaws, they fire them back into the sea like shot-puts. I lock eyes with one and see across its face an expression of utter disbelief as it flies right past the wheelhouse window’.

‘From a birds-eye view the pontoons look like slender trees whose leaves are the boats that colour and animate them, blowing slightly in the wind’. 

‘The crabs themselves look to me like old leather purses, the kind you find in boxes at the back of charity shops or swinging from the arms of grannies.’

One moment really captured my attention. On the way home from her week at sea, one of the crewmen tell her that as soon as the ship comes within five miles of the land and gets a mobile signal again, everyone will pick up their phones and stop talking to one another. And so it proves:

‘Our fingers caress the smooth, clean surfaces of our virtual lives and in each of our eyes shines a reflected blue oblong. And, like that, the community of the past eight days fractures.’

And so, I enjoyed this book much more than I expected to. I learned a lot about Cornwall, and about Newlyn and its fishing community. I found I was sympathetic to the author as she tried to fit in, to make herself useful and to understand how things worked.  I liked that she knew that she had only scratched the surface of the community that had welcomed her, and that she would never truly get to the bottom of what made them how they were. It will be interesting to see what she writes next, and I would love to hear the opinions of my West Country readers.

Dear Readers, the heat and humidity in London for the past few days has been difficult to bear for those of us already prone to hot flushes –  this is the longest hot spell in London since 1961, with temperatures consistently going above 34 degrees. I can hear all you people who live in Australia and South Africa and Asia laughing your heads off, but here in the UK we aren’t used to it, and the heat island effect of being in the city means that it never really gets chilly. Poor old things we are, sweating at our laptops and trying to decide whether a cup of tea actually does help or not. And so last night, braving the mosquitoes, we sat in our back garden, listening to the thunder and watching the lightning hopefully. Sadly, we got not a drop of a wet stuff.

There is something about sitting quietly, waiting for something to happen. I noticed a crisp, dry leaf falling prematurely from the whitebeam and skittering down the trunk. I saw the beautiful fluffy black cat rummaging in the leaves, and summoned up the energy to chase him after he grabbed a frog and ran away with it. I saw lots more lazy wasps amidst all the bees and hoverflies, a sure sign of autumn if ever there is one.

The heat lay over everything like a damp towel. A fork of lightning appeared over by the block of flats, and a few drops of rain spattered down, and then stopped.

We were watching for bats, and one careered past, flying low over the lilac, zig-zagging above the pond and then round and off. I didn’t see another one. A robin sang half-heartedly for a few seconds and then stopped, as if embarrassed.

The darkness gathered, as it does.

And still no rain.  So many new houses and flats are built without adequate protection from the sun – there are some apartments with enormous windows half a mile from me, and they are all south-facing. During the last heatwave, I was listening to the radio and a young woman said that it was so dangerously hot indoors that she had to take her new baby and her toddler and sit in a cafe all day, nursing a drink for as long as she dared. We are not prepared for the world that is coming, not at all.

Mum used to hate it when it got too hot. She’d strip off to her bra and sit in her chair complaining. Latterly, she forgot how to use the electric fan so the neighbours used to pop in to make sure it was on. Like so many elderly people, she didn’t drink enough either. Dad, on the other hand, loved the sun, and would go brown at the merest whisper of sunlight. I rather like the heat, normally, but in the middle of a pandemic it feels like one more thing that’s out of my control, something else to bear.

I have scattered a handful of dog food in case the fox puts in an appearance. She doesn’t, but the frog-murdering cat enjoys it.

I slap at a mosquito, and notice that the single bite has somehow set off my heat rash – I have no idea why this happens, but a solitary nibble by a midge or gnat has me scratching all over. What a wreck I am. A drop in the temperature of about 10 degrees Fahrenheit would turn me into a completely different person. As it is I am a sweaty, exhausted, slightly headachy curmudgeon with no redeeming features whatsoever. I hope that, wherever you are, you are dealing with things better than I am.

Lady’s bedstraw (Galium verum)

Dear Readers, this lovely plant has been flowering among the spear thistles and greater knapweed alongside Muswell Hill Playing Fields. It is such a discreet little thing that you could easily overlook it, but it has a long history of use by human beings. Lady’s Bedstraw is honey-scented when fresh, but smells of new-mown hay when dried, and this is one reason that it was used in straw mattresses. It was also believed to deter fleas, which must have been an additional bonus in medieval times, and until recently it was believed that the plant, dried between sheets of newspaper, could deter clothes moths.In Scandinavia, the plant was used as a sedative and analgesic for women in childbirth: the Norse goddess who helped women in labour was Frigg, and so the plant is known as ‘Frigg’s grass’.

The plant’s sedative qualities were also recognised in Gaelic mythology: a tea made from Lady’s Bedstraw was said to calm the terrifying battle frenzy of the hero Cúchulainn.

In Romania, Lady’s Bedstraw is known as Sânzianā, and was originally linked to the huntress goddess Diana (who was worshipped by the ancient Dacians who originally lived in the area). Nowadays, the Sânziene have been demoted to fairies, but these are still seen as powerful, wih the ability to promote fertility and cause injury. The festival of Sânziene is held every year on June 24th (although it is now said to be the ‘Festival of John the Baptist’ this is clearly based on a pagan midsummer celebration). Lady’s Bedstraw is central to the event:

“The folk practices of Sânziene imply that the most beautiful maidens in the village dress in white and spend all day searching for and picking flowers, of which one MUST be Galium verum (Lady’s bedstraw or Yellow bedstraw) which in Romanian is also named “Sânziànă”. Using the flowers they picked during the day, the girls braid floral crowns which they wear upon returning to the village at nightfall. There they meet with their beloved and they dance around a bonfire. The crowns are thrown over the houses, and whenever the crown falls, it is said that someone will die in that house; if the crown stays on the roof of the house, then good harvest and wealth will be bestowed upon the owners. As with other bonfire celebrations, jumping over the embers … is done to purify the person and also to bring health.

Another folk belief is that during the Sânziene Eve night, the heavens open up, making it the strongest night for magic spells, especially for the love spells. Also it is said that the plants harvested during this night will have tremendous magical powers.

It is not a good thing though to be a male and walk at night during Sanziene Eve night, as that is the time when the fairies dance in the air, blessing the crops and bestowing health on people – they do not like to be seen by males, and whomever sees them will be maimed, or the fairies will take their hearing/speech or make them mad.

In some areas of the Carpathians, the villagers then light a big wheel of hay from the ceremonial bonfire and push it down a hill. This has been interpreted as a symbol for the setting sun (from the solstice to come and until the midwinter solstice, the days will be getting shorter).” (From Wikipedia)

The Sanziene festival in Cricau 2013 (Photo One)

Botanically, Lady’s Bedstraw belongs to the Rubiaceae family, and is closely related to hedge bedstraw and cleavers . The frothy yellow flowers are pretty much diagnostic for the species  (hedge bedstraw flowers are white). It is found right across Europe and Asia, and is native to North Africa too. It has been naturalised in the northern part of North America, New Zealand and Tasmania.

Photo Two

The plant can be used to make vegetable rennet, for coagulating milk during cheese-making, and it used to give its colour to Double Gloucester cheese. Double Gloucester was a very regional product, made only from the milk of the Gloucester cow. Nowadays, while a few artisan cheese-makers and small farms are making the cheese the traditional way, most of the stuff that you buy in supermarkets is made by large dairies and coloured artificially to give the golden hue. Fortunately, the Gloucester cow has been rescued from extinction, and Single Gloucester cheese can only be made from the milk of this breed, which has a characteristic white stripe along the backbone.

Old Gloucester Cow and calf (Photo Three)

As you might expect from a plant that is in the same family as Rose Madder, the roots of Lady’s Bedstraw can be used to produce a dye, which produces a range of colours from palest pink through to coral. The extraction and cleaning of the fine roots seems to be quite a palaver however, and I note that many dyers turn their attentions to the commoner hedge bedstraw instead. The photo below shows the experiments of a dyer from Connecticut, and very pretty they are too. The flowers of the plant can apparently be used to produce a yellow dye, but I suspect you’d need a lot of them. 

Skeins dyed with lady’s bedstraw roots (Photo Four)

Lady’s Bedstraw doesn’t seem to be much eaten by humans (except for the cheese connection) but it is much loved by a variety of caterpillars, including those of the appropriately-named Bedstraw Hawk Moth (Hyles gallii). What a splendid creature! They also feed on Rosebay Willow-herb, so I shall have to keep an eye open.

According to my caterpillar book, 19 species of moth caterpillar have been found on Lady’s Bedstraw. This delicate little plant certainly pulls its weight on the biodiversity front, and it should feature in any wildflower meadow.

Bedstraw Hawk Moth (Hyles gallii) (Photo Five)

Bedstraw Hawk Moth caterpillar (Photo Six)

And finally, a poem. How I love this! I can see it all. I did not know that Frances Cornford(1886 – 1960) was chiefly known for her unkind and much parodied poem ‘To a Fat Lady Seen From a Train’ (‘Oh fat white woman whom nobody loves/Why do you walk through the fields in gloves?). This humane poem, however, seems to me a much better way to remember her.

The Coast: Norfolk

by Frances Cornford

As on the highway’s quiet edge
He mows the grass beside the hedge,
The old man has for company
The distant, grey, salt-smelling sea,
A poppied field, a cow and calf,
The finches on the telegraph.

Across his faded back a hone,
He slowly, slowly scythes alone
In silence of the wind-soft air,
With ladies’ bedstraw everywhere,
With whitened corn, and tarry poles,
And far-off gulls like risen souls.

And before we leave Frances, I note that one of her poems was much loved by Philip Larkin and his lover Maeve Brennan, who would read ‘All Souls Night’ every year after Larkin had died.

All Souls’ Night

My love came back to me
Under the November tree
Shelterless and dim.
He put his hand upon my shoulder,
He did not think me strange or older,
Nor I, him.

Frances Cornford

Frances Cornford (Photo Seven)

Photo Credits

Photo One By Saturnian – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26838120

Photo Two from CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=129770

Photo Three by Graham Tiller from https://www.flickr.com/photos/77175657@N00/7007115394/

Photo Four from https://localcolordyes.com/2011/10/19/dyeing-with-ladys-bedstraw/

Photo Five  By Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11242384

Photo Six By Hectonichus – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20863851

Photo Seven from https://russellboyle.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/childhood-by-frances-cornford/

Robert Browning, from his poem ‘Home Thoughts From Abroad’: ‘That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture!’

Good morning Readers! And thanks to everyone who had a bash at the quiz. I am marking it out of 20 because you got an extra mark if you hazarded a guess at the authors. Anne managed a stunning 20 out of 20, so well done that woman! Sarah got 10 out of 10 for matching the birds to the poems. and  Christine got 7 out of 10. Of those who had a bash at both matching the birds and naming the authors, sllgatsby got 8 and Gert Loveday got 8, so congratulations to everyone, and do let me know if you have a favourite bird poem, looking at the works for the quiz has got me intrigued. I’m specially interested if you have a poem about a local bird- where are the works about ground hornbills or kookaburras? I think we should be told.

Dear Readers, let’s see how you got on with our bird poems.

a) 8) – Carrion crow. From Ted Hughes’ ‘Examination at the Womb-Door’ from his Crow poems. This always gives me goosebumps. You can read the whole poem here

“But who is stronger than death?
Me, evidently.”

b) 9) Sparrowhawk, from Hawk Roosting, again by Ted Hughes. The whole poem is here.

“My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads.

c) 4) Robin – from W.H Davies’ poem ‘Robin Redbreast’ – read the whole thing here .

How he sings for joy this morn!
How his breast doth pant and glow!
Look you how he stands and sings, 
Half-way up his legs in snow!

d) 3) Mallards – from Kenneth Grahame’s ‘Duck Ditty’ in ‘The Wind in the Willows’. The whole poem is here.

Everyone for what he likes!
We like to be
Heads down, tails up,
Dabbling free!

High in the blue above,
Swifts whirl and call –
We are down a-dabbling
Up tails all!

e) 5) Kestrel. From The Windhover by Gerard Manley Hopkins. Read the whole poem, and an interesting analysis of it, here. One of my very favourite poems.

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn xxxxxx, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him solid air, and striding 
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy!

f) 7) Kingfisher – from The Kingfisher by Mary Oliver, another of my favourite poets. You can read the whole thing here.

When the wave snaps shut over his blue head, the
water
remains water–hunger is the only story
he has ever heard in his life that he could
believe.
I don’t say he’s right. Neither
do I say he’s wrong. Religiously he swallows the
silver leaf
with its broken red river, and with a rough and
easy cry
I couldn’t rouse out of my thoughtful body
if my life depended on it, he swings back
over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it
(as I long to do something, anything) perfectly.

g)2) Skylark from ‘To a Skylark’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley. So many children used to learn this at school and be put off poetry for life. What a shame. When I was taught it at my school in East London, I had never seen a skylark in my life. When I finally did see one, when I was a child on holiday in Dorset, it made a lot more sense. You can read the whole thing here.

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert, 
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still doth soar, and soaring ever singest. 

h) 1) From Sparrow by Norman Maccaig. Now, if we’d been taught this at school I’d have known how to relate. Read the whole thing here.

He’s no artist.
His taste in clothes leans towards
the dowdy and second hand.
And his nest — that blackbird, writing
pretty scrolls on the air with the gold nib of his beak
would call it a slum. 

i) 10 from ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ by John Keats. Another poem that is rather too complicated to be taught to young children I think. Plus, you would be very lucky to hear a nightingale these days (although Keats heard this bird on Hampstead Heath). This is a splendid poem on mortality but it needs time and  concentration. You can read the whole thing here.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk;
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, 
In some melodious plot 
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 

j) 6) ‘The Raven’ by Edgar Allen Poe. How this poem begs to be read aloud! It’s something of a Gothic masterpiece, in my opinion, with a strand of hectic madness in it. Read the whole thing here.

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter
In there stepped a stately …… of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he: not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door – 
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door – 
Perched and sat, and nothing more. 

1) House sparrow (Passer domesticus)

2) Skylark (Alauda arvensis)

3) Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos)

4) Robin (Erithacus rubecula)

5) Common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus)

6) Raven (Corax corax)

7) Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis)

8) Carrion crow (Corvus corone)

9) Eurasian Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus)

10) Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos)

Photo Credits

Photo One by Joe Ravi / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

Photo Two by Neil Smith from https://www.flickr.com/photos/51993572@N08/13536988595 

Photo Three by Mr TinDC from https://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_t_in_dc/5013989475

Photo Four by Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK / CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)

Photo Five by Andreas Trepte / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)

Photo Six by Brian Gratwicke at https://www.flickr.com/photos/briangratwicke/24374875053

Photo Seven by Roger Batt from https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishvets/36851050612

Photo Eight by Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)

Photo Nine by Imran Shah from Islamabad, Pakistan / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)

Photo Ten by Kev Chapman from https://www.flickr.com/photos/25553993@N02/7790441588

New Bins!

Dear Readers, as you’ll know by now it’s the little things that keep me happy, so I am absolutely delighted to report the arrival of new litter bins in Coldfall Wood and on the adjoining Muswell Hill Playing Fields. There are signs on the top asking people to take their rubbish home if the bins are full (as opposed to letting the crows and foxes strew everything about), so let’s see how that works. At least these bins have a lid  on the top, and I watched at least one person dispose of their litter correctly, so it’s an excellent start.

I love the way that the spiders are becoming more and more apparent as they grow into adulthood. We usually only notice them in the autumn, but if you look closely there are already lots of tiny orb-webbed spiders about, some of them smaller than a child’s fingernail. Whoever made this web, on an oak tree, has lots of ambition.  I think it’s most likely a little guy called Drapetisca socialis (or money-spider to you and me), who has a fondness for tree trunks. The unsuspecting prey ‘trips’ over the lateral threads securing the web to the bark, and falls onto one of the ‘sheets’, whereupon the spider leaps out and dispatches it. What a life.

I love the shadows of the leaves on the forest floor. It’s nice and cool in the shade, but soon we are out on the edge of the Playing Fields, being blasted by the heat.

It’s only when the seeds are mostly gone that you can see that the spear thistle is actually a member of the daisy family.

And someone has been brushing an enormous white dog, by the look of it. Shame the nesting season is over, this stuff would have made a lovely bed for some newly-hatched birds.

I am ostensibly marching around the fields to get to grips with the whereabouts of the Japanese knotweed, following a visit by the Environmental Officer from the Council last week. There is certainly a lot of it about on the border between the cemetery and the fields, though it’s a good long way from the wood at the moment.

A fine thicket of Japanese knotweed

When I get home, I read the email thread properly and realise that the question is really about the knotweed in the cemetery. As this is still closed during the week, I will have to do a special expedition next weekend. Still, any excuse for a walk is welcome.

I notice that it’s been a very fine year for yarrow, and there are rather more pink  specimens than usual. In some places, the absence of footballers has meant that the yarrow can start to take over the field itself. I don’t suppose it will survive the return of the sportsmen though (whenever that is).

And then, some real excitement. I am busy looking at the plants, but fortunately my husband is looking at the sky.

‘What’s that’? he asks.

Could it be?

Yes, it’s a buzzard, riding the thermals over the cemetery and the fields. People have been telling me that they’ve seen one for about six months, but this is my first proper look.  What a treat!

I wonder if it’s feeding on road kill along by the North Circular Road, or if it’s found some other source of sustenance – they eat small rodents, rabbits and even insects if there’s nothing else about. They are all-rounders, and it’s no wonder that they are among the first big birds of prey to start to make a living in urban-fringe areas. Plus, in East Finchley they are less likely to be blown out of the sky by a trigger-happy gamekeeper. Buzzards have a wingspan of about four feet, which is not eagle-sized but is plenty big enough to attract my attention. This one was probably lucky that the crows further up the field didn’t notice,  or maybe the corvids aren’t so jumpy once their youngsters have fledged. Normally, birds of prey spend a lot of time being harassed by crows. It must be very tiresome.

Onwards!

Another magnificent bin

We decide to cross the boardwalk over the ‘everglades’ part of the wet woodland. The plants have grown back vigorously since the floods of the spring – there is common and amphibious bistort, water plantain and some lovely water mint. The bistort species are in the same family as the Japanese knotweed, but are much better behaved.

Amphibious bistort (Persicaria amphibia)

Water plantain (Alisma plantago-aquatica)

Water mint (Mentha aquatica)

And here is a Common Darter dragonfly (Sympetrum striolatum), patrolling a tiny piece of the stream. They don’t breed until late summer, so this one could be looking for the arrival of a female.

And something has turned these leaves to lace.

As we brace ourselves for our return to the hot streets, I find one more excuse to linger. A speckled wood butterfly (Pararge aegeria) is beautifully backlit as it waits on a leaf. The male often sits on a leaf waiting for a female to pass, and drives away any other males who encroach on his territory. Interestingly, butterflies in the north of the species range (they extend from Yorkshire southwards) are chocolate-brown with white spots, but the London ones that I’ve seen have much creamier, orange spots. Whichever colouration is present, if you see a small butterfly that seems to mimic the play of shadows in the woodland, chances are you’re looking at a speckled wood.

And as we stride out into the heat, and take a small alleyway between Creighton Avenue and Durham Road, we are hit with the most fabulous, heady aroma of figs. Someone has a magnificent fig tree, and somewhere under those leaves, the fruit is ripening. How I would love to bottle that scent and save it for the winter months! It seems like the very essence of these long, hot, languorous days.

Robert Browning, from his poem ‘Home Thoughts From Abroad’: ‘That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over, Lest you should think he never could recapture The first fine careless rapture!’

Dear Readers, this week I thought I’d try something different for the quiz. Below are some photos of birds, and in a strangely uncharacteristic burst of generosity, I’m also going to tell you what species the birds are.  What I want you to do is to try to match the poem to the bird. Extra points if you can tell me who the poet was (and one poet is featured more than once)  So, if you think poem a) relates to the house sparrow (1), your answer is a) 1.

As usual, if you don’t want to be influenced by those who answered earlier, write your responses down before you pop them into the comments. Obviously you can play without going public with your answers, but if you want to be ‘marked’, please note that the deadline is 5 p.m. on Monday UK time. The solutions will be published on Tuesday. Have fun!

a)

“But who is stronger than death?
Me, evidently.”

b)

“My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot

Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly –
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads.

c)

How he sings for joy this morn!
How his breast doth pant and glow!
Look you how he stands and sings, 
Half-way up his legs in snow!

d)

Everyone for what he likes!
We like to be
Heads down, tails up,
Dabbling free!

High in the blue above,
Swifts whirl and call –
We are down a-dabbling
Up tails all!

e)

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn xxxxxx, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him solid air, and striding 
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy!

f)

When the wave snaps shut over his blue head, the
water 
remains water–hunger is the only story
he has ever heard in his life that he could
believe.
I don’t say he’s right. Neither
do I say he’s wrong. Religiously he swallows the
silver leaf
with its broken red river, and with a rough and
easy cry
I couldn’t rouse out of my thoughtful body
if my life depended on it, he swings back
over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it
(as I long to do something, anything) perfectly.

g)

Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!
Bird thou never wert, 
That from Heaven, or near it,
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still doth soar, and soaring ever singest. 

h)

He’s no artist.
His taste in clothes leans towards
the dowdy and second hand.
And his nest — that blackbird, writing
pretty scrolls on the air with the gold nib of his beak
would call it a slum. 

i)

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk;
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,-
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees, 
In some melodious plot 
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, 
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 

j)

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter
In there stepped a stately …… of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he: not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door – 
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door – 
Perched and sat, and nothing more. 

1) House sparrow (Passer domesticus)

2) Skylark (Alauda arvensis)

3) Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos)

4) Robin (Erithacus rubecula)

5) Common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus)

6) Raven (Corax corax)

7) Kingfisher (Alcedo atthis)

8) Carrion crow (Corvus corone)

9) Eurasian Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus)

10) Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos)

Dear Readers, my friend A gave me some ‘manky apples’ from the tree in her garden, but she hoped that I wasn’t squeamish, as the fruit had been ‘got at’ by at least one insect. And, dear readers, I hope that you aren’t squeamish either, because I have spent the last half an hour cutting the edible bits off of the fruit for a crumble, and taking photos of the inhabitants of the other bits. If you don’t like photos of caterpillars, look away now :-).

The major pest of apples in the UK, as you probably know, is the codling moth( (Cydia pomonella). Another stipulation for my receipt of the apples was that I was not to wax lyrical about the creature, but here is a picture of the adult, and I think it’s not unattractive in a mothy kind of way.

Codling moth (Cydia pomonella) (Photo One)

However, the caterpillars are obligate frugivores – in other words they cannot digest leaves, like other larvae, and are wholly adapted to eating fruit. Apples are their favourite, but they can also eat pears, walnuts and even apricots. The adult moth lays her eggs on either the twigs or the fruit of a tree, depending on the time of year (there are two generations, one in the spring and one later in the summer). It’s thought that the caterpillars navigate towards the light once hatched, and at some speed too, because nearly everything else in the garden, from blue tits to ants, eats codling moth larvae. As most trees produce fruit on the end of their branches, this behaviour means that the caterpillars are quick to find a suitable apple. It takes the larva about 45 minutes to burrow into the fruit, and then a further 15 minutes to spin a cap for the tunnel out of silk. Once in the apple, it heads into the centre where the seeds are. Amazingly, it then bites the seeds, which stops the natural development of the fruit and causes it to start to ripen – ripe fruit provides the caterpillar with more nutrients. Often, one apple will be enough, but some especially hungry critters will then start the process all over again with another apple. No wonder farmers love them so much.

Infested apple

Once the caterpillar is snug inside its fruity home, it makes a chamber, which rapidly goes black and fills with frass (droppings).

And then, when the caterpillar is ready to pupate, it either launches itself into the air on a silky thread, or crawls down the trunk, looking for a suitable chink in the bark or other secure spot. Some moths will hatch just ten days after pupation, while others will ‘hibernate’ over the winter. One old method of deterring codling moth was to put a sticky band around the tree – I always thought this was to stop the caterpillars climbing up (silly me) but in fact it catches the caterpillars climbing down to pupate. Once there is a suitable ‘haul’ the band can be removed and destroyed. However, my money is on the codling moths in my friend’s garden, as this very morning we saw some caterpillars abseiling down from the branches like tiny green SAS men about to remedy a hostage situation.

Some fruits, as is the nature of things, have fought back. Some varieties have thickened skins, and hairy skins, such as those of peaches and apricots, are also shown to deter codling moth. Others have responded by producing ‘stony cells’ in the layer of flesh that surrounds the seeds, making it much more difficult for the caterpillar to munch through. In short, the battle between codling moth and stone fruit has probably been going on for as long as both have existed.

Various methods to reduce the predations of codling moth on human food have been tried, including the usual ‘spraying with insecticides’ method, which has resulted in insecticide-resistant codling moths, as we might have expected. Less harmful techniques for the garden apple tree include clearing away fallen fruit so that any caterpillars still in situ don’t have a chance to pupate, pruning to get more sun into the heart of the tree (the caterpillars require humidity to survive), and even scraping the bark to make less sites for pupation. Plus, encouraging birds such as tits into the garden and being tolerant of ants (who are excellent predators of caterpillars before they set up home in the apple) helps. Woodpeckers are skilled at finding codling moth pupae under the bark of trees. However, once the caterpillar is ensconced it is very well protected from practically everything, because to destroy the insect you’d have to contaminate the fruit.

However, the adults are strongly attracted to the smell of ripening apples, and this can be used as a way of catching large numbers and disposing of them – the scent can be distilled into moth traps, and both males and females are likely to turn up. Like most pheromone traps, they are lined with a sticky substance like flypaper, which feels to me like a most unpleasant way to die. Still, at least it is very specific, and hopefully other species are not also enticed. It’s surely an improvement on insecticide.

Codling moth trap, Denmark (Photo Two)

So, I now have some perfect chunks of apple, and some that are full of caterpillars and holes. I imagine that for most of human history this was how it was. There would be good years and bad years, and on the bad years the apples wouldn’t keep as well, and more would have to be discarded. Still, it’s interesting that the bits of apple that haven’t already been nibbled are absolutely delicious, in a way that only garden apples seem to be these days. I’m happy to share my fruit with the little guys, but then my life and my livelihood don’t depend on it. I might feel differently if they did.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Olei – Self-published work by Olei, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=810865

Photo Two by By Slaunger – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20440883

Dear Readers, the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing is the UK’s most prestigious prize for all kinds of writing about the natural world, and this year I am determined to work my way through the shortlist. I was very happy to start with this book, ‘Dancing with Bees‘ by Brigit Strawbridge Howard – she is sixty-something, like myself, and has found much joy in reconnecting with the nature that she enjoyed so much as a child. When she says that:

‘I always warn friends who suggest going for a walk that they might like to think twice about having me as their companion, for I find it quite impossible to walk past anything small that moves or catches my attention without stopping to examine and admire it’. 

I (and probably my friends) can definitely relate.

Strawbridge Howard finds herself becoming interested in the natural world again through the medium of bees. At first, stories of colony collapse disorder cause her to look into the way that honeybees are treated, particularly in the USA where they are moved, in their millions, from place to place. But gradually, the empty space in her heart where nature used to be is filled by the buzzing of our many native bee species, and it is her exploration of these that takes up the majority of the book.

On the subject of honeybees, though, Strawbridge Howard introduces me to the organisation ‘Friends of the Bees’, who recognise that introducing honeybee hives into an area can outcompete other species. Her lovely husband, Rob, thinks carefully about introducing hives into the garden that he manages:

‘Had there already been large numbers of hives in the vicinity, Rob might thought twice about introducing a hive to his garden, as he would not have wanted to knowingly add more competition to an area already saturated with honeybees’. 

Certainly there were many horror stories when ‘urban beekeeping’ became a ‘thing’ in London a few years ago – there was so little forage that even the honeybees themselves were starving, so goodness knows what the impact was on other bee species.

And, as Strawbridge Howard points out

‘‘Keeping bees might well help increase crop pollination, but the fact is that you are no more likely to save bees by becoming a beekeeper than you are going to save ‘birds’ by keeping chickens’.

The author manages to weave her personal story through her developing passion for bees; the chapter ‘The Upside-Down Bird’, about the death of her mother, moved me greatly.  I love the tales about her misadventures too; as I’ve found, nature has a way of punishing hubris – just when you think you know something, you find out that it was much more complex than you thought.

But what I love most are the nuggets of information about bees, and the obvious joy with which Strawbridge Howard imparts them. I don’t think I’ve ever made so many notes in a book. Here are just a few:

‘When wild honeybees set up home in tree cavities, they tend to site their nests four to six metres above the ground to give the colony protection from natural predators….which is where log hives come in. They are basically hollowed-out logs, fashioned from trees that have been blown down in storms….They closely mimic the bees’ natural nesting sites and can be strapped on a tree, at exactly the kind of height where honeybees would be likely to establish a new colony. They have a very high success rate in attracting honeybee swarms’. 

‘Pollen, in its raw state, is indigestible. To make it digestible, the workers add nectar, together with saliva, gut enzymes, and wild yeasts. Over a few weeks, these cause the pollen to ferment. The resulting ‘bee bread’ (also known as ambrosia) is eaten by nurse bees -worker bees whose specific job it is to care for the brood- to produce royal jelly which, in turn, is fed to the queen and larvae, exclusively in the case of queen larvae and for about three days for others’.

‘Inside the nest, she (the queen bumblebee) secretes slithers of grey-white wax from glands in her abdomen and uses these to fashiion a little pot, about the size of a child’s fingernail and shaped like Winnie-the-Pooh’s honey jar. This she fills with her foraged nectar’.

‘For the bumblebee eggs to hatch successfully, the queen needs to sit on them and keep the temperature at around 30 degrees Celsius. She does this by disconnecting her flight muscles inside her thorax and shivering her muscles until her body reaches the required temperature’.

Within a bumblebee nest –  ‘Larger workers, being capable of carrying more pollen and nectar back to the nest than their smaller sisters, usually take on the role of foragers, whilst smaller workers stay at home, cleaning the nest, tending to the queen and feeding the larvae’. 

‘…a single Red Mason bee (Osmia bicornis), who collects pollen underneath her abdomen (rather than in a specialised pollen ‘basket‘) can be around one hundred times more efficient at pollinating than a single honeybee. 

‘..ground-nesting bees solve any potential water problems by smearing the sides of their nest chambers, which are seldom made at the lowest point of the tunnel, with antifungal secretions’

(Notes in bold are mine)

Common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum)

The writer is interested in a whole variety of aspects of ‘natural history’ – at one point she is investigating the history of her village in order to find out whether a particular species of bee is likely to live there, and I am reminded of my sudden interest in the history of Muswell Hill Playing Fields with their patch of ‘peculiar’ flora;

‘I have become a nature detective, investigating, digging deeper, leaving not a stone unturned in my search for evidence that the village of Sedgehill might be home to more than just one, lone Yellow Loosestrife bee’.

And, towards the end of the book, she realises that she has moved beyond just an urge to identify the bee species that she sees, and to learn everything about them, to a more holistic, open-minded search for connection. In this way, yet again, her journey mirrors mine. This could well be my mission statement:

‘Henceforth, I resolve to embrace lateral, creative and inventive thinking, as well as an inquisitiveness about, and wonder and awe of, whatever subject takes my fancy on a given day‘.

I loved this book, for its interweaving of the personal, the scientific and the historical, for the enthusiasm with which the writer’s discoveries are shared, and with the passion that burns through every page. I thought I knew a fair bit about bees, but there was lots here that was new to me, and plenty to provoke thought. Plus, it’s filled me with a desire to take a camper van to the Outer Hebrides and search for the Great Yellow bumblebee, or to a tiny nature reserve next to an industrial estate to find the Potter wasp. This book feels like an act of generosity, from someone who is filled to bursting with a love for the natural world, and with an irrepressible urge to share it with all of us. It’s certainly made me want to pay even more attention to the bees in my back garden, and to want to take even more care of them, which is a tribute to Strawbridge Howard’s powers of expression and persuasion. A worthy contender for the Wainwright Prize.

Common carder bee on spear thistle