Dear Readers, today there was a Bird Walk in Coldfall Wood, one of two patches of ancient woodland here in East Finchley. We’d already had a good walk when, right at the end, our guide, Gareth Richards, heard a familiar song. And then, a Firecrest flew out of the holly along the edge of the wood. What a treat!

Firecrests and Goldcrests are the UK’s  smallest birds, both weighing in at 4-7 grams (less than a quarter of an inch for those who are Imperial-measurement  inclined. But the Firecrest has a bold line through its eye, and that bright orange crest, though this isn’t obvious all the time.

Plus, I always think that the Goldcrests have rather indignant little faces. In my experience, I often see Goldcrests in yew or other conifers, but Gareth explained that Firecrests prefer holly and ivy, especially amongst oak trees – just the kind of habitat where we spotted ‘our’ Firecrest.

Firecrests are relatively rare birds (though not on the Red List), so this was a great find for the wood – the British Trust for Ornithology estimates that there are about 2000 breeding pairs in the UK, as opposed to 790,000 breeding pairs of Goldcrests.  Apparently Firecrests are increasing in number in London, which is great (we need all the birds we can get!) Firecrests and Goldcrests can sometimes be found together, but they differ in the prey that they eat, which reduces competition  – Firecrests favour bigger prey and, in addition to stealing dead insects from spider’s webs, they may also eat the spiders themselves. In Europe, Firecrests may nest in the same tree as the mighty Northern Goshawk, which will feed on the Firecrest’s main predators, such as sparrowhawks and squirrels. If we ever get one of these in Coldfall Wood you’ll certainly hear about it!

Firecrest really are a great find for Coldfall Wood, and it makes me think  that I should definitely do more regular birding there. If we don’t look, we don’t know what we’ll find. And that goes for any local ‘patch’,  be it a park, a garden, a stretch of shoreline or an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. We found 30 species of bird in 90 minutes today, which just  goes to show that all is not lost, and there is still much to see if we’re patient and pay attention.

Dear Readers, you may have been amazed by the behaviour of Bower Birds, who are often the stalwarts of nature documentaries. This family of birds lives in Australia and Papua New Guinea, and they are expert creators of ‘bowers’, where they perform dances in order to entice females. Some of the bowers are quite simple, but some of them are very highly decorated, often with items of a particular colour (blue seems to be a favourite).

Female birds come and inspect the bower, and if it meets with their approval they may allow the male to mate.

Well, in the UK we have a small wading bird, the Ringed Plover, who displays a similar-ish behaviour. In this case, it’s the nest site is decorated with broken shells before any eggs are laid. Although this behaviour is well-known by ornithologists and conservationists (who use the shells as a visual cue for where the birds are nesting), nobody really knows why the birds do this.

However, in this month’s British Birds magazine, Liam Andrews has noticed that a nest on the edge of an airstrip on the Out Skerries in Scotland was decorated with white flakes of paint, scraped from a concrete post twenty metres away which had peeling paint – the area had no seashells, so the bird seems to have reached for a substitute.

So, clearly this little bird is so motivated by the need to decorate the nest that it will seek out white scraps even when there are no seashells available. But why? It may be that the female prefers a few spots of white when choosing a nest site. It might be that the white spots mimic droppings and give some indication that a bird is already nesting, and so it’s safe. Whatever the reason, I would have thought that it made the nest site more visible from the sky, and that would be a worry, although the chicks are extremely well camouflaged, and are able to run about from the moment they hatch if danger strikes.

Ringed Plovers also have an impressive tactic for dealing with predators – like many of their relatives, they will run away from the nest while dragging a wing so that it looks as if they’re injured. When they’ve lured the predator away from the nest they’ll take to the wing.

For once, the Ringed Plover is not on the Red List, but it is threatened by human/dog disturbance near its nesting sites – for many wading, ground-nesting birds even the sight of a dog on a lead can be enough to startle them from the nest, let alone a dog that’s running free. I love dogs, but I do think that at least some of these nesting sites should be off limits to humans and dogs when it’s breeding season. Surely that’s not too much to ask?

 

 

Dear Readers, when Constable painted this landscape over two hundred years ago, he could little have thought that the trees he depicts so lovingly would now be vanishingly rare – there are now less than 7000 Black Poplar (Populus nigra subsp betulifolia) trees in the UK. Furthermore, only 600 of the trees are female, problematic in this species where the sexes are separate. This is a tree of boggy ground, and as more and more land has been drained for agriculture it has largely disappeared from Britain’s countryside. Furthermore, female trees were always considered a bit ‘messy’ – this tree is a member of the cottonwood poplar family, and the seeds are fluffy little things, spreading what looks like cotton wool far and wide. Finally, the variation of the trees is limited, with only 150 of the remaining trees being genetically distinct.

Still, all is not lost: the National Trust has sprung into action, creating a gene bank of seeds, and has replanted a flood plain on the Killerton Estate in East Devon. 80 trees of varying genetic heritage have been planted, and the hope is that, once the trees are established, cuttings can be sent to other suitable sites all over the country. Male and female trees have to be within 200 metres of one another to reproduce, and as the population has declined this has become less and less likely to happen, so the new ‘forest’ could be a lifeline for the species. The National Trust has also identified several other sites where the Black Poplar was probably present in the past, and could be re-introduced.

The Black Poplar can live for 200 years and grow up to 30 metres tall, making it arguably the UK’s tallest native tree. Ecologically, it provides food for a wide variety of moths and other insects, including the spectacular Poplar Hawk Moth.

So, let’s hope that this sterling effort by the National Trust pays off. The UK is nature-deprived enough without losing another species.

Dear Readers, last year I wrote a post about watching the swifts on our road here in East Finchley – they kept flying up into the eaves of buildings as if looking for a nest site, and finding nothing. Fortunately the scaffolding at my house has given me a chance to pop up a swift nesting box, and if any birds show an interest I shall certainly be adding some more.

You are not supposed to have favourites, but swifts are right up there with my favourite birds. Maybe it’s because they stay for such a short time. It might be because they are the most aerial of land birds, never touching the ground, flying, feeding, mating in the air. Maybe it’s because they’re such harum-scarum hooligan birds, almost daring one another to see how close they can come to the pavement, the rush of wings lifting your hair. But they having a breeding population decline of 66% since the 1950s, largely due to the decline in their insect prey, upon which they are completely dependent, and the loss of breeding sites. Hence the swift box. I am keeping everything crossed that they like it (though a friend tells me that her swift box is home to house sparrows. As they are also a Red List species, I wouldn’t be too upset.

I once had a cat who belied her fluffy, slow-witted appearance with the hunting instincts of a velociraptor. One day I came downstairs to find that she had deposited a live swift in her food bowl. I couldn’t believe it at first – I could only assume that the bird had been skimming the patio and got unlucky. What an extraordinary creature it was, close up – almond-shaped eyes, scimitar wings and tiny feet. I took it to a wildlife sanctuary, where they pronounced it unharmed, and thought that it could go free after a night to recover. After that, I kept the cat in when I heard the swifts about, but they are one of the few birds who are not much affected by these furry predators.

What to do? Well, swifts nest overwhelmingly in areas of human habitation. On my road I’ve started a campaign to encourage people to stick up a swift box when they’re having renovations done (which on my road is pretty much constant), and a few kind souls have already agreed. I was inspired by Hannah Bourne-Taylor, a tireless, indefatigable campaigner on behalf of swifts, who has been trying to get the government to mandate the inclusion of swift bricks in every new development.  Why is it so hard to get the smallest of changes enacted on behalf of wildlife? But with this, at least, there’s something we can try to do.

For those of us who might be yearning to hear the swift again, here are some from Sweden (with a cuckoo in the background for good measure). You can hear the rush of wings.

And finally, a poem, one I hadn’t come across before, by Anne Stevenson. See what you think.

Swifts

By Anne Stevenson

Spring comes little, a little. All April it rains.
The new leaves stick in their fists; new ferns still fiddleheads.
But one day the swifts are back. Face to the sun like a child
You shout, ‘The swifts are back!’

Sure enough, bolt nocks bow to carry one sky-scyther
Two hundred miles an hour across fullblown windfields.
Swereee swereee. Another. And another.
It’s the cut air falling in shrieks on our chimneys and roofs.

The next day, a fleet of high crosses cruises in ether.
These are the air pilgrims, pilots of air rivers.
But a shift of wing, and they’re earth-skimmers, daggers
Skilful in guiding the throw of themselves away from themselves.

Quick flutter, a scimitar upsweep, out of danger of touch, for
Earth is forbidden to them, water’s forbidden to them,
All air and fire, little owlish ascetics, they outfly storms,
They rush to the pillars of altitude, the thermal fountains.

Here is a legend of swifts, a parable —
When the Great Raven bent over earth to create the birds,
The swifts were ungrateful. They were small muddy things
Like shoes, with long legs and short wings,

So they took themselves off to the mountains to sulk.
And they stayed there. ‘Well,’ said the Raven, after years of this,
‘I will give you the sky. You can have the whole sky
On condition that you give up rest.’

‘Yes, yes,’ screamed the swifts, ‘We abhor rest.
We detest the filth of growth, the sweat of sleep,
Soft nests in the wet fields, slimehold of worms.
Let us be free, be air!’

So the Raven took their legs and bound them into their bodies.
He bent their wings like boomerangs, honed them like knives.
He streamlined their feathers and stripped them of velvet.
Then he released them, Never to Return

Inscribed on their feet and wings. And so
We have swifts, though in reality, not parables but
Bolts in the world’s need: swift
Swifts, not in punishment, not in ecstasy, simply

Sleepers over oceans in the mill of the world’s breathing.
The grace to say they live in another firmament.
A way to say the miracle will not occur,
And watch the miracle.

 

Dear Readers, all week long I’ve had builders replacing my windows. What hard, dusty, physical work it is! And they’ve done a lovely job too, with real pride and attention to detail. It feels important for me to remember the generations of my ancestors who worked with their hands (and their legs, backs, arms, brains). And so, here are a few work-related poems. See what you think.

Filling Station

By Elizabeth Bishop

Oh, but it is dirty!
—this little filling station,
oil-soaked, oil-permeated
to a disturbing, over-all
black translucency.
Be careful with that match!

Father wears a dirty,
oil-soaked monkey suit
that cuts him under the arms,
and several quick and saucy
and greasy sons assist him
(it’s a family filling station),
all quite thoroughly dirty.

Do they live in the station?
It has a cement porch
behind the pumps, and on it
a set of crushed and grease-
impregnated wickerwork;
on the wicker sofa
a dirty dog, quite comfy.

Some comic books provide
the only note of color—
of certain color. They lie
upon a big dim doily
draping a taboret
(part of the set), beside
a big hirsute begonia.

Why the extraneous plant?
Why the taboret?
Why, oh why, the doily?
(Embroidered in daisy stitch
with marguerites, I think,
and heavy with gray crochet.)

Somebody embroidered the doily.
Somebody waters the plant,
or oils it, maybe. Somebody
arranges the rows of cans
so that they softly say:
esso—so—so—so
to high-strung automobiles.
Somebody loves us all.

Oh lord, this one….’Alabanza’ means ‘Praise’.

Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100

By Martín Espada
for the 43 members of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Local l00, working at the Windows on the World restaurant, who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center

Alabanza. Praise the cook with a shaven head
and a tattoo on his shoulder that said Oye,
a blue-eyed Puerto Rican with people from Fajardo,
the harbor of pirates centuries ago.
Praise the lighthouse in Fajardo, candle
glimmering white to worship the dark saint of the sea.
Alabanza. Praise the cook’s yellow Pirates cap
worn in the name of Roberto Clemente, his plane
that flamed into the ocean loaded with cans for Nicaragua,
for all the mouths chewing the ash of earthquakes.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen radio, dial clicked
even before the dial on the oven, so that music and Spanish
rose before bread. Praise the bread. Alabanza.

Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up,
like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium.
Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen
could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:
Ecuador, México, Republica Dominicana,
Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh.
Alabanza. Praise the kitchen in the morning,
where the gas burned blue on every stove
and exhaust fans fired their diminutive propellers,
hands cracked eggs with quick thumbs
or sliced open cartons to build an altar of cans.
Alabanza. Praise the busboy’s music, the chime-chime
of his dishes and silverware in the tub.

Alabanza. Praise the dish-dog, the dishwasher
who worked that morning because another dishwasher
could not stop coughing, or because he needed overtime
to pile the sacks of rice and beans for a family
floating away on some Caribbean island plagued by frogs.
Alabanza. Praise the waitress who heard the radio in the kitchen
and sang to herself about a man gone. Alabanza.

After the thunder wilder than thunder,
after the shudder deep in the glass of the great windows,
after the radio stopped singing like a tree full of terrified frogs,
after night burst the dam of day and flooded the kitchen,
for a time the stoves glowed in darkness like the lighthouse in Fajardo,
like a cook’s soul. Soul I say, even if the dead cannot tell us
about the bristles of God’s beard because God has no face,
soul I say, to name the smoke-beings flung in constellations
across the night sky of this city and cities to come.
Alabanza I say, even if God has no face.

Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul
two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other,
mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have.

Who remembers cinema ushers, guiding you to your seat with their torch? What happened to them, I wonder?

The Dignity of Ushers

By Al Maginnes

Their authority did not unfold
from ironed white shirts and thin ties
or from the funereal seriousness that struck
their acne-splashed faces but because
they stood heir to our native faith in light.

So we followed the thin white waver
of beams they pointed down aisles
to seats we never thought of refusing.
It was the first job I wanted,
especially after birthday outings

far from home showed me the glowing
outfits worn by big-city ushers, their get-ups
a blend of doorman and military dictator,
as gaudy and fine as the plots
of movies my Saturdays were swallowed by.

None of us knew, as they took us
into the artificial light of the cinema,
that they walked the path of the pin setter,
the blacksmith or elevator operator,
professions reduced to curiosity

by wandering time. Only in the quick steps
of floor salesmen, the slim backs of hostesses
bringing us to our tables, do they remain,
the artful flutters of their flashlights lost
in dark we are left to find our own way through.

Any favourite work poems, readers? A most under-poeted area, I’m sure.

Dear Readers, it’s funny how things go around. Five years ago I wrote a post about this inoffensive little plant, which turns out to be the first plant to have its genome sequenced, and to be the source of all kinds of exciting information about plants in general. Then, this week on my Open University course we have some group work on a model organism – this is a plant/creature/bacteria which has had its genome investigated in depth, and which has helped to explain what the various genes do, and how different organisms are related to one another. Furthermore, some of the key areas that make every living thing ‘work’ evolved way back in bacteria and viruses, and have proved to be so useful that they’re carried forward right through to present day plants and animals, a path spanning some 4 billion years.

First we have to pick our model organism, and there is some variation of opinion, as you might expect. I suspect we’re going to end up doing E. coli, which will still be fun (not something you often say with regard to this sometimes-pathogenic bacterium) but not as much fun as my ‘weed’. Still, sometimes you have to go with the flow, and that’s never more true than when trying to get an Open University project done.

But I am still determined to let Thale Cress have its moment in the sun, so here we go!

Dear Readers, today I was searching for a new weed in East Finchley Station car park. I don’t know how you spend your Saturdays, but for me a plant hunt in a relentlessly urban setting, with tube trains whistling past my ear and the steady thrum of an emergency generator forming an interesting soundscape is as close to heaven as I can imagine. This is mainly because the auditors finished their work yesterday, and although they had many, many comments, none of them related directly to anything that I’d done. Hooray! Life can resume some vestige of normality, and nothing is more normal than peering at a tiny plant and realising that, humble as it is, this is one of the most scientifically important organisms of the past century.

Thale cress is a brassica (as was our hairy bittercress last week) and on the surface of it, there is nothing much to report. It is a winter annual, with a rosette of dark green, hairy leaves, and a long waxy stem bearing tiny white flowers. The ‘hairs’ on the leaves are called trichomes, and are interesting because in thale cress, each one is a single cell.

However, what makes thale cress so important is that it was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced: its small size, short life-span and relatively simple genetic structure made it perfect as a model organism in scientific research. It also has remarkably little ‘junk’ DNA.  Because it was (relatively) easy to map the genome of the plant to its appearance and behaviour, thale cress is used for experimentation in laboratories all over the world, leading to a much better understanding of flower and leaf development, light sensitivity and circadian rhythms. In spite of being self-pollinated, the plant is also surprisingly diverse, with over 750 naturally occurring varieties world-wide, and over 40 in the UK alone.This has led to a variety of commercial applications being suggested, from increasing the speed at which oranges develop to encouraging plants to produce more Omega-3 acid – this article by Peter Marren is a fascinating look at the different ways in which this humble ‘weed’ could be used.

Of the many discoveries that were made using thale cress as a model, one of the most intriguing to me is that the roots of a plant seem to channel light to their roots, where there are light sensitive cells that need illumination in order to grow.

Thale cress has also landed on the moon – the Chinese Chang’e-4 lander brought the plant in a closed environment together with silk worm caterpillars and potato seeds. In theory, the three organisms should be a microcosm, with the silk worms producing carbon dioxide for the plants, and the plant producing oxygen, provided, of course, photosynthesis can take place.

Thale cress is named after Johannes Thal, the botanist who first described the plant in 1573. Thal discovered it in the Harz Mountains in Germany, and thale cress does seem to be another of those mountain plants that does well as a weed, surviving light, infertile soil, a high degree of exposure and risk of drought.  It is a pioneer species, and I suspect that one reason that I’ve never paid it any attention before is because it is also ephemeral – with such a short lifespan it will be here one day and gone tomorrow. It is apparently sometimes used as a salad ingredient, but presumably it grows larger in less hostile environments, because you’d be a long time picking a bowl full in East Finchley station.

I found thale cress rather difficult to photograph – my camera really doesn’t like white flowers (they nearly always end up appearing overexposed) and my knees really don’t like crouching down for too long (poor old thing that I am). But for some really splendid pictures of this humble plant, have a look at the Wildflower Finder website. To whet your appetite, here is an example:

Medicinally, thale cress has been used in Indian traditional medicine to treat mouth sores and inflammation of the throat. However, scientists looking at the bacterial communities that live on the surface of the leaves of the plant have found that some of the bacteria are producing a substance that deters the growth of other bacteria – a novel antibiotic. If this proves to also be effective against the bacteria that cause disease in humans and animals, it would be a tremendous advance in the search for new methods of combatting infection. Many of our current antibiotics are becoming less and less effective as bacteria acquire immunity to them, so we need all the help we can get.

Now, thale cress is not a particularly beautiful plant. Monet preferred water lilies for some reason, and Van Gogh turned his nose up at the thale cress and went for sunflowers and irises instead. But there are some remarkable scientific photographs of thale cress, showing the intricate beauty of its structures.

How beautiful the tiny details of this plant are when viewed close up! And this is the point at which I would normally produce a poem. However, for the first time I can report that this plant actually is a poem. In 2003, a group of geneticists from Icon Genetics managed to encode a line from Virgil’s Georgics into the DNA of the line of thale cress that they were working with. The line was ‘Nec vero terrae ferra omnes omnia possunt‘ or ‘Nor can all of the earth bring forth all fruit alike‘. However, this was not a simple artistic act, but a way of copywriting the whole genetically modified organism – if it was ‘stolen’ it could be identified by the poem encoded into each of its genes. For more on this, and on the work of poet Christian Bok, who is attempting to encode a poem into a bacteria that will change and replicate as reproduction occurs, have a look here.

Thale cress is the fruit fly or laboratory rat of the plant world. It has been analysed and reorganised to produce plastic, to glow in the dark, and to produce oil . It is certainly something of a wonder plant, but while normal selective breeding (which humans have done for millenia) has limitations imposed by the genome of the organism, we are now swapping genes from one organism to another, sometimes for good, humanitarian reasons but often just because we can. I am no Luddite, but it seems to me that our technology may be running ahead of our ability to decide on the ethical implications of our discoveries. I believe that science can save us, but I also believe that we need to think through what the results of our experimentation mean. Looking at this tiny plant, so unassuming that it has taken me over six years to notice it, I wonder what other secrets it may hold, and what they will lead to. I only hope they will be used for everyone’s benefit, rather than to make profit for a few bloated corporations, naïve as that hope may be. It is long since time to cooperate rather than compete.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Heiti Paves – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29552690

Photo Two from http://wildflowerfinder.org.uk/Flowers/C/Cress(Thale)/Cress(Thale).htm

Photo Three from https://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/record/9200579/xx8cd9g9.html

Photo Four from https://phys.org/news/2012-05-cellular-secrets-fatty-acid-production.html

Photo Five by Dr Heiti Paves at Tallinn University of Technology from https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2009-photomicrography-competition/arabidopsis-thaliana-thale-cress-1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers, if I sneak out into the garden very quietly, and make sure that my shadow doesn’t fall on the pond, I can get a glimpse of the frogs waiting around in the pond. Apart from the occasional ‘gribbit’ from one of the males, everyone is pretty much stationery, as if cast in stone. Such patience! But what are they waiting for?

Beneath the surface of the pond, some of them will be hanging on to a female with their specially adapted thumbs, in a process known as amplexus. The males will ride around on the female, sometimes for days, until she decides to release her eggs. At that point the male will release his sperm and the eggs will be fertilised. This is the whole reason for those days of being carried around by the (much larger) female – while he’s in situ no other male will get a chance to mate, unless a bigger male comes along and boots him off. This explains those situations you sometimes see where one female has numerous males attached to her. No wonder the females are sometimes very circumspect about jumping in the water.

And here’s a really enormous female frog that was found on our road – the lovely lady who found her was worried about her, but I’m pretty sure she’s just gravid. She leapt into the pond within 2 minutes of seeing it. It’s interesting how varied frogs are in colour – the frogs in the garden can be any colour from nearly black to palest yellow, and everything inbetween.

The patient males don’t all have mates yet, so some of them will be waiting to see if a female happens along. Every year the males come out of hibernation at the bottom of the pond first, and then the females, who usually hibernate elsewhere, wander along and sometimes sit on the edge of the pond for a bit as if weighing up their options before taking the plunge.

I’ve had this pond for fifteen years now, and it’s always so unpredictable – some years the weather stays warm and it’s a bumper year, other years (like this oneI it drops twenty degrees, sometimes overnight. Fingers crossed that the pond doesn’t freeze – the frogs can cope with anything else. And soon there will be tadpoles, and spring will really be here.

Dear Readers, it’s fair to say that the creatures in the garden don’t know whether they’re coming or going. Today has been a perfect spring day, with temperatures in the 60s (that’s about 17 degrees Celsius). But by next weekend we’re being threatened with a 20 degree Fahrenheit drop, and even the chance of sleet. I just hope that the pond doesn’t freeze, or the spawn on the top is likely to die (though any eggs underneath the water should be ok). I shall have a few buckets handy to pop on top of the spawn, just in case they’re needed.

As I was crouching by the pond hoping to get a froggy photo for your delectation, a male hairy-footed flower bee buzzed past to feed on the winter honeysuckle. They are very buzzy insects indeed, and always sound much louder than expected. They are another first sign of spring for me though. No photo from this visit, but here’s one I prepared earlier…

We have been visited regularly by the cat below, who seems to have decided that our garden is a prime part of his or her territory. S/he walks along the edge of the pond, paying very close attention to ‘something’ – probably a frog. I only hope s/he doesn’t fall in. Cats generally don’t cause the frogs any problems while they’re in the water, though they can be a real menace when the amphibians leave the pond.

Lots of goldfinches around at the moment too, they really are the prettiest little birds, with the most tinkling song.

Here are some goldfinches recorded in the UK by David Darrell Lambert.

And finally, after I’d sat still for about ten minutes, a little face popped up out of the pond. Welcome, little chap! May the weather be kind to you.

Dear Readers, a few years ago I did a blog about the colouration of squirrels in Toronto, where a surprising number of grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) are black, whereas this is very unusual in UK grey squirrels. So, I was very interested to read that scientist Bradley Cosentino at the Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York state had been doing some studies into why this might be. Cosentino had already shown that, in rural areas, predators spot the black squirrels more easily than the grey ones, which explains why the grey morph is more common in woods in the countryside.

However, in the city of Syracuse in New York State, black squirrels make up half of the population, and Cosentino wanted to find out why they were so much more common in an urban area. He had a hunch that it might have been connected to roadkill – we rarely seen squirrels killed by traffic in the UK, at least in cities (maybe everything is moving too slowly), but it’s a very common cause of death in US cities. After 50 roadkill studies around Syracuse, involving more than 100,000 photos of dead squirrels (the joys of being a scientist), Cosentino found that within 10-12 kilometres of the city, the black squirrels were about 30 per cent underrepresented. It’s already been found that drivers can spot a black squirrel faster than a grey one, which may mean that they’re easy to avoid, and this is the current working hypothesis.

However, this correlation doesn’t yet prove that this is why black squirrels are so much more successful in urban areas. It could also be that black squirrels have some other survival advantage, such as being more careful about crossing the road, or even that they’re faster than their grey conspecifics. Still, it’s an interesting hypothesis. I would love to see a similar study for Toronto.

You can read the scientific paper here.

Dear Readers, there is a positive plethora of interesting exhibitions on in London at the moment – it’s almost as if the universe knows that I’m getting close to my Open University exam and so is taunting me with all these good things. I will definitely try to report back on at least some of them, but in the meantime, here’s a round up of nature-related exhibitions in London during the next few months.First up is “Soil – The Earth Under Our Feet” at Somerset House on the Strand – it’s open now and runs until 13th April. The blurb says:

“This groundbreaking exhibition unites visionary artists and thinkers from around the world to explore the remarkable power and potential of soil. Through a range of artworks, artefacts and innovative approaches, visitors are invited to reconsider the crucial role soil plays in our planet’s health. The exhibition delivers a message of hope and urgency, encouraging a more sustainable, harmonious relationship with the Earth—if we choose to act now. “

Exhibitions at Somerset House are often an intriguing mixture of art and science, and they are often a lot of fun, with all manner of installations and other shenanigans.

Then a reader recently reminded me about an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in West London – “Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art and Culture”. This is what the gallery has to say on the subject:

Flowers have, throughout history, inspired artists, writers and creatives. FLOWERS – FLORA IN CONTEMPORARY ART & CULTURE seeks to reveal the myriad ways that flowers continue to be depicted by artists and their omnipresence within our contemporary culture. Occupying two floors and over nine major gallery spaces, this exhibition features large-scale installations, original art, photography, fashion, archival objects and graphic design exploring the ongoing influence of flowers on creativity and human expression.

Aside from studies of their inherent beauty and drama, flowers are also utilised as symbols, signifiers or metaphors for human emotions and impulses.  Flora lies at the heart of myths and stories that inform our cultural outlook and language. Recognised as unparalleled objects of beauty in nature, artists continue to evoke the power and beauty of flora to convey a multitude of messages and meanings. 

Over 500 unique artworks and objects are on display throughout the exhibition, divided into nine sections – from Roots, In Bloom, Flowers and Fashion, Science: Life & Death, to New Shoots – each exploring different creative themes and media.

One room is entirely devoted to a bespoke installation piece by Rebecca Louise Law, made up of over 100,000 dried flowers, while another is transformed into a digital projection space featuring interactive work of the pioneering French artist Miguel Chevalier.

It all sounds very Instagram-worthy, and they are advising visitors to pre-book. This one runs until 5th May, so there’s a little more time to catch it if it appeals.

And here’s advance notice that on 2nd May “Unearthed – The Power of Gardening” will be opening at the British Library. The exhibition will include the only surviving illustrated collection of herbal remedies from Anglo-Saxon England, and the world’s first gardening manual, from 1564. The exhibition will run until 10th August 2025.

The exhibition’s focus is described below:

“From rural and urban gardens and allotments to indoor gardens and windowsills, the exhibition delves into how the act of gardening heals and sustains people in a multitude of ways. It explores how gardening brings people together, empowers communities and shapes our relationship with the natural world. It also considers gardening as a form of activism, as a means of challenging land ownership and highlighting social disparities, as well as the consequences of the international movement of plants for the environment and human societies.”

So, lots to see and do, and do let me know if you’ve already been to any of these exhibitions, and what you think!