Category Archives: London Birds

Bugwoman on Location – At Long Lane Pasture

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Dear Readers, on the hottest day of the year so far, my friend A and I ventured forth for a walk around Long Lane Pasture. This nature reserve is just half a mile from my house in East Finchley, but it’s easy to miss, being tucked in beside the North Circular Road and the tube line. Once I was through the unprepossessing gate it was as if I was in some mythical summer from my childhood – although the rumble of the traffic is ever present this is the only reminder that you are in the London Borough of Barnet, not in some meadow in the shires.

Rough Chervil (Chaerophyllum temulum) beside the main path

There are meadow brown and ringlet butterflies, cabbage whites and the occasional cinnabar moth flitting around the long grass. The flower heads of a yellow buddleia hang opposite the berries of a guelder rose. Wild and garden perennials mix cheerfully together. All that is missing is the chirrup of grasshoppers, which puzzles me – with all this long grass I would expect the place to be deafening. I wonder why there aren’t any?

Seedheads of yellow buddleia (Buddleia x weyeriana)

Guelder rose (Viburnum opulus)

There are some seats under a covered area next to the largest pond, and we sit and enjoy the shade and a drink of water. A moorhen and her chick head for cover, but the dragonflies are relentless. One male emperor dragonfly seems to want to own the entire pond, swooping down to see off all rivals, his wings gleaming in the sun. He always returns to the same reed to survey his kingdom. Occasionally he stoops at a butterfly but in a half-hearted way. This time of year is about breeding.

It is chastening to think ow easily this pasture could have been lost to development. In 1912 it was given to the public as a reserve, but half of it was lost in 1920 when the North Circular Road was built. For years the land was grazed by horses, but in 1999 Barnet wanted to build houses on the site, one of the last scraps of unspoilt green left in the Borough. After a public campaign it was designated as open space, and 2009 the Long Lane Pasture Trust was granted a 25 year lease. I suppose this means that we’ll have to gird our loins for another fight in 2034. I shall be marking it in my diary.

Alder bark ( I think! Feel free to correct me….)

We follow the paths, taking the opportunity to sit on the benches placed in the shade of the trees. In one area, an elm has been planted. A sign tells us that this is a Princeton elm, a hybrid developed in the US to resist Dutch Elm disease, which still kills off any elm saplings ambitious enough to grow taller than about six feet. The sign tells me that a white-letter hairstreak (Satyrium w-album) was spotted in the pasture in 2009: this is vanishingly rare in the UK, as the eggs are laid on the twigs of elm trees, and the caterpillars feed on the leaves. When the elms died in the UK, it was pretty much the end for the butterfly as well, so closely was it associated with the tree. The Princeton elm has been planted in the hope that ‘the white-letter hairstreak will make a home here’. I hope so too.

Photo One by By Ian Kirk from Broadstone, Dorset, UK - White Letter HairstreakUploaded by tm, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30182755

A white-letter hairstreak (Photo One)

Photo Two by By Ptelea [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

White-letter hairstreak caterpillar (Photo Two)

There are many small ponds on the pasture, many dotted with purple loosestrife and bulrushes. My friend A rescues a cinnabar moth caterpillar from one of them. The irises have just gone over, and there are some strange plants in another of the damper patches. I’m hoping that they aren’t skunk cabbage, an invasive species from North America that can out compete practically anything, but my latest advice is that it’s probably elecampane, a yellow member of the daisy family. I saw some in flower earlier, so this makes sense.

But the best is yet to come. My friend A points out some little webs in the long grass. I take a few photos, and once home I talk to some of my friends on the invertebrate identification groups that I belong to. It appears that the webs belong to nursery web spiders! I am cockahoop. These spiders are free-range hunters, tracking flies and other small insects  through the long grass and pouncing on them like cheetahs. The female carries her egg-sac around with her in her jaws and then, when they are ready to hatch, she weaves the webs that I saw so that her spiderlings are protected while they grow.

Nursery webs….

Apparently, when the male wants to mate with the female (who, as is the way with spiders, is much, much bigger than he is) he presents her with a gift of food while simultaneously pretending to be dead. When she comes over to investigate he apparently springs to his feet, mates with her (presumably while she is absorbed in her dinner) and then runs away as fast as his eight tiny legs will carry him. The ways of insects are strange, but I have known humans who would pursue the same tactics if only they were speedy enough.

Photo Three by By Lukas Jonaitis from Vilnius, Lithuania (Spider - Pisaura mirabilis) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Nursery web spider (Pisaura mirabilis) carrying her egg sac (Photo Three)

Photo Four by By Mathias Krumbholz [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Adult female nursery web spider (Pisaura mirabilis) (Photo Four)

And so we come full circle to the entrance again, having only just skimmed the surface of the wonders that Long Lane Pasture has to offer. I haven’t mentioned the fluty notes of the song thrush, nor the pretty yellow flowers of the meadow vetchling, and I could probably go on all day about the moth population of the grassland. But that will have to wait, because once it gets above 80 degrees in London it’s time for even the mad dogs and English women to get out of the mid-afternoon sun, and into somewhere a little more shady. I shall certainly be back.

Meadow vetchling (Lathyrus pratensis)

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Ian Kirk from Broadstone, Dorset, UK – White Letter HairstreakUploaded by tm, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30182755

Photo Two by By Ptelea [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

Photo Three by By Lukas Jonaitis from Vilnius, Lithuania (Spider – Pisaura mirabilis) [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Four by By Mathias Krumbholz [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

 

 

 

 

 

Dogs and Cats and Bats

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Rt Honourable William Lyon Mackenzie King with one of the Pats

Dear Readers, last week, while I was in Toronto, I visited the home of the first Mayor of Toronto, William Lyon Mackenzie. He was the grandfather of the former Prime Minister of Canada, William Lyon Mackenzie King, who lived from 1874 to 1950. Mackenzie King was a a solitary man, with no close relatives and a small circle of friends. He seems to have distrusted his fellow human beings, and no woman could ever live up to his mother. He lived alone with his dog: he had three Irish Terriers during his lifetime, each one called Pat, and wrote about them in his diary. He described his first ‘Pat’, his constant companion for over 17 years, as ‘a God-sent little angel in the guise of a dog, my dear little saviour’.  It is said that the dog was often asked about matters of foreign and domestic policy, the enthusiasm of his tail-wagging being a clue to how to proceed. When the dog died, Mackenzie King communicated with him by means of seances and a Ouija board.

Every Christmas, Mackenzie King sat down in his armchair beside a glowing fire and read the whole of the Christmas story to his dog, everything from the shepherds to the Magi to the birth in the stable, with special emphasis on the role of the animals around the manger, so that the dog would feel that he, too, was part of the nativity.

I was touched by the image of this man, so isolated from other human beings,  reading aloud to his dog and attempting to make the dog feel that he, too, had his part in the divine plan. I imagine the dog looking up at his master and reacting to his emotions, rather than his words. Who is to say that this is not love of the purest kind? Whatever we pay attention to grows and develops in mysterious ways, but what we sometimes overlook is that this is a two-way process.  The man reads to his dog, and the dog  repays him with unconditional love.

Willow showing relaxed indifference, her normal state.

My cat, on the other hand, had disappeared completely when we got home early on Saturday morning. Sometimes she rushes down the stairs to greet us, wailing the whole way. This time she hid under the bed for two hours before slinking down the stairs and presenting herself to me while I was on the phone catching up with Mum. The cat yowled and demanded to be stroked, tail trembling as she danced in tiny fraught circles. It took a lot of attention to bring her back to her normal state of relaxed indifference.

The cat seems to find me less intimidating when I’m sitting down or laying in bed, which makes me wonder how she actually sees me. Someone once wrote that when they lay down on the floor, their pet rabbit went directly to their hands, the only part of them that was familiar in this new scenario. And Oliver Sacks writes about a man who had been blind from birth, and was then able to have an operation so that he could see. This was not such an unalloyed blessing as you might think, especially at first: we ‘learn’ to see, and to understand the pattern of light and shadow that designates a staircase, for example. But what was most surprising was that, although he could identify his pet dog with his eyes closed, when his eyes were open he had difficulty in identifying his pet from different angles – a dog from the side looks completely different to a dog from the front. So maybe my cat is reacting to my towering, looming height, or maybe she just doesn’t recognise me as the same person when I’m sitting down.

Jackdaw

The garden has exploded into green and white. All the bare twigs are clothed, the reeds and purple loosestrife are three times the height of the plants that we left. The hawthorn is clothed from head to foot in white flowers that smell faintly erotic. The duckweed is advancing across the pond as usual, and is impossible to remove without a genocide of tadpoles. Water hyacinth has popped up, in full flower – I planted it over five years ago and it’s never done anything until now. A jackdaw has been feeding from the bird table, and I wonder if it’s the same one that visited in spring last year. He watches us as we tiptoe around the kitchen, his grey eye attentive, his frosted neck reflecting the sunlight. Sometimes he chases other birds, and once he is in turn pursued by a magpie.

A wood pigeon floats up from the roof and claps his wings, once, twice, before drifting off in a great loop.

And on Sunday evening, at dusk, I stand watching a single bat looping around the narrow side return. My climbing hydrangea is just coming into bloom, and I wonder if the bat is roosting in it during the day, but mostly I just watch, amazed, as she works tight little figures of eight in the confined space, sometimes silhouetted against the turquoise sky, sometimes disappearing against the black of the fence. I see a moth rise, the bat fly past it and then turn sharply and catch it. I see it happen again. I watch and watch, afraid to blink. And then the bat leaves, and the sky is empty, and the insects that have escaped this onslaught start to disperse.

It seems to have been a year for bats: in Costa Rica, in Collingwood, and now outside my own window. And of all of these, it is this homely bat that gives me most pleasure, because it implies that for all the failures, I must be doing something right in the garden. My mind moves to things that I can do to encourage the insects that the bat needs: should I plant a window box full of nicotiana, for example, or is it my pale cream rhododendron that is attracting them? All I know is that a garden is never finished, but that if we pay attention and are humble it will tell us what it needs, and how to work with it.

Maybe ‘home’ is whatever and whoever we pay attention to. And maybe attention is just another word for love.

My birthday rhododendron from my friend J, in full flower.

New Kids on the Block

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Egyptian Goose (Alopochen aegyptiacus)

Dear Readers, there is nothing like a wildfowl collection for releasing new species into the unsuspecting wild. Take these handsome Egyptian geese, seen strutting their stuff in Regent’s Park a few weeks ago. The owner of Holkham Park in Norfolk introduced a few pairs of these birds in the 17th century. They had their wings clipped, but the lust for freedom is sometimes very strong. By the 1890’s there were 7 in Clissold Park and several in the London Royal parks. A hundred years later, there are some 1100 breeding pairs in the UK, and they have the dubious distinction of being included in my ‘Field Guide to Invasive Plants and Animals in Britain’, They are particularly common on the Norfolk Broads, and are very territorial, to the disgust of our shyer native geese. Not content with seeing off an intruder on the ground they will take to the air for a ‘dogfight’, and have been known to attack drones. Egyptian geese pair for life, and both take care of their offspring.

They are also very vocal birds: a pair flying overhead and honking to one another sound exactly like a dustbin lorry reversing into a gap. The female has a particularly raucous quack, especially when with her goslings – she seems to be in a state of frenzied maternal concern for most of the time.

Incidentally, the Greek generic name ‘Alopochen’ means ‘fox goose’, probably referring to the russet colour of the male’s back.

Egyptian geese will sometimes make their nests in hollow trees, which, given the size of the bird is surprising. Maybe the one below was scoping out a suitable tree.

And while we’re on the subject of hole-nesting wildfowl, who would have thought that the little beauty below would also be included in my Invasive Species book?

Mandarin Duck (Aix galericulata)

Yes, the mandarin duck, possibly the most exotic and beautiful of all wild duck species, is becoming a pest. There are 7000 feral mandarin ducks in the UK, and my book suggests that they are problematic because they compete with native birds for those all-important nest holes. May I put in a gentle suggestion that if we didn’t keep cutting down our forests (as we have done, incessantly, for the past two centuries at least) there would be plenty of trees with holes in them to go round? Mandarins first bred in captivity in London Zoo in 1834, and there are now at least 50 wild breeding pairs in the London area, with approximately 2000 breeding pairs in the country as a whole.

As you might have seen on various wildlife programmes, the ducklings of hole-nesting species have to fling themselves from their nest hole to the ground once they’re ready to go – one reason why mandarins like to nest close to water. If you would like to see the whole drama (with swelling orchestral music and a commentary by someone with a voice very like that of Jean Luc Picard of the Starship Enterprise) you can see it below..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W06Ph9wBTMM

The only close relative of the mandarin is the Carolina wood duck (Aix sponsa), another extremely handsome bird that rears its young in the same way. The wood duck is often seen in wildfowl collections, but for some reason it doesn’t seem to have ‘jumped over the fence’ like the mandarin. Just as well, what with that shortage of nesting holes.

Photo One by By Frank Vassen - Flickr: Wood Duck (Aix sponsa), Parc du Rouge-Cloître, Brussels, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31263857

Carolina Wood Duck (Aix sponsa) (Photo One)

Of course, the most ubiquitous, the most hated and the most belligerent of all our introduced wildfowl has to be the poor old Canada Goose (Branta canadensis). It is big, noisy, and breeds like billy-o. You can blame King Charles II for the original importation, Strangely, the bird’s numbers were low until the latter half of the 20th century, but now this is probably the most recognised bird in the London area after the feral pigeon. Many a toddler has been knocked over as the leathery beak of a Canada goose snatches the last crust intended for the duckies, but the birds have a determined and straightforward nature that I can’t help but admire. Nonetheless, they foul the grass and are accused of causing the eutrophication of waterways. I sometimes wonder if a major factor in the fouling of water bodies is not so much the geese themselves as the extraordinary amount of bread that folk throw into the ponds and lakes, which not only encourages the birds to congregate but adds to the general muck when it isn’t eaten.

Photo Two by By Andreas Trepte - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40152982

Canada Goose (Branta canadensis)(Photo Two)

And while we’re on the subject of feeding bread to ducks and geese, it can cause a syndrome called Angel Wing, as seen in the bird below. Angel wing cannot be cured unless the bird is very young, and it renders the creature unable to fly. It’s no surprise to me that a Canada goose that can’t fly has survived to adulthood because, well, attitude – have you ever tried to mess with a Canada goose? I wouldn’t recommend it.

Photo Three by https://www.facebook.com/Nature-and-Wildlife-by-Jean-328912803836920/

Canada goose with angel wing syndrome (Photo Three)

We’ve all gone to the local pond and fed the ducks and geese bread and cake, and they’ve seemed happy and healthy. But the trouble is that when the food is easy to get, most animals will just hang around and wait, or spend their days eyeing the riverbank with a hungry eye. Wildfowl are largely omnivorous – grazing, eating water plants, grubbing away at the bottom of the pond with their sensitive beaks, even diving for food. When humans intervene, they end up with stale Battenburg cake and a few slices of Wonderloaf. Our joy at being able to feed animals should surely not trump their welfare, and just because we’ve always done something doesn’t mean that we should carry on when we find out that it’s doing harm. When we know better (myself included) we do better, surely.

Here’s what to feed the ducks and geese instead, courtesy of the Canal and River Trust:

a) Sweetcorn (who knew? Though I can empathise. I love sweetcorn, and my husband would happily live on it from August to October)

b) Lettuce, rocket, micro greens. Ducks won’t mind the tatty bits on the outside.

c) Peas (defrosted please)

d) Oats

e) Bird seed

f) Rice (raw or cooked, but no egg-fried rice please. That would be cannibalism).

And if you go to Regent’s Park with your largesse, you might find some very interesting birds to feed. I am always surprised at the sheer variety of wildfowl that turn up, especially in spring and autumn, on even the most uninspired local pond. Fill your pockets with frozen peas (defrosted) and have a brief trip back to childhood. It’s even more fun if you are accompanied by an actual child.

Greylag goose(Anser anser) amongst the daffodils

Pochard (Aytha ferina) (Native)

Male smew (Mergellus albellus) (Native)

Hooded mergansers (Lophodytes cucullatus) from North America. What delights they are! The female looks very determined.

Photo Credits

Photo One by By Frank Vassen – Flickr: Wood Duck (Aix sponsa), Parc du Rouge-Cloître, Brussels, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31263857

Photo Two by By Andreas Trepte – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40152982

Photo Three by https://www.facebook.com/Nature-and-Wildlife-by-Jean-328912803836920/

 

Bugwoman’s Fourth Annual Report – Part Two

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August 2017

Dear Readers, one of my most popular posts from last year was created during a deluge. ‘Twenty-six Ways of Looking at a Rainy Day’ was so much fun to write. The main challenge was keeping the camera from getting water-logged during the downpour…

It hasn’t been a particularly ‘foxy’ year, unlike 2016 when I was spending a lot of time with the foxes in the cemetery, but I did spot this little darling, sleeping under the whitebeam in the garden.

And I also spotted some common carder bees buzz-pollinating in the garden, a first!

September 2017

The month started a visit to the new gardens around Kings Cross station, for an assessment of how helpful they were to wildlife. The answer was that it’s early days, but the signs are very hopeful. Sparrows, vanishingly rare in central London, have already moved in, and there was an active wasps’ nest. I shall have to visit again soon to see how things are shaping up.

The month continued with my friend A bringing me a Knotgrass caterpillar for me to identify. What a fine creature! It has now pupated, and is back in A’s garden, with a barricade of twigs for protection. One day, no doubt, it will emerge and fly away, probably when no one is looking.

A theme throughout last year was my Mum and Dad’s 60th Wedding Anniversary party. At times it was all very stressful, and it was good to go for a walk around their village, Milborne St Andrew, and to reconnect. There’s always something wonderful to spot, and slowing down to actually see things is a very fine way of gaining perspective.

The party was held on 21st September. Mum said it was the best evening she’d ever had, so every bit of hassle about table-settings and whether or not to have a photographer was worth it.

Mum, Dad, my brother John and I at the cake cutting….

October

A few days after the party, we had the heart-breaking news that one of the people who had attended, someone who had battled for years with depression, had killed themselves. It was so hard, especially after the event had been such a good one. I wrote this piece in the days afterwards, and believe every word.

I also took a visit to Dundee. I worked as a carer in a night-shelter for homeless people in the city when I was in my twenties, and wondered how things were going. The shelter is about to be converted into luxury flats, the pub where we used to drink is now a college, and there’s a new branch of the Victoria and Albert Museum going up on the quayside, but there are still people asking for change on the streets. Everything changes, everything stays the same.

The sign above the door of the old Dundee Cyrenians night shelter

The garden was visited by an amazing visitor in October: a female emperor dragonfly, trying to find a spot to lay her eggs.

And some birds in the garden had a narrow escape when we had another visit from the sparrowhawk…

November 2017

November saw me back in Milborne St Andrew, following Mum and Dad’s spectacular double fall down the front doorstep. Fortunately neither of them were seriously damaged (though after spending two and a half hours waiting for an ambulance while laying on the front lawn Mum was a little less sanguine than usual). But once in hospital, they were delighted to be placed in adjacent beds, and even more delighted to be sent home after a couple of hours. Suffice it to say that my visit the next day was well-timed. But I did manage to get out for a walk, and finally got photos of a buzzard, and my first ever meadow pipit.

We even managed to make the Christmas cake. By the time we ate it, Dad had fed it with so much brandy that I’m glad I wasn’t driving.

Once home, I went for a walk in East Finchley Cemetery, where I found a strawberry tree, some greenfinches, a handsome jay, and this lovely gravestone. How I would love to find out a bit more about Muriel….

I also had a few thoughts about the use of fruit trees as street trees: there is a crab apple on our street which causes all kinds of mess, but which does attract such exotic creatures as this one.

What are you looking at?

I finished off the month with some thoughts about the passing of time, which seems to be have been a theme last year. With so many people that I love in their eighties and nineties, and with my own seventh decade approaching, I suppose that it’s inevitable that mortality should be on my mind, along with other existential thoughts, such as ‘what’s it all about’? ‘How do we live a good life, and what is a good life anyway?’ All this was prompted by watching a band of sunlight move across the garden in the space of a few minutes. I had a similar sensation last week as I watched the moon rise with Mum, and we both realised that you can actually see it moving,  and wondered why we’d never noticed before.

December 2017

December saw Mum and Dad struck down with a chest infection, and so I headed West again. It was a stressful time: the carer who normally looks after Mum and Dad was struck down by her own health emergency, and so I had to negotiate to try to get Mum and Dad to accept a carer who came from an agency, rather than someone that they already knew. I found it unbearable to think of them struggling on, sick, without someone to help them, and so I took myself off to the frozen fields for a walk and a think. Oh, the light on those December days. It felt like a blessing.

Then we had a spot of snow, the first that’s fallen and stayed for about five years.

Pied wagtail

And then it was Christmas, on the County Roads...

and in Dorset. We hadn’t expected to be in Dorset (Mum and Dad usually visit us in London) but they were both still too sick from their chest infections to travel. This didn’t reduce their appetite fortunately, and ridiculous quantities of the aforementioned Christmas cake were eaten, along with chocolates, roast potatoes, stuffing, brussel sprouts. Just as well we were able to get out for a walk.

It’s a pig!

January 2018

So, now we’re nearly back to the present day. January saw me exploring Hampstead Village, and falling in love with an angel.

It saw the very welcome arrival of a song thrush in the garden (still here as I write in February), and the continued presence of a single pied wagtail, who has been here since November. We are all hoping that he or she soon has some company.

And I took a bus ride down to Tate Modern, and a tube ride back.

So, readers, that’s the end of the review of the past year. Thank you for all your input  – I read every single comment, and love the community that we’ve built together. Don’t forget that if you’re on Facebook, you can find me here. I look forward to ‘meeting’ with you all in the year to come. And during the next few weeks, you will find that Bugwoman has been on a very exotic adventure, and has been living up to her name, for once. Stay tuned…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bugwoman’s Fourth Annual Report – Part One

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Dear Readers, it’s that time of year when I review what’s been going on during my fourth year of producing the Bugwoman blog. What’s been happening in the past twelve months? This week, we’ll be looking at February 2017 through to July 2017 – the rest of the year will make an appearance next week. Stay tuned!

February 2017

 

We started the Bugwoman year in a celebratory mood. After a year of no blackbirds (following the death of a male at the hands of the local sparrowhawk) a new couple moved in, and it was such a pleasure to hear the song of the male from the rooftop in the evening. I’m pleased to report that I still have a pair of blackbirds in 2018, and I’m hoping that they’re the same ones.

 

March 2017

In March London suffered the first of several terrorist attacks last year, when a car was rammed into pedestrians as they crossed Westminster bridge. I was on the South Bank when it happened, and wrote a piece about it here.  I find that nature has a way of restoring balance to our troubled minds in times of trouble, and it was especially consoling during my walk, the arrival of spring coinciding with the terrible injuries and loss of life.

And I also made a visit to Crossbones Graveyard, close to London Bridge. This is a site for the outcast dead, and they are remembered in a ceremony every month at the main gates. It is a very special place, and it felt entirely appropriate to be making my first visit there in the week after the terrorist attack. I hope to visit it again soon.

 

The gates at Crossbones Graveyard

‘A poor man taken out of the street, December 2 1725 – one of the ribbons from Crossbones Graveyard

A bee feeding on willow in the graveyard

And the frogs were back, singing away in the pond.

 

April

April kicked off with a garden visit from a female sparrowhawk, who plucked and ate a collared dove that she’d knocked out of the whitebeam tree. A spectacular but discomfiting event.

And then some Bohemian Waxwings visited a tree at the end of my road, something I hadn’t seen for years.

April also found me on my annual visit to Canada – my husband John is Canadian, and I love observing the wildlife on the other side of the Atlantic. The similarities and differences always intrigue me. For example, we have no grackles in the UK.

Grackle

 

 

 

And our goldfinches are not North American goldfinches…

And we don’t have any cardinals..

But we do have house sparrows.

And these guys of course….

 

 

 

 

May 2017

At the beginning of May I was still in Canada, and paid a visit to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Burlington (just outside Toronto). I met up with my lovely friend M, who lives in the States but had motored across the border. She is also a writer and a nature-lover. We had a wonderful day!

Trillium (Trillium grandiflorum)

Red-winged blackbird

Back in London, I took a walk to look at the street trees of Archway, just down the hill from where I live. It was based on one of my favourite books from last year, ‘London Street Trees: A Guide to the Urban Forest‘ by Paul Wood, and it was so much fun that I plan to do another walk later this year. You can read about the walk here and here.

Chinese Lacebark Elm

A Dawn Redwood (Metasequioa glyptostroboides) just off Holloway Road in North London.

A Bragania visited by a carder bumblebee in Dresden Road, a few hundred metres from the hubbub of the Archway junction.

June

June saw my monthly visit to my elderly parents turning into something of a drama, after Dad got a chest infection and had a fall. Still, spending time in Milborne St Andrew in Dorset is always a pleasure, and even if I didn’t have much time to admire the scenery, I did get a few brief minutes to look at the garden and take a deep breath.

White-tailed bumblebee on the ceanothus in Mum and Dad’s garden

June also saw the great willowherb in my garden infested with the caterpillars of a tiny moth. Surprisingly, they still flowered rather splendidly. ‘Weeds’ are resilient plants, for sure.

July

In July I made my annual visit to Obergurgl in Austria, for walking in the mountains and admiring the flowers and the insects. Oh, and for cake.

Large Copper butterfly on yarrow

Hoverfly on rampion

Early flowering orchid

Cake!

Closer to home, I paid a visit to East Finchley Station, and to the N2 Community Garden beside it. There are many new goings on in the entrance to the station…

 

…on the platforms

 

….and in the garden itself. It was lovely to go travelling, but it’s always nice to be home.

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare)

I also spent some time posting about my amazing artist friend, Robin Huffman, and her portraits of the monkeys and apes that she cares for when she volunteers at wildlife sanctuaries in Africa. I think her work is absolutely stunning, and to see more of it you can visit her website here. She is currently in Cameroon at the  Ape Action Africa sanctuary in Mefou, looking after several baby monkeys. I imagine that she’s covered in poo, bitten half to death and dreaming of Japanese food, but I bet she’s also deliriously happy.

Sunshine, Olive Baboon (Robin Huffman) (after a photo by Perrine DeVos)

Diva, moustached guenon

Ayla, vervet monkey

So, Dear Readers, that’s the end of part one of my annual review. Stay tuned for next week!

 

 

 

 

 

Bugwoman on Location – Hampstead Village

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The Wonky Chimneys of Flask Cottages, Hampstead

Dear Readers, this week I was in Hampstead, delivering an enormous bag of knitting wool to a charity called Knit For Peace who match keen knitters with good causes. I am a great believer in the healing power of crafts of all kinds – it’s hard to stay angry and resentful when you’re trying to work out how a Fair Isle pattern is supposed to work. And look at the excellent use that your master(mistress)pieces can be put to once the many hours of work have been completed!

Willow the cat and my blanket.

Being in Hampstead gave me an opportunity to explore. I started off on Flask Walk, where I am always intrigued by the wonky chimneys in the first photo above. Why are they so eccentric? My delving into the internets has produced nothing on the subject, so feel free to chip in with any suggestions.

Hampstead seems such a quaint and attractive area, rather Bohemian you might think, a great place to bring up a family. However, as average house prices for the area are over £1.6m (and a ‘detached family dwelling’ is getting on for £6m) I don’t imagine the average family will be moving here any time soon. In the meantime, however, I spent some time admiring the water droplets on the leaves and plants, and trying not to look too suspicious, what with my camera and all. There are a lot of security teams around here, as you might expect.

One reason for advancing along the road is that this is the location of Burgh House, the site of Mr and Mrs Bugwoman’s marriage in September 2010. Sadly, the building, and hence the delightful cafe, was closed until 10th January, but I recommend a visit for both food and edification, as the Hampstead Museum is also here. I took a few photos and remembered some of the details of the day – for example, when my dad and I got into the vintage Rolls Royce we’d hired to get to Burgh House and he said ‘I suppose I should be giving you some advice, but you know it all already’. Well, I was forty.

Burgh House, Hampstead

This was all very splendid but I hadn’t seen any animals yet, apart from one of the many blackbirds who have popped out in the past few days to make the most of the muddy conditions and the superabundance of worms. Incidentally, I was walking in the cemetery today with my most excellent friend A, and we observed a similar blackbird.

‘I don’t like to dwell upon blackbirds eating worms in a graveyard’, she said.

But when you think about it, how wonderful it would be to be recycled as a blackbird!

A Hampstead blackbird

I decided to pop over to the other side of the village and have a look at the churchyard. The church itself is the Parish Church of St John at Hampstead, although I note from the website that it wasn’t initially clear which St John was intended – it was only in 1917 that it was declared that it was the St John the Evangelist. The current church was consecrated in 1747, although there have been religious buildings on the site right back to 986.

The Church of St John in Hampstead

As you might have expected by now, I was drawn to the churchyards. There is one around the church itself, and a second one across the road.

The churchyard around St Johns

I was not exactly dressed for muddy paths and bird watching, what with my bright red coat and boots and all, but I slithered around nonetheless. There is an atmosphere of melancholy under those dark, ancient trees, and sitting on a bench right in the middle of the churchyard was a young man, deep in thought. How these places support us when we need peace and solitude! I sneaked past as quietly and unobtrusively as I could and noticed how the robins have suddenly started singing, just in this past few days. How sensitive their clock is to the length of days.

Around the side of the church, a tombstone had split and weeds were growing in the cracks, a metaphor for life’s persistence and resilience if ever one was handed to me.

And then I headed off across the road, to the ‘overflow’ graveyard that was opened in 1812.

The place was full of birds. Robins sang from the gravestones and, as I nearly went flat on my bum under an alder tree, a gang of long-tailed tits came along to have a good laugh.

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A long-tailed tit, no doubt laughing his head off

There was a small flock of redwings in the yew tree, and when one flew out to perch nearby, I was able to capture this candidate for Wildlife Photographer of the Year (not)

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Redwing! Honestly!

I found this exquisitely beautiful tomb, with an angel kissing the forehead of a small child. It is the last resting place of Eve Hammersley, who lived locally and died in 1902.

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I found a gorse bush in full flower, and noticed for the first time how the petals at the base of the bloom have a little hole in them, like a jawbone.

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And, in addition to the long-tailed tits (who aren’t really tits) there were blue tits and great tits, which are.

And so, as the rain started, I turned and headed for home. There are lots of interesting graves here: Hugh Gaitskill and Peter Cook are among the luminaries buried amidst the yew trees and the moss. And yet, as always, it’s the life that intrigues me and lifts my spirits in a cemetery, not the death. The call of birds and the bursting forth of new green life always reminds me that there are other cycles beside our day-to-day artificial bustle of Christmas and New Year, accounting year-ends and sales. For the birds, and for the plants, spring has already put a twinkle in their eye. If we stop and breathe and listen, it will do the same for all of us.

 

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A pathway in the second churchyard

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Surprise

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Dear Readers, we were expecting snow in the UK last weekend, but not in London, so it was a bit of a surprise to be woken by the strange light that snow produces seeping through the curtains. It’s been seven years since the last substantial fall, and so there were little children  who had never seen it before. But we woke up early, and everything was hushed.

My first thought was ‘the birds!’ and so we squeaked through the fresh snow to fill up the seed feeders and the suet feeders and the bird table. By the time we went out for a walk to get breakfast, a few children were already running about, their cheeks pinched pink from the cold. They were scraping the snow from the cars to make snowballs, but this year’s fashion seems to be for plastic sledges. A well-wrapped toddler sat like a little princeling surveying his kingdom while his father dragged him along the road.

On East Finchley High Street there were no buses, and just an occasional car travelling slowly and carefully. Michael at Tony’s Continental (the best greengrocer in London in my opinion) was relating how the North Circular Road had come to a complete standstill. An elderly lady was standing at the bus stop in conversation with a woman who was explaining that the bus garages had closed, and offering to walk her home if she wanted.

The red-hot pokers from the Wednesday Weed were wearing little hats of snow.

The various berries looked particularly festive.

I love the way the snow gathers on the undulations in the bark of the plane trees.

And here is a particularly fine festive doorway.

Back in East Finchley after eating my blueberry pancakes and drinking several Flat Whites, I noticed that the Bald-Faced Stag statue above the eponymous pub had turned from gold to white.

On the corner outside Kentucky Fried Chicken there was a single, very friendly pied wagtail. He or she has been there for several days now, and I suspect is living on a diet of discarded chips. Lots of birds hang out here: the crows wait around for discarded bones, the pigeons throw the debris about, and the foxes crunch up anything that’s left. I’m tempted to throw some food down for the wagtail but I suspect everyone else would get there first.

Pied wagtail

Back in the garden, every scrap of food had gone, so out I went again. Although the weather is unkind to animals, it does bring some unexpected visitors, and it also increases their tolerance of both humans and one another.

A small flock of goldfinches have been regular visitors for weeks, so no surprises here.

Goldfinch

But I was delighted to see a family of siskins.In the south-east we only see these birds in the winter, but they are year-round residents in the rest of the country. They are much smaller than the other finches, and flash citrus yellow against the snow.

And then some real excitement – a new species for the garden, a brambling (Fringilla montifringilla), another winter visitor and normally a bird of beech woodland. It is said to be ‘orange-washed’, and this is what helped me to see that this wasn’t ‘just’ another chaffinch. Sadly, she only stayed for a few brief minutes and then headed off. These are shy birds, and the rough-and-tumble of the garden can be a bit much for them.

A brambling (to the left of the picture)

There was a fine collection of birds pecking up the mealworms and suet that we’d scattered – not all birds are comfortable on feeders. The robins, for one, don’t seem to like them, although they are very happy on the bird table.

Robin and Chaffinch

Chaffinch (right) and two siskins.

I should have guessed that it would’t take long for the big guns to move in. I don’t mind, though. These creatures need to eat too. And then I tried to ring Mum and Dad, and got no answer from their telephone. What could have happened? Had it snowed so much in Dorset that the lines were down? Why couldn’t I reach Dad on his mobile? I had a spell of serious catastrophising. Regular readers will know that my parents are not very well, and both are currently recovering (very slowly) from a horrible chest infection.

And then, of course, it turned out that Dad had just knocked the phone off the hook,  and that they were well, without a single flake of snow, and my heart went back to its normal tempo.

I am sure that anyone who has been a carer, or who has had a family member who isn’t well, will recognise this syndrome – a kind of hypervigilance, an expectation that every phone call will require a springing into action. It takes some time to come down from the adrenaline rush, and to accept that all those little internal emergency workers can stand down. But having a garden full of hungry mouths to feed certainly helps take the mind off such things, because this is something that I can do, a way in which I can help. In a world of uncontrollable happenings, I can at least top up the feeders and make sure that there’s fresh water. I am repaid by beauty and interest and a sense of connection with the animal members of the local community.

In other news, Mum and Dad seem to like their new carers, which is a great relief. And the preparations for the Great Western Christmas Migration are more or less in place. This time next week we will (hopefully) be in Dorset, doing the final preparations for 25th December. And while I was sorting out the Tesco food delivery for the parents for next week, I glanced up and saw this.

And then, a few moments later, this.

I love the florid sunsets of winter, their drama and their fleetingness. In five minutes, the light show was gone, and darkness overwhelmed the colours. But for a few moments, it was glorious, and I felt privileged to have been lucky enough to see it. I wish for quiet moments of witness for all of us in the busyness of the next few weeks, moments when we can take a breath and remember what really matters: love, truth, and everyday beauty,