White form of Flower Crab Spider

Dear Readers, my friend A alerted me to this poem by Robert Frost. I hadn’t come across it before, and found it rather intriguing.

Design
Robert Frost – 1874-1963

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth–
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth–
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?–
If design govern in a thing so small.

Now, ‘heal-all’ is I think Prunella vulgaris (known as self-heal in the UK) and it’s usually blue, so a white flower would be most unusual.

I love the description of the ‘fat, dimpled spider’ and the moth with ‘dead wings carried like a paper kite’. I’m not sure about the whole design aspect though (says she with her scientist’s white coat on) – as we now know, even if the colour of the spider matches the flower that she’s on, it doesn’t seem to improve her hunting efficiency. And I suppose that the whole question of design implies that there’s someone ‘up there’ pulling the strings, bringing together the white flower, the moth and the spider (although his last sentence seems to imply that he doubts if even an all-seeing all-knowing deity could be bothered with a couple of invertebrates and a plant). I can see why my friend called it ‘intriguing’ because it opens up all kinds of questions about belief, causality and how the world works.

And clearly there’s something about spiders that makes humans philosophical. How about this, from Walt Whitman: it rather reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins, who lived at about the same time (1844 – 1889). Did one of them influence the other, I wonder?

A Noiseless Patient Spider
BY WALT WHITMAN (1819-1892)

A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

And how about this one, by E.B White, who wrote ‘Charlotte’s Web’, and who seems to have a special affinity with spiders? I love that this poem gives the spider agency. The last stanza is a jaw-dropper.

The Spider’s Web

The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.

And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.

Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.

And finally, just to remind us of something fundamental, here’s a poem by Nikki Giovanni. The last lines open this up into a much greater question. How much better the world would be if we acted out of curiosity rather than fear!

Allowables
By: Nikki Giovanni

I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn’t
And she scared me
And I smashed her
I don’t think
I’m allowed
To kill something
Because I am
Frightened

Male Ring ouzel (Turdus torquatus)

Dear Readers, this is an upland bird, and one that I’ve never seen in the UK, though some of you Northern folk might have had more luck. I did see one in Austria once, and was surprised by how much it looks like a blackbird with a white cravat – in fact the name ‘ouzel’ means ‘blackbird’, so the name makes perfect sense. The ones in the UK have spent the winter in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco – some will return to their territories here, but others will continue on into Scandinavia. What bright, elegant birds they are! I always feel delighted when I see one, even more so when I hear their song – the recording below, by Stanislas Wroza, is described as ‘song with outbursts’, and I can see what he means.

The female ring ouzel also has a white ‘necklace’ – in ‘Into The Red’, Stephen Lovatt describes it as ‘a rime of limescale’ and I can see what he means.

The ring ouzel is red-listed because of a decline in the breeding population in Scotland and Ireland, and it’s been difficult to pin down exactly why. One reason might be that migrating birds are hunted as they pass over south western France – birds flying along other routes don’t seem to suffer as much. But then there’s also degradation of habitat, and climate change – these are birds of the mountains, breeding up to 3750 feet, but as things get warmer they will be driven further and further up. Whatever the reason, their breeding range has reduced by almost 43% since the 1960s. However, Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey suggest another possible reason in ‘Birds Britannica’ :

‘Ring ouzels are unapproachable and unpredictable. A distressed bird can fly away for miles. Their susceptibility to modern disturbance, from hill walkers and even hang-gliders, may be instrumental in their disappearance from old strongholds across the entire Celtic fringe and northern England’.

And here is another conundrum for us to consider. What happens when ‘the right to roam’ comes into conflict with some of our most sensitive habitats and shyest creatures, on this nature-depleted island? We recently fenced off some areas in our local ancient woodland to give it a chance to recover after the trampling of the pandemic, and to talk to some people you would have thought that their basic human rights were being infringed upon (to be fair, most people did understand the reason for the fencing, but a sizeable minority could only think about themselves). What do you think? Clearly getting out into nature is vital for our mental and physical health, but where do we draw the line? Answers on a postcard please 🙂

Foxglove tree (Paulownia tomentosa)

Dear Readers, this exotic tree is really not the kind of thing that you expect to see in suburban East Finchley, so when I saw one on Sunday I was stopped in my tracks. The flowers are all the more special because they are not reliable – the buds set in late summer and then have to survive the winter, and as the tree is native to central and western China this is cannot be taken for granted. And then, sometimes the tree takes a break instead of flowering, and who can blame it? Paul Wood, in his book ‘Street Trees of London’, describes it as one of the few blue-flowered trees that will grow in London, and for that alone it’s very special.

The foxglove tree is, in spite of its eerie exotic beauty, something of a pioneer plant, in the same way as a willow or a birch tree can be – it has huge leaves (up to two feet across) that capture light efficiently and which also absorb pollutants, making it a good choice as a street tree. It grows so quickly (up to seven feet in a year) because it is racing for the light – once overshadowed, it will wane and die. This is a relatively short-lived tree for this reason (Paul Wood estimates up to thirty years).

Foxglove tree leaves (Photo by By Marija Gajić – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45091074)

It’s clear that the name ‘Foxglove tree’ relates to the shape of the tree’s flowers, but it’s also known as the Empress tree, because in China only an empress was allowed to have one on her grave. It’s also called the Princess tree – it was the custom in Japan to plant the tree on the birth of a daughter, and the tree would be cut down when she married. The wood was turned into a tansu dresser, which is used to store clothes such as kimono.

A traditional tansu chest, used to store and transport clothes (Photo by By Heineken, Ty & Kiyoko – Tansu: Traditional Japanese Cabinetry, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31536843)Foxglove tree wood is very light and strong, and is  used in the construction of the Japanese stringed musical instrument the koto. This is the national instrument of the country, and was traditionally played only by blind men, although subsequently different forms evolved that could be played by everyone. Every part of the instrument is full of traditional and cultural significance. It’s a very beautiful object, and if you want to hear how it sounds, have a listen here.

Japanese 13-stringed Koto (Photo by By Smgregory, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2539413)

And while we’re on the subject of beautiful things made of Paulownia wood, how about this tiered writing box, apparently used in poetry competitions? Each compartment holds an ink stone and ink stick, so I imagine that these were given out to the participants. It sold for £687.50 at auction at Bonhams, and dates back to the mid 19th century. I have a great fondness for these intricate objects.

Jusuzuribako (tiered writing box) from https://www.bonhams.com/auction/22814/lot/315/a-lacquered-kiri-paulownia-wood-jusuzuribako-tiered-writing-boxes-used-for-poetry-contests-by-mori-kansai-1814-1894-midlate-19th-century-52/

Inside the writing box

In North America the tree is not quite so welcome – it reproduces happily from seed, is extremely fast-growing, and, beautiful as it is, has become something of a pest in the eastern states of the US. The reason for this is partly because it was planted as an ornamental, but also for a more interesting reason. The seeds of the foxglove tree were used as a lightweight packing material for porcelain during the 19th century, before the advent of those irritating little polystyrene noodles that are used these days. As porcelain was exported all over the world, and was often transported by train, some of the seeds found their way out of the packing crates and onto the railway sidings and, being hardy little things, they rapidly germinated and started their march across the country, much as buddleia and Oxford ragwort have done in the UK.

Each seedcase contains hundreds of tiny winged seeds

And finally, a tiny but evocative poem. It was written in 1992 by the Empress of Japan, as part of an annual year-end presentation of poetry.

Paulownia Flowers
Unaware that the nation
Would soon face defeat,
I, a child evacuee,
Was absorbed, gathering
Bell-shaped paulownia flowers.

In view of the Japanese tradition, maybe King Charles should be encouraged to write something every year for the edification of the populace.  Let’s just hope that his fountain pen works properly when he tries to knock one up. I think maybe an annual limerick would be more in keeping with the British tradition of knockabout humour, but I’m not holding my breath.

Flower crab spider (Misumena vatia)

Dear Readers, I was so intrigued by this bright yellow spider yesterday that I thought I’d do some research. It’s known that the females of this species can change their colour from white to yellow (and indeed in North America this species is known as the goldenrod spider, as that’s the plant that it’s most frequently found upon). However, the change takes a full 25 days to occur, which doesn’t sound especially helpful if you’re doing it for camouflage. Furthermore, it appears that the spider’s ability to catch prey doesn’t decrease if it’s not on a ‘matching’ flower – let’s not forget that insects see colour differently from mammals, with UV light playing a big part in perception, and so a colour difference that is very apparent to us may not be so clear to an incoming hoverfly. 

White form of Flower Crab Spider (Photo by By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81672235)

I am indebted to Tone Killick, one of the administrators of the UK Spider Identification Facebook page, who produced a very interesting paper on this fascinating spider. He is unconvinced about the possibility that the change in colour is to evade predators – this is a very speedy spider, and furthermore birds are able to spot the arachnid even if it’s perfectly matched to its flower. And we already know that it doesn’t apparently help the spider to catch prey. The spider has a very low rate of success (apparently it only catches 3.5% of the prey that it attempts to grab in its spikey front legs), which means that it has to wait around on a flower for a very, very long time before it gets a meal. And here’s where Killick makes an interesting lateral link. The yellow pigmentation is caused by a chemical called ommochrome, which has been shown to provide protection against UV damage in spider’s eyes. Could it be that, if a spider spends a long time in sunshine, she develops the yellow colouration as a sun screen (we could hypothesise that spiders that stay white live in shadier places). Clearly more research is needed, but for now let’s move on to the other interesting facet of the spider’s life, reproduction.

All of these biggish yellow and white spiders are female. The males are only 3-4 mm long, while the females are 9-11mm. Furthermore, the males look completely different.

Male Flower Crab Spider (Photo by By James Lindsey at Ecology of Commanster, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1669767)

In the spring, the tiny males run through the flowers following the silken threads that the females leave as they move from one bloom to another. Upon finding a female, they scramble onto her abdomen while the female continues to go about her business, seemingly oblivious.

Female eating fly with male on her abdomen (Photo by S Drozd Lund from Misumena vatia photo – image 105272 (biopix.com))

The male then taps on the female to see if she’s receptive to some sperm transfer (like you do) and if all goes well, they mate. The male then makes an extremely speedy retreat, before he ends up as dinner. He must keep all eight legs crossed that the female hasn’t already copulated, as if so she can be extremely (life-threateningly) grumpy.

The female lays 150-400 eggs on a suitable leaf and covers it with lots of silk. Then she starts her guard duties – during this time, the only way she will eat is if a particularly silly fly blunders into her space and she can grab it. After 25 days the spiderlings hatch, and many will fly away by standing on some vegetation and holding a strand of silk which will act as a parachute. Alas, many dangers await these tiny spiders, though they can survive the freezing temperatures at 5 km above the earth’s surface. Many will be eaten by predators, and others will end up in an unsuitable environment. Some, however, will survive to adulthood, to delight amateur arachnologists and lovers of the unexpected everywhere.

Dear Readers, I always find that the jet lag when I’m travelling east is much worse than when I’m going west – I couldn’t keep my eyes open during the Coronation, but then come bedtime I’m pinging around the room like a pinball. One trick is to get out early (ish) in the morning so that the sunlight and other people’s pheromones can help the body to resynchronise its rhythms and so, bleary-eyed and in need of caffeine I headed out onto East Finchley High Road. But what is this?

A pollarded tree

Yes, a whole lot of pollarding has gone on in spite of it being spring and the trees no longer being dormant but starting to leaf up.

An unpollarded tree

I’ve rattled on about this kind of thing before (very recently in fact) and I have no problem with management of street trees – better that they’re trimmed than that they get blamed for subsidence and cut down (don’t get me started). But I am keeping an eye on this tree, further down towards to the station. See what’s at the top?

Yes, a nest, probably magpie or crow by the size of it. It’s against the law to disturb a bird’s nest, even one that belongs to such a common species. I will be interested to see if it’s left alone.

I couldn’t resist a snap of The Archer at East Finchley Station – he’s looking particularly fine in the spring sunshine. Look at those muscles! Clearly all those gym sessions have been working. He is firing his arrow along the Northern Line, and there is a legend that the arrow itself can be found at the end of the line, in Morden. The statue is by Eric Aumonier, and was unveiled in 1940

In general, things are looking really lovely at the moment – all the rain has brought a lot of plants and animals along. At the entrance to Cherry Tree Wood, this young magpie was trying to work out what was edible – s/he was very relaxed, which is unusual. I think that piece of rubbish to the right had attracted his/her attention. Put it in the bin, people!

The flowers at the entrance to the Wood are looking very fine – it’s part of the Paths for Pollinators project, and there were several honey, bumble and solitary bees buzzing around, so it’s clearly working.

There are lots of hybrid bluebells inside the wood – these tend to survive better in the drier sections of the wood, and clearly the pollinators, such as this hairy-footed flower bee, don’t care about its provenance.

The Hawthorn is in flower..

and so is the Herb Robert…

and so is the Bird Cherry – it always reminds me of fireworks zigzagging off in different directions. In previous years there have been ermine moth caterpillars here, but they’ve given it a miss this year, and the trees are looking magnificent.

Then it’s out of the wood and onto the unadopted road, a laneway at the back of the houses on Park Hall Road and Summerlee Road. It’s often been an interesting place for plants and animals, and today was no exception.

Look at this little beauty! This is a female Flower Crab Spider (Misumena vatia) – this species comes in many colours, and I’m not quite sure that this one has got that camouflage business right, though she’d do really well on some gorse or tucked inside a daffodil. They can change colour from white to yellow to green apparently, but a complete colour change takes up to 25 days, which isn’t going to be very helpful for our spider. However, her prey insects (hoverflies and bees) see colour in a different way, so maybe she isn’t so conspicuous to them as she is to us.  Judging by the size of her abdomen I’d say she’s pregnant, so there will soon be the patter of many, many teeny-tiny feet.

And this tree is looking particularly splendid – it’s a foxglove tree (Paulownia tomentosa), and I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in flower before. I feel a Wednesday Weed coming on….

And finally, a brief word on weeds. The green alkanet is having a particularly good year – those blue flowers are so intense, and I love the way they look against a red brick wall. I know that they’re a thug but the pollinators love them, and they grow in places where other more delicate plants would give up the ghost.

And aren’t they preferable to this? Just before we left the weedkiller man came round on his little electric vehicle with a huge tank of herbicide on the back.

At least this time he spared the tree pits that people have planted up. Look at all that greenery, making food for insects and cover for all manner of little creatures! Let’s face it, we all need as much greenery as we can get.

Dear Readers, by the time you read this we will be heading back home after almost a fortnight in Toronto. I’d be lying if I said it had been an easy or a fun visit – my mother-in-law’s memory is now about ten minutes long, I would say, and this been very hard on my husband. In previous years we would have been off to Collingwood to see our aunties, Rosemary and Linda, but they both passed away in the autumn of 2022, and it has hit us very hard now we’re back in Canada. But still, we have some wonderful friends here, and I will always have a deep affection for this city, which has felt like a second home for more than twenty years.

So, in no particular order, here are some recommendations if you ever find yourself here:

Our favourite coffee shop is Versus, easily the best coffee that we’ve had, and the pastries are pretty good too.

On the restaurant front, we can recommend:

The Queen Mother Café, a stalwart for over forty years.

Oliver and Bonacini Grill, especially as so many places are closed on Sundays.

Cantina Mercatto – very noisy on a Saturday night but pretty relaxed early/during the rest of the week.

For a splurge:

Opus was lovely, and the beignets for dessert were extraordinary. Expensive, but the quality is great.

Auberge du Pommier is situated in the middle of a car park in York Mills, but inside it is one of my favourite places, not just in Toronto but anywhere. It always makes me feel welcome, and the fact that we meet our friend M there is the cherry on the cake. The service is efficient and friendly, and it’s one of those restaurants where I want to eat everything on the menu. Highly, highly recommended.

We always stay at the Cambridge Suites Hotel – as the name suggests, the rooms have separate living and sleeping areas, which is great if you’re staying for a fortnight as we are. Sadly the site is going to be turned into (you guessed it) a condominium tower, but hopefully not for a few years yet.

We haven’t had much time for sight seeing this year, but we did enjoy The Beach(es), and it would be nice to get back to the brickworks in daylight and when the sun is shining.

And so let’s see how exciting our trip through Lester Pearson airport is (last time it took us nearly four hours to get through check-in and security, so let’s hope things are better this year). See you on the other side!

Evergreen Brickworks

Dear Readers, I don’t know what you would do on a wet and windy night in Toronto, but I would hazard that taking a three-mile walk through an urban environmental park in search of beavers probably wouldn’t be at the top of the list. But that’s exactly what my husband and I did with our friend D on Tuesday night. It hasn’t stopped raining properly for about the past week, but we missed out on the beaver spotting last year, so nothing was going to stop us this year.

The Evergreen Brickworks (previously known as the Don Valley Brickworks) opened in 1889, when local entrepreneur John Taylor noticed that the soil was good quality clay, ideal for making bricks. A quarry was set up to the north of the site, and the brickworks themselves were built at the south end. The bricks were used to build a variety of local landmarks, including Casa Loma (a remarkable  castle-like home that included an oven large enough to cook two oxen and three bowling lanes), the Ontario legislature and Osgoode Hall, home to the Law School.

Casa Loma being built in 1912

The site was mostly quarried out by the 1980s, and then the battle began. It was purchased by a company who wanted to use it for housing, but as it was on a floodplain it was decided that it wasn’t suitable, and the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority had to buy it back at a vastly increased price because it was now zoned as residential. But by 1994, restoration of the site had begun, with the quarry filled in, three new ponds created, and paths which link it to the Beltline trail.

The buildings of the brick works themselves have been largely preserved and are used for everything from the regular farmers’ market to children’s events. There’s even a garden centre, but of course at 10 p.m. at night, in the rain, it was closed.

Evergreen brickworks with autumn sumach (Photo By Glogger – Own work, GFDL, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16987626)

And so we found ourselves walking down to the brickworks . There’s something magical about stomping through a completely deserted forest, the moon a hazy disc through the low cloud, listening out for rustling  in the undergrowth or the hooting of an owl. Our friend D has seen beavers here several times, and there’s evidence of their activity everywhere – gnawed tree stumps, piles of branches in the ponds. He was disappointed that we didn’t see an actual beaver, but sometimes it’s enough just to know that they’re there and living their lives so close to the centre of town. The brickworks have a really impressive list of animals of all kinds that have been spotted, and if I lived in Toronto I think I’d be making a pilgrimage every week, binoculars and field guide in hand.

https://www.inaturalist.org/check_lists/3796341-Roughly-Evergreen-Brickworks-Park-Check-List

Apparently the beaver family currently in the pond is the first that’s stayed for the winter – often beavers visit just to top up on food, but don’t make the place their home. However, this year a pair of young adults and their kit did stay put, and the rangers are interested to see what will happen next.

Evergreen Brick Works beaver from https://parkbench.com/event/visiting-our-beaver-brick-works-to-harbourfront-centre

Sadly, the ponds have also become a dumping ground for unwanted goldfish and terrapins. D says that some of the goldfish are now enormous, but I suppose they’ll provide food for the herons, such as the great blue heron ( Ardea herodias) below.

Great Blue Heron (Photo by nigel, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

The terrapins will be competing with native turtles, but as the pond is also home to the native snapping turtle they might have met their match (in the UK they have no competition at all).

Common snapping turtle (Chelydra serpentina) (Photo by Dakota L., CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

And so, after walking around in the rain for a couple of hours we finally headed back, serenaded by the sounds of running water (including the drips from our kagoules) and the haunting cries of some mysterious animal off in the distance. D did say that he’d seen coyotes a couple of times, and they are definitely coming into the city more often, probably as their usual homes are being disturbed. Apparently the secret with a coyote is to make yourself look big and scary, but I’m not sure I’ve ever heard any stories of humans being bothered by the animals (though I suspect that pets might be in a bit more danger). Still, at least no one’s spotted any mountain lions or bears at the Brickworks. Yet.

Dear Readers, here I am, still in Toronto but today I have spent about six hours writing up my Open University science experiment – regular readers might remember that I decided to look at the hairy-footed flowerbees that visit the garden, and to see whether the number of males to females was temperature-dependent – the females are all jet-black, which should mean that they heat up more quickly than the males, who are little stripey geezers.

So, today has mostly been crunching numbers and looking at scientific papers, and I just looked up and realised that in exactly 59 minutes we are leaving for a posh meal with a lovely friend of ours, and here I am in my low self-esteem trackpants and a jumper that has seen better days. 59 minutes is not long to transform myself into a goddess, so today I shall just give you a brief recap, and tomorrow I shall return to things Toronto-related.

Suffice it to say that there were more females than males at all temperature ranges, but interestingly (to me at least) there was only a statistically-significant difference at the higher temperature range. I think this is because the week that I chose to observe my bees also featured high-winds and torrential downpours, so when it was cold, wet and windy all but the bravest bees stayed at home and did their crosswords/knitting/watched Netflix/whatever bees do when they’re confined to quarters. When the temperature was a bit higher, the females came out much more than the males, even when it was breezy: I think this is because a) they’re larger (as it turns out) and so can survive more boisterous conditions, and b) because every day they have to collect enough pollen to feed one of their larvae: hairy-footed flower bees are solitary bees, so each female is solely responsible for feeding their offspring. That is a pretty strong incentive to go out there and get provisioning, while for the males (especially if they’ve already mated) there’s no real advantage to risking the inclement conditions.

But who knows? I think my bottom line will be ‘more research is required’, as it should be in all good scientific inquiry.

And now I’m off to have a shower and make myself presentable. See you all tomorrow!