Dear Readers, as you know for the past week I have been spending fifteen minutes, three times per day, sitting in the garden counting bees for my OU project. And I rather think I’m going to carry on sitting outside for fifteen minutes at least once per day, even after I’ve collected all my data, because it does me so much good. Even when it’s cold and windy and starting to rain there’s always something to see, be it the magpies arguing in the whitebeam or the blue tits telling off a cat, or just a goldfinch singing silhouetted against the sky.
And another one
It’s been interesting watching the flowering currant gradually going over as well (and the windy weather hasn’t helped) – from the peak of perfection last week, many of the flowers are now on their last legs, and the bees are moving on to the white lilac that’s coming into bloom. It’s not often that we have the time to actually watch the ebb and flow of the natural world, but this week has felt like a gift, a chance to watch things changing from one hour to the next.
And then there’s the pleasure of the bees themselves. Hairy-footed flower bees are really fast, buzzy little things, and they sometimes fly about with their tongues out, as if to make sure that they don’t waste any time at all.
Male hairy-footed flower bee
Female hairy-footed flower bee
And so, however busy you are, I would highly recommend finding at least fifteen minutes (and preferably more) to sit in the garden or outside in the park, and just watch the world go by. There is no greater balm for the agitated mind or the distracted soul, and even if the wind is strong enough to blow your hat off, or the rain is dampening your enthusiasm, you’ll still feel much more connected and alive (and glad of a cup of coffee) when you get back inside.
Dear Readers, while I was sitting counting my bees today (1 male, 2 females in case you’re interested) I suddenly became aware of the sound of baby birds, and realised that I was sitting probably three metres from a blue tit nest! I haven’t taken any photos or shown any interest in it, because I don’t want to alert the various magpies/cats to their whereabouts, but I could not be more chuffed. Usually they nest in the nest box on next door’s wall, but they have some tarpaulins above it this year, so I think maybe they’ve moved on. At any rate, let’s see how they get on – the nest is tucked up in a tangled mass of honeysuckle so hopefully the nestlings are relatively safe, and they only call when they see a parent approaching. Sensible little things!
And here is a video that I took a while back. All the shouting was occasioned by my ancient cat taking a turn around the patio. They are feisty for sure.
And in the background you can hear the sound of baby starlings, another sure sign of mid May, which is when everyone seems to leave the nest at the same time. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for some of these little chaps. I will keep you posted on developments!
Dear Readers, what, you may ask, is that white thing dangling on the flowering currant? Well, it’s my thermometer (of course it is!) so that I can measure the temperature as close to the plant as possible for my bee experiment. You might remember that I’m looking at hairy-footed flower bees, who very conveniently have jet black females and stripy males. My hypothesis is that, as black absorbs heat better than any other colour, the females should be able to tolerate cold conditions better than the males. It certainly seems that there are more bees when it’s warmer (and that the little furry peeps really don’t like it when it’s cold and windy) but I have more data collection to do before I can come to any conclusions. The weather has been very varied, from warmish and dryish to blustery and wet, but it’s all good stuff.
And while I’m sitting on the patio I notice all sorts of things. Look at the leaves on the whitebeam, just waiting to burst!
And the marsh marigold has gone from a few small buds to a whole mass of flowers…
And the goldfinches are very chatty…
And so are the blue tits, even on a cold, miserable day like today.
Plus, a pair of feral pigeons have just arrived. This one is extremely tame – s/he didn’t fly off when I arrived, but looked at me with cocked head, as if appraising whether I was a food source or not. What lovely perfect red feet the bird had, none of the gnarly, knotted, diseased-looking toes that so many city pigeons have. They really are quite lovely birds, whose only problem is our attitude to them.
Dear Readers, whilst flicking through New Scientist this week, I was much taken by this story. Scientist Federica Amici, of the University of Leipzig, was interested in how different ungulates solved problems, and so she set various herds of horses, flocks of sheep and goats and other groups of hoofed animals a puzzle – how to get their favourite food from inside a covered cup.
The animals were first observed to see which individuals associated most and least with their herd mates, and they were also ranked according to how neophobic they were – a colourful ball was placed near their feeding area, and while some animals ignored it, others were very nervous when they saw it.
The results showed that animals who were outliers in their social groups were better at solving the problem, and were also much less bothered by the beachball. But why? One theory is that because these individuals weren’t integrated into the herd, they had to figure things out on their own without any ‘group think’. But on the other hand, what if these animals just enjoyed hanging out on their own? And could it be that because they had more time to observe and think, they were quicker at solving novel problems?
It’s another example of that most elusive thing to define, personality, and for the group as a whole it must be good to have a whole range of abilities and characteristics, so that whatever happens in the outside world, there’s the possibility of adaptation. But the study leaves as many questions as it answers.
Why are some animals so much quicker at solving problems than others? The Przewalski horses in the experiment managed to get to the food in 6 seconds, compared with 5 minutes for the gazelles. The horses were wild, so it’s not that they’d been domesticated and were more familiar with the strange ways of humans. On the other hand, gazelles are extremely timid in my experience and so probably took a lot longer to approach the food.
I am intrigued by the idea of the outliers being the brainy ones, though. It feels like a high five to all the kids at school who weren’t allowed to join in, and for all those people who don’t feel part of the herd (like me). Next time you popular peeps want some alfalfa removed from a sealed cup, you know who to ask.
Dear Readers, I took a little wander down Lincoln Road, here in East Finchley, today, and was somewhat taken aback by the state of the lime trees. Holy Moly! In truth they did need a bit of a trim, but this is absolutely brutal. Not a single tree has escaped.
Pollarded trees always look as if they’re raising their fists to the sky to me.
Here’s a shot of them from last time I took a walk a few months ago.
Now, it’s true that they did look a bit shaggy previously, and it’s also true that they will definitely come back – this one already has some inconvenient growth at the bottom of the tree already.
But some of the big plane trees on the High Street are also up for pollarding, and I strongly suspect that there are magpie/crows nests in some of them. Why does the council so often decide to get stuck into this in the spring, when everything is coming into leaf and just starting to get going for the new year? I guess there are problems with man power, and presumably you have to take your tree surgeons when you can get them, but it still makes me sad. The streets will be a lot warmer than they need to be for a good while until the leaf cover is regenerated, for sure. And lime trees, in particular, provide food for lots of insects, who in return help to feed all the baby blue tits and other birds who are currently in the nest. Sigh. It sometimes seems that everything is about somebody else’s convenience, and nature always comes last. I think the tree in the photo below is expressing its opinion in a very understandable fashion.
Oops, apologies to anyone who got this on Saturday, I accidentally posted it early :-(.
Dear Readers, I recently got a newsletter from Susan Cain, who some of you might know as the author of ‘Quiet’ and ‘Bittersweet’. Being an introvert myself, I really enjoyed Cain’s exploration of the gifts of being a more thoughtful, reflective person in a world that seems to largely value the outgoing and sociable, and ‘Bittersweet’ talks about the relationship between grief and joy, and how difficult it sometimes is to find the difference. Both books come highly recommended, but today Cain was reflecting on being older. One of the things that she said was that as she was getting older, she found herself noticing the exquisite details of things much more, and quoted Blake (one of my favourites as you know);
“…see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
The photo that Cain chose to illustrate her newsletter was the one below, by Claire Ogden, a British artist based in Cornwall. I thought it was stunning, and went in search of more of her work. I love that she has such a keen eye for the beauty of everyday things.
‘Blue Barnacles’ by Claire Ogden
This is a piece of corroded metal that Ogden calls ’embroidered rust’ – she’s turned it into a fabric design. Ogden is based in Newlyn where there is still a fishing industry, and so there are nets and battered boats and pulleys and all sorts of other industrial detritus. It takes a real eye to spot the beauty here. I am reminded of a photography course that I did, where the teacher entreated us to ‘see first, and take photos afterwards’.
Embroidered rust by Claire Ogden
On another trip, Ogden noticed the scuff marks on one of the boats:
“The fishing paraphernalia often provide good subjects – nets, ropes, pots, etc – and in this instance there was a small part of the blue hull that was scratched and scuffed to reveal dashes and splashes of yellow and white paint. Along with the stains of rusts and wear and tear this patch of marks was as if a painter had splattered the surface with different paints and made marks for the fun of it.”
Newlyn Fishing Boat Marks by Claire Ogden
I really love Ogden’s work – pop over to her website to see some of her other photographs and designs. She is certainly a photographer to watch.
Dear Readers, the results are in for the 2023 Big Garden Birdwatch,(BGB) run by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) (though my husband calls it the Royal Society for the Prevention of Birds which seems a little unkind). As you might remember, for one weekend in January lots of people count the birds that appear in their gardens or local parks, and record the maximum number of birds that they see at any one time. So here’s the countdown for this year.
At number ten, it’s the long-tailed tit, up from fifteenth place in 2022. I wonder if this bird features because they’re nearly always seen in little flocks, which bumps up the numbers? I know you’re not supposed to have favourites, but these little chaps are definitely up there for me. There’s something about them that always reminds me of small flying monkeys. The BGB participants counted 339,793 of the little devils.
At number nine (and a non-mover), it’s the magpie. I have a grudging respect for these birds, and they’ve certainly made the shift to urban life – 339,725 sightings were reported. I wonder if jackdaws will feature at any point soon? They’ve come to East Finchley in some numbers in the past few years, having been absent from much of London for decades.
Magpie at number nine
At number eight it’s the great tit, another non-mover. There are a pair nesting somewhere close to the house but I haven’t spotted the nest yet. The garden rings to the sound of them calling – ‘Teeecher, teeecher!’, and no wonder – 425,750 were counted.
Great tit, a non-mover at number eight
At number seven it’s the goldfinch, which seems to have taken to our gardens in some numbers over the past few years. I have an enormous crop of teasel coming up this year (it’s a biennial, so from my single plant two years ago I now have about ten lots of rosette leaves, and should get ‘flowers’ in the summer), and they are a favourite, so it will be interesting to see if the goldfinches take advantage of this natural food. The count for goldfinches was 491,934.
Goldfinch, a non-mover at number seven.
Then it’s the robin, another non-mover at number six. There can’t be many gardens without a resident robin (or possibly two). To check if you have one, just do a bit of digging and see if one appears. 498,612 were counted for the BGB.
The robin, a non-mover at number six
Yet another non-mover is the blackbird at number five. How I love this bird, with its fluty song and wide range of alarm calls! When something is close by and the bird doesn’t want to be noticed it utters a kind of clicking sound which is strangely difficult to trace – I’ve been standing right next to a blackbird in a bush making this call and haven’t been able to work out where it’s coming from. On the other hand, there’s the more familiar alarm call which lets all and sundry know that there’s a problem. 716, 734 were counted.
Blackbird song (recording by Hannu Varki in Finland)
Alarm call (recording by Sreekumar Chirukandoth from the Veneto in Italy)
And this is the call that the bird gives when it doesn’t particularly want to be located…(recording by Susanne Kuijpers in The Netherlands)
The blackbird, a non-mover at number five.
At number four it’s the woodpigeon, another non-mover. Over three-quarters of a million woodpigeons were spotted, which is impressive by anybody’s standards. Here are two beating one another up on the bird table during lockdown. However much food you put out, there’s never enough for these guys to share.
Woodpigeons, non-movers at number four
At number three, it’s the starling, with 904,079 observations. You might think that’s a lot of birds, but they’re down by 80% over the past few decades. Let’s treasure the ones we have, however raucous and argumentative they might seem.
The starling at number three.
Then it’s the blue tit – it clocks in just slightly ahead of the starling, with 904,637 sightings. It sometimes feels as if every garden has at least one pair. Which makes me wonder how many duplicates there are if lots of people are recording in the same area and the birds travel. Hmm, that’s an interesting data problem. I suppose the key is the trends, rather than the absolute numbers. This OU degree of mine is certainly changing the way that I think about things.
Blue tit, a non-mover at number two.
And finally, it’s the house sparrow, with 1,401,338 sightings. Again, that might seem impressive. Again, numbers are down by about 80% over the past few decades, but the numbers seem to be stabilising and even going up in some parts of the country. I look forward to a more detailed analysis of the numbers, and will keep you posted if I discover anything interesting.
House sparrow, number one for the twentieth consecutive year….
Dear Readers, I am uncertain as to what exactly the magpies are up to, but they are still paying a lot of attention to the nest in the whitebeam. Are there eggs in there? Who knows? They’re a flighty pair, though – the merest sight of a human being and they’re off to Bedford Road (another of East Finchley’s County Roads).
From underneath the nest looks very substantial, though I still think it was starting by a squirrel who probably did a lot of the hard work.
And in spite of the wind and the rain and the generally unsettled conditions, the hairy-footed flower bees are still around in force. I’d say it was 3 females for every 2 males today. My tutor has still not given me the go-ahead for my experiment (well, I am jumping the gun a bit in my enthusiasm) but I think I will start gathering the data anyway because nature doesn’t wait, for sure.
Female H_F FB
And another one
And yet another one
And I am very pleased with my grape hyacinths. A green alkanet has snuck into one of my pots, but I rather like them too.
And look, the marsh marigold is practically out…
And how about these lovely tadpoles, just wriggling free from their spawn? Being born is always a struggle, whether you have to break out of an egg or travel down somebody’s birth canal, so I sympathise with these little amphibians as they start their lives. Good luck, taddies!
Tyrannosaurus Rex statue in Glasgow (Photo by Thomas Nugent)
Dear Readers, New Scientist is a very serious magazine, as we know, but this week I was delighted to see the following front-page headline:
Why Dinosaurs Had Lips.
Why had I never thought of this? I’ve grown up with Jurassic Park and the sight of toothy carnivorous dinosaurs chasing Jeff Goldblum in a jeep.
Photo by Jeff Buck, from an exhibit at Chester Zoo
But it appears that we were wrong, wrong, wrong. Mark Witton, a scientist at the University of Portsmouth in the UK, has been researching reptile teeth (like you do), including living creatures such as alligators, and extinct therapod dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus Rex and those pesky velociraptors. Apparently, it all comes down to wear and tear on the teeth.
Teeth that are always exposed to the air tend to wear out more quickly, not just because teeth kept inside the mouth are protected from physical damage, but also because saliva is protective – teeth that dry out tend to become more brittle and easily damaged.
In alligators, some teeth are exposed, and these seem to have a lot of the enamel worn away.
However, the teeth of dinosaurs are usually in excellent condition, and Witton suggests that this is incompatible with them being on display all the time – he suspects that, like many predatory lizards, T.Rex and co were more lippy than toothy.
But will Hollywood change its depiction of dinosaurs? Witton thinks not- he points out that film-makers still haven’t wised up to the fact that many dinosaurs had feathers, so portraying them as gummy lippy creatures is probably decades away.Until then, whenever a re-run of Jurassic Park comes on, we can all be cleverclogs and tell everybody that the T.Rex didn’t look like that, and in fact had the steely close-mouthed grin of the worst boss you ever had delivering a written warning.
Wrong, wrong, wrong! What was Steven Spielberg thinking of?
Now normally I would of course link to New Scientist so that you could read the whole thing for yourself, but for some reason this article only seems to appear in the print edition (at the moment). However, there is this article in The Guardian which covers the same ground. Enjoy!
Dear Readers, it’s always fun to find a new weed, and so I was very happy to spot this rather toothsome-looking plant at the base of a plane tree outside Golders Green Crematorium (and also a large patch of it growing inside under a tree). Springbeauty is a member of the Montiaceae family, a very diverse bunch which also includes another common introduced ‘weed’, pink purslane (Claytonia siberica). What’s interesting about springbeauty is the way that the two top leaves fuse to form a little ‘saucer’ for the flowers to sit in – this is pretty much unique, so for once identification wasn’t a problem.
Springbeauty is originally a North American plant – there, it’s also known as Miner’s Lettuce, because it was eaten by the Gold Rush miners to prevent scurvy. Native peoples knew of the plant’s nutritional value too – it was known as palsingat or, possibly, lahchumeek by the Cahuilla people of southern California, and was gathered as a salad green in early spring. I think it looks very fresh and inviting. The Gardener’s World website describes it as ‘one of the hardiest salad crops available’, and I would love to know if any of you have tried to grow it.
The plant probably came to the UK in 1794, where the naturalist Archibald Menzies is said to have brought it to Kew Gardens. By 1849 it was over the garden wall and off into the wild, but it never seems to have become particularly invasive. I wonder why it isn’t eaten more regularly, when so many other ‘weeds’ are foraged? Hank Shaw, writing in The Atlantic, had this to say…
“Normally I mix greens to create certain flavors and textures (I wrote about making a proper salad a while back), but sometimes I prefer to eat miner’s lettuce solo. You really get to know a green when you do this, and you don’t want to dress such a salad too heavily; just a light coating is all.
I made a light mustard vinaigrette for the dressing, and added some fresh ground black pepper and a little flake salt for texture and crunch. The effect is tart, smooth, a little crunchy, and very “green” tasting.”
In their book ‘Alien Plants’, Clive Stace and Michael Crawley mention that springbeauty occurs through much of the British Isles, often in ‘great abundance’, so it’s curious that it’s the first time that I’ve seen it. Maybe all those years of lockdown have affected my ‘plant vision’, and clearly I need to get out more. Stace and Crawley also mention that a favourite habitat is ‘the small patch of soil retained around planted trees, where it appears to be somewhat herbicide-resistant’. Bingo! That’s exactly where I found it.
And strangely enough, I couldn’t find a poem specifically on Claytonia perfoliata, but I did find this, by Gerard Manley Hopkins. It makes me think of the freshness and newness of plants in the spring, including the shy little green job that I’ve been writing about this week. The poem deserves to be read slowly and savoured. See what you think.
Spring BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS
Nothing is so beautiful as Spring – When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush; Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing; The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy? A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy, Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning, Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
