Redwings…

Dear Readers, it’s been about six weeks since I had a fall and damaged my ankle, but today it felt strong enough for me to resume my Saturday walks in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery. Regular readers will know that this is one of the UK’s largest cemeteries, with an estimated one million people buried or cremated here since it opened in 1854. It isn’t actually in Islington or St Pancras, but is instead about a ten minute walk up the road from where I live in East Finchley. Today was a cold, grey day, but there were flocks of redwings everywhere. At one point, I followed the sound of them off the path and into the woods, where the sound  of their calls seemed to come from every point of the compass. It sounded like a stream of sound, but sadly when I tried to capture it for you the sound of the North Circular Road drowned it out, so I will have to leave it to your imagination. Suffice it to say that there is a kind of urgency about these birds now, as they fatten up in preparation for heading back to Scandinavia where they will spend the summer. God speed, little thrushes!

Redwing in an ash tree.

In other news, there was a very confident fox who seemed to pop up every few minutes as he trotted around the graves looking for something edible. I suspect that he is supporting a vixen who is denned up somewhere, expecting her cubs, or maybe even with cubs already born. You could almost track him by watching the cars of some of the cemetery visitors, who often slowed down to watch him and try to get a photo. I only hope that they got a better shot than I did.

There really is so much going on at the moment – I heard a buzzard and then another one, and watched them flap away, pursued by crows as usual. There are great spotted woodpeckers drumming, green woodpeckers yaffling and goldcrests being their usual hyperactive selves in the yew trees, plus all the usual finches and tits and other little birds. And the spring ephemeral plants are coming into flower. I saw my first lesser celandines today, and noticed that many of them have variegated leaves. How had I not noticed this before? They were one of Wordsworth’s favourite flowers, and I think they’re fast winning me over too.

The snowdrops are still out in the shadier places.

But the crocuses don’t seem as prolific this year as last year – I wonder if the drought last summer, followed by a cold snap this spring, have hindered them a bit? It’s always lovely to see them nonetheless, although they all seem a bit sad and droopy.

The delicate leaves of the cow parsley are spreading themselves across the forest floor…

and the more robust leaves of the hogweed are waiting for their moment too. Interestingly, looking at the photo below I think that the stinging nettle-y plant to the right is probably a species called small nettle (Urtica urens) – the leaves are more deeply toothed than on common nettle (Urtica diocia), and the little ‘tooth’ at the end of each leaf is about the same length as the other ‘teeth’. Alas, it is every bit as ‘sting-y’ as its larger relative, but it also feeds red admiral, peacock and small tortoiseshell caterpillars, so I’m happy to see it.

One plant that is in very fine form is the cherry plum (Prunus cerasifera), which is all over the cemetery in both its wild and cultivated forms. And very pretty it is too! It is the first of the plum trees to bloom, and by the time we get to March I for one am desperate for some signs of spring.

And finally, dear Readers, in the woodland burial area there are a lot of these plants, which look most unlikely candidates for a forest floor. Any ideas about what they are? I feel that I should know, but the sight of them in this location has rather got me flummoxed. They seem to be doing rather well, but I can’t help thinking that they look a little out of place.

Fortunately there are some primroses coming through as well, which is always a cheery sight.

And then it’s time to head home to immerse myself in my cell biology. I have yet another assignment coming up on 14th March, which is less than a fortnight away, and here am I still catching up on my Cell Communication, which is fascinating but involves a lot of new vocabulary. I think if I hear about phosphorylation one more time my poor brain will combust, but I’m sure it’s good for me. Onwards!

Dear Readers, I was minding my own business drinking a cup of coffee when my husband called up to me as he was about to head out of the front door on his way to work.

“Come and see this!” he shouted. “It looks like a clothes moth on steroids”.

This, Readers, is one reason why I love him. Clearly this is not a clothes moth, but he knew I’d be interested.

“Bring your camera!” he yelled, and so I did, and what I found was this really beautiful, new-minted Angle Shades (Phlogophora meticulosa). I took a couple of photos and then released it into one of my well-planted window boxes outside, where I hope it will be invisible to birds and will head off when darkness comes.

Angle Shades is a very common moth, but this one is very early – their flight season is normally May to June, and then August to October. The caterpillars normally pupate in soft soil, but they will use soft mortar on a wall. As our house is south-facing at the front, I wonder if the heat has encourage the moth to emerge, and maybe it pupated in the big plant pot next to the door. It also comes to light, and so maybe the light over the front door invited it in. At any rate, it is subtly beautiful, in olive-green and pink, and I love the ripple through the wings.

The caterpillars are the ubiquitous little green critters, but the broken white line along the back is helpful for identification. The foodplant doesn’t help much, as they seem to be happy to munch down on more or less anything.

It’s amazing what turns up, at any time of the day or night. And in other news, the magpies are continuing to build their nest, it’s turned very cold and so the frogs have given up on the breeding for now, and the crocuses (especially the white ones) are still in full flower. Spring is on the way, but very slowly.

Dear Readers, there are many exotic and attractively-coloured birds on the Red List this year, but somehow the one that breaks my heart most is the house sparrow. Is it because they’re associated so strongly with cities, especially London, especially the East End? After all, they’re sometimes known as ‘Cockney Sparrers’, and there is something about their no-nonsense attitude to life, their belligerence and their sheer domesticity that appeals to me. House sparrows usually spend their whole lives within one square mile of where they were hatched, and so the birds that turn up in my garden are probably the sons and daughters of the ones who were here when I first arrived back in 2010.

They are undemanding little birds – they need a nice thick hedge, or a building with holes in it (a broken grille or a loose roof tile will do). They like to stick together, so a single nest box will not do. They need caterpillars and aphids to feed their young, so pesticides and plastic lawns and slate chippings and low-maintenance gardens will not work for them. They love a patch of dry soil to dust bathe in, the seeds of groundsel and sowthistle and even Buddleia to feed on. It seems so little, but it’s clearly too much. In a study in Leicester, it was found that many chicks died of starvation because their parents couldn’t find the caterpillars that they needed to eat. The populations were increased when mealworms were provided, but the colony sizes as a whole didn’t increase, which implies that there is another cause of fledgling mortality once they leave the nest. However, there are reasons to be hopeful – house sparrows are actually increasing in number in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which makes me wonder what we’re continuing to do wrong here in England.

Air pollution is a major factor in the decline of many birds, particularly urban ones – let’s not forget that canaries were taken down into coal mines because they were so exquisitely sensitive to gas, and that caged birds often expire on exposure to the gases in paint, wallpaper, cooking materials etc.

The truth is, nobody knows exactly why the house sparrow population has dropped by 71% since 1977, but let’s be glad that they are coming back in some parts of the country. I can see me ordering in some live mealworms when we get to breeding season, and I already have a house sparrow ‘terrace’ of nest boxes which they are studiously ignoring. Maybe one of these years.

20th March is World House Sparrow Day and here, just a bit early, is a poem by Paul Farley (you might remember him from the Mistle Thrush poem last week). This one is one of the ‘Poems on the Underground’ that were posted in tube trains, and which always used to give me pause for thought. See what you think.

For the House Sparrow, In Decline (Paul Farley)

Your numbers fall and it’s tempting to think
you’re deserting our suburbs and estates
like your cousins at Pompeii; that when you return
to bathe in dust and build your nests again
in a roofless world where no one hears your cheeps,
only a starling’s modem mimicry
will remind you of how you once supplied
the incidental music of our lives.

Dear Readers, as those of you in the UK will have noticed we are having a bit of a problem getting our usual fruit and veg, and our illustrious Secretary of State for Enviroment, Food and Rural Affairs has suggested that as we can’t lay our hands on tomatoes and cucumber we might like to turn to the humble turnip instead. So, this seems like a good moment to resurrect this piece which I did a few years ago. I still don’t like these knobbly little chunks of nastiness, but maybe you have a turnip recipe to convince me that they have some redeeming features. We might all need to get onboard the root vegetable train very soon. 

So now, let’s shuttle back to 2020…

Dear Readers, when I got these turnips in my vegetable box last week, I admit to being stumped, because of all the roots in the world, this is the one I like least. In Scotland, a ‘neep’ is a completely different animal – in England we’d call it a swede, in the US it’s a rutabaga, and whatever it’s called I’m  rather fond it, especially when mashed and served with ‘stovies’, a delicious mix of leftover meat, potatoes, onions and gravy. In fact, swedes probably merit a blogpost all to themselves, so I shall move on (with regret) for now.

A swede or a neep, depending on where you live (or indeed a rutabaga) (Photo One)

I have a long and unhappy history with turnips, however. Back when I was a young thing and was working in Dundee, I had a blond Adonis of a boyfriend who was very into self-sufficiency. One of the things he grew was turnips, and when they were in season that is basically what we ate. There were turnips and broccoli for lunch (with additional earwigs which we where meant to pick out and put to one side). There was turnip and blackberry jam, following a war-time recipe. There was turnip and blackberry pie with custard made with wholemeal bread flour (don’t ask). There was turnip curry (which at least disguised the taste). Suffice it to say that turnips became my nemesis and I have never willingly or knowingly eaten one since. But here they are, and I am not going to waste the poor darlings.

Anyhow, what is a turnip anyway? Its Latin name is Brassica rapa subspecies rapa, and the wild plant is another of those mustardy cabbage plants with yellow flowers that are so confusing to the amateur botanist.

Wild turnip (Brassica rapa) (Photo Two)

The name ‘turnip’ rather charmingly comes from the word ‘turn’ (as in ‘turn on a lathe/make round) and ‘neep’ from napus, the Latin word for vegetable – so, ’round vegetable’. The poet Sappho apparently called one of her lovers Gongýla, which means ‘turnip’, and I have to admit that when I was arranging the vegetables for the photo they reminded me so much of a pair of breasts that I had to turn one of them at an angle to avoid offending anyone’s modesty. Clearly, this lockdown is affecting my brain.

Turnips actually have a double whammy when it comes to food – the green tops can be eaten as a substitute for spinach or chard, although they have a punchier, more mustardy flavour. In fact, some varieties of turnip are grown solely for their greens, and I’m sure that they’re all the better for it – broccoli rabe, bok choy and Chinese cabbage are all actually turnips. The root is apparently milder when cooked (but still, I would argue, not mild enough), but turnips are also often used as animal feed.  In 1700 Viscount Townsend, a Whig statesman, retired to his country house and became involved in agriculture, no doubt to the delight of the local yeomanry. He did, however,  invent a four-year crop rotation system featuring turnips, barley, wheat and clover, and became an enthusiastic proponent of using turnips as a year-round animal feed. Such was his association with the vegetable that he became know as Charles ‘Turnip’ Townsend.

Charles ‘Turnip’ Townsend (18 April 1674 – 21 June 1738), probably not wearing his gardening clothes (Photo Three)

While turnip greens are high in Vitamins K, A and C. the root is hardly a nutritional powerhouse, containing 14% of an adult’s daily requirement of Vitamin C and rather a lot of water and carbohydrate. Nonetheless, some people have leapt into the fray and tried to make something of it. Its radish-y qualities mean that it is sometimes grated and used in salads. I note that the Good Food recipe site has turnips in marmalade, turnips with duck, crispy salmon with turnip, mandarin and noodle salad and turnip tartiflette . I am going to put my turnips into a red lentil and turnip chilli from one of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s books, but as my husband’s stomach can’t tolerate chilli I shall be splashing on the pepper sauce after cooking. If you have any failsafe turnip recipes that don’t taste too much of turnip, do let me know.

Marmalade glazed turnips (Photo Four)

There seems to be something essentially comedic about the poor old turnip. For example, in an attempt to puncture what’s perceived as the po-faced nature of the Turner Prize ( the UK’s chief prize for ‘modern’ art of all kinds), some wag dreamed up the Turnip Prize. The prize is given to exhibits that display a lack of effort, and which are rubbish, though I also detect a very British love of puns. Some of its winners have included a builder’s hard hat with elf’s pointy ears attached (‘Elfin Safety’), a lump of dough with toy children embedded in it (‘Children in Knead’) and a pole painted black (‘Pole Dark’). The prize is, of course, a lump of wood with a turnip nailed to it.

Nonetheless, the turnip has also played a more serious role in history. During the winter of 1916-17, the German populace were close to starvation. The harvest of the potato, a staple food in the country, failed and this, combined with the Allied blockade, the seizure of farm horses for the army, the diversion of nitrogen fertilizers to make explosives and the lack of agricultural manpower as people were drafted into the army made for a perfect storm. The government attempted to substitute turnips, normally used for animal feed, for the lost potatoes, but turnips have a much lower nutritional value, and mortality, particularly among women, increased by 30% in 1917. Furthermore, it’s believed that the malnutrition also had a lasting effect on the immune systems of those who survived, making them more vulnerable to the so-called Spanish flu pandemic which ravaged the world right after the war. The Germans call this period ‘The Turnip Winter’, and a loathing of turnips lingers to this day amongst the older population.

Strangely enough though, just across the border in Austria, the municipality of Keutsch am Zee features a very splendid turnip on its coat of arms, probably a nod to the agriculture which was the chief source of income for the area until tourism came along.

The Coat of Arms of Keutsch am Zee (Photo Five)

And finally, did you ever wonder what people made Halloween lanterns out of before pumpkins arrived from the New World? Well, again it’s our old friend the humble turnip, though I suspect the larger swede is more often involved. Apparently these lanterns are still made out of turnips on the Isle of Man, and in Ireland and Scotland (so do let me know if the pumpkin has made inroads into lantern-making in your neck of the woods – I do suspect that pumpkins are much easier to carve).

A traditional Cornish Jack-O-Lantern carved, as I suspected, from a swede (Photo Six)

And so, a poem. How delighted I was to find that Seamus Heaney had written a poem about a turnip snedder, a machine used to slice up the turnips to make feed for the animals. Here is one from Sentry Hill in County Antrim, from an excellent blog by Anne Hailes – well worth a look.

Wesley Bonar, Museums and Heritage Officer at Sentry Hill with a turnip-snedder (Photo Seven)

Northern Lights above Lendrick Hill in Clackmannanshire, Scotland (Photo by William Starkey, taken in 2016)

Dear Readers, my Mum always wanted to see the Northern Lights. She’d seen a BBC TV programme featuring Joanna Lumley, (and you can watch some of it too here). She never did see it: after their sixtieth wedding anniversary I tried to organise a cruise for them, but Dad wanted somewhere hot and Mum wanted to see the Northern Lights, and so many criteria were designated that it became impossible. Now, I realise that they were both terrified to go so far out of their comfort zones, but they didn’t want to tell me. One of these days, I will find a way to see the Northern Lights myself, and I will see them for Mum and for me.

The Northern Lights (and the Aurora Australis in the south) are the result of particles emitted by the Sun, that are drawn towards the Earth by gravity, but which then bounce off of our atmosphere, releasing energy as light. Normally they just bounce off of the top and bottom of the planet, but when there’s a particularly splendid gust of the ‘solar wind’ we can see them much further south. Incidentally, other planets also have auroras, being subject to the same particle emissions as us – have a look at this photo of the aurora around the poles of Jupiter. Now, that would be something to see.

Jupiter with aurora – photo from Nasa

For now, though, I am keeping my fingers crossed that someone who reads this has actually managed to see the phenomenon from their back garden in the UK – the Northern Lights can often be seen in the Outer Hebrides, or the Shetlands, but it’s much rarer to see them as far south as St Albans (where they appeared on Sunday night), or in Cornwall. You can belong to something called Aurora Watch, which will give you a shout-out if there’s a chance of a sighting (though I didn’t get one, harrumph). The trick seems to be to find the darkest place that you can (something of a trick in North London) and look north. It won’t be as spectacular here as it is in Svalbard, but surely such a rarity is worth a look! You can see some splendid photos of Sunday’s display here.

As with many natural phenomena, the Northern Lights have been seen as harbingers of doom or auspicious signs. If you watch the Joanna Lumley piece, the scientist at the start tells her that it’s very bad luck to whistle at the aurora, in case it notices you and spirits you away. On the other hand, some Native Americans/First Peoples believed that the aurora will carry messages to the dead for you if you whistle to ask them to come closer. And in Japanese culture, it’s believed that a child conceived under the Northern Lights will be both lucky and beautiful. In Iceland, it was believed that the the aurora eased the pain of childbirth, but a pregnant woman shouldn’t look at them because she would give birth to cross-eyed children. So if you do get a glimpse over the next few days, you will have a multitude of ways to behave, some more fun than others.

Let me know your Aurora stories, if you have any! And I will be keeping my eyes peeled, and will let you know how I get on, though I think I will have to go a bit further north than Totteridge to see them.

The Aurora Borealis in St Albans (Photo by Joel Rabinowitz)

Dear UK Readers, just a quick heads up (ahem) that the Aurora Borealis was visible across much of the UK last night (Sunday), as far south as St Albans and Cornwall – this doesn’t happen very often, and it may well be visible again tonight (Monday), so watch the skies, and let me know if you spot (or have spotted) anything…good luck!

Dear Readers, my friend A alerted me to some major roadworks going on in Bedford Road in East Finchley (one of the ‘County’ Roads), and so I toddled down this afternoon to see what was going on. A whole swathe of the pavement is being dug up for what look like cables (though it being Sunday the workmen were on a well-earned day off – they are apparently extremely hard-working and diligent). A grant of £3.4 million has been given to Barnet Council to enable them to roll  out more charging points – at the moment on most streets, there is only one, like the one in the photo above.

The system chosen for this rollout is different to the lamp post charging system – it’s being pioneered by Trojan energy. The charging points appear to be in the equivalent of a manhole cover, and drivers will carry what’s called a ‘Trojan lance’ (no comments about this being an Achilles heel please). The lance fits into the charging point, and then the car is plugged in. I do worry a bit about what happens if some idiot in a heavy goods vehicle mounts the pavement above the charging points, as happened literally five minutes ago while I was writing this piece and noticed a huge delivery van parked diagonally across the entire pavement, but hopefully the manufacturers have thought about this.

The aim is to keep the pavements as clutter-free and accessible to other pavement users as possible, which is laudable considering how difficult it is for anyone in a wheelchair, or with a pram, to negotiate around the various obstacles that currently block the pavement (not including the aforementioned delivery vans). And of course, there are a limited number of lamp posts to plug into, so I see this as a positive step forward, and hope that it’s a success. It’s also very useful in the County Roads because no one here has a front garden large enough to park in – it’s all on street parking, so these charging points will make life easier, and will hopefully encourage more people to switch to electric.

I do see electric cars as a transitional step in the fight against climate change, though, especially in cities. The eventual answer surely has to be safe, clean, accessible and reliable public transport for the majority of journeys – every one getting about in their own car is not a long-term option in terms of resources, whether it’s an electric car or some other kind of individual vehicle. But roll on the electric revolution in the short/medium term, and it’s most pleasing to see some progress being made.

Dear Readers, the magpies have been hanging around quite a lot lately (probably following my bird food preference experiment a few months ago), but today I (belatedly) realised that they appear to be making a nest. They are plucking twigs from the whitebeam, and seem to be weaving them into a rather untidy habitation in the top of the tree. I can’t tell which is the male and which is the female, but one of them spends a lot of time away from the garden gathering twigs, while the other one seems to be trying to tidy it up.

From what I remember, young magpies have to learn how to make a ‘proper’ nest, and it might be several years before they’re successful – these are long-lived birds, and I suspect that what’s happening here is that they are basically ‘playing house’ rather than making a serious breeding attempt. We’ll see over the next few days, but it all looks a bit flimsy and contingent to my eyes. However, I am clearly not a magpie, and in some ways this is an ideal situation, with lots of food available and relative safety, though do note Mr Bear the cat who always takes a lot of interest in whatever is going on.

You can see the comings and goings of the magpies below. The neighbours were less than impressed by the sheer volume of sound that these birds can produce as soon as it gets light, so I suspect I’m going to be very popular over the next few months. Fortunately East Finchley is not the kind of place that is very fond of gathering on someone’s doorstep with pitchforks and lighted torches, but we’ll see as nesting season progresses.

I am actually quite impressed that this pair are finding nesting material for themselves – on several occasions I’ve watched them dismantle the nests of other birds, especially crows and woodpigeons, while the owners of the nests watched helplessly. They really are pirates, and while I have some concerns for any smaller birds who might be thinking of nesting nearby, I also wonder if these magpies will at least keep everybody else off. We’ll have to see. As I’ve said before, when you devise a garden for wildlife, you don’t get to say who can come and who can’t. We could be in for interesting times.

ATP Synthase

Dear Readers, the more that I study Cell Biology for my Open University degree, the more drop-jawed with astonishment I become. At the moment we’re looking at how cells manage the energy requirements of an organism, and an integral part of the process is a ‘molecular machine’ known as ATP synthase. I hope you’ll forgive me geeking out a bit here, because I do love to share a factoid!

As you might remember from your biology lessons, energy is managed by the mitochondria, a kidney-shaped organelle which floats around in the watery interior of the cell. To digress here slightly (and to simplify greatly), it’s believed that mitochondria were once free-living bacteria who, back in the most distant days of the evolution of life, were gobbled up by a larger organism, but which continued to live and eventually became an integral part of all of the more complex organisms (a similar thing happened with chloroplasts in plants).

Anyhow, you might also remember that a substance called Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) is one of the ‘currencies’ of energy, which we need to do any kind of ‘work’ in the cell, from digestion to growth. When the bonds in ATP are broken (into Adenosine Diphosphate plus a free phosphate) it releases lots of energy that can be used to power other reactions. The downside is that the cell also has to synthesise ATP, so that it has a store of energy to use. This is where ATP synthase comes in.

Studded into the inner membrane of the mitochondria is an extraordinarily complicated ‘molecular machine’ called ATP synthase. This is a complex of many different proteins which are formed into 15 subunits, but what astonishes me most is its structure. If you look at the illustration below, what it shows is that the protein actually has a rotor which spins as protons enter it from a space between the inner and outer membranes of the mitochondria  (shown in red). This happens because there’s a higher concentration of protons (H+)  on one side of the membrane than the other, so the protons try to equalise themselves. The passage of the protons causes all sorts of changes to the shape of ATP synthase, and generate the energy which allows it to ‘grab’ ADP and a phosphate, and to make ATP.

This might sound like a lot of old chemistry, but when you consider that the human body has literally trillions of mitochondria at any time, and that each mitochondria can have anything from 100 to 5000 ATP synthase molecules working away, it feels (to me at least) completely staggering. And this is only one part of the complexity of the cell. It seems extraordinary to me that all this is going on, for the most part invisibly, in every living thing. It’s miraculous that any of us can ever get up in the morning.

For a rather neat little animation showing the process, click here.