Dear Readers, as a change from the usual Thursday poetry, I’d like to bring you the winners of the first ever ‘Tune In and Celebrate Nature’ prize, awarded to musicians between 18 and 30 whose work ‘celebrates a true collaboration with nature’ and who are resident in the UK. The description of the prize is:

“Research shows that a closer relationship with nature comes through tuning into nature with our senses, responding with our emotions, appreciating beauty, celebrating meaning and activating our compassion for nature. We also seek to reverse the typically extractive relationship with nature that has been present across many creative sectors, and instead to recognize and reward nature as the artist she is. So, be creative in the nature sounds you include, from birdsong and rainfall to the sounds of the soil.”

Well, I couldn’t agree more. There is music all around us if we can only find the time and space to stop and listen (and if we can hear it above the hubbub of daily life, and the noise pollution). I love the early morning for just this reason – it’s then that the traffic drops, the banging and crashing of workmen doing their jobs stills, and you can hear the lone blackbird, or the rustle of a fox in the undergrowth.

I rather like both the winning pieces (all the pieces submitted had to be 5 minutes long or less). First up is Josephine Illingworth, with ‘Dawn – Singing the Mountain’. I rather like the way that it builds, that sense of light gradually travelling across a landscape, the gradual arrival of the dawn chorus, the sense of awe. One for the headphones ideally, I think.

Josephine explains: “Dawn, Aurora is a piece made from sounds I collected over several weeks of sleeping alone in mountain huts across the Dolomites. Its lyrics are taken from entries left in the guestbooks of these huts by past visitors. It is a tapestry of the memories and experiences taking place across the mountains, and a call for us to see life and movement in things we may think are silent.”

You can listen to the piece here.

The second winning piece is ‘Nightingale’, by Wildforms, and it couldn’t be more of a contrast (i.e. you might want to adjust the volume of your earphones before you put it on). I liked this too, for its high energy and youthfulness – it sounded rather like the drum and bass that I used to listen to as a young(er) person, and I was pleased to find out that this was, indeed, the inspiration. Here’s what the artist has to say:

“The track is based around the Nightingale song, which I recorded in Spring 2024. Upon hearing the birdsong for the first time, I thought – this really reminds me of the Jungle and Drum & Bass music I loved as a teenager.
So – I took the recordings home and began working it into a piece of music. Rhythmical Wood Crickets and Grasshoppers make an appearance as well as ‘cymbals’ made from Marram grass. A lot of the higher percussion is created with snapped dry twigs.”

You can listen to the piece here.

And if this has gotten you in the mood for more of this kind of thing (as Father Ted would say), there are links to all the shortlisted pieces here.

See what you think! Let me know!

Radiata/Monterey Pine (Pinus radiata) Photo By dalvenjah on Flickr – Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6078804

Dear Readers, today’s ‘weed’ is a story of how a tree originally from North America ended up, via New Zealand and the Netherlands, in some East Finchley window frames. For, in another guise, Radiata Pine is also known as Accoya, a ubiquitous wood which, when treated, probably forms most of the wooden frames used across the UK.

First things first. Radiata Pine (also known as Monterey Pine) comes originally from the Central Coast of California, and from two islands off of Baja California in Mexico – Guadalupe and Cedros Islands. In one of those strange connections that seem to occur more and more as I get older, I have actually been to Guadalupe Island – the place is littered with the bleaching skeletons and skulls of goats. The goats were introduced years ago by settlers, but as the water supply is extremely limited, the settlers soon left, leaving the goats to their own devices. Being hardy and resourceful animals, the goats sustained themselves by nibbling all the baby Radiata Pines until they were stumps. Eventually, someone realised that this particular subspecies of tree had been almost extincted (new verb) by the goats, and so the poor old goats were culled. The trees are now regenerating, which is just as well, because although the Radiata Pine is the most widely-grown timber tree in the world, as a wild tree it has become vanishingly rare across its original range.

Goat Skull from Guadalupe Island

Now, Radiata Pine plantations are found all over Australia, New Zealand, Spain, South Africa, Argentina and a host of other countries. The tree grown for timber is very different from the wild tree – it has long, straight trunks, which don’t divide as the tree grows (see the wild specimen in the photo above). New Zealand has become a major source of wood for Accoya production – the timber is transported by sea to the Netherlands, where it’s transformed by a process called acetylation. This makes it as tough and durable as the hardwoods that it’s increasingly replacing, and my window frames have a 50 year guarantee, which should, as my Dad used to say, ‘see me out’. The wood has all sorts of environmental accreditations, including from the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC). Am I completely convinced? Of course not. In many places, native forests have been cut down to grow Radiata Pine, and a plantation is no substitute for a long-established, diverse forest. Plus there’s the environmental cost of transporting timber from New Zealand to Europe – I’m sure it’s by sea, of course, but marine traffic is also implicated in climate change and environmental damage.  It seems as if the choices that we have to make these days are all fraught with ethical problems, and we have to do the best we can.

Radiata Pine plantation in Australia (Photo By Wikipedian, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53692872)

In ‘the wild’, Radiata Pine forms a diverse community with Monterey Cypress, another fine conifer. The gaps between the trees harbour some extremely rare plants, such as Hickman’s Potentilla, known from only two Radiata Pine sites in California.

Hickman’s Potentilla (Potentilla hickmanii) Photo by By John Game, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=56210367

The orchid Plantathera yadonii grows only in Radiata Pine forests in California.

Platanthera yadonii (Photo by By Irene – https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/146515368, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114428450)

A remnant Radiata Pine forest in California (Monarch Grove) is an important over-wintering site for Monarch Butterflies on their way south, with approximately 16,000 butterflies hibernating there in the winter of 2022-23.

At Monarch Grove Sanctuary in Pacific Grove, CA near Monterey (Photo by By Kenneth Lu – https://www.flickr.com/photos/toasty/12934272853/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=152229127)

Writing this blog has made me think about the trip that I made to Monterey to watch whales, and also my trip around Baja California and the Sea of Cortez. Again, as I get older I think more and more about experiences, places I’ve been, people who’ve touched my heart and made me think. How very lucky I’ve been to see some of the things I’ve seen, and to have done that in the company of such precious human beings.

Elephant seal pups (Baja California)

Blue whale at sunset, Sea of Cortez

Grey Whale spyhopping in St Ignacio lagoon, Mexico

Grey Whale calf coming for a look in San Ignacio lagoon, Mexico

Brown Tree Ant (Lasius brunneus) Photo by Ryszard at https://www.flickr.com/photos/ricosz/16664758345

Dear Readers, we had a wonderful guided walk in Coldfall Wood yesterday, led by ecologist Russell Miller. We learned all sorts of interesting things, but of course I was most excited by the discovery, in a fallen birch log, of what we think is the nest of the Brown Tree Ant (Lasius brunneus), a most elusive and unusual (and probably under-reported) insect. And no wonder it’s not well known! Usually, the Brown Tree Ant lives inside living oak trees, but it will also live in dead wood, as in this case.

My Ant bible, ‘Ants’ by Richard Jones in the British Wildlife Collection series (highly recommended) describes the species as ‘timid and non-aggressive, and disappears quickly if its galleries are uncovered when peeling bark off old rotten trees’. Much, I suspect in the same way that I would run for cover if a giant alien took the roof of the houses off for a look. Apparently, though the species prefers ancient woodland, it is occasionally found in houses with timber frames, and Jones reports  being given a biscuit tin that had been invaded by the species from a house in Guildford.

The status of this quiet little ant is not clear in the UK – it may well have benefitted, as Jones suggests, from the different management of woodlands since World War II. Previously, woods were coppiced, pollarded and cut for the wood that they produce on a regular basis, but these days such activities are rare, resulting in the deeper, darker woods that we’re familiar with now. This may well have benefited an ant that prefers to live harmlessly in living trees, though it’s fair to bemoan the falling numbers of butterflies who used to benefit from the more open, sunny areas in woods that used to exist. Swings and roundabouts, I guess!

And even life beneath the bark is not without its challenges. There are whole communities of tiny rove beetles and weevils who seem to co-exist with the ants, but there are also other ant species, such as the Yellow Shadow Ant (Lasius umbratus) where a queen will infiltrate a Brown Tree Ant nest. First she will munch a few worker ants – it’s thought that this may change the way that she smells, and enable her to move through the nest more easily. Then, she finds the queen ant and kills her, before starting to lay her own eggs. The workers accept her, because by this time she smells like ‘one of us’. For a while, the colony will be a mixture of Brown Tree and Yellow Shadow workers ants, but, as the former die off and are not replaced because their queen is dead, the nest becomes a Yellow Shadow Ant nest. All these tiny battles going on, unseen beneath a piece of bark!

Yellow Shadow Ant (Lasius umbratus) Photo by By This image is created by user Dick Belgers at Waarneming.nl, a source of nature observations in the Netherlands.

Dear Readers, there’s a reason that the old  proverb about not ‘casting a clout (item of clothing) till May is oot’ makes a lot of sense -after a few days of the weather feeling a bit warmer here in London, it froze over night. What about the frogs, though? They’d been starting to sing at the start of last week, but fortunately there isn’t any spawn yet.

Spawn above the surface of the pond can be damaged or even killed by frost – I remember when the ‘Beast From the East’ struck in late March/early April a few years ago, I ended up putting buckets over the blobs of spawn. The eggs that are under the surface of the water, where it isn’t frozen, will usually be fine.

Pond starting to thaw where it’s in the sun

Adult frogs will also usually be fine – after all, they’ve spent all winter in a state of torpor in the sediment at the bottom of the pond, and so they take a few days of ice in their stride (or maybe that should be ‘in their hop’. There is a phenomenon called ‘winterkill’, when the gases from decomposing vegetation at the bottom of the pond build up and can’t escape due to the ice, but this is more likely to happen in ‘natural’ pond that don’t have a worried human to look after them.

We’re always advised not to break the ice (the shock is bad for the critters) or to pour boiling water on it, though I have sometimes made a hole in the ice by resting a hot saucepan on it. Just don’t get distracted and leave it, or chances are you’ll have one saucepan at the bottom of the pond. Chemicals are obviously a no-no, and most people swear by leaving a football/tennis ball floating on the surface so that you can have a nice hole in the ice. I’ve always found that that only works if you have a smallish pond, where you can reach aforesaid ball from all angles.

Sunshine starting to touch the pond!

I am noticing that the duckweed is getting naughty again, so there’s something for me to think about next week while the windows are being done, and I’m desperate to get away from the noise and dirt. At least the weather forecast for next week is absolutely stunning, so there shouldn’t be any delays for that. Keep your fingers crossed for me, and the frogs!

Dear Readers, as The Big Day for our window replacement gets nearer, I’m spending more and more time trying to be realistic about what I will and won’t do during the rest of my life. Honestly, my cook book collection is out of control. If I cooked a new recipe every day from now until I’m 95 (which is 30 years from now and probably pushing it a bit) I still wouldn’t get through them. So here I am, trying to persuade my neighbours to take my books and enjoy themselves. We’ve had a few takers, but I suspect there will be a few more trips to the RSPCA charity shop.

There are so many memories here. In 2016, following the Brexit vote, I decided to become a qualified TEFL teacher, and here are just some of my text books. I spent a few years teaching groups, particularly women, the basics so they could navigate things like shopping, going to the doctor, using public transport and sorting out their children’s schooling, and it was an amazing experience, particularly the way women from different countries came together to help one another. Plus we often ended up with impromptu  cooking and gardening sessions. Every woman had a story to tell, and every one was determined to make the best possible productive life for themselves and their children. I often wonder how the women are doing now.

And here are the very last of the flowers from Fran – so many went to people all over the country (don’t forget to send me any photos if you remembered to take any!) A number of parents have taken some seeds for their children to grow, and I’m pretty confident that at least some will come up. I hope Fran would have approved of how far her seeds have spread, and how many people they’ve cheered up. I’m sure she would love that small children will be watering them and encouraging them to grow just like I used to when I was a child. Plants are a miracle that we should never take for granted, especially now, in the face of all the terrible stuff that’s happening. When everything seems bleak, there’s always something growing.

Dear Readers, I have should have known that the frogs were out and about when one of the local cats spent an inordinate amount of time pacing around the pond, but today I got my first photo of one – it’s a lot colder today so there’s no singing or popping up at the side of the pond to see what’s going on. I couldn’t get a clear view of this frog, but I half-think that there might already be a male on board. See what you think.

Anyhow, there are lots of signs of spring – bulbs seem to be popping up everywhere, as do the wildflower seeds that my lovely gardener planted in the autumn. I can’t wait to see what they actually are…

And there are a few things in flower: the winter honeysuckle is nearly finished, but the clematis is still going strong.

The duckweed is starting its annual advance across the pond, but we shall be doing battle regularly, at least until the tadpoles hatch and it becomes too difficult to disentangle them from the vegetation. Because of all the tree work last year, the garden should be a bit lighter, but maybe that will only encourage the duckweed, we shall have to see.

And we are in for a few fun-filled weeks – on Wednesday we had the scaffolding put up so that we can get replacement windows. Our windows are single-paned, and to be honest my poor neuropathic feet have been so cold this winter that anything that helps to keep them a bit warmer (and to lower our carbon footprint/heating bill) can only be to the good. Last time we had scaffolding a sparrowhawk spent a lot of time sitting on it, so let’s see what happens this year. Someone suggested that we now have a makeshift balcony so maybe I can sit there with a martini and survey my kingdom.

One good thing is that I shall be able to get at least one swift box up – it’s a north-facing wall so the poor little things won’t get roasted, and if the swifts don’t like it maybe the sparrows will move in. Anyhow, it’s going to be a pretty messy, noisy and stressful few weeks/months, so wish me luck!

Corn Bunting (Emberiza calandra) Photo by By Steve Riall – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17750681

Dear Readers, what a bold, energetic little bird this is! A creature of farmland, its numbers declined drastically between the 1970s and 1980s, though it seems that the population might have stabilised at these new low levels. There have been local extinctions – Corn Buntings are effectively extinct in Ireland, and the small populations in Scotland are increasingly at risk. It doesn’t help conservation efforts that different populations of Corn Buntings are becoming more and more isolated, and that different groups of birds seem to need different conditions.

It’s not for want of trying to survive on the Corn Bunting’s part though – one male had 18 partners in a single season, and the males sit at the top of a tall weed or fence post and sing their heads off for hours. The song is described by the Crossley Guide as ‘like the jangle of keys being shaken, starts slow and accelerates’. See what you think (recording by Jarek Matusiak)

Although the Corn Bunting is another ‘little brown job’, there are a few things that distinguish it from other similar birds. First up, it flies with its legs dangling. Secondly, it is described (again in the Crossley Guide) as a ‘plump, streaky, rather featureless songbird with a big head, short tail without white sides and very thick pink bill with S-shaped cutting edge’. In fact, the Corn Bunting is the ur- Bunting, the classic example of the group. The word ‘Bunting’ used to mean a plump or thickset person (hence the nursery rhyme ‘Bye Baby Bunting’). The bird is thought to have arrived in the UK as a consequence of the woodland clearance by Neolithic and Bronze Age farmers, and has always been associated with cereal production – the fields provided seed, invertebrates, a nesting habitat and protection from predators.

Corn Bunting (Photo by Antonio Pena at https://www.flickr.com/photos/anpena/46783480884/)

Nesting on the ground makes Corn Buntings  particularly susceptible to predators. As I’ve mentioned before, the shooting (and dumping) of pheasants means that there are large amounts of food around for animals such as foxes, who have always taken some eggs and chicks, but which will be present in higher numbers because there is so much waste food around. This has been particularly important in the decline of the curlew, but many other farmland and wetland birds are also affected.

What is clear is that the birds need seeds during the winter (particularly weeds/late autumn-sown crops) and where these have been available, the birds do better. Nesting habitat and invertebrates are important in the summer, so all the usual rules about not spraying with pesticides and herbicides apply. It’s always heartening to see that some farmers are trying to restore habitat for farmland birds, who have as a group suffered drastic declines over the past fifty years, and many are provisioning birds over the winter.

This was once the commonest songbird in Shetland, and had a whole raft of local names, as outlined in Birds Britannica:

‘Docken sparrow, docken fool, docken laverock, trussy laverock, shurl, titheree, cornbill, corn-tief and song thrush’.

As the authors of the book (Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey) point out, all these names are now redundant, as the bird is extinct in Scotland. As nature disappears, so vernacular language too is impoverished. What a sorry state of affairs.

Dear Readers,

Today it’s pouring down, which is very bad news for the poor scaffolders who are working at the back and front of the house because we are getting some new windows and having the external decorating done. It’s not all bad, of course – I really enjoyed making this post about a previous rainy day in 2017, and as the first few frogs have appeared in the pond (of which more later) it makes me feel as if spring is just around the corner. But here are a few rain-related poems – do let me know if you have any favourites!

Rain by Don Paterson 

I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score
before the act, before the blame,
before the lens pulls through the frame

to where the woman sits alone
beside a silent telephone
or the dress lies ruined on the grass
or the girl walks off the overpass,

and all things flow out from that source
along their fatal watercourse.
However bad or overlong
such a film can do no wrong,

so when his native twang shows through
or when the boom dips into view
or when her speech starts to betray
its adaptation from a play,

I think to when we opened cold
on a starlit gutter, running gold
with the neon of a drugstore sign
and I’d read into its blazing line:

forget the ink, the milk, the blood –
all was washed clean with the flood
we rose up from the falling waters
the fallen rain’s own sons and daughters

and none of this, none of this matters.

And I know Robert Frost isn’t very fashionable at the moment, but I do rather love this…

Acquainted With the Night by Robert Frost

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain – and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

And this is lovely, by poet Li-Young Lee, someone that I hadn’t come across before…

I Ask My Mother to Sing by Li-Young Lee

She begins, and my grandmother joins her.
Mother and daughter sing like young girls.
If my father were alive, he would play
his accordion and sway like a boat.

I’ve never been in Peking, or the Summer Palace,
nor stood on the great Stone Boat to watch
the rain begin on Kuen Ming Lake, the picnickers
running away in the grass.

But I love to hear it sung;
how the waterlilies fill with rain until
they overturn, spilling water into water,
then rock back, and fill with more,

Both women have begun to cry.
But neither stops her song.

And finally this one, by Conrad Potter Aiken (1889-1973), an American poet that I’d never come across before, but I think I’ll look out some more of his work. Anything that mentions snails can only be a masterpiece in my view…

Beloved, Let Us Once More Praise the Rain by Conrad Potter Aiken

Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.
Let us discover some new alphabet,
For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,
The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,
The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,
And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,—
Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,
Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.
There is an oriole who, upside down,
Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,—
Under a tree as dead and still as lead;
There is a single leaf, in all this heaven
Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:
The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught
Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;
There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom
Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.
The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly
Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock
Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail
Surveys the wet world from a watery stone…
And still the syllables of water whisper:
The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait
In the dark room; and in your heart I find
One silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf,—
Orion in a cobweb, and the World.

Edgeworthia chrysantha in flower in Embankment Gardens this weekend

Dear Readers, a number of you have been telling me about the wonderful scent from the Edgeworthia shrubs that you have in your garden, so when I saw this plant during a walk along the Embankment at the weekend, I had to go in for a sniff. And indeed you weren’t exaggerating – this plant has such a delicious perfume, all the more remarkable on a chilly day. Otherwise known as the paperbush, the plant is named after amateur botanist Michael Pakenham Edgeworth, an Irishman who worked for the East India Company,  and for his sister Maria Edgeworth, herself an accomplished author (born in England, she was said to have been the ‘most celebrated and successful living English writer’ of her day). However, her heart seems to have been in Ireland, where there is not only an Edgeworthstown, but a Maria Edgeworth Center and Festival. This blog does lead me to some most surprising discoveries!

This species of Edgeworthia comes originally from Myanmar and southern/western China, where it grows in forests and on shrubby slopes. Here it is in flower in the Imperial Palace gardens in Tokyo (where it is naturalised). What is so unusual about this plant, to my eyes at least, is that flowers before any leaves appear and so the blossom looks all the more spectacular.

Photo by By Egghead06 at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10752563

Why ‘paperbark’, though? Edgeworthia (known as mitsumata in Japan) is used to make a very special kind of tissue paper, which can be used for repairing any damage or tears in manuscripts or books. It’s also used for Japanese banknotes!

Japanese Tissue made from the bark of the Kozo (Paper Mulberry) tree. This can be repaired with fibres from the Edgeworthia.

Edgeworthia bark and roots are known as ‘Zhu shima‘ in Chinese medicine, and have been shown to have some analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects, while the flowers have been used for eye infections. The chemicals involved in the medicinal effects are derivatives of coumarin, which is the same ingredient which makes the plant smell so good.

Edgeworthia flowers (Photo By 清水五月 (Shimizusatsuki) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9098823)

Edgeworthia is a member of the Thymelaeaceae, a huge family of nearly 900 species and 50 genera. It will probably come as no surprise to hear that it shares the family with that other fragrant winter-flowering shrub, Daphne. Several other members of the family are also used in paper production. However, Edgeworthia chrysantha is unique in having a stem that splits into three identical parts, something that no other living plant is known to do. Don’t you just love botanists, with their attention to detail?