University of Bristol via https://www.newscientist.com/article/2467711-watch-a-cuttlefish-transform-into-a-leaf-and-a-coral-to-hunt-its-prey/

Dear Readers, I am forever amazed by the adaptability and intelligence of cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish and octopi) – in the past year we’ve had stories about octopi hunting in collaboration with fish (and walloping any freeloaders) for example. However, these cuttlefish use their extraordinary colouration, and ability to change shape and colour, to mimic leaves or coral. They also use a pulsing pattern of stripes, which may ‘hypnotise’ prey, or act as a kind of ‘dazzle camouflage’. You can see them in action in the video below:

https://youtu.be/BTNfDMYb5Qg

Scientists are still unsure how the cuttlefish decide which tactic to use: some cephalopods seem to change their colouration and shape according to which prey they’re hunting, but it may also be a way of avoiding predation themselves, as your average cuttlefish makes for a very tasty morsel. But at the moment, we don’t know, and I suspect that there might be a lot of variation between individual cuttlefish too. This particular species, the Broadclub Cuttlefish (Sepia latimanus) lives on and around Pacific coral reefs and mangroves, and the youngsters mimic mangrove leaves. The photos below give an idea of the range of colours that this species can achieve: these are both the same individual, with the pictures taken only a few minutes apart.  What astonishing animals cuttlefish are! And to think that previously I only knew them from the chalky-white object in my budgerigar’s cage.

You can read the research paper here.

Broadclub Cuttlefish (Photo by By Nhobgood Nick Hobgood – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6261651)

By Nhobgood Nick Hobgood – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6261651

Theodore Gericault (1791-1824)(Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Rank (French: Le Monomane du Commandement Militaire), 1822 (Collection Oskar Reinhart am Römerholz, Winterthur)

Dear Readers, today we visited an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery in Somerset House, to see some paintings from the Oskar Reinhart collection. There are examples of the work of all the big name Impressionists here, but as the review in The Guardian suggested, these are generally not as ‘great’ as the ones already in the Courtauld collection. For me, some of the best paintings were actually those who came before or (technically) after the Impressionists, including this portrait by Gericault (above). Gericault is best known for his enormous painting ‘The Wreck of the Medusa’ (well worth a look if you’re in the Louvre), but he also painted a series of portraits of ‘the insane’ from the patients of his friend, Dr Etienne-Jean Gorget, who was a pioneering psychiatrist. The man in the portrait is wearing a policeman’s hat, and the ‘medal’ around his neck identifies him as a patient at the asylum. As in all of this series of paintings, Gericault is able to portray the man as afflicted whilst preserving his dignity as a human being, maybe because there was a history of insanity in Gericault’s family, and his own mental health was fragile.

Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)Ward in the Hospital in Arles, 1889, Oskar Reinhart Collection “Am Römerholz”, Winterthur, Switzerland

There were also two Van Goghs in the exhibition which have never been seen in the UK, both painted in the last years of Van Gogh’s life. Following the artist’s cutting off of his ear, he was taken to a hospital in Arles, where he continued to paint. I rather like the painting above – the stove seems to be almost a character in itself. Both this and the other painting made in Arles (below) have a distinct blue-green tinge to them, and I wonder if this was how Van Gogh saw the world, or if there really was a kind of ‘bottom of the sea’ atmosphere to the hospital.

The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles, 1889, Oskar Reinhart Collection “Am Römerholz”, Winterthur, Switzerland

And finally, a ‘proper’ Impressionist painting – Claude Monet’s ‘The Break Up of Ice on the Seine (1880-81). Monet loved the paint the same scene multiple times, from different angles and in different lights, as if once he found something that interested him he had to explore every facet of it.

Claude Monet (1840 – 1926) The Break Up of Ice on the Seine (1880-81) Oskar Reinhart Collection

I love the way that Monet has managed to show both the reflections and the solidity of the ice, and the coldness of the image almost has me pulling a scarf around my neck.

I enjoyed this exhibition, and it’s really worth wandering around the rest of the collection, which has some Impressionist masterpieces and also, on the first floor, some very interesting Medieval altarpieces – I think after my trip to Ravenna I feel like anything after the end of the first millennia BCE is modern, but there we go. And it was so good to be able to wander around London again, even though I still keep an open for trip hazards, of which there are many.  London is such a gift for the art lover, we are so lucky.

Giant Springtail (Holacanthella spinosa) Photo by By Andy Murray – Holacanthella spinosa (14017688257), CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33671693

Dear Readers, I have always wanted to go to New Zealand – so many interesting plants and flightless birds and fungi! But most of all, there are the invertebrates, and to celebrate them, New Zealand holds a ‘Bug of the Year’ competition, with the results for this year just being announced. So, here are the top three.

In at number three is the Giant Springtail (photo above). You might remember me getting all enthusiastic about springtails a few months ago, but Giant Springtails are found only in New Zealand, and they grow to an impressive 17 mm long. Admittedly that’s not very big, but it is about 17 times longer than your average springtail. Plus, they are very spiny and colourful, some with yellow spines, some with red ones. Sadly, these springtails don’t jump, but instead hang around munching upon dead and decaying wood. They are found only in New Zealand’s old growth forests, where the trees have never been logged, so they are true ‘ancient forest indicators’. Well done, Giant Springtail! Third out of twenty-one nominees is excellent work.

New Zealand Praying Mantis (Orthodera novaezealandiae) Photo by By Bryce McQuillan – DSC_9358E, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6334041

In at number two is the New Zealand Praying Mantis, described as ‘a very active little mantis’ . This is another endemic species, found nowhere else in the wild but in New Zealand. Unlike most praying mantises, the female of the species doesn’t eat the male, although unfortunately there are stories of male New Zealand Praying Mantises mating with females of other, introduced species, who do eat their partners. Could miscommunication get any worse? This insect is a great muncher of flies and other ‘pests’ and has a prodigious appetite for its size (about 40 mm which is smallish for a praying mantis), but alas is affected by pesticides. More mantises and less chemicals, I say.

As you might have gathered from the mention of a pet website above, this species does well in captivity, though I note that the newly-hatched nymphs are said to be extremely fast, and capable of leaping fairly far too. Probably not one for the spare room, then (my husband is tolerant of my funny little ways, but not that tolerant).

So, what won the Bug of the Year 2025? This little critter…

Ngāokeoke | NZ Velvet Worm (Peripatoides novaezealandiae ) Photo by Frupus at https://www.flickr.com/photos/frupus/10853890484)

This is a New Zealand Velvet Worm, yet another endemic species, and a very interesting one. As the name suggests, its skin is velvety to the touch, and it has fifteen pairs of hollow, cone-like ‘legs’ called lobopods. They grow to about 5 cms long, and are usually found beneath or in hollow logs as, like woodlice, they are prone to drying out and can’t manage their own moisture levels – they lose water twice as fast as earthworms, and forty times faster than caterpillars. Earthworms and caterpillars, like velvet worms, breath through trachae, little holes in their sides, but unlike velvet worms they can close the trachae if it gets too dry. Velvet worms are truly creatures of a very limited habitat.

Baby velvet worms are born alive, developing from eggs while in the body of their mother, and in this species they’re pure white when they emerge.

Don’t be taken in by the velvet worm’s rather cuddly exterior, though – this is a voracious nocturnal predator, who tracks their prey and then shoots out a net of slime from their mouth. The slime hardens on contact with air to form a net that encases the prey (which can be anything that you’d find under a log, from a spider to a centipede).

What is a velvet worm, though? Taxonomically it’s thought that velvet worms are closely related to both Arthropods (animals with jointed legs such as spiders, crabs, insects etc) but also to Tardigrades (extremely resilient micro-animals, also known as water bears).

Tardigrade (Water Bear) Photo by By Bryce McQuillan – DSC_9358E, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6334041

So the Velvet Worm, with its squidgy feet, velvety ‘skin’ and lethal slime-throwing, wins New Zealand’s Bug of the Year for this year. And well deserved, I think. Well done, also, to the Entomological Society of New Zealand for publicising the ‘little things that run the world’.

Now, where’s the website for Air New Zealand?

Great Skua (Stercorarius skua) Photo by By Ómar Runólfsson – Great Skwatua – Catharacta skua – SkúmurUploaded by Snowmanradio, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15516838

Dear Readers, here we are at Red List Forty, and we’re just over half way through the 78 birds currently on the UK list of birds of Conservation Concern. Sadly, the list gets longer every year, and at this rate I’ll never get to the end, but here we are. And I thought that this week I’d feature one of the very few birds that I’ve ever been attacked by, though I only have myself to blame.

Great Skuas, like many seabirds, are very protective of their nests, so when we visited the island of Handa, off the west coast of Scotland, I shouldn’t have been surprised that these large birds were watching us with a jaundiced eye as we stumbled along the rocky paths. We were kept well away from the nest sites, but even so some of the parents were not pleased, flying up and then zooming past our ears in a display of aerial acrobatics that was most impressive, even if it made me fear for my sunhat. ‘Bonxies’, as Great Skuas are known across Scotland, are kleptoparasites, and will attack birds as large as gannets in an attempt to make them disgorge the prey that they’re trying to bring home for their nestlings. They are also fearsome predators of smaller seabirds themselves, and also take by-catch from fishing boats. Great Skuas really are piratical birds, big, strong, daring and adaptable. The Crossley Guide (which has something of a sense of humour) describes the Great Skua as a ‘heavy-bodied troublemaker’, and who could argue?

When Great Skuas first arrived in the Northern Isles (as recently as the 18th century) they were welcomed by crofters as these ferocious birds frightened away the ravens and white-tailed eagles who used to prey on their lambs. Alas, it was then found that the Bonxies themselves were eating the lambs, and so the islanders retaliated by taking the Bonxie chicks and fattening them up for the pot. Apparently Great Skua eggs were eaten on the island of Foula as recently as 1970 (illegally, but then it’s a long way to go to make an arrest). It could be argued that until recently there were plenty of Great Skuas to go around – it was estimated that the birds were killing up to 200.000 Kittiwakes every year in the 1990s. This was probably because the birds that the Great Skuas used to steal from, the puffins and gannets, were themselves affected by the crash in the sand eel population, which was one of the foundations of the food chain for all these creatures. Everything is connected, as we know.

Photo by By Erik Christensen – With permission from: Murray Nurse, Guildford , England, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9508570

So why are these seabirds, which were previously not causing any concern with regard to their UK population, suddenly on the Red List? The Great Skua has been badly hit by Avian Flu, with a number of the Scottish populations showing a drastic reduction in numbers. This is especially worrying as about 67% of Great Skuas breed in coastal areas of the UK.  The disease has been devastating for a number of seabird species, with some terns losing an entire generation of fledglings to the disease. Let’s hope that numbers start to recover once the Avian Flu outbreak has peaked.

Photo by By T. Müller – Own work, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1838990

And I’m sure you’re all intrigued to know what a Great Skua sounds like. Here are some of the birds in Iceland, recorded by Stanislas Wroza. They sound rather charming and chucklesome to me.

And so, fingers crossed for this big bully of a bird, apex predator of a complex and dynamic ecosystem. And if you ever go to visit them, keep to the paths, and wear a stout hat.

Dear Readers, as the pond is still frozen it’s a little early to be waiting for the frogs to put in an appearance, but hopefully as the weather warms I might soon see their little faces looking up hopefully from under the duckweed (which is currently under control, but I think that every year). And in the meantime, here is some amphibian-related poetry.

The Frog

By Hilaire Belloc

Be kind and tender to the Frog,
And do not call him names,
As ‘Slimy skin,’ or ‘Polly-wog,’
Or likewise ‘Ugly James,’
Or ‘Gape-a-grin,’ or ‘Toad-gone-wrong,’
Or ‘Billy Bandy-knees’:
The Frog is justly sensitive
To epithets like these.
No animal will more repay
A treatment kind and fair;
At least so lonely people say
Who keep a frog (and, by the way,
They are extremely rare).

And here’s Norman MacCaig, a man who loves frogs almost as much as I do. This is so well-observed.

Norman MacCaig – Frogs

Frogs sit more solid

than anything sits. In mid-leap they are

parachutists falling

in a free fall. They die on roads

with arms across their chests and

heads high.

I love frogs that sit

like Buddha, that fall without

parachutes, that die

like Italian tenors.

Above all, I love them because,

pursued in water, they never

panic so much that they fail

to make stylish triangles

with their ballet dancer’s
legs.

And finally, here’s a poem by Goethe, no less, who clearly didn’t appreciate the vocal qualities of the frog…

The Frogs
by
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A pool was once congeal’d with frost;
The frogs, in its deep waters lost,

No longer dared to croak or spring;
But promised, being half asleep,
If suffer’d to the air to creep,

As very nightingales to sing.

A thaw dissolved the ice so strong,
They proudly steer’d themselves along,
When landed, squatted on the shore,
And croak’d as loudly as before.

Dear Readers, when I was growing up my Mum would always pop a soluble aspirin into the water if she received some cut flowers – this was a very rare occurrence, and so she wanted to make them last as long as possible. But is there actually any evidence that it helps? In New Scientist last week, James Wong went through the science, and very interesting it was too.

As you probably know, aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) is derived from a naturally occurring plant compound, salicylic acid – willows, or Salix, are named for this chemical. In humans it acts as a painkiller, but in plants it acts as a signal that some kind of damage is imminent, through drought, pests or some other threat – Wong describes salicylic acid as a kind of ‘on/off switch’ for the immune system.

Studies have shown that if plants are misted with aspirin, their own defences ‘ramp up’, and this treatment also seems to improve the quality of harvests: one experiment showed an increase in the Vitamin C in tomatoes, while another study showed spraying cherries made them larger, with a higher antioxidant content.

However, the one thing studies haven’t shown is that putting aspirin in to plant water makes the flowers last longer. When compared with pure tap water, there was no difference in the longevity of chrysanthemums or roses. What does seem to make a difference, empirically at least, is a) not having your flowers in a room that’s very warm, b) not keeping your flowers in the kitchen (probably because of proximity to fruit like bananas, which exude ethanol as they ripen – this encourages other fruit and flowers to hasten through their life cycle too), and c) change the water every few days. Let me know if you have any ‘hacks’!

Tiny cucumber spider on cut lilac!

Dear Readers, many wonderful things came about as a result of my broken leg last year, strange as it might sound. I had been lucky enough to have never broken a bone, never spent a night in hospital, never had a general anaesthetic or an operation. I had never been immobilised for so long, or so completely. And I feel as if the experience changed me in a lot of ways, mostly for the better. So, I thought about how I could symbolise the event so that I wouldn’t forget the lessons that I’d learned, and I suddenly remembered that my Facebook friend Joanna Smith, someone that I’d never met, was a jewellery designer.

Joanna and I had chatted a bit online because she followed the blog here, and when she heard about my leg she was a great support, being the proud owner of a titanium implant herself. And as I started to heal, I asked her if she’d be up for collaborating with me to design and create something to commemorate what had happened.

You might remember that I had a spiral fracture, and the image in my head was always one of the bone unpeeling like an orange. And to fix it, I had a piece of titanium implanted through the bone. The spiral being held steady around a metal rod held a lot of resonance for me, for reasons that I’ll try to unpack shortly, but what I especially loved was the design that Joanna came up with – a real rod of heat-treated titanium in the middle so that it glows a discreet blue in certain lights, surrounded by the swirl of silver. The whole pendant has the heft of a reliquary. I haven’t taken it off since I received it a week ago.

So what does it all mean? On the surface, it’s about physical healing, about how a traumatic wound can be brought back under control by a surgical intervention. But it also symbolises how interconnected we are – when I think about all the people who helped me get better, from the medical teams to my friends and relatives who stepped up time and time again, to my good friends here on the blog who offered advice and counsel and taxi rides (thank you Mark!) and support. However independent we like to think we are, we are truly need other people, and I was moved by people’s kindness and generosity over and over again.  When we feel as if we’re spiralling out of control, it’s that solid core of our friends who hold us together.

And the final thing is that the titanium symbolises resilience, the ability to endure and to harness what has happened, in all its swirling complexity, and to make something solid out of it. To allow pain to open our hearts to all the other people in pain, to increase our understanding. I was fortunate because my pain gradually faded, but I know that there are many for whom that’s not the case. The pendant both reminds me that I can come through, and that there are those who are still in the maelstrom, deserving of patience and comfort and support.

And so that’s quite a lot for a little pendant to symbolise, but it does its job quietly and sincerely.

If you’d like to see Joanna’s work, or if there’s something you’d like to commission, you can find her here. Highly recommended, as I’m sure you can tell!

Dear Readers, it’s easy for me to forget that although East Finchley is a relatively modest area by London standards, it’s just around the corner from some truly spectacular houses, including this one, built in 1924 and known as ‘Tudor House’. It has some truly lovely Arts and Crafts details, and its location, just around the corner from Highgate Wood on Lanchester Road, means that it seems to have attracted the attention of some high-profile folk.

As I stood on the pavement taking a few photos (and being glared at by at least one passerby), I had no idea that this was formerly the home of legendary popstar Liam Gallagher and his missus until last year, when it appears to have been sold again. When it was sold to Mr Gallagher in  2019 it looked like a truly stunning house that had been renovated with great love and care by the previous owner – have a look at the brocIhure that was created at the time here.

I have no idea what’s going on at the moment – the front garden seems to be undergoing a drastic renovation, but who knows what’s going on inside? I just hope it’s as sympathetic as the previous work. The property is on Haringey’s ‘Local Heritage’ list but doesn’t appear to be listed, so won’t have any particular protections. However, the good burghers of Highgate are a ferocious lot, very knowledgeable and keen to preserve their environment, so fingers crossed they’re keeping an eye on it.

Oh, and we also spotted this lovely Wolsey Fifteen/Fifty, which apparently dates to between 1956 and 1958. What a beauty, and so obviously well loved and cared for. I imagine a few heads turn when this one is out for a spin! Does it bring back any memories for anyone?

Red-backed Shrike (Crossley Guide)

Dear Readers, the Red-Backed Shrike (Lanius collurio) was once a common visitor to the south of England, and bred here in some numbers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Alas, it is now rare enough to cause a surge in bird watchers when it visits, and with only four breeding pairs in the whole of the United Kingdom over the past few years, it is functionally extinct as a breeding bird.

What happened? Well, you may know shrikes as ‘butcher birds’  – they are formidable predators of more or less any animal smaller than themselves, and the corpses of their victims are impaled on thorns to be eaten later. It’s worth remembering that this is not a large bird – it’s somewhere between the size of a sparrow and a starling. However, what it lacks in size in makes up in attitude.

Red-backed shrike (Photo by Antonios Tsaknakis, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons)

Thomas Bewick, the engraver of birds, suggested that ‘their courage, their appetite for blood and their hooked bill entitle them to be ranked with the boldest and more sanguinary of the rapacious tribe’. Even their Latin name, Lanius, means ‘I tear or rend in pieces’. At the RSPB reserve at Minsmere, Red-backed Shrikes used to fly into Sand Martin nests, take the chicks and impale them on barbed wire, much to the disgust of visitors (Birds Britannica, by Mark Cocker and Dominic Couzens). However, the shrikes favourite food is  large insects – crickets and grasshoppers, fat caterpillars, huge beetles are all taken with great enthusiasm. Alas, we all know what’s been happening to insects of all kinds, let alone the big hunky ones.

Another important factor in earlier years (and possibly even now) was egg-collecting – Red-backed Shrikes have particularly beautiful eggs in a huge variety of colours and patterns, so multiple birds were likely to have their eggs stolen. One notorious collector (again, from Birds Britannica) took almost 900 eggs of this species during a 50 year ‘career’.

However, this is a bird that climate change could actually benefit. The Red-Backed Shrike is widespread in the warmer parts of Europe, and seems to enjoy long, hot summers, so with a bit of habitat recreation maybe these birds could be enticed to recolonise. They are spectacular creatures, and maybe they can be enticed back. A few pairs still choose to breed here every year, so maybe it’s not impossible. And overall, Red-backed Shrikes are not endangered, either in Europe or globally, so at least there’s that.

I’m sure you’d love to hear what a Red-backed Shrike sounds like (just in case one turns up in the garden and starts impaling things), so here you go…it’s surprisingly twittery!

And look, a poem! Oh my goodness. I am struck dumb, for once. See what you think.

Shrike Tree by Lucia Perillo

Most days back then I would walk by the shrike tree,
a dead hawthorn at the base of a hill.
The shrike had pinned smaller birds on the tree’s black thorns
and the sun had stripped them of their feathers.

Some of the dead ones hung at eye level
while some burned holes in the sky overhead.
At least it is honest,
the body apparent
and not rotting in the dirt.

And I, having never seen the shrike at work,
can only imagine how the breasts were driven into the branches.
When I saw him he’d be watching from a different tree
with his mask like Zorro
and the gray cape of his wings.

At first glance he could have been a mockingbird or a jay
if you didn’t take note of how his beak was hooked.
If you didn’t know the ruthlessness of what he did–
ah, but that is a human judgment.

They are mute, of course, a silence at the center of a bigger silence,
these rawhide ornaments, their bald skulls showing.
And notice how I’ve slipped into the present tense
as if they were still with me.

Of course they are still with me.

* * *

They hang there, desiccating
by the trail where I walked, back when I could walk,
before life pinned me on its thorn.
It is ferocious, life, but it must eat,
then leaves us with the artifact.

Which is: these black silhouettes in the midday sun,
strict and jagged, like an Asian script.
A tragedy that is not without its glamour.
Not without the runes of the wizened meat.

Because imagine the luck!–to be plucked from the air,
to be drenched and dried in the sun’s bright voltage–
well, hard luck is luck, nonetheless.
With a chunk of sky in each eye socket.
And the pierced heart strung up like a pearl.