A juvenile Maugean skate. Image: Jane Rucker, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies. From https://tasmanianinquirer.com.au/news/this-is-a-hard-conversation-endangered-maugean-skate-headed-for-extinction-in-a-decade-unless-macquarie-harbour-fish-farms-rested/

Dear Readers, when I was growing up, skate, mashed potatoes and parsley sauce was the dish that tempted me to eat whenever I was ill in bed. It’s an acquired taste, for sure, but the texture of the fish and that intensely fishy flavour made it a favourite, not only when I was ill, but with chips for tea as well. When I was growing up, fish and chips was a cheap dinner, and therein lies the problem. In my own lifetime, skate as I knew it has been pretty much annihilated, and ‘ray’ or ‘skate’ fetches a premium price, as indeed it should when you’re eating an endangered species. Much better to have a look at the Marine Conservation Society’s list of sustainable fish, though be warned, it’s a constantly changing scenario, and I suspect that very few fish are sustainable enough to survive our depredations.

But, lest you think that this is a bad news post, there is some good news about at least one species, the Maugean Skate, dubbed ‘the thylacine of the seas’ by Tasmanian marine scientist Neville Barrett, lives in only one area, where it’s threatened by fish farms, hydroelectric dams and climate change. There are currently only 1000 of these fish, and they are nearly all adults, which means that the juveniles aren’t surviving.

Enter scientist Jayson Semmens and his team. In a desperate attempt to save the fish from extinction, they collected 50 egg cases (skates, rays and dogfish produce those ‘mermaid’s purses’ that you sometimes see on the beach), over half of which turned out to be viable. An adult female that they held in captivity also laid over a hundred eggs.

Photo by Maugean skate Research Team’/University of Tasmania

The team currently have 17 ‘skatelings’, with many more eggs maturing. Work is also going on to try to restore the current habitat – skate live in water with low oxygenation, but the fish farms had made the situation much worse, so there are trials involving pumping oxygen into the water.

This is all great news, although the key thing will be to see if the hatchlings are able to survive in the wild. There is time, though – skate are very slow-growing fish, and the babies are unlikely to be released until they’re thought to be old enough to survive, probably in five or six years time. By then the environment should be cleaned up enough for the skate to survive and thrive.

In these depressing times, it’s always good to know that there are people out there devoting their careers to save a species. Let’s see how things progress.

The New Scientist articles are here and here

Black-tailed Godwit (Limosa limosa) Photo by By Charles J. Sharp – Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography.co.uk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=122718207

Dear Readers, the Black-tailed Godwit is a bird most likely to be seen in muddy estuaries, marshes and wet pasture in winter, when the native subspecies (Limosa limosa limosa) is boosted by Black-tailed Godwits arriving from Iceland (Limosa limosa islandica). And herein lies a tale of two very similar birds, one critically endangered, and one actually expanding its range and doing rather well.

The population of breeding birds of the limosa subspecies is vanishingly small, with less than 50 pairs of birds remaining, mostly in East Anglia. They need flooded meadows and bogs to breed in, but as we know, these are rare, and becoming rarer. Which is a shame, not just for the birds but for us too,  as meadows and wetlands are amongst the best measures for soaking up excessive water. The birds, as ground nesters, are also under severe predation pressure: one factor that I hadn’t considered, and which is also implicated in the falling numbers of curlews, is the increase in animals such as foxes due to the ridiculous number of gamebirds (particularly pheasants) which provide easy pickings, and enable the numbers of predators to grow.  The situation for the limosa birds is so severe that organisations such as the RSPB are ‘head-starting’ some chicks (taking chicks from the nest and rearing them in captivity before releasing them when grown).

To add to their problems, Black-tailed Godwits were considered a great delicacy in the UK right up until Victorian times and 6,000 – 8,000 of the birds are still hunted every year in France (the last European country to do so), although the EU does now have a management plan to try to preserve the species.

The Icelandic birds, on the other hand, breed in Iceland where the areas of lowland, semi-natural grasslands are actually growing due to climate change, and are doing very well.

Black-tailed Godwits are elegant birds, long-legged and long-billed, who immerse their whole heads and beaks to find the small invertebrates that they feed upon. The birds pair for life, but only spend  time together on their breeding grounds – when they migrate they do so separately, with each individual bird being faithful to particular stopping places and wintering grounds (the Icelandic birds go back to Iceland from the UK in spring, while the limosa birds return to the UK from southern Europe/Western Africa). The males display rather splendidly to the females, and defend nesting sites until their mates arrive. If the mate does not appear after a few days, a ‘divorce’ occurs and either party can go off to find another mate.

Displaying male Black-tailed Godwit (Photo By Berend Jan Stijf. – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2163689)

My old favourite source of all things bird, the Crossley Guide, refers to the Black-tailed Godwit as ‘not noisy, making the odd whining ‘wicka‘. See what you think. These birds were recorded in Ireland by Irish Wildlife Sounds. The bird sounds more like a small dog to me!

So, if you visit an estuary or a wetland during the next few months, you may well see some of the Icelandic godwits, probing the mud with their elegant beaks. But to see the UK birds you will need to be in East Anglia, in the summer, and to be very, very lucky.

We’ve had a lot of heavy poetry just lately, so here’s something that made me laugh – see what you think!

Five Years Trying to Win the Flower Show Vegetable Animal Class

By Julia Bird

From https://thewarriormessenger.com/12835/adapting-to-obstacles/why-having-a-new-years-resolution-is-important/

Dear Readers, I’ve never been a fan of New Year’s Resolutions – the middle of winter seems more like a time for hibernating than for busting out some new activities. I’ve been going to pilates for 15 years now, and every January the studio is full of people that are gone by February, so I know how difficult it can be to actually keep going with ‘hard stuff’. Still, it’s always good to think about what the general direction of travel will be in the New Year, and the graphic above is not a bad way to think about things.

So, this year, I plan to:

• See if I can finally find out why I’ve been falling over so much. I have a nerve conduction test on 3rd Feb to see what’s going on neuropathy-wise, and I will be seeing a leg/ankle specialist soon. Mobility feels like the most important priority, because without it it’s so much harder to do other things.
• Learn a bit of German so that I can actually converse with the people in Austria when we visit in July (after my aborted trip last year when I broke my leg en route)
• See more theatre! I’ve already booked for this in February, and this in June. There’s nothing like a live show.
• Do some cat fostering. I still miss our little cat, but in my view a house is not a home without a cat or dog, and I’m sure there will be lots about after Christmas.
• Be diligent with my OU course. There are only two years to go (biology this year and environmental science next year), and I’ve enjoyed sciencing so much!
• Find lots of things to write about for the blog. And maybe catch up with some of my readers that I’d planned to meet in real life in 2024!
• And maybe, finally, finish off that book about my parents, dementia, getting old, etc etc. I think I’ve basically written it, but I need to knock it together….

How about you folks? Do you have any plans for 2025 that you’d like to share?

Mason Alexander Park as Ariel in The Tempest at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

Dear Readers, this was the third time that I’ve seen The Tempest on stage. First up, it was Patrick Stewart who did a run of Shakespeare a few years ago, including Antony and Cleopatra and Macbeth. His Prospero had been marooned somewhere in the Arctic, with Caliban emerging from the body of a dead walrus. So far, so entertaining. Then I saw a high-tech production at The Barbican, with Simon Russell Beale as Prospero – I think of this as the gold standard of The Tempests that I’ve been lucky enough to witness. What was remarkable about this latter production was the clarity of the verse, which is some of the loveliest in all of Shakespeare. “Full fathom five thy father lies” is both beautiful and chilling, and this is the play that “Vanish’d into thin air” comes from. 

And so we go to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, for Jamie Lloyd’s production of the play, starring Alien actress Sigourney Weaver as Prospero. Well, you can’t complain that you don’t see much of Weaver, as she’s seated on stage pretty much throughout the production. Does it make much difference having Prospero as a woman? It maybe adds a maternal dimension to her relationship with her daughter, Miranda (played here by Mara Huf with all the awkwardness and stroppiness of a typical teenager) but although Prospero is actually the ringmaster (mistress) of the play, the one that makes everything happen, she appeared more of a cipher here, a narrator rather than a dynamic part of the action. It’s a shame that it’s only at the end, where she comes forward for the ‘Our revels now are ended’ speech, that we actually notice any emotion. Weaver has had a lot of stick from the reviewers for her rather flat delivery, but I do wonder how much of that is the direction rather than Weaver herself.

The play runs for just over two hours including interval, so a fair amount must have been trimmed. What this means is we get a higher proportion of clowning about from Trinculo and Sebastian, the shipwrecked servants, and Caliban, the ‘mooncalf’, who is for some reason dressed in PVC shorts and a chest harness. Someone described aspects of this production as being like a theatre undergraduate’s first attempt at Shakespeare, which is a bit unkind but not wholly inaccurate.

A very honourable mention here to Mason Alexander Park as Ariel, who manages to combine an ethereal quality with a steely determination to do Prospero’s bidding, in order to finally win their freedom. They have a great singing voice as well, and manage to look cool while dangling from the ceiling, not an easy thing to do. And also to Selina Cadell as Gonzago, who spoke Shakespeare’s verse with more clarity and nuance than anyone else in the production.

So, it was an ‘interesting’ afternoon of theatre, enhanced by the special effects – the stage set looks like a blasted volcanic rock and there is some clever sound work (sometimes at the expense of the verse, sadly). And at the end we had that most irritating of theatrical experiences, the demi-standing ovation, where half the audience springs to their feet (largely to support Weaver I suspect) and the other half wonder if they’d just sat through the same experience.

Sigourney Weaver at the end of The Tempest

Flowering Currant buds

Dear Readers, it might feel a bit early to be thinking about spring (especially as the pond is frozen over again today), but the plants are getting ready for it already, and if you have a close look, you’ll see that lots of shrubs and trees are full of buds, like the Flowering Currant in my garden. It didn’t like the weather at all last year, what with the wet, late spring, but hopefully this year will be better, and we’ll get lots of flowers and hairy-footed flower bees come March.

Male hairy-footed flower bee

There are buds on the ash trees, which look a little like the hooves of miniature deer….

Ash buds

And sticky buds on the horse chestnut – the stickiness is thought to deter insects and to provide a kind of  anti-freeze.

Sadly my Kilmarnock Willow looks as if it’s died, but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for a miraculous resurrection…

And because we’ve reached the Twelfth Day of Christmas, and the decorations are going away for another year (how do the years get so much shorter every cycle, I wonder?), here’s a poem that I’ve always loved, for the buds and for the sow. May we all be re-taught our loveliness this year.

Saint Francis and the Sow

By Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

The garden in December 2022

Dear Readers, the temperature has dropped here in London, and the pond has frozen over for the first time since last winter. The street outside was filled with the sound of windscreens being scraped, and my trip to the coffee shop was enlivened by trying to avoid all the patches of ice created when people wash down their shopfronts, only for the water to freeze into a mini ice-rink. And today we might have snow, which is massively inconvenient as we’re out to the theatre to see Sigourney Weaver as Prospero in ‘The Tempest’ (review to follow). But still, the child in me is always excited by that strange light through the curtains on a snowy day, or the sight of snowflakes billowing down.

Incidentally, why is ‘snowflake’ such an insult, when snowflakes en masse can bring  everything to a halt? Just wondering….

The bird table, 2022

I love that there are certain birds that only ever arrive when it’s snowing – we had a fieldfare in the crab apple tree for a week in the snow of 2011, and  siskins always pop in for a feed when there’s lots of the white stuff, but not at any other time.

Siskins in 2017

The one and only time that I had a brambling in the garden was on a snowy day.

Brambling 2017

But even if it doesn’t snow,  we’re promised sub-zero temperatures on and off for the next week or so, and I’m always stunned by the beauty that’s revealed by ice, especially if one has a hat/gloves/a thick coat/some thermals. Just look at the spiders’ webs from a few years ago, and how the ice reveals their structure in a way that nothing else can. So much beauty! A true small pleasure. It’s hard to get out and about when it’s cold, but it’s absolutely worth it.

Crape Myrtle bark in Huntingdon Road

Dear Readers, in mid winter, when there is precious little in bloom (though see here) and the leaves are largely gone, there’s nothing to distract me from the beauty of the bark  on the street trees around East Finchley. Bark has two main roles – keeping nasty stuff (insects, pollution, fungi etc) out of the tree, and keeping good stuff inside (moisture, heat) when the conditions outside are less than ideal. But the different ways that trees have chosen to do this is a subtle pleasure and a great delight.

The Crape Myrtle is famed for its subtle, smooth bark, as you can see in the photo above.

Silver Birch by Gustav Klimt

The white bark of Silver Birch is rightly celebrated, as in the picture above by Gustav Klimt. Many different willows are being planted as street trees now, and it’s not just the traditional willow species that have interesting bark – have a look at the lattice pattern on this Goat Willow from St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, a sign of a mature tree (Goat Willows can live to be 300 years old).

Goat Willow (Salix capra)

Another startling street tree is the Paperbark Maple – this one was spotted close to East Finchley Cemetery, and  a very fine example it is too. No one knows exactly why the bark peels, but as this tree originates in the mountains of China, one explanation is that the bark is lost because in its native habitat it’s often damaged by UV light exposure at high altitude. It could also be so that the plant can rid itself of parasites, both insect and fungal. But who knows?

Paperbark Maple (Acer griseum)

And while we’re on the subject of maples, how about these Snakebark Maples, from the Cleary Gardens close to St Pauls in the City of London? I found them on one of Paul Wood’s Street Tree Walks which I really love – they make me stop and pay attention, which is always a good thing.

Snakebark Maple in the Cleary Gardens

The shiny polished bark of the Tibetan Cherry is another favourite – this one is in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, but these are popular street trees, so keep an eye open.

Tibetan Cherry (Prunus serrula)

And maples aren’t the only ‘paperbark’ trees – here are some Chinese Red Birches (Betula albosinensis) – these are becoming quite popular as street trees in London. Paul Wood mentions that young trees have the ‘red’ trunk but that the tree becomes increasingly white with age.

Chinese Red Birch (Betula albosinensis)

Of course, the one tree that every Londoner is familiar with is the London Plane, and with the idea that it sheds its bark to rid itself of pollution, but during periods of high temperature and drought it will  shed in bucketloads. You can see this most clearly in the photo of the London Plane in Toronto (below) – it was so white that I failed to identify it as a London Plane until I wandered over for a closer look.

London Plane in Toronto, practically white after losing most of its outer bark

London Plane tree during the drought of 2018

Sometimes it isn’t the patterning of the bark, but something else that attracts the attention and helps to identify the tree. For example, Whitebeam trees are known for their habit of ‘spiralling’, as in this tree seen on Paul Wood’s street tree walk around Archway in North London.

Whitebeam in the Whitehall Estate, Archway

And when trees have been coppiced you can get a kind of ‘slow ballet’ effect, as with the muscular hornbeams of Coldfall and Cherry Tree  Wood, though here it looks a bit as if the two central trees are tangoing.

Coppiced Hornbeam in Coldfall Wood

Coldfall Wood during the ‘golden hour’ of late afternoon.

So, although Christmas is over, and the New Year has started, it’s always worth taking a slow meander, especially on a cold, sunny day, to see what you can see. Bark is something of a wonder, and an overlooked one at that. So see what you can see, and report back if you spot anything interesting!

Dear Readers, I spotted this London Plane on New Year’s Eve, a time when we are meant to be considering the year that has gone, and looking forward to the year to come. What a magnificent beast the tree is! Probably planted when Bedford Square was originally built (around  1775), the tree has grown and grown and is starting to gobble up the insolent metal fence that is supposed to contain it. As it oozes out onto the flagstones at a rate of a centimetre or so every few years, I wonder when it will stop. Will it eat the Georgian houses opposite? Will the whole of London eventually be one giant tree? There are worse fates, for sure.

Over the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about resilience. There’s the street tree cut back to a stump, which is regenerating on Fortis Green. There are the weeds that are flowering in December, regardless of whether there’s anything about to pollinate them. And on the personal front, there’s my broken leg, which is about 90 percent back to normal now, I’d say, in spite of its rather horrible fracture.

Plus I’m really, really hoping to see some green on my whitebeam and hawthorn trees come the spring. Fingers crossed!

It’s a funny old thing, resilience. As I’ve learned with my leg, it’s both about pushing yourself and knowing  when to rest and give yourself a break (not literally of course). It’s about the gradual but consistent application of pushback, whether it’s against a metal fence or a government. It’s about determining where your energies are best deployed, and about not trying to do everything at once. Nature knows this – the roots of a plant can find their way through concrete, and it’s the thing that you do everyday for five minutes, without thinking almost, that will make the difference in the end.

And here is a most uncharacteristic poem by Sylvia Plath that I hadn’t come across before – I think it sums up everything that I’m thinking about at the moment. In what is likely to be yet another ‘interesting’ year, let us all summon up our inner fungi.

Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot’s in the door.