Bugwoman Goes to the Ballet!

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Royal Opera House

Dear Readers, on Wednesday night I headed into Covent Garden to get some long-overdue culture. I used to go to the National Theatre every few weeks to take in a matinee of something or other, but somehow, since lockdown, I don’t seem to have gotten back in the way of it all. So, it was quite something to find myself at the Royal Opera House, for one of the performances celebrating Frederick Ashton, the founding choreographer of the Royal Ballet. My friend S, who not only loves watching ballet but goes to ballet classes four times per week, tells me that Ashton is most famous for the way that he matches the choreography of the ballet to the music, and you could really see this in the performances – the way that the movement of a hand or a sequence of steps combines with the music, at its best, is as sharp as a tack. It does make Ashton’s ballets technically challenging, however, as we saw.

The programme was of three short pieces: first up was Rendezvous, a light-hearted and witty piece about friends meeting in a park with costumes by Jasper Conran and a general mood of flirtatiousness. I confess that I haven’t been to a ballet since I was about eighteen, so I spent most of this section wondering how on earth the dancers did it. How did the chaps just pick up the women as if they were gossamer? How did the women do that pointy-toe thing for so long? Would my size eight feet have made me too tall to be a ballerina as I would have been six feet six inches tall on my tippy toes? And of all the colours in the universe, why would someone make a grey tutu? But in general I was transported and amazed, which is pretty good for a Wednesday night, especially as I usually go to bed at 9.30 and the show ran until 10.45.

Then it was ‘The Dream’, a retelling of Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Mendelssohn’s lovely music. The role of Oberon is said to be one of the most difficult in ballet, although in this performance I think he was outshone by a leaping, feather-light Puck. I know nothing about ballet, but I do get a sense of when someone isn’t quite at home, whether the performer wasn’t feeling well, wasn’t that confident in what was possibly a new role, or was just having an off night. There’s something about the way that a role is inhabited, whether in dance or theatre, that helps you to suspend your disbelief and sink into what’s going on, however unlikely. After all, this is a piece about how the Queen of the Fairies falls in love with a donkey.

The last piece was ‘Rhapsody’, with a score by Rachmaninoff. I know this is my friend’s favourite Ashton piece: it was choreographed with the physicality of Mikhail Baryshnikov in mind, and it involves a ridiculous amount of leaping/turning/general high voltage activity. The dancer in the role on the night that we saw it was technically brilliant, but much more delicate – he was lovely in the pas de deux, tender enough to move me to tears, but in the solo parts he didn’t seem quite right. He would have been a superb Ariel, or indeed Puck. Maybe just a bit of a miscast?

And any ballet buffs out there are welcome to tell me exactly why I’m wrong. This is very much a civilian first impression.

But did I love it? Yes, I did! The evening sprinted past, and I didn’t even mind getting to bed after midnight. It made me feel as if I should do lots more things. After all, London is such a extraordinary place, and I am retired now, you know. So who knows what’s next? Watch this space…

 

 

Notes on a Windowbox Meadow

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Rough Hawkbit (Crepis biennis)

Dear Readers, you might remember that I’m growing a mini-meadow in a windowbox for the East Finchley Festival on Sunday. Largely, things are going pretty well – the selfheal and the rough hawkbit are both in flower, with yarrow and meadow vetchling not far behind. However, there’s something very interesting going on on the goatsbeard (I will be giving it a good wash before it’s put on the stall on on Sunday).

You can see that the ants have been hard at work, moving the black aphids around. The aphids have been producing barrel-loads of honeydew, you can see it caked on the leaves and forming a kind of sugar crust on some areas of the stem (above).

But wait, what is this?

This tiny blue and red insect is a jewel wasp (Chrysis ignita species). I only wish that my camera could have caught the true brilliance of this tiny creature, with its turquoise thorax and bright red abdomen. You would have thought it was made of molten metal.

 

Jewel wasps are actually cuckoo wasps – they lay their eggs in the nests of other insects, usually other wasps or mason bees. This is a dangerous way of carrying on, as you can imagine, so the wasp has a number of defences – it has a hollow stomach, which means that it can roll up into a tight ball if attacked by an angry bee, and it also has a sting, though this is not venomous, so it ‘stabs’ an attacker, but can’t poison it.

You can see the jewel wasp in flight bottom right of the photo.

At first I wondered if the wasp was planning on munching on the aphids, but after a while I realised that it was much more interested in the honeydew – the ants who were ‘farming’ the aphids didn’t like this, and would drive the wasp off whenever it tried to land. Eventually the wasp gave up and sat on a self-heal leaf for a bit. In the photo below you can make out that shiny red bottom.

What fascinates me is how a tiny collection of ten meadow plants can become an ecosystem in just a few weeks, and this was after less than twenty minutes observation. Who knows what else goes on? And I am full of questions – why is only the goatsbeard covered in aphids, and everything else looks fine? Are these the same ants that have recently put in an appearance on my living room floor? And what will happen after I’ve washed the aphids off? I shall keep you posted…

Ermines in the Bird Cherry

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Net of the Bird-Cherry Ermine (Yponomeuta evonymella)

Dear Readers, I’ve written about the Bird-Cherry Ermine moth before, but during a walk with my friend L today I finally saw some of the tiny moths emerging. We were in Cherry Tree Wood in East Finchley – it used to be known as Dirthouse Wood because  nightsoil and horse manure used to be collected at the site of the Old White Lion pub just across the road, but Cherry Tree Wood, presumably referring to the Bird Cherry trees, is obviously much more inviting.

Bird Cherries in Flower

I love the way that the flowers of the Bird Cherry look like fireworks exploding out of the tree, but I honestly don’t begrudge the Ermine Moth caterpillars their meal. Some years there are a lot of them, but in other years they’re barely there. And just look how pretty they are when they hatch.

Here’s a rather clearer photo:

Bird-Cherry Ermine (Photo Ivar Leidus, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons)

These tiny moths are nocturnal, and at this time are subject to predation by bats. Furthermore, they’re completely deaf, so aren’t able to hear any incoming predators. However, an interesting study has shown that Bird Cherry Ermine moths, and some other closely-related species, produce ultrasound clicks during flight that are similar to those used by tiger moths. But why? Tiger moths contain compounds which are distasteful to birds and bats. During the day, their bright colouration means that birds avoid them, but at night they produce clicks that warn bats not to eat them. The Bird Cherry tree that the caterpillar feeds on contains compounds that can be converted to hydrogen cyanide during the digestion process, so it appears that the Bird Cherry Ermine moths are also producing warning sounds. Furthermore, these sounds are faint enough so that they won’t advertise the presence of the moths to the bats, but loud enough that the bat can hear them before it actually chomps the moth.

You can read the whole paper here, and very fascinating it is too (plus it’s rather more accessible to the non-specialist than many research articles). As the authors say, we know so little about the acoustic arms race between bats and flying insects that’s going on in the skies.

Wednesday Weed – Pyramidal Orchid

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Dear Readers, over the years I’ve found a lot of unexpected plants in East Finchley, but this Pyramidal Orchid ( Anacamptis pyramidalis) was the most unexpected. It was growing in a tiny triangle of rough grass in the middle of a car park (forgive me for being a little coy  about the exact location, but I don’t want some eejit to pick it). My friend L spotted it at the weekend, and we are both astonished – we can only think that it’s growing because it’s in a remnant of the meadow that existed way before the tarmac went down. The seeds of Pyramidal Orchid don’t contain enough food to germinate on their own, so they go into partnership with a soil fungus.

Darwin was fascinated by orchids, and discovered that the pollen in orchids is clumped into little coherent ‘blobs’ known as pollinia. These then attach to the tongues of moths and butterflies and are transferred to the next orchid that the insect visits. Below is Darwin’s own drawing of the pollinia attached to the tongue of a butterfly. What an amazing scientist Darwin was, and what a debt we owe him.

Pyramidal orchids can be found throughout western Eurasia, and one of their strongholds is on the chalky soils of the Isle of Wight. They do like disturbed soils, so they can sometimes also be found on road verges and quarries, presumably where the fungi that they rely on to thrive can also be found. And of course, there is now at least one in East Finchley too, though just the one as far as I can see, having had a good walk around the vicinity to see if I could see any more.

As with all orchids, the individual flowers are very interestingly shaped, as you can see from the close-up below. As you might guess from the name, the flowerhead as a whole is pyramid- shaped.

Photo By Hectonichus – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15709806

When I look at a Pyramidal Orchid the thought ‘ooh that might be tasty’ doesn’t immediately occur to me, but in fact the root of this plant and various other orchid species are used to make a white, starchy powder called salep. Orchid roots have always been considered as powerful aphrodisiacs and fertility-enhancers (the word ‘orchid’ comes from the Ancient Greek for ‘testicle’, which the roots were thought to resemble). The Ancient Romans used the root of Pyramidal Orchid and other orchids to make drinks called ‘Satyrion‘ and ‘Priapiscus‘, both of which were thought to act to improve ‘performance’ (and I don’t mean in the 100 metres). Paracelsus, the ‘Father of Toxicology’ wrote:

“behold the Satyrion root, is it not formed like the male privy parts? No one can deny this. Accordingly, magic discovered it and revealed that it can restore a man’s virility and passion”

In the Ottoman Empire, the root was used to make a drink for young women in order to fatten them up before marriage. The drink then spread to the UK and Europe as an alternative to tea and coffee – in the UK it was known as ‘saloop‘. It was thought to cure ‘chronic alcoholic inebriety’ and, more shamefully, venereal disease, which meant that drinking it in public became a source of embarrassment. The drink was increasingly associated with ‘the lower orders’ – note that someone is drinking out of a saucer in the Rowlandson cartoon below. My mother used to drink her tea out of a saucer if it was too hot, so clearly she hadn’t got the memo.

A cartoon by Rowlandson, showing the lower orders drinking saloop. This file has been provided by the British Library from its digital collections.Catalogue entry., CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31452779

Salep became so popular that it became illegal in Turkey to export it , due to the decline in wild orchid populations. However, the attention of the salep sellers has now turned to the orchids of Iran, where it was estimated that between 7 and 11 million orchids of nineteen species and sub-species were collected from northern Iran in 2013. Yikes! As we know there’s no price people won’t pay for sexual enhancement (see also tiger bone and gorilla meat), and this in the age of Viagra. Sigh.

And oh my goodness! Here’s a poem, by Peter Daniels. It won first prize in the Arvon International Poetry Competition back in 2008, and it feels even more apposite today. See what you think.

Shoreditch Orchid by Peter Daniels

They’re grubbing up the old modern
rusty concrete lampposts,
with a special orange grab
on a fixture removal unit.
The planters come up behind
with new old lampposts in lamppost green,
and bury each root in a freshly-dug hole.
The bus can’t get past, brooding in vibrations.
We’re stuck at the half-refurbished
late-Georgian crescent of handbag wholesalers.
The window won’t open. The man behind me
whistles “What a Wonderful World”,
and I think to myself:

Any day soon
the rubble will be sifted; the streets all swept,
and we’ll be aboard a millennium tram ride,
the smooth one we’ve been promised, with a while yet to go
until the rising sea and the exterminating meteor,
but close before the war
starting with the robocar disaster.
And when the millennium crumbles,
I’ll be squinting through the corrugated fence
at the wreck of the mayor’s armoured vehicle, upside down
where they dumped the files of the Inner City Partnership;
and as I kick an old kerbstone
I’ll find you, Shoreditch orchid, true and shy,
rooting in the meadow streets
through old cable, broken porcelain, rivets and springs;
living off the bones of the railway.
You’ll make your entry unannounced,
in the distraction of buddleia throwing its slender legs
out in the air from nothing,
from off the highest parapets, cheap
attention-seeking shrub from somewhere
like nowhere. But here
you’ll identify your own private genes,
a quiet specimen-bloom seeded in junk,
and no use to any of us; only an intricate bee-trap
composed in simple waxy petals, waiting
for the bees to reinvent their appetite.

We’ll be waiting for the maps to kindle
as we get settled, where we find ourselves
undiscovering the city,
its lost works, disestablished
under the bridges. There’s no more bargaining
for melons and good brass buttons.
We share your niche
and crouch as the falling sun
shines through smoke, and the lampposts
fail to light the night to the place all buses go.

 

A Visit to Tunnel Gardens

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Dear Readers, it’s always exciting to discover a completely new green space, especially when it’s close to home, and relatively unknown. And so, on Monday I took a walk through Tunnel Gardens with my friend S. Tunnel Gardens is very close to the Sunshine Garden Centre in Bounds Green, and is so named because it is on top of the railway tunnel between Alexandra Palace and New Southgate. It is an area of oak, hawthorn, ash, horse chestnut and a single eucalyptus, along with lots of wildlife-friendly brambles, and some open meadow spaces, plus a few surprises.

At the Bounds Green end you can see the remains of the walls that would have held terraced beds and other garden features.

There’s a small patch of stinking iris, which could be ‘natural’ or the remnant of planting…

…and then some brambles in full flower and absolutely abuzz with bees. There will be blackberries by the bucket load in a few months!

And then the hogweed is also in flower. The flowerheads are well worth a second look.

Hang on though, who’s this?

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a fox, so this was a lovely brief encounter…

As we walk on, the smell of roses fills the air, and this huge rose bush comes into view. I suspect it’s a ‘domesticated’ rose, judging by the way that it’s festooned with flowers.

And here’s that eucalyptus, no doubt a garden escapee.

Then there’s a meadow area, with ox-eye daisies, meadow cranesbill, teasel, and goatsbeard…

All too soon, we come to the end of the path…

But then  we find this fenced-off area, and an interesting story emerges.

This area was cleared illegally by a developer during lockdown, who went as far as to pour a concrete slab. The people who lived locally were not impressed, and pursued the case with Network Rail and with Haringey Council, until eventually it transpired that this little patch of green was owned by the railway, and they’d be prepared to lease it to a local group to make a meadow and a green space.  Hence, Friends of Hillside Green Space was born, and there is now a pond and a nice variety of wildflowers. It just goes to show what can be done when a group of determined people get together.

Foxglove

Melilot

Red Valerian

While we were checking the site out, we had a chat with a very nice man who had just moved into the area. He had the most relaxed dog that I’ve ever seen.

And finally we paused to look at the railway line as it enters the tunnel. Once upon a time, S used to pause to watch the trains with her son when he was a child. What is it about trains that still quickens the pulse even today, or is it just me? Maybe it’s the promise of travel to other places, that sense of escape. But my walk today proves that you can find something new and  have an adventure just a short bus ride from your house. It makes me wonder what else I might find.

Remembering the Professional Whistler on Father’s Day

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Dad at the Marina close to Minnesota

Dear Readers, I was sitting on the top deck of a bus en route to the Museum of Barnet on Saturday when I heard a sound that I thought had been consigned to the past. The man sitting at the front of the top deck was looking pensively out of the window at the driving rain (well, it is June after all) and occasionally whistling what sounded like an excerpt from ‘You Are My Sunshine’. Ah, how the memories flooded back, as you’ll see from my piece below, written in 2021. 

I am trying to forget about Father’s Day, but of course I don’t want to forget my father. Father’s Day could often be a bit fraught, as Dad was impossible to buy for because he didn’t want anything. His only vice, latterly, was creme caramel (a bit difficult to send in the post) . Plus, on one occasion when I phoned to wish him Happy Father’s Day, he announced that he was too young to have any children and put the phone down. When questioned by the nurse it transpired that rather than being in his eighties, he was a young lad of 21. 

As the years go on, the sharpness of grief largely eases, but the ache remains, ready to be nudged into consciousness by a complete stranger and his tuneless whistling. If I close my eyes, I can nearly hear Dad’s all time most terrible rendition – a version of ‘She’ by Charles Aznavour, not an easy tune to start with but made all the more surprising by Dad attempting to whistle in a French accent . If you are finding that difficult to imagine, then count yourself lucky. But how I miss him! And for more on the subject of whistling, read on…

Dear Readers, whatever happened to whistling? When I was growing up, everyone seemed to do it. Paperboys whistled on their rounds. Van drivers wolf whistled out of their windows at any female between 11 and 65 (these days they yell obscenities which is hardly an improvement). To attract a friend’s attention, you put two fingers in your mouth and emitted a startlingly loud blast (which I could never do, but was impressed by those who could). Nowadays the paper boys (those who are left now that we all read the news online) listen to music on their phones rather than making it, and I suspect most people never learn to whistle in the first place. The only living things whistling on my street are the starlings.

Dad was a long-established whistler. He would put a Nana Mouskouri or Demis Roussos record on the player, and would tap along for the first thirty seconds. My brother and I would wait for the inevitable. Dad would pucker up and join in, invariably half a bar late and with a tune that only roughly approximated what was actually happening. Sometimes he would stop and give it another bash, and on other occasions he would rush to try to catch up. We were often in silent stitches by the end of the performance, but Dad would always look quietly content, as if the race had been difficult but he’d got there in the end.

I don’t remember the last time I heard Dad whistle. It might have been around the time that he was diagnosed with COPD, but for years he’d barely had the breath to sit in his reclining chair comfortably. As his health, and Mum’s, declined, there was precious little to whistle about. But when I had lunch with him in the home in March last year, they were playing Spanish music and serving Spanish food, and I saw him tapping along with Julio Iglesias. He puckered up at one point, as if about to start, but then the Spanish chicken turned up and he set to with enthusiasm. It was the last time that I ever ate with Dad, or had a proper conversation with him, because he died on 31st March. The tuneless whistler was finally silenced, and there will never be a performance like it again.

How amused Dad would have been to hear that there is such a thing as a professional whistler! I thought of him when I read this piece in The Guardian yesterday. Here’s an excerpt:

‘Sitting by the deathbed of the Hollywood veteran Harry Dean Stanton, professional whistler Molly Lewis delivered her most poignant performance to date. The Australian-born musician whistled otherworldly versions of Danny Boy and Just a Closer Walk from Thee, the gospel ballad Stanton croons in 1967’s Cool Hand Luke. “He kissed my hand – it was such a beautiful moment”, remembers Lewis of her intimate 2017 performance”.

So, naturally I had to have a listen myself. For your delectation, here is the video for Lewis’s 2021 single ‘Oceanic Feeling’. I think the sound is utterly beautiful, but it might be better listened to rather than watched – it’s difficult not to be distracted by the comic appearance of someone whistling.  See what you think!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ6vuWFxvGM

 

At The Barnet Museum

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Dear Readers, I have lived in the London Borough of Barnet for nearly fifteen years, but yesterday I realised that I’d never been to the Barnet Museum. Located in Chipping Barnet (closest station: High Barnet) this is an extraordinary collection of ‘stuff’ that has been donated and found over the years. Unlike many museums, this is run entirely by volunteers, and what a cheery, informative and knowledgeable lot they are! The building (which used to be the Brewmaster’s house for the local brewery) is absolutely stuffed to the gunnels with everything from cannonballs from the Battle of Barnet (1471) through WWI and WW2 paraphernalia, from Pearly King and Queen outfits to the Barnet Ventilator. Here are just a few of my personal highlights.

The Battle of Barnet was part of the Wars of the Roses, and no one is quite sure where it was actually fought. There’s a Battle of Barnet guided walk pretty much every year, so I shall gird my loins and go along next time.

Upstairs there’s a sign for the Barnet Horse Fair ( no dogs or chickens  for sale). At one point (1834 to be precise), this was the UK’s largest cattle market, with over 40,000 animals for sale. These days it’s still a fair, but features carousels and helter-skelters rather than  livestock. And incidentally, for anyone interested in Cockney rhyming slang, ‘Barnet Fair’ = hair (these days usually shortened to ‘Barnet’.

And how about this sign? My mother and grandmother were evacuated to Slough during WWII. Having not seen a single bomb in Stratford, East London, an incendiary device landed outside their place of refuge on the first night that they were there. They were back in London by the end of the week.

Below is a model of the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum, which had the longest straight corridor in Britain  when it was built – it would apparently take a visitor two hours to walk from one end to the other. 2,500 unfortunate people were ‘housed’ here when it opened in 1850. It was finally closed in 1989 when someone had the bright idea of ‘Care in the Community’. Amongst its patients were Adam Ant and the author Jenny Diski, and Lindsay Anderson’s film  ‘Britannia Hospital’ featured the exterior of the building. Nowadays the building is ‘Princess Park Manor’ and has been converted into luxury flats.

A model of Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum

The building in 2017 (Photo By Philafrenzy – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60289604)

More cheerfully, here are some examples of the Barnet Ventilator. You’ll note that it appears to have saved the life of the young Elizabeth Taylor – she became ill with pneumonia when filming ‘Cleopatra’ with Richard Burton in Pinewood Studios. She was rushed to Barnet Hospital, and was apparently intubated for three days. The machine was so new that the hospital had four of them made ready in case one of them broke down. Taylor recovered, and the rest of the filming was done in the sunnier climes of Italy and Spain.

And how about this? I had a desk identical to this when I was at primary school (Park  Primary in Newham). One of us used to be the ink monitor, and their job was to keep the inkwells topped up. And this was in 1965 lest you think  I’m the longest-lived Victorian in the world.

There are some interesting artifacts from both world wars. From WWI, there are examples of the medals that were sent to the bereaved parents or wives of soldiers who had been killed, along with a letter commemorating them.

From the Second World War, there are maps of the bomb damage around High Barnet. It seems like a lot of bombs for what was a pretty leafy suburb at the time, but there was a railway, and I imagine that no pilot wanted to return to Germany without dropping their full complement of explosives.

There were gas masks that you could put your baby into…

And ‘Micky Mouse’ and ‘Donald Duck’ gas masks for children. My mother remembers skipping off to Park school (yes, the same one that I went to) with her gas mask in a little bag. She also remembers being in the underground cloakroom with the teachers and all the other children while a bombing raid was going on, singing endless verses of ‘Ten Green Bottles’. How parents sent their children off to school every day, not knowing if they would ever see them again, and how the teachers held their nerve is worthy of some consideration, I think.

On a much more cheer note, this is a Victorian Overmantel – I’ve been looking for one to go above my fireplace for the past fifteen years, so if anyone notices one, give me a shout!

And finally, here are the costumes of the Pearly King and Queen of Barnet. I’ve written about Pearly Kings and Queens before (in particular Henry Croft, the first ‘Pearly King’ who is buried in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery). In Barnet, the Pearly King was Jack Hammond, with his wife and daughter being the Pearly Queen and Pearly Princess. The horseshoes on the costumes refer to Barnet Horse Fair (as described above), Each of the pearl buttons was sewed on by hand, and the Pearly King costume weighs in at 32lbs.

So, it was well worth jumping on the 263 bus to Barnet to see the Museum, and I was so impressed by the sheer amount of local history here, and by the sheer enthusiasm of the volunteers. There are events on regularly at the Museum, and if you’re a North Londoner I can heartily recommend a visit. We don’t have to go into central London to learn about our community and our history.

You can read all about Barnet Museum here.

A Pill for Pigeons?

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Pigeons at Bunhill Fields in the City of London

Dear Readers, I was reading an interesting article in The Guardian today, and thought I’d find out what you think (and share some of my thoughts). It appears that scientists are working very hard to find a way of persuading various ‘pest’ and ‘invasive’ species, from feral pigeons to grey squirrels to wild boar, to ingest contraceptives in order to control their numbers. This is the ‘holy grail’ of control methods, but it remains to be seen how practical or effective it will be, and also whether there will be unintentional side effects.

Some species of animal, such as the grey squirrel, have become an intrinsic part of the wildlife of the UK, but they are associated with the decline of the red squirrel and blamed for £37m worth of damage to timber through bark stripping. A study, that proposes using contraceptives in hazelnut spread, is aiming to find a more humane way of reducing the number of squirrels than trapping or shooting. One problem has been finding a hopper that can only be opened by grey squirrels, so that it could be used in areas where both red and grey squirrels are present. In spite of the headline for The Guardian article, no contraceptives have yet been used in the field, while research  continues to see which levels of the medication would be safest and most effective.

The University of York is hosting the first ever workshop on Wildlife Fertility Control, looking at not just the issue of contraceptives for squirrels, but also for pigeons, parakeets, rats, wild boar and deer. Contraceptives have been used with wild boar in Europe, but at the moment it involves delivering the drug by injection – clearly, an oral contraceptive would be cheaper and less dangerous for humans and animals. Contraception has also been used on elephants in the Kruger National Park in South Africa.

However, I have questions. First up, there is a clear correlation between pigeon numbers and the amount of food available to them – reduce the food, and you get less pigeons. It seems as if better litter bins and less waste food would bring down the number of birds over time, without having to resort to feeding them ‘the pill’. This is probably also the case with a number of other species. Shouldn’t we simply be a bit tidier and less messy?

More worrying, for me, is the potential impact on not only the animals who ingest the contraceptive, but also on the animals that feed on them. What if a peregrine falcon eats a pigeon who has been treated with ‘the pill’, or an owl picks off a rat who has been similarly treated? Of course, the use of poisonous chemicals to kill ‘pest’ animals, particularly rodents, also has a terrible effect on their predators, but the cumulative effect of eating prey animals laced with contraceptive may also have an effect on the breeding potential of some of our rarest birds of prey.

And finally, the effect of human urine that contains the residue from the contraceptive pill and ends up in our rivers has been shown to have a feminising effect on the fish who swim there.

As with so many things, we’ve made a massive mess by moving animals from one place to another, and providing the conditions that have resulted in some animals proliferating without any natural controls. Using a contraceptive is one way to try to sort things out, but it will undoubtedly have side-effects, both predicted and otherwise. It will be interesting to see if any of these research projects actually result in reducing the numbers of the targeted species, or if nature will, as usual, find a way around human controls.

What do you think, Readers?

 

Little Things…

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Dear Readers, as you might remember I HAVE RETIRED (not sure if I mentioned that before 🙂 ) but my husband is still slaving away doing about 55 hours a week, so every lunch we try to get out for a walk around the County Roads here in East Finchley. And do you know, there’s always something to see? Today, for example, this little tabby cat was absolutely fascinated by something lurking under the paving stone. A mouse? Or just the sound of the water running? Who knows, but puss wasn’t responding to any of my usual enticements, so on we went…

Someone has planted some lovely spotted loosestrife. There is in fact a yellow loosestrife bee that feeds on this and similar species, so I shall be paying close attention just in case.

How much do I love ivy-leaved toadflax? Enough to take this portrait of this single plant. I love the way that it takes advantage of any old wall.

And then, on Hertford Road, there is the most magnificent tumbling, cascading pink rose. What a beauty.

And in a tree pit just up the road, there’s some purple toadflax, another favourite with bumblebees.

And then there’s this tree fern. The man from the house next door said that this garden put his to shame, though actually I think his garden was more nature-friendly. How we always love to apologise for our gardens/houses/etc, when actually they’re perfectly fine and dandy! Anyhow, it appears that the tree fern is a very fast grower. I love the way that the leaves unfurl (the ‘bud’ is known as a crozier), and the fractal thing that goes on, with the big leaf containing lots of identical smaller leaves.

There are some of these deep purple species geraniums – Mum and Dad used to have them at the bungalow in Milborne St Andrew, and they always make me smile. They were Dad’s pride and joy (along with the roses). I should point out that Mum always asked the man who came to help with the garden if he would mow around the daisies, and bless him, he always did.

There seems to be a fine crop of miniature sedum roofs to hide the fine collection of wheelie bins that each house now has – at least two, and sometimes three of them. It’s another habitat, for sure, though I wonder if we couldn’t think of other things to plant too – maybe a few wildflowers would add to the biodiversity? They are a great improvement on a row of bins, though (which is what I currently have).

And so, a twenty minute hike provides all sorts of things to look at and think about. And my husband is so energised that he’s rushed off to buy another flat white coffee to support the local economy. It’s always worth getting outside your front door if you can, even for a few minutes.

Not Quite What It Seems

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Dear Readers, at first glance you might, like me, think that this tree, growing next to the Euston Road, was a Horse Chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum). But think again! This is an Indian Horse Chestnut (Aesculus indica).  If you look at the flowers, you’ll see that they are rather more widely spaced on the central stem, and have a distinct pink glow, compared to the creamy colour of the ‘candles’ on an ‘ordinary’ Horse Chestnut.

Flowers of ‘ordinary’ horse chestnut

Plus, the  leaves on an Indian Horse Chestnut are very long and slender compared to those of a standard Horse Chestnut.

Indian Horse Chestnut

Another way to tell the Indian Horse Chestnut is that it’s flowering now – a standard Horse Chestnut’s flowers are well finished by now, even in a wet and chilly spring like the one that we’ve just had. And you might well see this tree on a street near you soon, as it has much greater resistance to the various leaf-miners and fungi that are playing havoc with the standard Horse Chestnut. A few other horse chestnuts also have good resistance (so far) to the insect and fungal attacks – first, the Red Horse Chestnut, which is a cross between the standard Horse Chestnut and the American Red Buckeye (Aesculus pavia). There’s a splendid one in East Finchley Cemetery. I used to call this the Spanish Chestnut, but apparently not. 

Flowers of the Red Horse Chestnut

And then, according to Paul Wood’s book ‘London Street Trees’, you might also see the Yellow Buckeye (Aesculus flava), which is a smaller tree with yellow flowers.

Flowers of the Yellow Buckeye (Aesculus flava) Photo A. Barra, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

Judging by the bumblebees around the Indian Horse Chestnut this afternoon it’s likely that all of these trees are a good source of late spring/early summer nectar for pollinators. Plus, they are so attractive, to my eyes at least. I’m looking forward to the variety of street trees increasing over coming years, to meet the challenges of climate change. It will be interesting to see what we end up with here in East Finchley.