New Zealand’s Bird of the Year – The pūteketeke. Does it look familiar? Photo from Pūteketeke: New Zealand crowns ‘bird of the century’ championed by John Oliver | CNN

Dear Readers, New Zealand has just announced its ‘Bird of the Century’, the Australasian Crested Grebe and when I saw photos of it I was slightly puzzled. Surely this was a straightforward Great Crested Grebe, as spotted on the reservoir at Walthamstow Wetlands only the day before? And indeed it was, though the bird, known in Maori as the pūteketeke or ‘puking bird’ is the Australasian subspecies, Podiceps cristatus australis.

The bird had an able ‘campaign manager’ in the form of television host and comedian John  Oliver. He bought up billboards in New Zealand (famous for the Lord of the Rings films) and popped up a photo of the bird with the words ‘Lord of the Wings’. He managed to persuade the American host of the Today Show to appear dressed as a Great Crested Grebe (sadly I’ve been unable to find a photo of the costume). He campaigned not only in New Zealand, but in the UK, US, Japan and France, and flew a plane above Rio de Janeiro with a campaign banner. The competition normally only attracts about 35,000 votes, but this year it received over 350,000, with 290,000 for the pūteketeke.

Photo by Bernard Spragg at https://www.flickr.com/photos/volvob12b/23475117089

What’s with all this stuff about puking though? Apparently the bird will sometimes eat feathers and then regurgitate them in order to reduce its parasite load. Personally, I suspect that the temptation to link the bird’s name, pūteketeke. to puke was too good for Oliver to miss. But anyhow, here we are. The Australasian Great Crested Grebe is rare in New Zealand (less than 1000 pairs), so it could probably do with all the help it can get.

Personally, though, my favourite New Zealand bird is probably the Kakapo. Who can forget that magnificent  film where a particularly randy bird attempts to mate with the cameraman’s head? And what’s not to love about a rare, noctural, flightless parrot? And there are only 252 of them (as at 2023). Come on people! 

Sirocco the kakapo. Photo by By Department of Conservation – https://www.flickr.com/photos/docnz/4015891720/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48081940

And then there’s the rather splendid Kea, another parrot but one which has had a rather trickier relationship with humans. Intelligent and destructive, it was accused of injuring sheep and other domestic animals, and while this proved to be true, the subsequent hunting reduced Kea numbers to less than 5000. These days the bird is protected, so it can dismantle cars and torment tourists as much as it likes.

Kea investigating a car full of tourists (Photo by By Bold_kea.jpg: Peti Deuxmontderivative work: Avenue (talk) – Bold_kea.jpg, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9032026)

And who can resist a Kiwi, with its nostrils at the base of its beak and the fact that its eggs are larger as a percentage of body weight than those of any other bird on earth?

Young kiwi (Photo by By Stewart Nimmo – Released under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence by Development West Coast as part of the West Coast Wikipedian at Large project., CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=94641030)

So, whatever you think about the campaign for New Zealand’s Bird of the Century (and the knocking of the Kiwi off the top of the chart has led to charges of ‘foreign interference’ which it’s difficult to dispute under the circumstances), it’s always good to see birds in the news, particularly rare birds. The extraordinary birds of New Zealand need all the loving attention and protection that they can get, as they face threats from habitat destruction, climate change and invasive species. Long may they continue to be a source of dissension.

Kea about to land and showing orange flight feathers (Photo from CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9031801)

A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Dear Readers, only a few days ago I was exhorting everyone to ‘watch the skies’, but today I am inviting you all (well, at least those of you in temperate zones) to ‘watch your feet’ instead, because the leaves are making some very fine patterns at the moment. What an extraordinary transformation is going on! I suspect that the breakdown and decay of the leaves from deciduous trees is the biggest annual change in biomass in the seasonal areas of the world, and as it happens it releases an ephemeral but evocative smell. Scuffling through leaves reminds me instantly of looking for conkers in the garden of my Aunt Mary’s care home, of walking with friends through the local woods, of raking up leaves for the Guy Fawkes bonfire that we used to have when I was a child.

As Rebecca Warren explains in her article in Nature’s Calendar, the different parts of the leaves decay at different rates. Fungi are very important detritivores, spreading their hyphae over the fallen leaves like tiny fingers and extracting the nutrients that they need. Slugs, snails, bacteria and worms all get to work, and the frost and rain help break down the trickier elements of the leaf. Lignin forms the skeleton of the leaf, and is often the last part to remain.

I also love those ‘ghosts’ of leaves that you sometimes see on a particular kind of paving stone, where the leaf has disappeared, but its ‘shadow’ remains.

Of course, if you live in the UK one reason often used for disruption on the railways is ‘leaves on the line’. But why? Well, the tracks are lined with literally millions of trees (and there used to be a lot more mature trees alongside the route for HS2 which have now been cut down) (don’t get me started) and they all shed their leaves over the course of a month or so, leading to a mulch on the rails. This makes the rails slippery, and so train drivers have to accelerate and brake more carefully, which can cause slower journeys and delays. ‘Leaf fall timetables’ are in place for many of the more rural lines, including my regular journey from Waterloo to Dorchester to visit Mum and Dad’s grave. I note that the first three trains of the day in both directions will be leaving 5 minutes earlier, so I had better make a note. If you are in the UK and want to check your trains for ‘leaf fall timetable changes’, have a look here.

Well, as the rain pours down outside and the leaves gently turn to mush, here is a poem by Amy Boothby, aged 10. Many of the poems by adults equate autumn with sadness and loss and endings, but not our Amy, who sees the excitement of it all. Let’s be more Amy whenever possible!

Autumn, by Amy Boothby (Age 10)

Look at the different coloured leaves,
Swaying gently with the breeze,
Lovely reds, browns and greens,
All waiting to fall from the trees.
When they leave they twist and turn,
Ready to join the masses of fern,
Landing softly on the ground,
You can taste the smell of autumn, all around.

Dear Readers, I have been watching the influx of Bohemian Waxwings this year with some interest, and not a little excitement. These handsome birds ‘irrupt’ out of Scandinavia during years when the berry supply that they rely on in Scandinavia starts to run out, and they head south and west. It looks like quite a promising winter, with birds arriving in some numbers on the east coast of Scotland, and with some turning up now in East Anglia. There is also one record from Richmond Park.

I have been lucky enough to see waxwings actually in my very own street here in East Finchley, munching berries from the whitebeam tree just up the road from the Kentucky Fried Chicken on the corner. I first spotted them on an icy day in 2010, and then they were back in 2017 in the very same tree. They tend to stay around until they’ve eaten practically all the berries, and as they defecate every four minutes this can make for a very ‘interesting’ abstract pattern under the tree. However, while they’re feeding they seem absolutely fearless: they were unconcerned about me and my camera, and the various other people that I grabbed and forced to watch as the birds flew about. There is a rumour that waxwings can get ‘drunk’ on the fermenting berries, which may account for their devil-may-care attitude. Anyhow, I shall be keeping a very close eye on this tree, just in case.

You don’t have to be out in the wilds (or indeed the suburbs) to spot waxwings either: in 2005 160 waxwings were recorded in the trees outside Warren Street Station in Central London, and the largest London flock ever recorded was at Lakeside Shopping Centre, with 367 seen in 2011. The species is sometimes known as ‘the carpark bird’ because if there’s a cotoneaster hedge, or some pyracantha, or a few rowan or whitebeam trees the birds will often hang about, sometimes for as long as a week. So another place that I’m keeping a close eye on is the carpark at the Sunshine Garden Centre, which has some splendid Pyracantha bushes.

Pyracantha at the Sunshine Garden Centre

Incidentally, even if the waxwings don’t show up, these are great sites for the various little thrushes that arrive in the UK at this time of year, especially Redwings. My first sight of a Redwing is always an indication to me that winter has finally arrived.

Redwing in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery last year.

Dear Readers, as you know I am usually enchanted by the squirrels that visit the garden, but this year they are slightly ‘taking the Mickey’ as my Dad would have said. There are at least two adults and two youngsters who visit the garden as soon as the seed feeders are put out and sit there until they have eaten so many sunflower hearts that they can no longer move. Then, they sometimes move over to the suet feeders. I had no idea that squirrels had a taste for animal products, but I should have guessed following a squirrel’s interest in the prey of a sparrowhawk a few years ago. At one point, all four feeders had a squirrel attached.

So I have come to the conclusion that while I am happy for the squirrels to have some of the food that I put out for the birds (after all, when you make a wildlife garden you can’t necessarily be that fussed about who turns up), I don’t want them gobbling it all up. This morning there were three varieties of tit (coal, blue and great), some sparrows, a dunnock and some chaffinches who were all unable to feed because of the squirrels, and that’s without the collared doves who looked as if they were gathering en masse to at least attempt a take over.

So I have turned my mind to ‘squirrel-proof feeders’. If I had one or two of these at least the birds would get a look in. But which type to buy? There are so many different kinds, and I know that not all of them actually foil the furry foe (a quick burst of alliteration there). Have you had a similar problem? What has worked for you? Before anyone points out that attaching a seed tray to one of the feeders probably helps the squirrels, I need to tell you that I put this there for the woodpigeons/collared doves so that they could feed.

So, looking at Vine House Farm (my favourite bird food provider), it appears that the choice is: cage…

Photo by Vince at https://www.flickr.com/photos/vince2012/5254073092

…baffles….

Photo by Jim Winstead at https://www.flickr.com/photos/jimwinstead/78308502

or the ‘Squirrel Buster’ (the weight of a squirrel or large bird closes up the ports of the feeder, though clearly I’d have to be careful about where it was located). I haven’t found any photos of squirrels ‘busting’ the squirrel buster feeders, so maybe this design really does foil them. Shame it’s the most expensive, but there we go.

Photo from https://www.reallywildbirdfood.co.uk/hanging-feeders/squirrel-buster-classic/sb-c

Over to you, Readers! Squirrels and bird food – your thoughts. I will report back soon.

Dear Readers, today we went for a fungi foray in Coldfall Wood. We were all a little dizzy with excitement, as I had been trying to find someone to lead a walk for weeks, and then, like a blessing, Mario arrived. The walk only had 20 places, but it was subscribed twice over. I had no idea that there was such interest in these ephemeral organisms, but soon we were ‘getting our eye in’ and spotting them all over the place. We saw more than 30 species in an hour and a half, and I will do a longer post soon describing what we saw.

If you have a wood nearby, and haven’t had a chance to explore it for a while, do go. This seems like a particularly splendid year for fungi, who are maybe recovering after all the period during Covid when it seemed as if everyone in the world had descended on any woodland that they could find, in a kind of desperation to be outdoors. Their variety and abundance is astonishing at the moment, but not probably for much longer – once the rain and the frost get going, it will be mostly over until next year.

For now, though, I wanted to share their beauty with you, and also this poem: I love the way that the poet weaves the life of the forest together, from what we can see above ground to the intricate weaving of mycelial threads underground. The poem is by Paige Quiñones, a poet that I hadn’t come across before. She is writing about foraging for mushrooms probably in the US where she’s based, and by the size of the spiders I’d say maybe the south west of the country, but still, there is much that is familiar here. See what you think.

Mushrooms by Paige Quiñones

Pulling my first from its place in the forest floor
felt like slipping a key from its partnered, well-oiled lock.
Broken so cleanly at the stem it appeared scalpel-sliced.

You assured me this was a good find, a Boletus from its reddened bruise
and lack of gills. But chanterelles proved easiest to forage;
their penny-bright caps glinted between dead leaves, ripe for the taking.

Spiders were the largest animals we saw that day: orb weavers
bigger than a man’s fist, sharp-legged seamstresses whose webs
like neural networks transgressed each clearing. Without hair

they weren’t so frightening, as if each spider had disrobed herself
to display a less menacing skeleton. Still, we kept our distance.
And suddenly what I had never paid attention to was flourishing:

oysters in bursts around a rotting stump, Amanitas with their white
burial shroud, indigo milk caps as fluted and blue as
a ballerina’s tulle skirt. You told me the wildness

might not be as feral as we think. That the fungi’s filaments
weave a pattern, a conscious fabric, engaging the nearest tree with
its opposite furthest tree to say entwine your roots with my mycelia

and I will tell you my secrets. We followed their invisible cartography
by whatever heads peered up from autumn’s detritus.
And though we were strangers there, unmooring

each mushroom that seemed least dangerous, we could feel
the vast organism underfoot. Silent but for the sounds
of insects, unwitting and soon to be caught.

Attenborough’s Long-Beaked Echidna (Zaglossus attenboroughi) Photo from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/10/attenborough-long-beaked-echidna-seen-first-time-cyclops-mountain-photos-footage

Dear Readers, there was much rejoicing in the Bugwoman household this morning when news broke that Attenborough’s Long-Beaked Echidna (otherwise known as Sir David’s Echidna) has been found in Indonesia – the last time it was seen by Western scientists was in 1961. However, the animal is an integral part of the culture of the local Yongsu Sapori tribe, who helped the scientists in their seach for the creature. In Yongsu Sapori tradition, if there is a falling-out between members of the tribe, both sides have to find, and capture, an echidna and a marlin, a very energetic oceanic fish. Both creatures are so rare that by the time they’ve been found, the heat has gone out of the argument and people are more able to come together and reconcile. In recent years, the Yongsu Sapori people have decided that this process doesn’t have to involve actually killing the echidna as it is so rare. How the marlin fares is not recorded.

You can see film of the echidna here as it goes about its business. I can only imagine how excited the scientists were when they saw it.

An echidna is a most unusual animal – it’s a monotreme, which means that it lays eggs and produced milk from special glands on its chest rather than having actual breasts. The only other living monotreme is that rather better-known Duck-Billed Platypus.

There are five species of Echidna in total, but the rest live in Australia and Papua New Guinea. They are nocturnal and shy, and can burrow into the ground with remarkable speed if interrupted in their nightly hunt for ants and termites. The appearance of the animal looks rather similar to a hedgehog, an excellent example of convergent evolution – the two animals are not closely related, but have both developed spines, nocturnal  behaviour and a taste for invertebrates. What our hedgehogs don’t have, however, is sharp spur on their hind legs – in Platypuses this contains venom, but in Echidnas the spur is innocent  of poison. These are very long-lived animals, at least in captivity, where the oldest recorded animal reached 50 years of age.

The Western Lond-Beaked Echidna (Zaglossus brunii), found in Papua New Guinea. Photo by By User:Jaganath – Transferred from English Wikipedia., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1004068

Whilst Echidnas have not made that much of a dent in popular culture, I can heartily recommend the  Platypus books by illustrator Chris Riddell. My favourite is ‘Platypus and the Birthday Party‘, in which Platypus arranges a party, complete with balloons. The consequences of inviting Echidna, an animal with sharp pointy spines, to such an event can be imagined, I’m sure, but (spoiler alert) in a very Australian fashion Platypus and his friends top each spine with a cork, so that the festivities can go ahead with everyone included. I also love that Platypus has a toy platypus called Bruce. Of course s/he does. There is something really appealing about the Platypus books, and do have a look if you haven’t come across them before and have some young people (especially animal-lovers)  who might be in need of a Christmas present. After all, the earlier in life you learn about platypuses and echidnas, the more likely you are to care about them (and to be a whizz if the subject ever comes up in a pub quiz.

A foggy day in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery

A series following the 72 British mini-seasons of Nature’s Calendar by Kiera Chapman, Lulah Ellender, Rowan Jaines and Rebecca Warren. 

Dear Readers, ‘Fog, Drizzle and Mist’ sounds rather like a Dickensian solicitors’ firm, but as Rowan Jaines points out in her piece on the subject in ‘Nature’s Calendar’ November really is the time for all three of these atmospheric conditions. Now that the smogs of my childhood no longer happen, it’s actually quite pleasant to walk about and see how familiar things are changed when they’re not quite clear. I always notice how  my footsteps and my breathing sounds louder because everything else is so muffled. And then there’s the way that the dampness seems to concentrate the smell of the soil. The last roses on a bush, or the whiteness of mushrooms amongst the trees seem to glow. It’s all rather satisfying, provided you’re well wrapped up and have the prospect of hot tea and maybe a bun when you get home.

This is all rather different from the fogs when I was growing up, before the Clean Air Acts in London put paid to the ‘peasoupers’. To be fair, the worst of the fogs were over and done with by the 1960s but I still remember wandering home from school and not being able to see more than a few feet in front of me. From memory, we used to be sent home early from school if there was a bad fog, presumably to stop us having to contend with the failing light as well (it’s dark here by 5 p.m. in November) but it still strikes me as a bit strange to throw several hundred small children out onto the street without letting their parents know.

For fog and mist at any time of year I recommend a walk in the mountains of Obergurgl (though any relatively high ground will do). Every year when we go to Austria we have what I describe as a ‘Panoramaweg’ moment, when we look out over a splendid view to see precisely nothing. If we’re lucky, the clouds lift suddenly and the beauty of the vista is exposed, but sometimes we just trudge on, trying to avoid tripping over tree roots and being menaced by distant floppy-eared sheep, who just know that we have sandwiches in our rucksacks even if they can’t see us.

Menacing Italian Sheep.

But why is November so good for all this foggy, misty, drizzly stuff? Jaines explains as follows:

‘During November the conditions are perfect for this process of condensation: the nights are lengthening, the temperatures are falling and the air is moist. The ground still retains some of the warmth of the summer sun, and the heat that it radiates is rapidly cooled by the frigid air; liquid water begins to condense on the surface of things, such as blades of grass and particles of air in the atmosphere. Light reflects off the airborne droplets in all directions, forming the whitish haze that we associate with fog, drizzle and mist. On days when the sun is strong it heats up the air after dawn, increasing its capacity to hold moisture, and the air clears. As autumn gives way to winter, the sun’s rays grow weaker and the moisture is no longer ‘burned off’ with the coming of day’ (Page 291)

Konigstal waterfall, Hochgurgl, Austria

But how beautiful the mist can be when it comes into contact with something as delicate and yet strong as a spider’s web! I remember seeing the hedges in Milborne St Andrew, where Mum and Dad used to live, being absolutely covered in thousands of tiny webs that were only visible when there had been mist or fog, their makers long since dead, their offspring waiting as eggs for the spring. There aren’t quite so many hedges here in East Finchley, but there are still some fine webs that are picked out on a damp day. It’s these tiny moments of unexpected miniature beauty that bring me such joy.

And finally, here’s a little, little poem, by American poet Carl Sandburg (1878 – 1967). It isn’t in the form of a haiku, but it has something of the same quality. See what you think!

Fog
BY CARL SANDBURG
The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Dear Readers, I have mused about scaffolding and its role as a new habitat before, but today I was surprised to look out of my bathroom window and see not one but two squirrels, tucked in between the climbing hydrangea and the scaffold poles. I looked at them, they looked at me, and clearly they were horrified because they separated and ran. One went vertically up onto the flat roof, and the other escaped in the general direction of Durham Road.

For a while there was a bit of twitching in the leaves, but then the second squirrel bolted vertically downwards in an impressive display of acrobatic activity. And I hope that they enjoy their climbing frame because, at least in theory, the scaffolding is coming down in a few days. I will be glad to have a bit more light back in my dining room, but it has been interesting to see how various animals have been using it.

You might remember all the spiders’ webs that appeared in the autumn.

Well, last week I watched a little flock of blue tits systematically working their way around the poles, sometimes disappearing into them in search of spiders and other insects. I wonder if this is a much overlooked temporary addition to the habitat of many creatures? I might have mentioned that the first sparrowhawk that I ever saw in our garden was sitting on the scaffolding at the back of my house, surveying the scene with great equanimity while the sparrows went berserk.  If you’ve ever seen scaffolding being used in an unusual way, do tell! One reason that city foxes are so successful is that they seem to have a very developed 3D map of their territories, and are great climbers as we know. The photo below, from the Natural History Museum, shows a young fox exploring recently-installed scaffolding.

Pigeons and doves are fond of making their nests on scaffolding, and this can lead to problems – although it’s illegal to disturb nesting birds (even common ones) it’s a rare scaffolder who won’t put business over nature when it’s time for the scaffolding to come down. But birds can be very adaptable – have a read of this article by Paul Evans in The Guardian for a happy ending.

The rescued wood pigeon squab in a cardboard box. Photograph: Maria Nunzia Calderone

So, over to you Readers! Any scaffolding anecdotes to recount? Or any other tales of animals or plants using temporary structures? It always cheers me up to see how adaptable some animals are, and how quickly they will make use of, and reclaim, human-made structures.