The Mose Flood Barrier (Photo from https://www.designboom.com/architecture/mose-flood-barrier-venice-storm-alex-10-05-2020/)

Dear Readers, there was a sense of impending doom in Venice this morning. We were able to get a whole table to ourselves at the Parlamento coffee bar, just along the canal from where we were staying, and furthermore the chocolate croissants hadn’t sold out. The reason was two fold. First up, there was a vaporetto strike, so lots of people were working from home and hence not grabbing a coffee en route to the University or to the other places round about. But secondly, the first serious Acqua Alta of the year was planned, with the tide forecast to reach 120 cm. At 90 cm Venice gets a bit of flooding, but at 120 cm it starts to get serious in most parts of the city. We were planning our day on the basis that we should be back close to home by lunchtime – it’s true that the highest tide only lasts for an hour or so, but it’s easy to get stuck somewhere, and as today was our last day we were reluctant to be caught out.

So, after refuelling (there’s been a lot of refuelling on this trip) we headed off to the Accademia, to see the St Ursula Cycle of paintings by dear old Carpaccio. Sadly, someone (i.e. me ) hadn’t done their research, as the Carpaccios are actually in an exhibition at the Ducal Palace. Sigh. St Marks always floods the worst as it’s the lowest part of the island, so that was a non-starter. We did get to see ‘The Dream of St Ursula’ though, and it reminded me very much of ‘The Vision of St Augustine’ yesterday – the same light, the same precision, the same air of expectation. I also noticed the small cat at the foot of the bed for the first time. Vittore clearly couldn’t resist sticking in one more detail.

The Dream of St Ursula (Vittore Carpaccio, 1495)

Anyhow, not seeing the whole St Ursula cycle means I’ll have to visit Venice again, which is no bad thing. And there was also this wonderful Veronese (probably my second-favourite Venetian painter). Veronese always seems to give a real sense of what life was like in sixteenth century Venice, and got into a lot of trouble with the painting below. It clearly shows the Last Supper, but the Venetian Inquisition were very unhappy with it. What’s with the dwarves, and the drunken people, and the dogs and cats, and the geezer in the bright red costume who looks like Santa Claus? They asked. This is no fit subject matter for a religious painting. Aha, said Veronese, this is not actually the Last Supper, but a depiction of the Feast at the House of Levi. Fair enough, said the Inquisition, no doubt to everyone’s surprise. And so it has remained. The more I look at it, the more shenanigans I spot. It’s endlessly entertaining, and just busting with life.

Veronese ‘The Feast in the House of Levi (1573)

The dog eyeing up the cat under the table, plus the guy in the red costume on the left.

A jester and a servant boy having an argument over a parrot

And then there’s this stunning painting by Tintoretto – a master was about to have his slave tortured for having the audacity to visit the relics of St Mark on a visit to Venice. St Mark swoops down like a superhero and breaks the instruments of torture, which can be seen at the bottom of the picture. There’s much wish-fulfillment in this for me. If only such things could be destroyed so easily. 

Incidentally, one thing that I love about Venice is the prevalence of terrazzo floors, and the Accademia is full of them – little bits of stone set in cement and then polished. While common in municipal buildings, you can also see these floors in some domestic buildings, and they’re both attractive and easy to maintain and keep clean. Indeed, it’s noted that when a terrazzo floor cracks it’s usually because the surrounding structure has moved, a not-uncommon occurrence in Venice.

Terrazzo floor

And so, as we prepare to wade back home, we hear that the Mose has been activated. This is very exciting. The Mose is the new flood barrier that’s been installed along the edge of the lagoon, and it comprises a number of gates that can be raised from the seabed at three key locations – the entrance to the Lido, Malamocco and Chioggia. The gates are only raised for exceptional combinations of tides and weather events – there’s no chance that Venetians and visitors will have completely dry feet, as the normal spilling-over of the tide on the canals is essential to not only the ecosystem of the lagoon, but also the sewage system (don’t ask). So, at the moment the gates are raised if the expected tide is above 110 cm, which today’s clearly was. So far, the gates have been raised more than 50 times since they started operation in 2020, whereas the expectation was that they would only need to be raised three times per year. The question of whether this will be enough to save Venice from sea-level rise and extreme weather events remains to be seen.

Acqua alta in Venice, Campo Santa Margherita, 2019 (Photo byBy Marco Ober – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=94906890)

Dear Readers, the Arsenale in Venice has existed since about 1100, and at the height of Venice’s sea power in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was probably the world’s first production line for ships. At its busiest it employed over 20,000 workers, who were divided into teams who made the frame, the hull, the rigging, the sails and the munitions separately and then put the ship together – legend has it that they could construct a battleship in a single day. Dante described the process in his Inferno:

As in the Arsenal of the Venetians
Boils in winter the tenacious pitch
To smear their unsound vessels over again
For sail they cannot; and instead thereof
One makes his vessel new, and one recaulks
The ribs of that which many a voyage has made
One hammers at the prow, one at the stern
This one makes oars and that one cordage twists
Another mends the mainsail and the mizzen…

Well, these days the buildings are home to the Venice Bienniale. In ‘even’ years, it’s art, but in ‘odd’ years it’s architecture, so for the first time this year we decided to see what was going on. But first, we had to visit the lions that surround the old entrance to the site. First up is the Piraeus Lion. He was originally sculpted in about 360 BC and was stolen from Piraeus in Greece in 1687 by Venetian commander Francesco Morosini. Morosini was something of a character, who apparently always dressed in red from top to toe, and never went into battle without his cat Nini beside him. Nini is embalmed in the Museo Correr on St Marks Square, with an embalmed mouse between her paws.

Francesco Morosini, sadly without cat (Portrait by Giovanni Carboncino)

Anyhow, the Piraeus lion is covered in runes, apparently inscribed by Scandinavians at some point in the eleventh century (they were probably mercenaries hired by the Byzantines, and they were clearly a long way away from home). Some people just can’t resist a bit of graffiti, clearly.

The Piraeus Lion

Some of the many runes.

Because the runes are so weathered, attempts at translation have been somewhat hindered, but the consensus is that the 1914 translation by Erik Brate is probably the closest to what the runes actually say. So here it is:

They cut him down in the midst of his
forces. But in the harbor the men cut
runes by the sea in memory of Horsi, a
good warrior.
The Swedes set this on the lion.
He went his way with good counsel,
gold he won in his travels.
The warriors cut runes,
hewed them in an ornamental scroll.
Æskell (Áskell) [and others] and
Þorlæifʀ (Þorleifr)
had them well cut, they who lived
in Roslagen. [N. N.] son of [N. N.]
cut these runes.
Ulfʀ (Úlfr) and [N. N.] colored them
in memory of Horsi.
He won gold in his travels.

So there.

There are three other pillaged lions sitting in front of the gates (the winged lion is the symbol of St Mark, the patron saint of Venice), but this one is my favourite. Whenever I see him, it makes me laugh. Lion or dachshund? You decide.

And look at that face.

This is the Delos lion, another statue nicked by Morosini during the wars with the Ottomans in the seventeenth century. This lion probably dates back to the sixth century B.C., and the head was added later, probably after the lion arrived in Venice. Incidentally, Morosini tried to hammer off some of the horses and chariots from the Parthenon but they fell out of the frieze and smashed. Dear oh dear.

Anyhow, finally we get into the Architecture Bienniale itself. Sometimes, the language used to describe what’s going on at these events is basically word salad, and I don’t think that it’s always a problem with translation. But several exhibits really did stand out. One was a very thought provoking piece about a city in Ukraine dating to 4000 B.C, contemporary with Uruk, usually thought to be the first city in the world, but I want to do a whole post on this so I will leave it for now.

The other exhibit was the Slovenian display, which wondered why we didn’t learn more from vernacular architecture about how to conserve energy, adapt to climate change etc. They used some excellent examples. One was the way that, in the past, people would use only part of their homes during the winter rather than the whole thing, sharing their space with animals or additional people, closing down some rooms and using things like hangings and tapestries to lower ceilings and insulate walls. Whenever I see the latest enormous white box that someone has built in Grand Designs, I always think how cold it’s going to be, even with our excellent insulation and fancy glass.

There’s also much to be learned from places in North Africa and the Middle East about adjusting to hot weather – smaller windows on the outside, courtyards with fountains in the centre that stop ‘thermal load’ and keep the living spaces cool. I found myself nodding up and down like one of those plastic doggies that people used to have on the rear windows of their cars. Below are just some of the questions asked, and the answers they came up with from the past. People have always adapted to climatic problems with creativity and intelligence. Why reinvent the wheel? There’s much from other times and other places that could be useful. I always fancied one of those little sleeping cubby holes meself.

Anyhow, this all seemed so sensible to me that I feel quite inspired, and it’s no different from what my parents and grandparents used to do to save money on energy bills. I bet if we thought about there are ways that we could use our homes differently to adapt to how the climate is changing.

And then I went for a walk outside the Arsenale, because I just love all the bits of engineering from previous iterations of the building that are still hanging about. Like this Armstrong-Whitworth crane, for example, which would have been used to loading/unloading ships, and for building ships. It was originally built in Newcastle and is the only one of its kind left anywhere in the world – in fact, it was the subject of a ‘Venice in Peril’ appeal about twenty years ago, which looks to have been completed.

I absolutely love these gigantic oil tanks, which are slowly being repossessed by nature. The one in the middle looks to me as if it has a cartoon face.

There is yet another lion, this time just a head, presumably to tie a ship up to.

And then there are these enormous white hands and arms. As we got the vaporetto home, I noticed that they form an arch. The installation is called ‘Building Bridges’ and it’s by Italian artist Lorenzo Quinn. They were put in place for the 2019 Bienniale, but like his previous installation ‘Support’, which drew attention to rising sea levels in Venice, this one was so popular that it’s still in place. Apparently the six sets of hands symbolise friendship, hope, love, help, faith and wisdom, and we could all do with a bit more of all of those.

‘Support’ by Lorenzo Quinn, created for the 2017 Venice Bienniale

And so, it’s time to head home. We get the vaporetto around the east and north of the island, and walk back home. You don’t have to go far in Venice to find a quiet alleyway or a peaceful unpopulated canal if you keep away from the main Rialto/San Marco/Accademia stretch (though if you only have a few days these are the things that you’re definitely going to want to see). It’s worth sometimes just exploring gently, though. Not all who wander are lost, and in Venice even those who are lost are generally unconcerned.

Dear Readers, I was wondering if we were actually going to get to Venice, following this news on the night before we departed:

‘Seagulls Force Venice’s Marco Polo Airport to Close Briefly‘.

Apparently a gang of about 200 gulls landed on the runway at Marco Polo, forcing the plane carrying the president of the Veneto to be diverted to Trieste. The usual measures to dissuade birds were used (which involve a falconer and an ‘acoustic deterrent’) and eventually the gulls sighed and moved on. Here is one waiting on the Canareggio Canal for someone to pass by with an ice-cream or an unguarded pizza slice, though to be fair this is just a young ‘un, it’s the adults who have learned all the tricks of the trade.

Clearly some restauranteurs along the canal have found the birds annoying, as evidenced by these anti-seagull measures:

And I rather like the way that the ‘seagulls’ dance to the sound of the church bells in the clip below.

Anyhow, our flight was perfectly fine and we arrived in Cannaregio, found our apartment and set out to explore. We usually just spend the first day hanging out and drinking too much coffee, but as this is where John proposed to me back in 2000, we always try to find our way back to the café where he popped the question. In previous years it was no longer a café but a pizzeria, but this time it was back to being a café again, so we had to stop for old times sake. When John  proposed we were seated between two German tourists and a Venetian lady with pink hair and a small white poodle on her lap, and when I said yes everyone applauded, so it will always have a special place in my heart.

And so we headed off to St Marks Square, because it has to be done at least once. They were clearly expecting an Aqua Alta as they had the raised boards out – these are basically trestle tables, just wide enough for people to pass one another, which make getting around Venice (especially on the path to and from St Marks) even more of a pain than it is usually. But nonetheless it is an extraordinary public square, with something spectacular wherever you turn.

A man was selling pigeon food, but I suspected that it would be the gulls who got most of it – the young ones sit on the ground looking pathetic, while the adults keep an eye on the square for anyone not paying attention.

The best time to visit the main sites of Venice (there are so many, but St Marks Square, the Doge’s Palace and the Campanile are probably the most well-known) is definitely first thing in the morning. Having said which, I have never been inside any of these buildings, because the crush is always too much, and I like the smaller, less well-known sites, of which more later this week. But in the meantime, I’d never had a close look at the capitols on the pillars around the Doge’s palace. What are these monkeys doing? I’m sure there’s a story here.

Then we head in the general direction of the School of the Dalmatians (better known as the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni), home to a series of paintings by Carpaccio, probably my favourite Venetian painter. Alas, as we turned the corner a tour group of about 30 people were entering the church, and that’s at least 20 people too many for a comfortable viewing. We’ll be back later in the week for sure, but in the meantime here’s one of my favourites. It shows St Augustine in his study, and while there have been different interpretations, the one that I favour is that it shows St Augustine at the exact moment that his beloved mentor, St Jerome, died – it’s said that a divine light filled the room, which can be seen from the long shadows in the study. What I love most, of course, is the little dog. Carpaccio, as we will see, was a close observer of animals and people, and his paintings are often full of strange creatures and complicated goings on. What I love most about this one is its serenity.

‘The Vision of St Augustine’, Vittore Carpaccio (1502)

And then we head back to Cannaregio via an increasingly confusing set of alleyways and squares. At one point, we head through a covered archway, where a small Italian tour group are gathered. As we wander through, they cry, as one,

“Don’t stand on the red stone!”

Well of course I had to investigate when I got home, and it turns out that this alley way was the turning point in the 1630 outbreak of the plague – it’s said that the disease never got any further than this spot, and therefore it’s very bad luck to step on the red stone. The reason was that a local woman, Giovanna, had a dream in which the Virgin Mary appeared to her and asked for a painting of the Madonna, St Roch and St Sebastian to be painted on the walls of the portico containing the red stone (between Calle Zorzi and Calle della Corte Nova since you ask). After this, the plague dared go no further, and the red stone was placed to indicate where it turned back.

The red stone – photo from https://www.visitvenezia.eu/en/venetianity/tales-of-venice/the-legend-of-the-red-stone-of-venice-

So on we go. Here we have a gas holder. I had no idea that Venice even had gas, but clearly it does.

Of course, in honour of my friend Margaret and her adventures, we had to pay tribute to  the hospital in Venice, right next door to the Basilica Giovanni i Paolo. Because it’s Sunday and services were in progress we weren’t able to go into the Basilica, but I fully intend to light a candle for Margaret, and one for all the other people that I’ve lost over the past few years, which will make for quite a display.

The lion outside the hospital entrance. Most of this archway is trompe d’oeil, though the lion is actually carved in relief.

And by now the water is rising, and it’s definitely time to head home before we get too wet. Plus, it must surely be time for another coffee? You can never have too much coffee in Venice.

Lundy Island

Dear Readers, Lundy is a small island off the coast of North Devon, and this year it has been the scene of a remarkable rebound in the number of seabirds that nest on its cliffs. 25,000 Manx shearwaters, 95% of England’s population of the species,  nested here this summer, along with 1,335 puffins and 150 pairs of storm petrels, who have only been using the island since 2014. This is in spite of the threat of avian flu, which has severely damaged seabird populations in other parts of the UK, and in spite of the problem of a dramatic decline in the number of sand eels that provide food for the birds.

Puffin (Fratercula arctica) with a beakful of sand eels (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=106949394)

Manx Shearwater (Puffinus puffinus), Photo by By Matt Witt, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25776525

In 2000, just over 7000 Manx shearwaters were counted, and only 13 puffins were seen in 2001. In the 1930s it was estimated that the island was home to more than 80,000 seabirds. So what caused the decline?

Brown rat (Rattus norvegicus) (Photo by By Matt Witt, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25776525)

Now, I love a rat as much as the next person, but there’s no doubt that they can wreak havoc when they find a population of ground-nesting or cliff-nesting birds. The eggs are easy to steal, and the chicks are unprotected when the parents are out fishing. In some places, rats and mice are eating albatross chicks alive as they sit helpless in their nests.

Both black and brown rats came in the supply boats that visited Lundy over many decades, and liked the location so much that they stayed and bred. But from 2002-2004, a coalition of the RSPB, Natural England, the Landmark Trust and the National Trust worked together to completely eradicate rats from the island. They succeeded, and there is an ongoing monitoring programme because clearly the boats that still arrive with visitors and wardens could have furry stowaways.

Black rat (Rattus rattus) – Photo by By Kilessan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9002871

Animal rights campaigners were very angry at the destruction of the rats, arguing that the organisations involved were valuing tourist-friendly birds over the rodents. From a purely ethical point of view, I can see where they were coming from – both birds and rats are intelligent, sentient beings, so why would the life of a bird be worth more than the life of a rat? But sadly, human beings travel from place to place, messing things up, taking their rats and cats and rabbits and Dutch elm disease and ash dieback with them, and it’s the local ecosystem that bears the cost. This was, in effect, an attempt to turn back time, to a time before the rats reached critical mass and began to destroy the bird population. With better biocontrol hopefully such a thing will never need to be done again. We are only just waking up to the disastrous effect that alien organisms can have when they find themselves with no natural predators and a conducive environment. Let’s hope that we can nip more problems in the bud, rather than letting them get to the stage where we need to kill thousands of animals in order to protect other animals.

Puffling (Photo from https://isleofmaynnr.wordpress.com/2021/06/29/pufflings-3/#jp-carousel-15021)

Sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa)

Dear Readers, when I see the boxes of chestnuts outside Tony’s Continental on East Finchley High Road I know that autumn is well under way, and it will soon be pumpkins for Halloween and Christmas trees all the way to December. And I remember the smell of roasting chestnuts on the streets of London, though I haven’t noticed the vendors for a while. As Rebecca Warren points out in her post in Nature’s Calendar, chestnuts have been an important autumn food for a long time. Here’s Dickens in ‘A Christmas Carol’:

‘The poulterers’ shops were still half-open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence’.

The trees themselves can make for an impressive mess, however, with the chestnuts spilling out of their green hairy cases. Being soft, the nuts are easily trodden into a mess, unlike the conkers which are harder and less likely to be crushed. A few years ago I noticed that the ring-necked parakeets had discovered a sweet chestnut tree in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, and were thoroughly enjoying the nuts. What a source of plenty they are! And yet in the UK they have largely been regarded as a famine food, unlike in France, Italy and Switzerland, as we shall see in my Wednesday Weed post below. Are you a chestnut fan? Do share!

Dear Readers, I confess a great liking for the sweet chestnut tree. It was introduced to the UK by the Romans, who loved its sweet, mealy fruit, and grew it not only for this purpose but also for its timber and perceived medicinal benefits (its Latin name sativa means ‘cultivated by humans’). I love it for its furry fruits, and for those shiny serrated green leaves. The tree can live for several thousand years, and can reach a height of 35 metres.

Sweet chestnut is not closely related to horse chestnut, although the fruits do resemble conkers – sweet chestnuts are members of the Beech family (Fagaceae), while horse chestnuts and buckeyes belong to the soapberry and lychee family Sapindaceae. It just goes to show that superficial differences, such as the ‘hairy’ nut cases and the leaves which spray out like fingers from a central point, do not indicate an actual family relationship.

The bark has a characteristic spiral pattern, which I noted on another sweet chestnut that I saw on Hampstead Heath, and the flowers are in long sprays that are said to smell strongly of frying mushrooms.

Spiral bark on the Hampstead Heath sweet chestnut

Sweet chestnut flowers (Photo One)

Incidentally, the sweet chestnut catkins bear both male and female parts, with the female flowers at the bottom and the male flowers at the top. It’s the female flowers that will turn into chestnuts if pollinated. The tree is self-incompatible, which means that it can’t fertilise itself – the tree somehow recognises that the pollen grain from the male part of the plant is of the same genetic make-up as that of the stigma (female organ) of the receiving plant, and stops the process of fertilization. This prevents inbreeding, and is considered one of the most important mechanisms for ensuring the genetic diversity and health of a population. Who knew? Certainly not me. I am astonished pretty much every day.

Now, back to the sweet chestnut fruit itself. This is the quintessential chestnut that you smell cooking on braziers all over London at Christmas time, and very tasty the nuts are too. Apparently Roman soldiers were given chestnut porridge before going into battle, and look how successful they were! The French have a particular fondness for chestnuts (marrons) – they turn up as sweets (marrons glacé) and in Mont Blanc, a dish made from chestnut puree fashioned into vermicelli with whipped cream. Italy and Switzerland both claim the Mont Blanc as ‘their’ dessert, in much the same way that hummous is claimed by at least eight different Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern countries. I think that travelling the countries involved and sampling the dish in each region could easily be turned into a gastronomic travel book and if anyone wants to offer me a book deal to do such a thing I am open to offers once the pandemic is over.

French/Italian/Swiss/ Mont Blanc (Photo Two)

I thought that marrons glacé were  indisputably French, but apparently Northern Italy, a major sweet chestnut-growing region, also claims them.

Marrons glacés (Photo Three)

Furthermore, in Corsica polenta (or pulenta as it’s called) is made from chestnut flour, and the Corsicans also make sweet chestnut beer. Chestnut flour has no gluten, and so is useful for people suffering from coeliac disease.

Corsican chestnut beer (Photo Four)

Historically, sweet chestnut has also been used for timber – like other trees in the Beech family, such as hornbeam, it responds well to coppicing, and produces a good crop every 12 to 30 years. In his book ‘Woodlands’, Oliver Rackham describes how there are possible remnants of Roman chestnut orchards on the edge of the Forest of Dean, but it seems that in the UK chestnut timber was relegated to uses such as hop poles and included in the wattle-and-daub walls of medieval houses. Nonetheless, as noted earlier, if not coppiced these trees can reach an immense size and age. One ancient sweet tree in South Gloucestershire, the Tortworth Chestnut, was called ‘the old Chestnut of Tortworth’ in records from 1150 AD, indicating that it’s over a thousand years old.

The Tortworth Sweet Chestnut (Photo Five)

Medicinally, it’s the leaves of the sweet chestnut that have been used, in particular to cure whooping cough and other ‘irritable and excitable conditions of the respiratory organs’. The belief in the efficacy of the leaves as a treatment for coughs lasted until at least the Second World War, according to the Plant Lore website. Another use for the leaves, also recorded on Plant Lore, was by children playing at running a home – if you strip away the flesh from the leaves they apparently look exactly like fish bones, just the thing for dinner!

And finally, a poem. This is by Thomas James, who was born in 1946 and committed suicide in 1974, a year after this poem was written. I’ve read it over and over, and I see more with every reading, but it still refuses to be nailed down, which is, I think, how it should be with a poem. See what you think, readers.

“The Chestnut Branch” by Thomas James

There is something to be said for darkness
After all. My mother’s hands
Have been full of the dark all winter.

They are hollow boats not going anyplace.
They only pull the blinds
Or gesticulate at some ineradicable star.

Now the backyard unfolds its lacy pleats,
And I bring in a white branch
Because love is the lesson for tomorrow.

Will nothing cure the brightness in these streets?
A million strange petals touch
The panes. Is it a gift of snow?

Is it making up for lack of bandages?
Is it cold, is it hot–
Will it keep, should we put it on ice?

Should my sister sew it into bridal clothes?
Is it lingerie, or just a sheet
To pull across a used-up face?

Will it brighten up the arms of chairs?
It moves. It hurts my eyes.
I am not accustomed to so much light.

It is like waking after twenty years
To find your wife gone and the trees
Too big, strange white growths that flank the street.

Photo Credits

Photo One by Viascos, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Photo Two By Honio – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8630026

Photo Three By "passamanerie" / flaviab – https://www.flickr.com/photos/flaviab/2013678423/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4884657

Photo Four By Clément Bucco-Lechat – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22857997

Photo Five By Aliasnamesake – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107161562

Dear Readers, I wouldn’t want you to think that I’m obsessed with the sex life of frogs, but clearly I am. A few weeks ago, I reported on  how male frogs have a tendency to attempt to mate with whatever object comes within range, and it appears that this behaviour goes back a very long way, to when the very first frogs appeared out of the primordial ooze and started ribbiting away. Well, this week the plot thickens, as it appears that female frogs have come up with some interesting behaviours to try to dampen the ardour of these lotharios, who can sometimes drown a female with their overzealous advances.

Scientist Carolin Dittrich, of  the Natural History Museum in Berlin, observed the behaviour of two female frogs, one larger and one smaller, when placed in a miniature pond with a male for an hour. When grabbed by a male, 83% did a sharp rotation, which might have been a way of testing the male’s strength or an avoidance tactic, or possibly both. 48% made a specific call known as a ‘release call’, which basically means ‘get your hands off me you pest”. Usually this call is made by a male when grabbed by another male, but the females have learned to mimic it.

And 33% of the females demonstrated something which scientists call ‘tonic immobility’, and you and I might call ‘playing dead’.

In total, 46% of the females managed to escape from the male, which is reassuring, at least to me: I’ve sometimes seen my pond full to brimming with eager male frogs, and have watched as a newly-arrived female frog sits on a rock surveying the scene, as if deciding whether or not to take the plunge. Of course, I know that I’m anthropomorphising but it’s difficult to avoid making a comparison with when I was 15 and was just about to enter the school disco, though fortunately I didn’t end up drowned or with several thousand eggs to worry about. Incidentally, it was the smaller, younger female frogs who were most able to wriggle out of a male frog’s slippery embrace, so maybe this is a good thing, giving them a bit longer to mature and get up to a proper breeding weight. It’s clear that female frogs don’t just go along with the male’s advances, but make some choices themselves.

I will definitely be paying more attention to ‘my’ frogs next year, to see what they get up to. What a privilege it is to be able to observe the behaviour of these animals in my own back garden! I hope I never forget how lucky I am.

You can read the whole paper here.