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.

Sicilian Honey Garlic

Dear Readers, I can’t believe that it’s autumn already, but at the weekend I spent a couple of hours planting out some bulbs. This year I was a little more sensible than I’ve been in previous years, and have tried not to over do it, but let’s see how that works out. First up is some Sicilian Honey Garlic, actually a kind of Allium, which I fell in love with a few years ago. I’ve planted one pot with just this plant, and in another I’ve tried a ‘bulb lasagne’ – a layer of deep-planted Sicilian Honey Garlic, which flowers in May/June, and some early flowering grape hyacinths, which should be March/April flowering. Let’s see how all of that works out! My success with bulbs is very hit and miss, so do let me know what’s worked for you, especially if your bulbs are in pots, as most of mine are. I’m sure I should be feeding the poor things at some point, though I do always top dress them.

I’ve had various grape hyacinths over the years, but this time I’ve gone for just two – the absolutely standard blue grape hyacinth, and a two-tone one which I think might be Muscari pseudomuscari (which is a bit of a mouthful). Let’s see how I get on! I often find that you can’t beat the original varieties of some of these plants.

Muscari pseudomuscari or Pseudomuscari azureum, I’ve lost track 🙂 Photo by By Meneerke bloem – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9811729

And then, in spite of many years of having the squirrels eat every one that they can find, I am growing some crocuses. Last year I bought some in pots, intending to pop them into my windowboxes but the squirrels got there overnight.

And they often dig them out of the pots at their leisure. They don’t like Alliums ( I guess it’s the garlic/oniony taste) and they don’t like daffodils (or at least in my experience) but they do seem to like nearly everything else. We planted some squill last year and when I got up the following morning, the bed looked like a miniature version of the trenches of Verdun. But I have topped the pots this year with a thin layer of gravel, in the desperation borne of hope.

Anyhow, we have some ‘Tommies’ (Crocus tommasianus) and some slightly later Dutch crocuses (Crocus vernus).

Crocus tommasinianus

Crocus vernus

And in my magpie-like search for novelty, I have also planted some bulbs that profess to be bright orange crocuses. Goodness! My whole front garden is themed around blue, purple and dark pink, and now I’ve stuck in something orange. So much for discipline.

Orange Monarch crocus (Photo from https://en-gb.bakker.com/products/25x-crocus-crocus-orange-monarch-orange-black)

Anyhow, lovelies, tell me what you’re planning for your garden/pot/windowbox, if you’re lucky enough to have any such thing, or if you’ve seen anything unusual in the garden centre/park/municipal planting lately. I love that a few hours work now can reap such pleasure in the spring. Of course, I’m largely obsessed with finding something for the bees to feed on, hence all the pollinator-friendly bulbs, and the lack of tulips and daffs which I find are not usually that interesting to the critters, but do tell me if I’m wrong, and you’ve found some that the bees love! Now that I’m retired I have no excuse not to make the garden the most splendid human and wildlife sanctuary that I can imagine. Onwards!

‘Ordinary’ grape hyacinths and windflowers from last year.

Tawny Owl chicks from Kensington Gardens

Dear Readers, there is something magical about owls, and they are often nearer to us than we think. The two chicks above were photographed in Kensington Gardens, of all places, and there are Little Owls there too (which I hope to photograph at some point this month). I had a very excited reader who lives close to the North Circular Road contact me a few years ago with a recording, and she asked if I thought she was hearing owls, because she couldn’t believe her ears. She was! And there are tawny owls in both of our local cemeteries (St Pancras and Islington and East Finchley) and probably in Coldfall Wood too.

More tawny owl chicks, because I for one can’t get enough

The prime time for owl ‘conversations’ is in the spring, but there is something particularly spine-chilling about hearing them at this time of year, as the nights draw in and Halloween approaches. Of course, for the owls themselves the calls are many things, but mostly, as Kiera Chapman points out in ‘Nature’s Calendar‘, they are a way of helping the male and female owls to establish their territories in preparation for the spring breeding season. The ‘tu-whit, tu-whoo’ call is the two owls duetting, and typically it’s thought that the ‘tu-whit’ is the female’s soliciting call, the ‘tu-whoo’ part the male answering. However, Chapman reveals that male owls can also make the ‘tu-whit’ call (though at a lower pitch than the female does), and both sexes can answer. Which just goes to show that just when I think I’ve gotten something about the natural world nailed down, it turns out to be more complicated, which is a source of some pleasure.

Let’s have a listen to some tawny owl calls.

Here is a single owl making the ‘soliciting call’ (recorded by Huw Lloyd at Bagmere Nature Reserve in Cheshire). Chapman points out that this call actually sounds much more like ‘Ku-Wick’ than ‘Tu-whit’ and she’s definitely right.

And here’s an ‘answering’ call, recorded in Queen’s Wood in Highgate by David Darrell-Lambert

And here, also by David Darrell-Lambert in Queen’s Wood, you can hear the call and the answer.

Here is another ‘soliciting call’, and you can hear how different it is from the owl in the first recording above. Owls can tell a lot from one another’s calls, not just the sex of the caller but their size, weight, health and level of aggression. These are all important factors in choosing a mate – will they be able to defend and hold a territory? Are they good hunters? Chapman points out that the males with the highest levels of testosterone call more frequently and for longer, and this is often related to the size and quality of their territories. This recording was made by Paul Driver, in Northaw in Hertfordshire.

Adult Tawny Owl (Strix aluco) in flight Photo by By BVA – Tawny owl at night, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=74644057

The combination of the two owl ‘voices’ is a signal to other owls that the partnership is working, and that they are cooperating in defending their territories. It’s hard work providing for owlets, and so this teamwork is essential. Although the cry of the owl has been seen as a harbinger of doom since at least Shakespeare’s time, and probably long before, for me it signals that something in the ecosystem is working – if it can support two tawny owls, then the rest of the food chain is likely to also be relatively healthy.

So, finally, here’s a rather impressive selection of calls, with at least one duet and some other males trying to get in the action. The woods at night are an interesting soundscape, for sure, but note that at this time of year you’re most likely to hear the owls just after sunset, rather than at the dead of night. It’s definitely worth going for a dusk walk, just to see what you can hear and see.

These calls were recorded by Ilkka Heiskanen in Finland.

Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris)

Dear Readers, as you know I have long been a champion of weeds: I’m often driven to stand up for the most maligned members of our community, and that includes the botanical ones. So I was most intrigued to read about this exhibition at RHS Wisley in Surrey. Called ‘What is a Weed’ it features the work of young people from King’s College, Guildford, who are 14-15 years old, and 17-18 year-olds from St John the Baptist School in Woking. They have created a whole range of artworks,  from comics and magazines to interactive works in the show. What intrigued me most was hearing how the young people really ‘dug down’ into the whole concept of what a ‘weed’ actually is, and how strongly they identified with the plants. Many of the young people recalled either being called ‘a weed’ or feeling left out and rejected, and this seems to have given them empathy for these misunderstood and vilified plants.

The two facilitators, artists Ada Rose and Linden McMahon, seem to have done a great job in drawing out the bigger picture of the role of ‘weeds’. Ada explains below:

“There were two main areas that I knew it would be fruitful to explore. First, young people have a much more egalitarian perspective on the human relationship with plants: they don’t believe that we have a right to control or dictate the plant world. The second area is the concept of weeds and how that extends into their own lives. We looked at beauty standards and hierarchies of value and judgement, and how these have shaped their own existence, affecting their mental health and shaping wider society”.

All this heartens me greatly. The generation who are coming up largely seem to have an environmental awareness that many people lack, and a recognition that the lives of humans are deeply intertwined with those of plants and of the rest of the living world. Many of them feel passionately that we can’t keep doing things in the same old way, and this extends from ecological concerns to how we treat one another. After all, who gets to decide what’s beautiful and what’s not?

Lesser Celandine (Ficaria verna)

I remember being young, and full of rage at how unjust the world was, and how so often the weakest and most vulnerable were disregarded and trodden down. I’m still angry now, but it’s tempered by having less energy than I used to have, and being aware that it’s sometimes better to focus that rage rather than having a scattergun approach to every wrong that I encounter. But these young people should be listened to. Our binary thinking (good/bad, right/wrong, black/white) is not fit for what we’re facing. We need more nuance, to recognise that creative solutions are needed, and that, most of all, we need to work together.

As Ada says,

“What I think people might be most surprised by is the depth of their (the young people’s) compassion – not just for each other, but for everyone. They’re so invested in a society and an ecosystem that works for all of us. They inspire me so much”.

“What is a Weed” is on at The Old Laboratory, RHS Wisley, from now until 23rd January. 

Cartoon from the ‘What is a Weed’ exhibition

Pink-footed geese in flight (Photo by Steve Garvie, from https://www.flickr.com/photos/rainbirder/8083466318/)

Dear Readers, I have been thinking a lot about wild geese since our discussion yesterday, and I was delighted to find the poem below, by American poet Rachel Field. I love the simple charge of it, and the sense that sometimes you have to leave before you really want to, which I find strangely moving. See what you think.

Something Told the Wild Geese
by Rachel Field

Something told the wild geese
It was time to go.
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered,—‘Snow.’
Leaves were green and stirring,
Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers
Something cautioned,—‘Frost.’
All the sagging orchards
Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
At remembered ice.
Something told the wild geese
It was time to fly,—
Summer sun was on their wings,
Winter in their cry.

And I suppose that it’s impossible to talk about wild geese and poetry at the same time without mentioning Mary Oliver? This one is so familiar to me that I could (almost) recite it, and yet it seems fresh at every reading, to me at least.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

And how about this one, by Martín Espada, a Bostonian poet. I was moved when I read it, but for a real treat, listen to it here. You won’t regret it, I promise.

After the Goose That Rose Like the God of Geese
Written by Martín Espada

Everything that lives is Holy.
—William Blake

After the phone call about my father far away,
after the next-day flight cancelled by the blizzard,
after the last words left unsaid between us,
after the harvest of the organs at the morgue,
after the mortuary and cremation of the body,
after the box of ashes shipped to my door by mail,
after the memorial service for him in Brooklyn,

I said: I want to feed the birds, I want to feed bread
to the birds. I want to feed bread to the birds at the park.

After the walk around the pond and the war memorial,
after the signs at every step that read: Do Not Feed The Geese,
after the goose that rose from the water like the god of geese,
after the goose that shrieked like a demon from the hell of geese,
after the goose that scattered the creatures smaller than geese,
after the hard beak, the wild mouth taking bread from my hand,

there was quiet in my head, no cacophony of the dead
lost in the catacombs, no mosquito hum of condolences,
only the next offering of bread raised up in my open hand,
the bread warm on the table of my truce with the world.

Over to you, lovelies? Any favourite swan/goose poems out there? Do share!

Mute swans in flight (Photo by Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

Dear Readers, many years ago I lived in Chadwell Heath, in the London Borough of Redbridge. It was a good mile to the station and as I was working in Farnborough I often had to set out very early in the morning. So one October morning, as it was just getting light, I was heading off with my laptop in my rucksack when I heard a strange, unearthly sound, and three mute swans flew over my head, no doubt en route to Havering Country Park. It says something for the almost supernatural quality of the encounter that I still remember it 30 years later: the sound of my footsteps on the silent street, the strange sound of the wings, and that glorious sight of the three white birds as they passed by. I stood open-mouthed and watched them pass, their wingbeats audible for long seconds. At that moment I could believe in portents and omens.

Have a listen here. You’ll see what I mean. Mute swans might be ‘mute’ in terms of calls (though they are not silent, having a fine variety of grunts and cries) but this is their special music. This particular recording was made by Johannes Dag Meyer, in Germany.

For more evocative and haunting swan music, it’s hard to beat the Whooper swan in flight, here recorded by Tomas Berg in Sweden. Whoopers actually are migratory birds, arriving in the UK from Iceland every year.

But let’s not forget the sound of geese. When I lived in Dundee, I would sometimes hear the sound of the geese arriving (so unfamiliar to a London girl) and would look up to see them flying in a V-formation, usually against a curdled, blood-red sky. They seemed impossibly exotic, and reminded me of how far away I was from home and everything that was familiar. To this day, I can’t hear them without feeling a little melancholy. It wasn’t helped by the fact that my boss at the time was a shooting man, who would lay in a boat in the Tay estuary waiting for the poor tired geese to arrive. He’d describe how they’d ‘whiffle’ on landing, rocking from side to side to make themselves less of a target for predators. It was much harder to evade a bullet, however. What made it worse was that he didn’t even like to eat goose.

Pink-footed geese in flight (Photo by https://www.flickr.com/photos/blondinrikard/)

And here is the sound of Pink-footed geese, recorded in the UK by David Darrell-Lambert

This is a great time of year to get to your local RSPB reserve if you’re in the UK, or to visit some local wetlands if you’re in North America – so many winged creatures are on the move, heading to safer places to sit out the winter. There are some of the most spectacular sights in nature to be seen in spite of the dwindling days and extending nights, the colder temperatures and the falling leaves. What have you seen?

Raywood ash trees in St Pancras and Islington cemetery

Dear Readers, clearly this retirement thing has made me too relaxed because I managed to forget about my October update, and now it’s October, but at least there are another 28 days to go….

Dear Readers, October can be a glorious month, full of crimson and gold and rust and scarlet, or it can be a grey, drizzly month. Whichever it is, it’s important to make the most of it, before the clocks go back in the UK at the end of the month and we start to hunker down for the winter. There is a lot to see – fungi springing up, migrant birds arriving, leaves turning – but for Bugwoman it marks the last month when I’m likely to see our invertebrate friends in any numbers. Still, the season turns, and we’re none the worse for it.

Things to Do

• 8th October marks the World Conker Championships, held annually in the grounds of the Shuckburgh Arms in Southwick, near Oundle (the closest big town is Peterborough). The event raises money for charities that work with the visually impaired (over £420k so far), and also for the local church and village hall in Southwick. It sounds like a lot of fun, but no doubt the contenders take it very seriously.
• On 12th October, NASA will (hopefully) be launching the Psyche mission. The plan is to visit and orbit an asteroid where the metal-rich core is exposed – this may give useful information about the history of the Earth and of other planets in the Solar System. You can read more about it here, and keep an eye open for when the livestream of the launch will be shown. Arrival at the asteroid is likely to be about 100 days after launch.
• Our old friends Rosemoor Gardens in Torrington, Devon, have courses on autumn photography and autumn gardening (on 14th and 12th October respectively). For autumn colour, many sites recommend Hyde Hall in Essex, Winkworth Arboretum in Surrey and Stourhead in Wiltshire but I’m sure there are many more, and even your local park or woodland (or cemetery) should be wonderful at this time of year.
• The London Natural History Society are planning a Geotrail walk (along with ecology and entomology) in Bedfords Park in Havering . However, if you fancy taking yourself off on a walk to discover the geology of various London areas, you can download a map and details from here.

Plants for Pollinators

• One of the very best plants for pollinators at this time of year is flowering ivy – I’ve spent lots of time scanning the wasps and bees, and if you’re lucky you might see some ivy bees (Colletes hederae), stripey little chaps who first arrived in the UK in Dorset in 2001, and who have been moving north ever since.

Ivy bee

Other RHS – recommended plants include devil’s bit scabious, bistort, our old favourite Bowles’s Mauve perennial wallflower, Abelia x grandiflora and the strawberry tree. I am definitely planning on getting some of the first two to try in the garden, especially as bistort is said to be shade-tolerant. This is also the season for Japanese anemones which seems popular with some bees.

Abelia x grandiflora ‘Confetti’

The flowering season for wild plants is definitely coming to an end, but the Michaelmas daisies are often still going strong, and you might see holly in flower, along with yarrow, cyclamen, daisies and brambles, so there is still food around for any laggardly pollinators.

Bird Behaviour

• Redwings and fieldfares should be starting to arrive by now, attracted by the crop of berries. If you stand outside on a cold, crisp night you might hear them calling as they migrate overhead – listening for the sounds of nocturnal migration (or nocmig as it’s called) became a very popular pastime amongst birders during the lockdown. There is something magical about hearing the flocks of birds pass overhead when you can’t see them.

Redwings have a very piercing, high-pitched call…(recording by Paul Kelly in County Meath, Ireland)

The call of the fieldfare at night is much more of a chuckle (recorded by Irish Wildlife Sounds in County Wexford, Ireland)

• You might be lucky enough to spot a waxwing, especially if you live along the north-east coast of Scotland and England – the birds irrupt from Scandinavia and will drift west and south over the coming months
• Starlings and other birds, all animosity dropped, will start to gather in huge flocks. If you’re lucky, you might spot a starling murmuration
• If you are even luckier, you might see a Palla’s warbler – these tiny birds are rare but they are being seen more often in the east and south of England, and October is the prime month for them to arrive. They move from China to south east Asia for the winter, but there are about sixty records in the UK every autumn, and probably lots more that go unnoticed. It’s hypothesised that either they get blown off course during their migration, or simply that they are enlarging their range.

Pallas’s warbler (Photo By 孟宪伟 – 个人拍摄,)

• This is also a great time of year to spot goldcrest – the resident birds are joined by birds from mainland Europe. In my experience you can often find them foraging for tiny insects in yew hedges and trees, though they’re so fast that you’ll have to be patient to get a good view. I’ve been trying to get a photo of the ones in the cemetery since I started the blog in 2014 and haven’t managed a good one yet.

Plants in Flower

• In addition to all the pollinator plants mentioned above, keep your eyes open for all the prairie favourites who really come into their own in October – rudbeckia, helenium, single dahlias, chrysanthemums.

• But really, October is the month for foliage and berries – Japanese acers will be at their best, smoke bushes (Cotinga) may be covered in fluff, and every plant, shrub and tree that produces fruit, from crab apples to cotoneasters, from the acorns on the oaks to beech mast, from rowan to sloe, should be bursting with energy-rich food for birds, small rodents and even foxes.

Other Things to Watch/Listen Out For

• It’s the height of the deer rut, so whether you live close to the Scottish Highlands or within walking distance of Richmond Park, stags will be full of testosterone and up for a fight. Well worth observing from a respectful distance.
• Wildfowl start to arrive from Russia – our native populations of teal, wigeon, pintail, tufted duck and pochard are all boosted by great flocks from further east. Scaup visit in the winter, as do the common and velvet scoters, though they are largely sea ducks, unlikely to turn up on a pond. A visit to the coast or to local wetlands is highly recommended at this time of year.
• This is also a great time of year to hear tawny owls – this recording is lovely, it’s a male and female calling to one another from opposite sides of a lake. The recording is by Regina Eidner, and it was made in Brandenburg, Germany.

• Having said earlier that there weren’t many invertebrates around, you might still see shieldbugs (the juveniles change colour from bright green to brown before overwintering as adults – the colour change means that they’re better camouflaged against the twigs and dry leaves. Some bush crickets are also around, and are attracted to light, so you might find one of these surprising insects in the house as late as November.

Hawthorn Shield Bug

Southern Bush Cricket

• Another late-flying insect is the batman hoverfly (Myathropa florea), so named for the pattern on its thorax that looks like the bat signal in the films. What a handsome creature it is! Well worth looking out for, and often found on ivy or on sedum/hylotelephium.

Batman hoverfly

• October is also the start of fungi season, check your local parks and wild places to see if there are any walks or ID sessions. Depending on the weather, the fungi can be spectacular – below are just a few from my local cemetery last year.

• The October full moon is on 28th October and is known as the Hunter’s Moon or the Blood Moon

Holidays and Celebrations

• 1st October – Harvest Home/Ingathering (Traditional)
• 1st October – Start of Black History Month
• 1st October – Start of English pudding season (I have no idea what this is, but it sounds worth celebrating)
• 11th October – Old Michaelmas Day, when the devil is said to spit on the blackberries so they shouldn’t be eaten after this date
• 21st October – Apple Day
• 29th October – British Summertime and Irish Standard Time end, and the clocks go back one hour
• 31st October – Halloween