Signs of the times: Autumn #15

More comparisons between the British countryside of today and that from 1959-1961 in the paintings of Charles Tunnicliffe in the Ladybird "What to look for..." series of books.

"Hogs, in eating acorns, chew them very small, & reject all the husks.  The plenty of acorns this year avails the hogs of poor men & brings them forward without corn."

Rev. Gilbert White "The Natural History of Selborne", entry from  November 3 1781 (230 years ago the day after tomorrow! Which is pretty cool!)

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Autumn Picture 15

Back to my series of blog posts about the wonderful art of Charles Tunnicliffe and the story his paintings told about the state of Britain's wildlife and countryside some 50 years ago when the Ladybird "What to look for in... Spring/Summer/Autumn and Winter" books were first published.

Another romantic painting of a lovely Autumnal rural idyll. A herd of pigs and a flock of wood pigeons are rooting about under an old oak tree, feeding on its fallen acorns. In the background, a traditional-looking wooden barn is backed by poplar trees and some nearby silver birches are turning yellow and gold. In the foreground there is a fairy-ring of little toadstools. The aging oak tree has bracket fungi growing from a cleft in the trunk, showing that, as the book’s text says, “there is rotten wood inside”. Indeed!

Pigs were traditionally a useful domestic animal for turning the bounty of acorns into a useful source of meat, something that cattle cannot do as, apparently, the “sharp little spikes at the crown [of the acorn] accumulate in a cow’s stomach, sometimes with fatal results”. As pigeons can also digest acorns, using their strong-muscled gizzard, they could also be regarded as another traditional mechanism for transforming acorns into something more palatable for people to eat!  I discussed the trajectory of the wood pigeon population of the UK in the first post from the Ladybird Autumn book, here, so I won’t add more now on that story.

We also saw a large female pig, with her piglets, in a picture from the Ladybird Summer book, here, but I didn’t look at pigs in any detail then. Pigs had a traditional role in woodland management in Britain or, looked at differently, pigs were an excellent means of producing edible protein from inedible acorns (well, acorns that are inedible to humans at any rate), a traditional form of foraging/ feeding known as ‘pannage’. In his book ‘People and Woods in Scotland. A History’, eminent Scottish environmental historian Professor Chris Smout notes that a visitor to Scottish woodlands in the past would be impressed by how populated they were by, amongst others, swineherds in the Middle Ages running their pigs among the acorns.

The form of extremely extensive pig meat production shown in the picture couldn’t be further from the means of production by which the bulk of pig meats have been produced in Scotland over the last 50 years, in indoor rearing units. It looks more like the mode of life of wild pigs.  The wild pigs native to Europe, and once native here, were forest-dwellers, as are many of the other wild pig species in the world. It seems that, as a result of escapes from farms and collections and, possibly, as a result of illegal deliberate releases, wild pigs, the wild boars of the media’s vivid reporting (here’s a great example)  are once again living wild in Scotland and elsewhere in Britain. In fact, BBC Radio4 (all hail – we’re not worthy) broadcast a documentary a couple of weeks ago about the very subject, which claimed that there are now records of wild boar living free in nearly every county in the country (although whether that was England or Britain, it wasn’t clear). There’s a lot more interesting information about Britain’s wild boars on this site here.

The fairy ring of toadstools and the bracket fungi could be any of many possible species (it's impossible to tell which from the painting) and I’ve written previously about how little we know about the long-term trends in most of our native fungi species. So, I’m yet again sorry that I can’t comment properly on how well these species are doing compared to 50 years ago!

Nice to be back on the Ladybird seasonal trail again!

Signs of the times: Autumn #13

More comparisons between the British countryside of today and that from 1959-1961 in the paintings of Charles Tunnicliffe in the Ladybird "What to look for..." series of books.

"Then the sudden rush

Of the rain, and the riot

Of the shrieking, tearing gale

Breaks loose in the night,

With a fusillade of hail!

Hear the forest fight,

With its tossing arms that crack and clash

In the thunder's cannonade,

While the lightning's forked flash

Brings the old hero-trees to the ground with a crash!

Hear the breakers' deepening roar,

Driven like a herd of cattle

In the wild stampede of battle,

Trampling, trampling, trampling, to overwhelm the shore!"

Henry Van Dyke (from: "Storm-Music")

 

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)






Autumn Picture 13


Well, when I started this set of blog posts on these Ladybird books, I had rather hoped to be able to keep pace with the four seasons as I progressed through the four books, starting with Spring. Clearly, although I managed this for Spring and largely for the Summer book, the timetable went out of the window when I was busy in the Autumn. So, here we are, in June and I’m writing about Autumn. Never mind, I hope you are still enjoying these posts regardless of what it looks like outside your window. I will be satisfied if I finish the series in the 50 year time window since the books were published, which was 2009-2011. That means I have the rest of the year to finish the second half of the autumn book and the Winter volume. On, on...


Here’s a wild picture. Until last month’s unprecedented extreme weather conditions in Scotland, I would have said it seems a bit odd to be writing about wild Autumn weather in June but hey ho... Here, a herd of young cows are sheltering behind a high hedge from a gale and lashing rain. Some starlings and magpies are sheltering as best they can behind the cattle. Growing under a fallen, broken tree, there are some puffballs. The only part of this scene that you couldn’t have found here last week was the puffballs – it’s a bit early for those in June! But hey, this is supposed to be a picture from Autumn. In fact, as far as the theme of these posts goes, comparing our natural history today with that displayed in paintings from 50 years ago, I don’t have much to say for this one. I’ve already covered starlings here and magpies here and, as I’ve said elsewhere in these Autumn posts, we actually don’t have good information on the changes in the distribution of many of our native fungi over time, even the relatively large ones like puffballs.

Having lived in the Stirling area for 22 years, I’ve seen many little puffballs around here, but never a giant puffball, the edible (in fact, gourmet) giant puffball beloved of gourmands, and delicious when sliced and fried; until last Autumn that is, when O and I were walking near Dunblane and found the shattered and largely decomposed remains of a giant puffball, but which was still capable of producing clouds of spores. So we took some pieces and scattered them along the edge of the field we found it in and, from late summer, we will start checking for signs of growth, just in case!

Signs of the times: Autumn #12

More comparisons between the British countryside of today and that from 1959-1961 in the paintings of Charles Tunnicliffe in the Ladybird "What to look for..." series of books.

“That day was their first use

in the whole time since

his father’s death, eleven years

before; the mute swan

and the whooper, avocet

and teal, tufted duck and lapwing,

the pochard and redshank;

pushed the eyepieces closer

and apart, that occluded,

needed to be refocused;

shoveller duck and egret,

marsh harrier, bunting.”

Ian Pople, “His Father’s Binoculars”

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Autumn Picture 12
We have a busy waterside scene here, with a flock of the tiny duck, teal, “dibbling in the mud” in the foreground on a lake shore, with some shoveler ducks hunkered down between them and a roosting flock of lapwings or peewits. A single goldeneye drake (described in the book’s text as a “she” – wrong! Female goldeneyes are brown and white) is swimming close to shore in the top left, near some swimming black-headed gulls. A heron stands on one leg, overlooking the scene.


We’ve looked at a couple of these species previously, the heron in some detail here, and the peewit similarly here! Of the others in the picture, one that I was fascinated by as a child was definitely the shoveler duck (Latin name: Anas clypeata), one of our more unusual looking bird species. As my old AA Book of British Birds says: “The enormous heavy bill that gives the shoveler its name is specially adapted for feeding on the surface of lakes and ponds”. Paddling through the shallows, it dabbles in the water or thin mud, sieving out small plants and animals, hence its membership of the group of duck species known as “dabbling ducks”.

I am not a regular bird-watcher these days (other than daily naked-eye ornithology every day when dog walking), although I was a bit obsessed as a child, and haven’t seen a shoveler for years, and it is not a numerous species in Britain, especially in Scotland; but I remember vividly the first one I saw, at Aberlady Bay Nature Reserve. I must have been eight or nine years old and I was thrilled! The British Trust for Ornithology doesn’t maintain an entry for this duck in the Species Trends information that has been my main source of up-to-date information on the status and long-term success of bird species for this series of seasonal posts (come on BTO guys, what's a blogger supposed to do?). Its BirdFacts information does, however, give its status in the UK as a migrant breeding bird, and a passage/ winter visitor. It is unable to provide a population trend, although a summer population of 1000 to 1500 pairs is cited, along with a winter population of some 15,000 individuals. In “The Birds of the Western Palearctic”, it is suggested that, although there might have been some contraction of the range in Britain, there might actually be a slowly increasing British population.


The little flock of teal (Anas crecca) in the foreground represent a typical group of this, Britain’s smallest native duck, and another dabbling duck species. The teal is also one of the most aerobatic of our duck species, small flocks performing dramatic and rapid manoeuvres in flight outwith the breeding season. The explosive, near-vertical rising of a group of disturbed teal also leads to the collective name for the species, namely “a spring of teal”. In clay pigeon shooting (which I’ve never tried), I believe that there is a challenging dispersal of vertically-fired clay pigeons called “rising teal”, supposed to simulate this behaviour. Teal typically inhabit small pools, ponds, lagoons, slow-flowing rivers an streams, and complexes of wetland habitats. They prefer habitats where there is some form of dense vegetation cover, and they will sometimes nest away from water in gorse or bracken. The male teal is a strikingly beautiful bird, with a vivid metallic green eye patch on a chestnut coloured head, and both male and female bids have a green patch on the upper wing. In this Autumn picture, however, the birds are in “partial plumage” having moulted after their breeding season, and so they look a little more plain than normal.


Again, the BTO doesn’t maintain a Bird Trends page for this species on its website, so I must rely on other sources for information of the status and trend of the British teal population. “Birds of the Wester Palearctic” cites a marked contraction in the range of teal in Britain and Ireland, with a conservative estimate of a 20% decline in population over the 20 years preceding the book’s publication (1998), although no causes are suggested for this. A British breeding population of 1500-2600 pairs was estimated between 1988 and 1991, although huge numbers of teal pour into Britain in winter from mainland Europe and Iceland (the BTO quotes a winter population of 192,000 in the period 1994-1990!), to over winter here in our (usually!) milder winter conditions.


The other species of duck in the picture is a diving duck species, the goldeneye (Bucephala clangula), represented by a single male swimming, its white cheek clearly visible (it actually does have quite a bright golden eye but it is too far away to see this clearly. Practically all the goldeneye seen in Britain are here as winter visitors between September and April. While the summer population of (presumably) breeding birds here is around 200 pairs, the wintering population between 1994 and 1999 is around 25,000 individuals. Seen on lakes, lochs and rivers in winter, they are also seen on the coast when migrating. Here in Stirling, I see goldeneye every winter on the tidal river Forth, effectively the upper estuary of the Forth although it is largely freshwater moving up and down as it piles up against the rising tide further downstream. Generally, they are solitary males, easily identifiable from a long way off on account of the white eye patch and bright eye. They are tremendously good divers, and can travel quite a long way underwater.


The first reliable record of goldeneye breeding in Britain was in Inverness-shire in 1970 (BTO). Its status as a breeding species in Scotland has been enhanced by their colonisation of nestboxes for ducks installed as part of conservation programme in Strathspey. So, the summer population of this species has certainly increased in the 50 years since these books were published (partly as a result of human intervention), and “The Birds of the Western Palearctic” indicates that most populations in Europe are stable or increasing. A good point on which to end for now!

Signs of the times: Autumn #11

More comparisons between the British countryside of today and that from 1959-1961 in the paintings of Charles Tunnicliffe in the Ladybird "What to look for..." series of books.

“We’re for the laird’s wuid,

Geordie speels the tree,

Shakes aa the conkers
Doun on me.”

J. K. Annand (1908-1993) (from: "Conkers", in Bairn Rhymes, Mercat Press, 1999)

(Copyright:Ladybird Books)

 

Autumn Picture 11
Wow – what a festival of chestnut colours on show here – conkers from the horse-chestnut, with a beautiful little chestnut-coloured weasel, And still more autumnal fungi, with some purple-coloured wood blewit mushrooms (yet another delicious edible species).

The horse-chestnut is not a native tree in Britain, but is widespread and naturalised. We’ve looked at it previously here and now we reach the fruiting stage, with the basis for the world’s finest nut-based children’s gladiatorial game, conkers, scattered all over the ground! Just in case you've never played... look here! This is what I spent a considerable percentage of my childhood Autumns doing, collecting for and preparing conkers for. I was never any good though but I still remember the excitement at finding a big conker - would this be THE ONE? The one that is unbreakable, unbeatable and can be retired a champion of many smashed conkers? I suspect officialdom's risk aversion masquerading as supposed health and safety concerns will have stolen the joy of conker fights from many of our playgrounds. But happy to be proved wrong about that!

Wood blewits (Lepista nuda) can be found in woodlands, hedgerows and gardens. They are up there among the best of our edible mushrooms. As with previous pictures showing fungi, I’m unable to comment on how well this species has done in the past few decades, as we have no reliable long-term data on trends in populations of fungi like the wood blewit.There is more interest now, though, in understanding what is happening to our fungi and you can pick up a flavour (no pun intended) of the enthusiasm for fungal recording, conservation and gastronomy on this newish fungi site for Scotland, Scottish Fungi. I recommend that you take a look!

The weasel (Mustela nivalis) is Britain’s smallest member of the mustelid family of carnivorous mammals (otters, badgers, polecats, martins, stoats, etc). Small but fierce! Like other members of the mustelid family, weasels are highly active hunters, with sharp teeth and keen senses of sight, hearing and smell, even seeing well in the dark. Weasels will live anywhere that there is suitable cover and prey, from coastal dunes to woods and uplands. Most of their diet consists of voles and mice and weasels eat prey equivalent to about a third of their body weight EACH DAY! They will also take over and live in the burrow of a prey item, lining it with the fur of their prey.

In terms of the status of weasels in Britain over the past 50 or so years, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee’s review of British mammals indicates a possible British population of about 450,000, of which around 106,000 are in Scotland. At the start of the 20th century, weasels were extremely common In England, Scotland and Wales. The outbreak of myxomatosis in rabbits in the early 1950s led to increased vegetation growth and a great abundance of small rodents in 1957-1958. This led to a record catch of weasels on game estates (I refer you here back to my rant about the downer we seem to have on predatory mammals in Britian - see the second half of that post). There has been a progressive decline in the number of weasels killed since 1961, most marked in East Anglia and the East Midlands but barely noticeable in the south-west and Scotland. The gradual recovery of the stoat from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s was accompanied by a substantial decline in the number of weasels, perhaps due to competition. Since the mid-1970s, however, the number of stoats killed by gamekeepers has declined again, but there has been no apparent increase in the number of weasels killed.

Signs of the times: Autumn #10

More comparisons between the British countryside of today and that from 1959-1961 in the paintings of Charles Tunnicliffe in the Ladybird "What to look for..." series of books.

"Wha saw the tattie howkers?

Wha saw them ga'an awa'?

Wha saw the tattie howkers,

Comin' ower the Barrow Raw?

Some o' them had bits an' stockins'

Some o' them had nane of aw

Some o' them had a wee bit whisky

Just to keep the cald awa.'"

Traditional Kilwinning song, to the tune of The 42nd

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Autumn Picture 10
This another picture that shows me how much some things have changed in 50 years. It shows a fairly manual harvesting process for a potato crop, with a little grey Massey Ferguson tractor with a rotary “spinner” which unearths the potatoes so that they can be lifted by hand by pickers with baskets (women in headscarves and, again, men in flat caps!), a back-breaking task. At the top of the picture, a larch tree is covered in golden cones. To the right, a hawthorn hedge has a vine of black bryony, with its bright red berries, entwined through it, and a flock of lapwings (peewits) is circling in the far distance.


I looked at hawthorn previously, here, and the larch tree here. Lapwings or peewits have also featured in a couple of posts previously, here, and in this picture we see them exhibiting their winter flocking behaviour, something I saw often when growing up in East Lothian. The long-term decline in the lapwing population has probably resulted in fewer people seeing this wonderful sight in the 50 years since these books were published.


The black bryony (Tamus communis) is a native vine species, found in southern and central England, and in most of Wales. The New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora says that is found: “mostly on neutral to calcareous, well-drained soils, particularly those overlying chalk and limestone, but also on clay. It can be luxuriant in hedgerows, woodland edges and along paths and in waste land”. It grows from a large tuber and the text in the book speculates on how good the tuber may be to eat! Richard Mabey, in Flora Britannica, however, points out that it is actually the only member of the yam family to grow in Britain, and is a poisonous irritant (so not a good candidate for our wild food project!). The New Atlas indicates that there has been no change in the overall distribution of black bryony since the previous Atlas was published in 1962.


The image of the potato harvesters reminds me of the itinerant Irish workers, in the early 1970’s, who came to our village in East Lothian each Autumn to work in the potato harvest. Backbreaking work indeed, not helped by the squalid little “bothy” they lived in on the edge of the village (On the Mair road) for the duration of the harvest, which sat empty for the rest of the year. It must have been damp and I am certain it didn’t have running water or plumbed toilets. On the farm we lived on, potato harvesters would occasionally come to the door asking us to fill a large water bottle. We used to collect leftover tatties from the fields too, once the harvest was over, something we’ve done more recently around Stirling (shame to let them rot on the ground...). Even in the 1970’s, however, the potato harvesting equipment employed around us was much more advanced than the relatively primitive mechanised digger shown here!

Signs of the times: Autumn #9

More comparisons between the British countryside of today and that from 1959-1961 in the paintings of Charles Tunnicliffe in the Ladybird "What to look for..." series of books.

“Their mass rotted off them flake by flake

Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer's stake,

Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high

Infecting the winds that wander by.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (Cancelled stanza from: “The Sensitive Plant”. Omitted by Mary Shelley from all editions from 1839 onwards, and thought to refer to the shaggy ink cap mushroom)

 

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Autumn Picture 9
This picture illustrates yet again that Autumn is the best time of year for finding the fruiting bodies of fungi, i.e. mushrooms and toadstools. Here, we see a mouse, specifically a long-tailed field mouse (as it is called in the accompanying text) now known more commonly as a wood mouse, running past some shaggy ink cap mushrooms, towards a clump of Autumn crocuses, or meadow saffron. At the top of the picture, we also see some fallen sycamore leaves dotted with the black spots of tar spot fungus (more fungi!).


The wood mouse (Latin name: Apodemus sylvatica) is a native, and very common, rodent species widespread on mainland Britain and some of the islands (although usually accidentally introduced to those). I have some living behind my compost bin in the garden. Sometimes, when I lift the lid to pour the next load of green waste in, there is a panicked flurry of activity as one or two wood mice flee up and over the edge of the bin to safety. According to the Joint Nature Conservation Committee’s Review of British Mammals, this mouse species is “highly adaptable and inhabit[s] most habitats if they are no too wet, including woodland, arable land, ungrazed grassland, heather, blanket bog, sand dunes, rocky mountain summits and vegetated parts of urban areas”. The JNCC reports a possible UK population of about 38 million wood mice, of which maybe 15 million live in Scotland, and the UK population is thought to be quite stable (other than for significant and normal annual peaks and troughs related to reproduction, predation on young, as well as the effects of the grain harvest on populations in arable areas, and mortality from extreme winters). The JNNC also reports from one study that: “A reduction in the use of herbicides, e.g. to produce 'conservation headlands' around the edges of arable fields, leads to an increase in the abundance of both floral and invertebrate food supplies and hence to increased populations of wood mice”, so the development of agri-environment schemes through such means are good for wood mice, as well as all the species of birds and mammals that feed upon them.


The shaggy ink cap or Lawyer’s Wig mushroom (Coprinus comatus), which grows in grassland, verges and rubbish tips, is described in the book in the following terms: “no living things, except maggots and insects, are rash enough to eat the ink-cap toadstool”. Which is a bit odd really, as it is a perfectly edible mushroom , so long as you eat it when the gills are still white. In fact, in that state, my Mushroom Guide (Roger Phillips) describes it as good to eat. As it ages, however, the gills go black and begin to drip inky black liquid. That process can happen very quickly, over the course of a few hours.


The Autumn crocus (Crocus nudiflorus), also described in the picture’s accompanying text as “meadow saffron”, is not a native species in the UK. The New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora describes it as “naturalised in meadows, pastures, amenity grasslands and on roadsides. It spreads vegetatively by means of rhizomes.” It was introduced in the Middle Ages apparently, and in his Flora Britannica, Richard Mabey collates information that suggests that the present scattered shotgun pattern of its distribution is strongly linked to its introduction by certain orders of monks and by Knights Templar, who all grew it to provide themselves with a cheap form of saffron. In Scotland, it is only recorded from a couple of unconnected locations so this picture could, just conceivably, be Scottish as everything else in it can also be found here!

Signs of the times: Autumn #8

More comparisons between the British countryside of today and that from 1959-1961 in the paintings of Charles Tunnicliffe in the Ladybird "What to look for..." series of books.

"...These men, this particular three in brown

Witnessed by birds will keep the scene and say

By their configuration with the trees,

The small bridge, the red houses and the fire,

What place, what time, what morning occasion

Sent them into the wood, a pack of hounds

At heel and the tall poles upon their shoulders,

Thence to return as now we see them and

Ankle-deep in snow down the winter hill

Descend, while three birds watch and the fourth flies."

John Betjeman (from: Winter landscape)

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Autumn picture 8

A short Autmn post this time, as the only new natural features of note are the parasol mushrooms in the foreground. The huntsmen and their hound pack are partially obscured by a large blackthorn bush, heavy with its fruit, the much-favoured sloe. I wrote previously about the blackthorn and its uses, including the use of sloes to make sloe gin (which we made a batch of last Autumn and which is reaching maturity in our kitchen as I write).  I will write more about foxhunting iaround a future picture from the Ladybird Winter book, where an actual fox hunt is illustrated. The scene here is festooned with dew-heavy spider's webs, a classic scene of Autumn.

The text accompanying the above picture says "The toadstools in the foreground are sometimes called 'parasol mushrooms'. It is doubtful whether they are good to eat and inadvisable to try." A little strange really, as the Parasol Mushroom, Lepiota procera,  which the drawing certainly resembles, is described quite unambiguously in my main mushroom guide (Roger Phillips: "Mushrooms and other fungi of Great Britain and Europe." Pan Books) as "Edible - excellent"! I wonder if the writer was just unsure himself about which fungi were edible and which would have serious consequences if eaten and so opted on the side of caution (an excellent policy in the absence of sure identification!). Other related species, such as the Shaggy Parasol, can, if eaten, lead to gastric upsets in some people. I'm unable to report on the success or otherwise of this mushroom species since the Ladybird books were first published as we generally have very poor information on the distribution, status and trends in our mushrooms and toadstools.

 

Signs of the times: Autumn #7

More comparisons between the British countryside of today and that from 1959-1961 in the paintings of Charles Tunnicliffe in the Ladybird "What to look for..." series of books.

 

"... the hazel bush o'erhangs the thrush,

the spreading thorn, the linnet..."

Robert Burns (from: Now Westlin Winds)

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Autumn Picture 7
I love hedgerows. Quiet life goes on apace in a well-managed British countryside hedge, minding its own business between rounds of flailing, cutting or hedge laying (a traditional form of management for renewing a “leggy” and “gappy” hedge). This picture shows two common species of plant found in our hedgerows, especially older hedgerows. A hazel bush displays a fine crop of hazel nuts, while a dog rose below it has both scarlet red rose-hips and parasitic pincushion galls. The small blue-grey and ochre coloured bird in the middle of the hazel bush is a nuthatch. In the background, hedge clippings are being burned by a farm worker, while cows stand in the smoke of the fire to help keep biting flies away.


I wrote previously about the dog-rose here. Although I won’t repeat that story now, I do love to see wild rose hips, little shiny fat red blobs of encapsulated sun energy. It was the memory of spoonfuls of amazingly sweet and tasty rosehip syrup fed to both of us as children (as a rich source of Vitamin C) that encouraged my wife and I to have a go at making a batch a couple of years ago as part of our adventures with wild food. It was tasty but not quite how we remembered it, ours being runnier than that sweet, gloopy, golden-red/orange liquid of our childhood. The pincushion galls, the fluffy structures ont he rose stems, have been grown by the rose around the irritation caused by the larvae of small gall wasps of the family Cynipidae. In other words, the gall wasp is a parasite of the rose and induces the plant to provide a shelter for its developing larvae which feed on the rose’s tissues until ready to emerge as a winged wasp.


The hazel (Corylus avellana), a native woody shrub/small tree and one of the early post-glacial colonisers of Britain, is also one of the most useful and probably still one of the most used plants in our countryside. As well as the obvious production of hazelnuts, the hazel’s sticks and branches have been and continue to be a mainstay of the world of basket-weaving, fencing and countryside crafts (e.g. stick-making or “dressing” as it is known), and hazel was usually the wooden element of the wattle and daub (stick and mud) houses people were building in early (Bronze Age?) England at the same time that the early Scots were building multi-storey stone towers or “brochs” (but, heyho, we were all savages up here back then, weren’t we?). Hazel produces long, straight sticks easily after coppicing (cutting back down to the ground), and people have been coppicing hazel for 4000 years in Britain.

The New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora indicates that there has been no change apparent in the distribution of hazel since 1962. A supposed increase in the number of occupied areas in Scotland since then is likely simply to be the result of better recording. The New Atlas indicates that “high numbers of livestock, deer and squirrels can limit regeneration, and conifer planting and the cessation of woodland management may reduce abundance locally.”

The bird in the picture, the Nuthatch (Sitta europaea) is a species always associated with trees – in woods, parklands and gardens. It is the only bird species in Britain that can easily walk vertically down tree trunks, on account of the arrangement of its toes. Nuthatches feed on invertebrates, seeds and nuts, wedging nuts into crevices and bashing them open with their strong, sharp beaks (“nuthatch”, from “nut hatchet”). Nuthatch abundance in the UK has increased rapidly since the mid 1970s and the upward trend continues.

(From: British Trust for Ornithology)

The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) identifies that this increase (a population increase of 178% between 1967 and 2008) has been accompanied by a range expansion into northern England and southern Scotland. The average date of egg laying by nuthatches has advanced by a whole 11 days between 1967 and 2008. Perhaps the expansion of population and range is changing in response to a warming trend and earlier Springs.

Signs of the times: Autumn #6

More comparisons between the British countryside of today and that from 1959-1961 in the paintings of Charles Tunnicliffe in the Ladybird "What to look for..." series of books.

“The gentle sun cobwebs brightly

his black cap, his crimson breastplate”

Norman MacCaig (From: “Bullfinch on guard in a hawthorn tree”, December 1980)

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

This charming picture shows some of Autumn’s bounty of fruit being enjoyed by one of Britain’s most attractive birds (in my humble opinion). Here, as a car that looks like a psychedelic purple Hillman Minx disappears over the brow of a dip in the road, a pair of bullfinches are feeding on the berries of a road-side elder bush. In the bottom left of the picture, the golden autumnal leaves of a dwarf maple are growing under a heavily fruiting rowan or mountain ash tree, with its clumps of bright red berries.

The Scots gaelic name for the bullfinch is corcan-coille, which I think means “forest finch”, but it has managed to adapt to a wide range of the habitats that humans have carved out of the original forests of Britain. The BTO advises that the bullfinch is most commonly found in scrub habitats but also commonly in deciduous woods, pasture lands, villages and coniferous woods. Although a delightful bird to look at, the bullfinch has a bad reputation with gardeners since its diet, as an adult, is based on soft fruits, and the buds and new shoots of fruit trees and bushes, something g mentioned in the text accompanying this picture. In terms of the fate of bullfinches in Britain, the BTO reports that the UK’s Bullfinch population “entered a long period of decline in the mid 1970s, following a period of relative stability. The decline was initially very steep, and more so in farmland than in wooded habitats, but has been shallower since the early 1980s.”

(From: British Trust for Ornithology)

Although the exact causes are not clear, it is possible that “agricultural intensification and a reduction in the structural and floristic diversity of woodland are suspected to have played a part through losses of food resources and nesting cover”. There is also a suggestion that predation by sparrowhawks may limit the colonisation of certain habitats by bullfinches. Recent figures show a slight upturn although, in Scotland, this has been more marked, with an estimated 30% increase in population between 2003 and 2008. This reflects my own, admittedly anecdotal, experience, that bullfinches are much more common in the Stirling area than when I first moved here over 20 years ago. I certainly see many more pairs in our garden and in nearby parkland woods than I used to, perhaps a response to efforts to improve marginal habitats on farmland through the so-called agri-environment schemes – and perhaps an effect of more gardeners deliberately planting fruit-bearing bushes and trees to benefit fruit-eating (frugivorous) birds. Whatever the reason, it is, to my mind, a welcome return.


Incidentally, one of the nature writers whose work I most admire, Ray Collier, has written a little article about bullfinches in the Highlands. Ray, retired after a career spent working for the government’s nature conservation organisations, is one of the contributing writers for the Guardian newspaper’ s daily “Nature Diary”. He writes beautifully in those articles, little vignettes of the natural history of the Highlands and his daily experiences and encounters, often while walking his dog. I commend his Guardian articles to you - his bullfinch text can be read here, where you can also access his other writing - under the April 2010 heading.


Both the rowan and the elder in full fruit are very powerful images of the bounty of Autumn, the energy of the Sun captured in fruity form, a highly attractive source of energy for birds building their fat stores for the winter ahead. I’ve already written about both the rowan or mountain ash) here and the elder here, so I won’t add more now, other than to say that we have managed to find ways to use both kinds of fruit in our wild food experiments – rowan berries going into rowan jelly for when we have wild Scottish venison (which a local butcher buys in from the Cairngorms National Park red deer culls), and elder variously into hedgerow jams, a somewhat failed cordial (WITH VINEGAR – IT WASN’T GOOD) and into a black berry (as opposed to purely blackberry, if you see what I mean?) fruit coulis(brambles, blackcurrants, elder) to go on ice cream. We’ve also have elderberry clumps dipped in batter and deep fried (tempura elderberries!) – deep-fried fruit? Well, this is Scotland, you know!


As for the so-called dwarf maple in the picture, with its golden Autumnal leaves, I’m afraid it is not something I can track down – it might simply represent a typical maple species that has grown in a dwarf form as a result of continued pruning/ cutting. I’m sorry, I can’t tell you anything more about it!

Signs of the times: Autumn #5

More comparisons between the British countryside of today and that from 1959-1961 in the paintings of Charles Tunnicliffe in the Ladybird "What to look for..." series of books.

"The downy seeds of traveller’s joy fill the air, & driving before a gale appear like insects on the wing."

Reverend Gilbert White (From: "Journal for 23 November 1788")

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Autumn Picture 5
Three of the first five Autumn pictures involve, or revolve around, scenes of harvest as it was undertaken around 1960. A beautiful barn owl sits, under a (September?) harvest moon, with some very large hay ricks or hay stacks in the background on the edge of a village. Above the owl, the red berries are ripening to purple on a specimen of the wayfaring tree, and the feathery seeds of the traveller’s-joy plant surround the fence post on which the bird sits.


There is a high likelihood that this image represents a southern English location, as, although barn owls are found over much of Britain, both of the featured plant species have a native range restricted to the south (but more on them shortly). The barn owl (Tyto alba) is a rarely glimpsed creature, but is probably most commonly seen as a ghostly white form in your car highlights while driving on country roads. I’ve only seen a barn owl a few times and always on that basis. The British Trust for Ornithology says of this species: “The unearthly shrieks, cries and hisses of the Barn Owl (and its association with churches) may have given rise to a widespread association of owls with all things evil - an owl’s wing was a key ingredient in the witches brew that troubled Macbeth.”


The barn owl is one of our middle-sized predatory birds, like most of our owls, usually hunting by night for small mammals (e.g. mice and voles). The barn owl is so well equipped for its mode of hunting, with large, forward-facing eyes that, like ours, help them to spot their prey in low light conditions, very acute hearing that will allow it to pinpoint prey in pitch black conditions (its ears have a slight asymmetry which introduces a minute delay in hearing between the ears, helping with the targeting), long, sharp, hooked talons to increase the chance of a capture when it strikes, a sharp, hooked beak to dispatch the unfortunate victim and feathers with a downy leading edge to allow near-silent swooping down on the prey. What a package! How unfortunate, therefore, that the countryside we have been creating doesn’t seem to suit this amazing predator. And not just here in Britain: The “Birds of the Palearctic” reports that there has been a widespread decline in the barn owl which has been attributed primarily to intensive farming methods and urbanisation, leading to “loss of foraging habitat, nesting and roosting sites”. Pesticides and road mortality “are further negative factors.”


Even if things were going well for the barn owl, the population size fluctuates naturally with its rodent prey populations, and is also affected by increased mortality in hard winters. The BTO reports a British summer population (in the period 1995-97) of 3-5000 pairs. The decline in the barn owl population is not just a modern phenomenon either – it has apparently been happening since the 19th Century, then at a lower rate until the 1940s, and then more marked after 1955. So, even by the time that this painting was published in 1960, the barn owl was a rare, precious commodity in our bank of nature!


But the species hasn’t been abandoned to its fate just yet. The BTO tells the tale here of how, in earlier decades, “the plight of such a charismatic and popular bird led to extensive releasing of captive-bred birds in well-meaning attempts at restocking: by 1992, when licensing became a requirement for such schemes, it was estimated that between 2,000 and 3,000 birds were being released annually by about 600 operators, although many birds died quickly and few would have joined the nesting population”.


More recently, the erection of Barn Owl nest boxes, “already numbering c.25,000 by the mid 1990s, has enabled the species to occupy areas (notably the Fens) that were previously devoid of nesting sites, and may have been a factor in improving nesting success.” Provisional survey data for the UK show an increase of 464% since 1995, with the caveat that nocturnal species are difficult to monitor accurately. This trend suggests that the current population estimate is much too low, so maybe things are looking up for this lovely bird.


The wayfaring tree (Viburnum lantana) is more of a deciduous shrub than a tree. Shown here with its berries ripening from red to purple, it is native, effectively, to the Home Counties and maybe Wales, although the New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora indicates that it is now planted widely as part of roadside planting schemes and shows its introduced range extending up into central Scotland. The native range has changed little since the original 1962 Atlas. While Richard Mabey’s “Flora Britannica” points out that its flowers smell like lilies, there isn’t much else to say about it!


The other plant shown here is the traveller’s joy (Clematis vitalba), the only native clematis we have in Britain (I think). It is shown here with its feathery seed heads, that earn it the common name: “Old man’s beard” (and it has also been known as “Father Christmas”!). The New Atlas describes it (in admittedly dry technical terms) as a: “climbing perennial with liana-like woody stems, often covering large areas on hedge banks, hedges and walls, trees and scrub, sand dunes, disused quarry faces and ruins. It is a classic railway plant.” Furthermore, “[c]omparison of the current map with the 1962 Atlas suggests that the distribution of C. vitalba is stable.”

Signs of the Times: Autumn #4

More comparisons between the British countryside of today and that from 1959-1961 in the paintings of Charles Tunnicliffe in the Ladybird "What to look for..." series of books.

"...Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies."

John Keats (from “To Autumn”)

 

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Autumn Picture 4
A bit of a shorter account this time around as there are no species featured here that I haven’t already written about in this blog series. Nevertheless, here is another attractive Autumn image to enjoy; it does seem like ages since we saw the swallows, house martins and sand martins massing on wires and roofs in preparation for their southward Autumnal migration. In reality it was only a few weeks ago (maybe early-mid October here in Stirling?) when the last birds finally headed off on their long, risky journey to the heat and relative comfort of sub-Saharan Africa, wherethe food supply of flying insects, unlike in the Britishwinter, isn't jeopardised by low temperatures!

I have already posted, in some cases quite extensively, on the three related species, the swallow (Hirundo rustica), the house martin (Delichon urbicum), and the sand martin (Riparia riparia). In all three cases, I reported on a variable recent history for these species, which seems to be linked to the arrival or otherwise of seasonal rains in the Sahel and other sub-Saharan desert regions where these birds spend their time during the European winter. You can read more about the swallow in earlier posts here, a post including the house martin here, and I looked at the fate of the sand martin in Britain over the past 50 years here.


Perhaps it is the very obvious departure of these summer visitors, their “here one minute, gone the next” exodus that makes their massing for migration such a strong symbol of the departing warmth of summer and the ushering in of the shorter, colder days of Autumn. It always seems as if swallows and martins reappear much more gradually in Spring than they disappear in Autumn!

Looking forward to their return in 2011...