Signs of the times: Summer #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.

"As he sat on the grass and looked across the river, a dark hole in the bank opposite, just above the water's edge, caught his eye, and dreamily he fell to considering what a nice snug dwelling-place it would make for an animal with few wants and fond of a bijoux riverside residence, above flood level and remote from noise and dust. As he gazed, something bright and small seemed to twinkle down in the heart of it, vanished, then twinkled once more like a tiny star. But it could hardly be a star in such an unlikely situation; and it was too glittering and small for a glow-worm. Then, as he looked, it winked at him, and so declared itself to be an eye; and a small face began gradually to grow up round it, like a frame round a picture.

A brown little face, with whiskers.

A grave round face, with the same twinkle in its eye that had first attracted his notice.

Small neat ears and thick silky hair.

It was the Water Rat!"

Kenneth Grahame, from "The Wind in the Willows"

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Summer Picture 13

We are back on the canal again for this picture, having already looked at canal wildlife in Spring, here. Back then, we also, as here, saw a kingfisher. There is also a water vole feeding in the right foreground, among a collection of waterside plants: arrowheads, great water-plantain, flowering rush, on and around which are flying damsel-flies, while in the background, across the canal, some anglers are fishing (in one case, successfully, as he lands a fish).

As I discussed the kingfisher in some detail in an earlier post in Spring, I won’t say any more about it here. The other (non-human) warm-blooded vertebrate in the picture, the water vole (Latin name: Arvicola terrestris) is a rodent, found throughout mainland Britain, principally on lowland rivers and, as here, canals, although I have also seen the tunnels and signs of relatively recently discovered colonies now known to be widespread fairly high up in the Cairngorm mountains. So, we are still discovering new information about this widespread species. The water vole might be described as a member of Britain’s most threatened mammal species and, perhaps, its unluckiest mammal species. How can this be, given the public popularity of the water vole, one of the stars of the much-loved “tales of the riverbank in Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows”, where “Ratty", friend of Mr Toad was indeed a water vole? I still remember the first time I saw a water vole, when I was perhaps eight or nine, on “patrol” with my Dad, and heard the “plop” sound as the vole dropped from the bank into a little coastal stream at Longniddry in East Lothian, and watched it swim underwater, all silvery from the layer of air bubbles trapped in its fur.

As the Joint Nature Conservation Committee’s Review of UK mammals reports, at the start of the 20th century, “water voles were abundant in all suitable localities in England, were found in all low-lying districts of Scotland except Argyll, and were common in the streams of Anglesey and North Wales, but were comparatively scarce in south Wales ...Subsequently there has been a long-term decline.”

The JNCC report continues, starkly, that a field survey in the 1990s showed that there has been a steady long-term decline this century, with two periods of accelerated site loss, the first in the 1940s and 1950s, and the second between the 1970s and 1990s. The first decline: “was most marked in northern and western Britain and may correlate with increased afforestation and subsequent acidification of waterways”. The second period of loss, most marked in the 1980s: “is correlated with the spread of the American mink”. On top of this, before and as well as the escape of mink from fur farms, “habitat destruction by riparian engineering works causing fragmentation and isolation of colonies, coupled with water pollution, acted as cumulative factors which also contributed to this decline.” The extent of the decline is quite breathtaking: since 1900, 68% of occupied water vole sites have been lost, and this could be as high as 77%. Also, as the number of voles at each site is believed to decline with the percentage of occupied sites, the reduction in water vole numbers has been even greater.

Mink, particularly a female feeding young, can demolish a water vole colony in a few days of hunting activity. Valuable research at Aberdeen University has shown that water voles can tolerate predation by American mink where there are wide vegetated corridors on the banks alongside the river as mink do not forage far from the river. But the poor way that we manage the banks of so many of our rivers flowing through agricultural and urban areas, with perhaps only a metre or two’s width of uncultivated or ungrazed vegetated river bank between the river and the landuse inland simply leaves too little habitat space for water voles to survive the pressure of mink in those areas.

But all is not doom and gloom for the water vole. The species is listed as a priority under the UK’s Biodiversity Action Plan (UKBAP) and this has galvanized a considerable programme of activity geared at turning around this calamitous decline. The plan has been led since 1996 by a very dynamic Environment Agency Conservation Officer, Alastair Driver – if you’ve heard radio interviews (e.g. Radio 4’s “Today” programme) or seen countryside programmes on TV which have discussed water vole conservation projects, then Alastair was either speaking or was likely to have been behind the media opportunity. I was privileged to represent my agency for 12 years on the UKBAP water vole action plan group led by Alastair and so I’m aware of a wide range of actions being taken to try to protect remaining stronghold populations of water vole across Britain, as well as reintroduction programmes, improvements in the way that the water vole’s habitats are being managed, and a water vole habitat management handbook (to which we managed to contribute some funding). There are also mink control programmes across Britain, and my own agency has found water vole populations establishing in some of the urban drainage pond schemes that we have been encouraging for many years as a part of developments, and which are now a legal requirement for all major developments. The group was also involved in helping to secure increased legal protection for water voles under British law, from killing, disturbance and destruction of their burrow systems. The campaign isn’t yet won but there are some significant strides being made now, by partnerships of many organizations at national, county and local level, to turn around the significant decline in this popular and characteristic species of British rivers, canals and wetlands.

Incidentally, my life-long interest in water vole populations in coastal burns in East Lothian has also led to my observation of water voles feeding, and forming tunnels, in saltmarsh vegetation at the foot of these little streams, where they have short sections that flood tidally. I am not aware of any other reports of coastal populations of water voles using saltmarsh vegetation in this way.

There are three beautiful waterside plants in flower in this picture. The big, butch, pink flowering plant on the right is the Flowering Rush (Butomus umbellatus). It grows both as a submerged and an emergent species, at the edges of rivers, lakes, canals, ditches and in swamps. The New Atlas reports that it has maintained its distribution since the 1962 Atlas and, indeed, has spread in the Tweed, where it was first recorded in 1956, 3-4 years before these Ladybird books were first published. Other than the Tweed, it seems that this species is not native in Scotland, although it has been introduced in a few dispersed locations across Scotland.

The small three-petalled white and purple flower above the water vole belongs to the arrowhead (Sagittaria sagittifolia) – you can also see the arrowhead-shaped leaves below. The New Atlas states that the arrowhead is a: “perennial herb of shallow, still or slowly flowing, calcareous and eutrophic water. In major rivers it may be present only as submerged leaves, but in ditches, lakes, ponds and canals it often produces emergent leaves and flowers”. It also reveals that is a distinctly southern species in Britain and is absent from northern Britain almost entirely, other than largely the Forth & Clyde and Union Canals in central Scotland, where it is an introduced species. The New Atlas reports no significant changes in distribution since 1962, other than some losses from ditches in some areas, where it remains as a riverine species.

Finally, the tall, wispy flower stalk on the left, with the tiny three-petalled white flowers, is from the Common Water Plantain (Alisma plantago-aquatica), a perennial plant growing on exposed mud at the shallow edge of still or slow-flowing waters, or in marshes and swamps. It is confined to moderately or very enriched freshwater habitats. Its range extends as a native species well up into Scotland, as far as the Moray Firth, and the New Atlas says that this well-recorded species is still found largely where it was in 1962. We have this in our garden pond (and it is quite lovely in person!).

I'm afraid the image of damselflies in the picture doesn't really give me enough to go on as far as species. Maybe I will do a special post on damsels and dragonflies in future, once I've finished this series of posts.

Signs of the times: Spring #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.

“The sun was warm but the wind was chill.

You know how it is with an April day.”

Robert Frost

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Back to the waterside for picture 11 from Spring – this time down on the canal bank. Here we see the canal environment with many plant species emerging from winter dormancy, with new Spring growth on an alder tree stump and the water’s edge plants, brook-lime, flag-iris and water plantain. The marsh marigold is already in flower with its beautiful golden yellow blooms. A water shrew is mooching about under the marsh marigold, a female mallard is nesting discreetly near the middle of the picture and a kingfisher is flying off to the left of centre. In the background, a canal narrowboat is heading towards a set of large lock gates.


The collection of plants down by the waterside, brook-lime (Veronica beccabunga), flag-iris (Iris pseudacorus), water plantain (Alisma plantago-aqutica) and marsh marigold (Caltha palustris) is typical of the lowland canal habitat, as well as many other wetland and waterside environments in Britain. The New Atlas of the Flora of Britain and Ireland reports that there has been no change in the distribution of any of these species since the original 1962 Atlas. At the time of writing, the marsh marigolds around my pond have been in flower for only two days, and the flag-iris plants are at much the same stage of growth as those in the picture.


The other plant species featured, the alder tree, is regenerating from a bankside stump. Alder (Alnus glutinosa) is a common tree of riverbanks, canal and loch-sides, wet woodland and fen habitats. It is native to most of mainland Britain and Ireland. It has some historical importance according to Richard Mabey in his magnificent book Flora Britannica, its resistance to rotting underwater leading to its use to shore up canal and river banks. But historically it is better known as a wood from which clogs were made, and as a source of charcoal for gunpowder manufacture. The New Atlas reports its distribution as stable since 1962, but highlights that a recently-evolved fungus, a Phytophthora species related to the potato blight fungus has killed 10% of the alder trees in southern England and Wales and is now also causing damage to alders on Scottish river systems, including on the Rivers Avon, Dee, Deveron, Duirinish and Spey. More information from the Forestry Commission and Forest Research here.


Other than the boatman on the narrow boat, there is only one mammal featured here, the tiny Water Shrew (Latin name: Neomys fodiens). This is the largest of the three native British shrew species. I have never seen one. I think my Dad, in over 20 years as a Ranger and a lifetime as a naturalist, only ever saw a dead one, in East Lothian, at a site well away from any water bodies. I could do worse here than reproduce information from the Mammal Society factsheet for water shrew:


“The water shrew is found throughout mainland Britain but is probably rather local in northern Scotland. It is present on many of our larger islands, including ... Arran, Skye and Mull ... It is semi-aquatic and is most often found in habitats close to water, including the banks of streams, rivers, ponds and drainage ditches, as well as reed-beds and fens. It is particularly numerous at water-cress beds. Occasionally it is found far from water in rough grasslands, scrub, woodlands and hedgerows, usually as young ones are dispersing. ... Although water shrews are widespread in mainland Britain, they have a rather localised occurrence, probably because of their preference for clean, clear sources of freshwater for foraging. They have low populations densities compared with most small mammals, with a maximum of about 9 shrews per hectare in favoured sites such as water-cress beds. ...Water shrews inhabit burrows and come out to feed on invertebrates. Their main food source is freshwater shrimps, water slaters and caddis larvae which they obtain by diving and hunting underwater. Occasionally frogs, newts and small fish are eaten. They also feed on many terrestrial invertebrates such as earthworms, snails and beetles. The water shrew is most unusual amongst mammals in possessing venomous saliva. A mild toxin secreted into the saliva in the mouth helps to stun the prey. Even humans can feel the effects of this if bitten by a water shrew. Even though the shrew's bite rarely punctures the skin, a red rash appears at the site of the bite which is sore to touch.”


So far, so biologically interesting! But more bizarre is the text accompanying the picture. The author, zoologist E.L. Grant Watson noted: “In the springtime water shrews sometimes sit in twos and threes on a mudflat and sing – which they do very prettily.” Now, THAT I would love to see! For a better view of the water shrew than you will ever manage yourself (sadly not singing though), here is an excellent bit of film from the BBC which someone has put on Youtube. How well are they doing compared to 1959-61? It just isn’t clear - the species is probably too scarce to monitor easily or accurately. One estimate puts the British pre-breeding population at about 1900000: 1200000 in England, 400000 in Scotland and 300000 in Wales. The same source says: Historical changes: Unknown ... Population trends: Unknown.


Moving on to the birds in the picture, I have already written about the mallard in the 1st post in the series, so I won’t say more here except to note that the picture captures well why the female mallard isn’t as brightly coloured as the male bird – her colouration makes great camouflage when she is sitting on the nest. But few birds, especially in Britain, are as brightly coloured as the kingfisher (Latin name: Alcedo atthis), seen shooting off along the canal here. There are many kingfisher species in the world (including the kookaburras of Australia) but we only have the one species native to Britain. Luckily, it is one of the most beautiful kingfisher species (in my humble opinion), indeed one of the most stunningly attractive birds we have. I still remember the magic of my first kingfisher sighting – I must have been 10 or 11 and was walking up the River Garnock in Kilwinning with my Dad when we saw the iridescent turquoise flash of a kingfisher. Although he had fished the rivers of Ayrshire his whole life up to that point, I think that seeing a kingfisher in Ayrshire back in the early 1970s was still quite unusual, as the then-more frequent bad winters in Scotland would kill off a high percentage of the kingfisher population, reducing their ability to spread north.


The British Trust for Ornithology, with its Waterways Bird and Waterways Breeding Bird Surveys, makes the following observation about the kingfisher in Britain: “The Kingfisher declined along linear waterways (its principal habitat) until the mid 1980s, since when it seems to have made a complete recovery. The decline was associated with a contraction of range in England... Kingfishers suffer severe mortality during harsh winters but, with up to three broods in a season, and up to six chicks in a brood, their potential for rapid population growth is unusually high. Amber listing of this species in the UK results from its 'depleted' status in Europe as a whole, following declines between 1970 and 1990.” In Britain, the kingfisher’s population trends looks like this:

(From: British Trust for Ornithology)

I’m guessing the extremely long and cold winter will have had a significant impact on kingfisher populations in Scotland, so there might be a dip in the graph for this year!


I don’t get to spend as much time on rivers as I would like to, so I think I can probably remember the few times I have seen kingfishers in Scotland. I think the most unexpected and unusual was to see a kingfisher in the middle of a very cold winter a few years ago fishing in the tidal freshwater part of the Forth Estuary (so far upstream that there is no salt water influence, just a tidal rise and fall of the river), by the Stirling County Rugby ground, where it was fishing in the river by diving in from a hovering position.


It is worth saying something here about the canal itself. Not everyone realises that there are 137 miles (220 km in new money) of canals in Scotland. In the 1960s, soon after these books were published, Scotland’s Lowland canals – the Forth & Clyde Canal and the Union Canal, which had already been declining in importance, were finally closed as operational canals, heralding a 30 year period of minimal maintenance and decline. When the M8 motorway was built, a monumentally short-term planning decision allowed it to be built across the Union Canal, effectively cutting the canal in two and preventing boat navigation along the length of the canal from Falkirk to Edinburgh.

It took the combination of decades of campaigning by canal enthusiasts, the advent of Heritage Lottery Millennium funding, ongoing regeneration of the English and Welsh canal systems, and a few British Waterways Scotland canal engineers with vision in Scotland to kick-start the regeneration of the Scottish lowland canals in the mid-late 1990s. This culminated in the construction of the Falkirk Wheel, the world’s first rotating boat lift, and the re-opening of the lowland canals to boat navigation following the completion of the Millennium Link project. This renaissance of the Scottish canal network continues today with the proposed Kelpies as part of the Helix project (see my earlier post and picture about this).

Throughout this regeneration, which also involved significant decontamination of several areas of historic industrial pollution, British Waterways Scotland aimed to conserve and enhance the habitat value of the canals. This was apparently successful as it is possible to see all the wildlife shown here on Scotland’s lowland canals (although I challenge you to spot a water shrew!), and much more. Indeed, British Waterways has just launched its annual wildlife survey. If you want to take part and submit records of wildlife from any of Scotland’s canals, you can find out more here, as well as finding out about their related canal wildlife photography competition.

Heavy horses

"Heavy Horses, move the land under me.
Behind the plough gliding slipping and sliding free.
Now you're down to the few
And there's no work to do:
The tractor's on its way."

(Jethro Tull, Heavy Horses, 1978)

I’ve been thinking a bit recently about what horses mean to me, spurred on, if you’ll pardon the pun, by Jethro Tull’s 1978 song “Heavy Horses”. I was driving back home last week after a day working in the Borders and it is the first time I’d listened to the song for years. It triggered a whole lot of thoughts and memories concerning horses. There’s a sub-text to the Tull song that, one day, when the oil runs out, the heavy horses, the Clydesdales, Percherons, Suffolks, Shires and others, will have their day again, be called back to harness and celebrated for their usefulness and strength. Horses as a working tool for land management when the oil runs out? Silly old hippy nonsense surely! But no, horses have made something of a comeback in recent years, especially in forestry, where specialist log extraction in sensitive areas is sometimes best accomplished by horses.

A little web searching reveals a wealth of thriving heavy horse culture in Britain and wider, with a whole range of professional and amateur bodies devoted to preserving and restoring the culture of heavy horses as working animals. There is a Heavy Horse Centre between Perth and Dundee, there are numerous societies and trusts (The Working Horse Trust, British Horse Loggers Charitable Trust, and the European Federation for the Promotion of the Working Horse (FECTU), to name a few) and many forestry and land management consultants who use working horses (e.g. Heavyhorses.net, British Horse Loggers. Other contractors are available!). I even found an interesting blog: trojanheavyhorses.blogspot.com


Clydesdale

So, for a few days, I’ve been contemplating the influence that horses have had in my life. For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to the idea of heavy horses and the romantic notion of the “living tractors” with all their horse brass and quiet power. I don’t manage to attend the Royal Highland Show at Ingliston every year, but the heavy horses are a major attraction for me when I do. Now, don’t get me wrong – I have never owned a horse, never helped look after a horse. Blimey, I’ve never even ridden a horse, not even pony trekking. But I think these sentimental notions derive from the earliest age, when parents and grand-parents talked about working horses in their younger lives in Ayrshire. We always had horse brasses hung as decoration in the house, as I suspect lots of people did.

Of particular note is my memory of Dad telling us many times how, as a boy, he helped with the collection of milk churns from dairy farms on horse and cart. To my childhood imagination, that horse was always a big Clydesdale (rather than the wee working horse that it probably was in reality). I remember, as a very young child in the early-mid 1970’s, Dad pointing out to us the big draught horses from one of the Edinburgh breweries, still pulling the dray wagons to make beer keg deliveries around the city. The fact that we only ever saw them when we were driving through very early morning Edinburgh (this was a time before city bypasses, when all roads converged on central Edinburgh) on our way to a holiday stay with grandparents only added to the sense of drama and enjoyment!

I experienced another link to the days when “horse power” was still a serious option in agriculture through the grand-dad of my closest childhood friends. For most of my childhood and teenage years, our family lived in a row of cottages on a big farming estate in East Lothian. These had been modernised to convert six original tiny cottages to form two small cottages. My friends’ grandfather (and their mum as a little girl) had lived in one of the original six cottages, where he had worked as a ploughman on the farm (just that change in housing density in itself tells a whole story about rising living standards for working people through the 20th Century, and the increasing mechanisation of British agriculture). He told us a number of times about his working life. Rising each morning at about half past four, he had to prepare his horses for the working day, would spend a day working the horses in the field, and then would have to feed and look after the horses before his work was done for the day. It sounded unbelievably hard work to my young ears. No wonder tractors were seized on with such enthusiasm when they first appeared!

But a celebration of big horses is not restricted to those working with horses. Many Scots will be familiar with the big horse statue on the M8 motorway. The artist who created this magnificent equine celebration is the Glasgow-based sculptor Andy Scott. He specializes in statues of horses as public art and you can see more of his wonderful, inspiring work at here. But he is working on something particularly spectacular just now. A remarkable project is underway, courtesy of British Waterways Scotland, who run Scotland’s canal network, the people who brought us the Falkirk Wheel, Central Scotland Forest Trust and Falkirk council (collectively the Helix Project). Only a few miles east of the Wheel, where the Forth and Clyde Canal reaches the sea at the River Carron next to the M9 motorway, two 30 metre horses head statues are to be built as part of the Helix Project by Andy Scott, to create an iconic entrance to the canal network. They will be known as the Kelpies, after the mythical Scottish water horse spirits. What’s more, one of the 30 metre high heads will dip, as part of a mechanism to pump water in and out of the canal’s sea lock. I was privileged to be invited to the launch of the 1/10 scale “maquettes” of the Kelpies statues at the Falkirk Wheel in 2007, when Andy Scott spoke very movingly of the influence of horses in his life and in his family that led him down his own personal artistic path.



Andy Scott's 1/10 scale maquettes of the Kelpies (c)S Mathieson

The Kelpies are due to be built by 2012 and will create a fine historical link back to the role of horses in Scottish life, not least on the canals where almost all canal transport back when the canals were built in the late 18th to early 19th centuries would have been horse-drawn. I, for one can’t wait to see them!