Signs of the times: Spring #21 (final post of Spring!)

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.

"Spring - an experience in immortality."

Henry D. Thoreau

A bit of a bumper post this time, to complete the stories from the Ladybird Spring book with Spring pictures 23 and 24.

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Picture 23 shows a turtle dove sitting on a branch of a horse-chestnut which is in full blossom. In the background a crowd of swifts are circling a church tower. The turtle dove (Latin name: Streptopelia turtur), a fairly lovely looking bird is, however, one that I have never seen in over 40 years of observing wildlife in Scotland. I checked with my Dad who, with maybe a further 30 years of bird watching, has never seen turtle doves in Scotland either.

I know they do turn up in Scotland – they are recorded at the bird observatory in Fair Isle and on North Ronaldsay (Orkney) every Spring, presumably on migratory passage (or gone off course on migration!). I say “on migratory passage” because maps of its breeding areas, for example in the Birds of the Western Palearctic, show that it doesn’t breed in Scotland. Even back in 1969, when my old AA Book of Birds was published, it shows only the slimmest of areas of breeding territory in Scotland, in the extreme southeast, stating that, back then, turtle doves had only bred in Scotland in the previous 25 years. I not sure that’s even the case anymore. The poor old turtle dove, for all its loveliness and its role in “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, is in trouble. It has suffered relatively recent and widespread decline in Europe, particularly in the west. According to the British Trust for Ornithology, the turtle dove "is one of the most strongly declining bird species in Europe, having decreased at an annual rate of 4% during 1980–2006.” The above bird book suggests that this is “probably due to drought in its winter quarters [in semi-arid and savannah areas of Africa from Senegal to Ethiopia], shooting and agricultural changes on breeding grounds”, which agrees with what the BTO also suggests. Although the turtle dove population of Britain increased in the 19th Century and up to 1965, there has been a marked decline since the early-to-mid 1980s, as you can see from this BTO plot:

(From: British Trust for Ornithology)

The British population was estimated to be over 125,000 pairs between 1968 and 1972, but only 75,000 territories between 1988 and 1991 and, according to the British Trust for Ornithology, from their Common Bird Census, an 87% decline between 1967 and 2007, putting it on the UK’s conservation “red list” of species suffering a decline of greater than 50%. So, I guess my chances of seeing a turtle dove in Scotland are now even slimmer!

I think that church tower in the picture really suggests that this picture was never intended to represent a Scottish scenario! I’m no architectural expert but it looks much more like a church tower that would be flying the cross of St George! The swifts screaming around the church tower are another of the things I look forward to most about Spring and the move into Summer (nearly there folks!). The swift (Apus apus) is perhaps the most aerial of birds, its short legs generally incapable of sitting it up should it accidentally end up on the ground and its long wings therefore hampering its take-off again. Apart from fleeting contact with water surfaces (while in flight), all of the swift’s normal activity takes place up in the air, from feeding to courtship, even regularly roosting in flight at night. Formerly a bird that nested, in pre-civilisation times, on the edges of crags, sea-cliffs and caves, it has largely moved over to being a species that nests on buildings, often on a flat surface under eaves, or in holes in walls, in a shallow nest of feathers, straw, leaves, etc, cemented together with saliva. So, the swift is a species for which urbanisation and the spread of cities and towns with tall buildings has facilitated the expansion of its range. And rarely can a bird have been given a more descriptive common name. I defy anyone not to marvel at racing flights of large numbers of swifts, with their long, scythe blade-like wings, screaming and screeching around buildings and turning tightly down urban canyons on warm evenings in late Spring and Summer. So, given the importance of urban areas to swifts, it is ironic that one of the proposed explanations for the decline in swift numbers shown in the BTO figure below (in this case, for the UK, but the Scottish picture is similar) is suggested to be the loss of breeding spaces in buildings as a result of redevelopment:

(From: British Trust for Ornithology)

The BTO figure above is based on its Breeding Bird Survey and there is uncertainty over the actual status of swifts. The swift has, however, been placed on the amber list of conservation concern. Other initiatives are also aimed at improving our understanding of the status of swifts (by the RSPB. Look here if you are interested in taking part), and Concern for Swifts, a small private organisation is promoting the deliberate provision of nesting sites for this species.

The final feature of this penultimate Spring picture if the horse-chestnut trees in full flower. The horse-chestnut (Aesculus hippocastanum) is not native to Britain, having been introduced into cultivation in 1612 or 1615, then recorded in the wild by 1870 (all according to the New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora). It is widespread throughout Britain and Ireland, and all over Scotland except for the central Highlands, the far north (blanket peat areas), the Outer Hebrides and Shetland. According to the New Atlas, its distribution has changed little since the 1962 Atlas was published. Richard Mabey, in Flora Britannica, points out that for a relatively new tree in Britain, in ecological terms, the horse-chestnut has made a huge contribution to popular culture. In particular, the glossy red-brown chestnuts or “conkers” are the raw material for what he says is the most widely played children’s game with plants, a game of conkers, with horse-chestnut nuts on strings, taking turns to try to smack the opponents conker into oblivion. But the horse-chestnut has also provided a symbol of “village peacefulness”, the theme of music-hall songs and a 1930s dance craze, one of the commonest elements of street names and gaggle of words and metaphors to enrich our language. There is even a World Conker Championship. Incidentally, as children in East Lothian, we ALWAYS referred to horse-chestnut trees as conker trees. I had a secret and very fruitful conker tree in the Gosford Estate woodland where I lived that no-one else knew about (I think!). We even had one at the entrance to our primary school, inside the front gate. I wonder if it is still there?

The final Spring picture, number 24, takes us down to the coast for the first time proper (we saw some terns in the distance in an earlier post).

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

We see a beautiful cliff-top scene dominated by flowering sea-pink, white sea-campion, a white flowered stonecrop (in the bottom right) and, above it, kidney vetch, all plants that flourish in this environment and are in blossom as Spring turns in to Summer. The flowers surround the nest of a herring gull containing three eggs, herring gulls are flying about the cliff face, and the flowers are being visited by a red-tailed bumblebee and, on the yellow vetch flowers, a cuckoo bee mimic of a red-tailed bumblebee. The rocks are covered in a range of yellow and grey lichens.

The cliff-dwelling coastal plants all shown in flower here are also found in other related coastal habitats. For example, the pink bauble flowers of the sea-pink or thrift (Armeria maritima) are also common in late Spring – early Summer on saltmarshes and coastal shingle habitats (although it is also found in the mountains and on mossy heaths away from the coast). Ironically, it also occurs inland alongside roads treated in winter with salt, creating ideal salt-influenced conditions for its establishment! This species has not, according to the New Atlas of British and Irish Flora, had much change in its natural distribution since the original 1962 Atlas. Its range in Scotland is stable, perhaps as the habitats where it occurs, such as the sea-cliffs in this picture, remain among the least disturbed of Britain’s natural habitats. Richard Mabey, in Flora Britannica, highlights an interesting wee tale about this species and its cultural influence. Its common name “thrift” may actually come from its “thriving” habit, growing densely where it occurs. However, “thrift” was well-enough known (or popular enough perhaps?) to be used as a visual pun, as the emblem on the rear-side of the pre-decimalisation British twelve-sided (twelve-sided!!!) threepenny bit. Mabey describes this as the coin whose physical awkwardness led to it being the one most frequently consigned to money boxes, i.e. a significant contribution to thriftiness!

Like the thrift, the other three plants shown here are distinctive elements of sea-cliff plant communities and their wonderful Springtime flowering displays. The white flowering sea campion (Silene uniflora) at the top of the picture is very tolerant of high nutrient levels which makes it an ideal candidate for sea-cliffs covered in nesting seabirds, with all the attendant inputs of “guano” that comes with this. The New Atlas reports that its distribution in Scotland, largely confined to (almost) all of the 10km squares covering the coastline, as well as a few inland upland locations, is unchanged since the 1962 Atlas. The white stonecrop (Sedum album) shown flowering in the bottom right is not a native species in Scotland, or probably over most of the rest of Britain, and, as a non-native species, the new Atlas reports that its distribution has increased markedly since the 1962 Atlas. The yellow-flowering kidney vetch (Anthyllis vulneraria), also bottom-right in the picture, is a widespread native species, found all around the coasts of Britain and Ireland, as well as widely inland. Its distribution has been stable since the 1962 Atlas was produced. In Flora Britannica, I noted that it is capable of completely dominating bare ground where conditions are right for it.

I’ve already written about the cuckoo bee parasites of bumblebees here.

The final entry for the Spring element of this series of posts is the herring gull (Larus argentatus), represented here by the nestful of eggs and the adult birds wheeling about the cliffs. This species is definitely the definitive “sea gull” of seaside towns – noisy, aggressive (stealing food from people’s hands), splattering droppings, resting on roofs, and so on. If you follow the coverage of gull stories in the media, you would think we were suffering from a Biblical plague of gulls, rampaging through our coastal holiday resorts. So why is the herring gull now listed as a species on the “red list” of conservation concern for the UK? Truth is, there has been a decline in the breeding population in the UK since 1969 and the non-breeding population since 1981.

The British Trust for Ornithology hasn’t produced its usual detailed summary of trend information and related causes for this species (come on guys! What’s going on?) so I will speculate that the decline arises from a number of sources. My guess is that a principal cause may be the continued improvements in the regulation of landfill sites, which used to be chock-full of delicious waste that attracted huge flocks of herring gulls (plus other gulls, crows, rats , etc) and provided an artificial boost to their populations. Landfills are no longer allowed to have exposed tipping surfaces containing edible wastes, plus measures have also increasingly been introduced to prevent gulls accessing waste (nets) or to scare them off (e.g. use of trained hawks and even eagles to scare off “vermin birds”). Also, there has been a long-term decline in the size of Britain’s inshore fishing fleet which has presumably resulted in big reductions in the amount of discarded by-catch and on-board fish processing waste that used to be available to the gulls following the trawlers. Fewer trawlers = fewer discards = fewer herring gulls? Maybe!

This concludes my comparison of the British wildlife and countryside portrayed in the Ladybird book “What to look for in Spring”, seen particularly from a Scottish perspective. Hopefully it has been an interesting read and I’ll try to keep on going now with the Summer book in the series. If I have time, I’ll try to summarise in a brief post what I think the key changes have been, as seen from the Spring book.

Signs of the times: Spring #20

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 pleasant'st angling is to see the fish

Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,

And greedily devour the treacherous bait."

William Shakespeare, “Much Ado About Nothing”

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Spring picture 22, although a lovely picture in its own right, is a bit simpler to comment on than the previous one, showing a couple of beautiful brown trout rising, taking adult mayflies, with some water crowfoot, the emerging water plant in flower at the foot of the painting.


The mayflies (insects belonging to the order Ephemeroptera) have an interesting life cycle, spending a period (depending on species) of months to 2-3 years as an immature larva in an aquatic phase of its life. Once fully developed, the larva emerges from the water as a winged insect. The mayflies are the only insects to have two adult stages, the “subimago”, which emerges from the final larval stage. This, depending on air temperature, will usually moult within 24 hours, emerging as its second, “imago” stage. The Freshwater Biological Association’s identification key for mayfly larvae clarifies that anglers usually describe the subimago stage as the “dun” and the imago as the “spinner”. The name “Ephemeroptera” comes from the Greek words ephemeros = lasting for a day, and pteron = wing, referring to the brief life of the adult mayflies (also sometimes called “one-day flies”!), which doesn’t have a proper gut system and which has a short life as an adult, evolved only to emerge, mate, lay eggs and then die.


Earlier today, I met Craig Macadam, the Scottish officer for Buglife, the Invertebrate Conservation charity, and he put me on the trail of a study by the Environment Agency (EA) in England, using anglers records of adult mayflies going back many years, sometimes as far as World War Two. Sitting on the bankside for hours at a time, many anglers are very interested in which mayflies are emerging and which the trout are rising to catch and eat, as there is a fine art in making artificial flies that seek to simulate the living flies! So back in 2001, the EA exploited this interest, in some cases lifelong, by collating anglers’ personal records to assess changes in the state of mayflies. An article in the Independent newspaper here, reported that the study identified a significant decline in mayflies in southern England’s chalk streams, particularly in the last 20 years, and ascribes this to the continued increase in pesticides, fertilisers and other chemicals, particularly from intensive agriculture. A more recent (2008) article on the BBC Scotland web pages helpfully reports the general position of mayflies in Scotland, according to Buglife (and Craig), who were trying to recruit volunteer recorders for a survey of mayflies. The article reports that one mayfly species (Ephemera danica, the original “Mayfly”, which emerges when the May or Hawthorn is in flower) is making a comeback in Central Scotland’s rivers, probably due to declining pollution levels. The fortunes of other mayfly species are more mixed; although the water quality of Scotland’s rivers is generally high and has greatly improved over the last 30 years, there are other pressures on invertebrates like mayflies living in the rivers, for example, some northern and upland species are showing changes in their southern ranges in Scotland that are consistent with a warmer climate. You might be interested to look at the website for the River Fly Partnership here, a network of over 60 organisations working to conserve our river fly populations in the UK, including the mayflies.


In the picture, the mayflies are being taken by brown trout (Latin name: Salmo trutta), probably Britain’s most widely distributed and commonest freshwater fish. Lordy, what to write about brown trout? I could write pages (and pages). Many people have written whole books. So, as I don’t simply want to replicate screeds of text from my fish books, I will focus on the main point of this series of posts, a comparison of the status of the features of the pictures compared with when they were painted. Professor Peter Maitland, in his book “Scotland’s Freshwater Fish. Ecology, Conservation & Folklore”, describes the origin of all native brown trout populations in Scotland as all “descended from early post-glacial colonisation by anadromous [sea-going] trout”. Brown trout are found in Scotland wherever water quality is high enough and there are not too many predaceous fish. Populations have also been introduced very widely across Scotland for angling and perhaps for more historical fish production, and many populations are maintained by angling associations and clubs, or by fishery managers, by stocking of farmed or wild brown trout. So, since 1959-1961, it is unlikely that the distribution of brown trout has deteriorated. Indeed, the improvement in the overall quality of our rivers in the past few decades will have allowed the recolonisation of many rivers previously rendered virtually fishless (or at least troutless!) by poor water quality. Stocking and introductions will certainly have increased the distribution, but there is no overall assessment of what this may have done to the many unique, genetically distinct brown trout populations and varieties of form that led historically to an enormous range of local names for brown trout. There is a caveat to this story which relates to the sea trout, a form of brown trout that is born and grows in freshwater then goes to sea (like a salmon) for one or more years before returning to the river to breed. Sea trout have suffered particular problems in recent years but that is a fishy tale for another time.


Finally, the water-crowfoot in the picture could be one of any of a number of related water-plant species, of which Ranunculus aquatilis is probably the commonest (hence, Common Water-crowfoot!). It can cover ponds, streams and ditches in summer. The problem with reporting on how its status compares now with 1959-1961 is that, in 1962, when the original Atlas of British and Irish Flora was published, the differences between a number of water-crowfoot species had not been resolved. It is not really possible, therefore, to say whether any of a number of the water-crowfoot species has increased or declined! Water-crowfoot is not native in most of Scotland’s rivers anyway, but is more likely to be found in southern Scotland, and the River Tweed is particularly important in Scotland for hosting a number of species.

Signs of the times: Spring #19

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’ve been rambling all this night

And the best part of the day,

And now we’re returning back again

We’ve brought you a branch of May.”

Anonymous Hertfordshire May-Day folk song, reported in Flora Britannica

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Nearing the end of the pictures in the Spring book, with four to go, it already feels like Summer outside (occasionally...). Spring picture 21 is like a picture from a child’s fantasy of Spring, with a mare and her foal, blossom, chicks and orchids. In fact, the text of the book is charming: “The mare and her foal are in a lovely place on a lovely day, and have the best month of the year in which to stray at their own sweet will.” But horses aside, the wilder, natural elements of this picture are a lapwing and her chicks in a field where the bracken is growing up among the flowers of early purple orchids and lady’s smock. To complete the picture, a hawthorn tree in the hedge of the field is in full blossom and, in the background, the new, silvery, pale leaves of a whitebeam tree are opening.


I already covered the long-term problems of the lapwing or peewit (Vanellus vanellus) in a previous post in the series but with the beautiful lapwing chicks in the picture here, how could I not add a bit more? I just wanted to share the following picture, scanned in from my beloved old AA Book of Birds (from 1969), which is just possibly the cutest bird picture ever painted – not my dispassionate contribution to the assessment of the state of nature, but who cares? Everyone deserves to see and enjoy this en masse set of wading bird chicks! The lapwing chick is bottom left. If you double-click on the picture, you can take a closer look.

The bracken fronds starting to rise behind the mare first appear as little spiralling “fiddleheads” uncurling from the ground, but fairly quickly they will shoot up to form a dense green canopy. Bracken (Pteridium aquilinum) is a native species of fern found in the uplands, on moorland, in forests, generally on slightly more acidic soils. Many land managers regard bracken as a problem invasive species, which can invade and ruin good grazing land. In keeping with that attitude, the New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora identifies that its abundance increased markedly in the 20th century, “apparently in response to more intensive sheep grazing and more frequent burning of hill vegetation. In the 1970s, it was invading more than 10,000 hectares of agricultural land annually.” But, if you looked only at the records of bracken in Britain divided up by squares of sides of length 10 km in 1962, you wouldn’t see this, as it was recorded nearly everywhere even then. So what has happened is that its local distribution has increased in many areas. This shows the importance of understanding exactly what it is that records of nature are telling you. Looking at the trends in species in more than one way can reveal changes which would be masked by looking just at, for example, records as presence or absence in 10-km squares.


But bracken hasn’t always been a villain – it has a long an honourable history of use in rural Britain, as described by Richard Mabey in his “Flora Britannica”, including manuring and covering potato beds, for dressing leather, and as fuel and tinder. Chiefly, however, it was used as “a universal packing and padding stuff”, such as winter bedding for cattle, basket lining for fruit and fish, and padding for earthen ware and slate transport. Mabey also suggests that the decline its use as modern alternative materials became available, may have contributed to its spread. In 1990, it was estimated that bracken covered between 1.2 and 1.7% of Britain’s land area, and 15% of rough upland grazings, leading to more grazing of bracken by stock – this may be a problem as it is toxic to mammals and may be carcinogenic to humans if overeaten (the young shoots are commonly eaten in east Asia) and perhaps from over-inhalation of its spores. One to watch!


You will find fewer people complaining about the presence of native orchid species on their land, and we see the flowers of the early-purple orchid (Latin name: Orchis mascula). The New Atlas reports that this orchid, which grows on a variety of neutral and calcareous soils, is most common in “woodlands, coppices, and calcareous grassland”, as well as in hedgerows, scrub, roadsides and railway banks, on limestone pavements and moist cliff ledges. The fact that this species has, since 1962, declined particularly in central England and parts of Scotland, is largely due to felling of woodland or its replanting as conifer plantations, the intensification of grassland management and ploughing. Richard Mabey makes an interesting point – the variety of local names for this species (perhaps over 90) suggests that the early-purple orchid was once abundant and well-known. Mabey also adds that the habitats where it is found includes “precisely the kind of habitats that have suffered most from development and modern farming over the past 50 years [the precise window for this series of posts, as it happens], and where they have gone the orchid has usually vanished with them”. Maybe the early-purple orchid ought to become one of a number of flagship indicator species of the success or failure of our future efforts to prevent further declines in our native wildlife. Fin ally, the Latin name Orchis that is applied to many orchid species (such as this one) is the Latin word for “testicle”, due to the testicle-like pair of root-tubers from which orchids grow!


The other flower growing in the horse’s paddock is the cuckoo-flower, or lady’s smock (Cardamine pratensis), a perennial herb typically of wet grassy areas in woodland, wet meadows and fens, upland rush pasture and springs. I think it is the main food plant for the caterpillars of the beautiful Orange-tip fritillary butterfly. There has been no overall change in its distribution since 1962. According to the New Atlas, it is quite resistant to some herbicides and so has been able to survive in semi-improved pastures.


The hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) – where to start? Also known as the May-tree, it is the only British tree to be named after the month in which it flowers. It would be difficult to cover here all the important cultural aspect of this tree in British rural culture – Richard Mabey devotes six pages of Flora Britannica to this one species. A flavour of its influence can be taken from the following quote for Mabey: “Its blossoming marks the cusp between spring and summer... It was the ancestor of the May-pole, the source of May Day garlands and the decoration of Jacks-in-the-Green and Green Georges, and one of the models for the foliage which wreathes the faces of Green Men carved in churches and inns. Superstitions about the flowers – and especially about the dire consequences of bringing them inside the house – persist more widely than for any other species.”

Regarding its superstitious status, Mabey suggests that, among other possible causes, the red berries and thorns was taken, in earlier times, as an association with the Crucifixion of Christian tradition. On the wild food front, we eat the new young leaves in salads in Spring, which taste slightly nutty. The New Atlas indicates that its distribution is stable.  As it has been so widely planted as a hedging plant for centuries, however, the extent of its natural distribution is unclear, although in northern Scotland, its distribution is often confined to the vicinity of habitation where it is almost certainly an introduction.


Briefly, the whitebeam (Sorbus aria) which is coming into leaf in the rear right of the picture, is a small-to-medium sized tree, not native to Scotland (in fact, probably only native to southern England. The New Atlas reports its distribution as stable, although widely planted, including in Scotland, in parks, gardens and streets. The new leaves of this tree resemble the buds of magnolias before they open and, with fine downy white underside and shiny slightly silvery leaf-top, must be the whitest-looking leaves of any tree native to Britain. I’ve been greatly enjoying their emergence every morning this Spring along our local park and golf course footpaths. One unusual feature of the whitebeam is its tendency to form highly-local endemic species often confined, according to Flora Britannica, to single rocky gorges and found nowhere else in the world. At least 14 of these individual species are known in Britain. Special!

Signs of the times: Spring #18

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.

“A fine and subtle spirit dwells

In every little flower,

Each one its own sweet feeling breathes

With more or less of power.

There is a silent eloquence

In every wild bluebell

That fills my softened heart with bliss

That words could never tell.”

Anne Bronte (1820-1849), “The Bluebell”

I’m covering two pictures (more briefly each) in order to try to catch up a bit and allow me to start the Summer book, which should have begun in June (on Tuesday!). Ah well, Scotland’s seasons start a little behind England’s (as you’ll know if you’ve ever looked, from a Scottish perspective, at the suggested planting times in most British gardening books!). So, on with pictures 19 and 20 from the Spring book!

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Spring picture 19 has us out in the wild wood again, this time with a small herd of fallow deer standing among a mass of bluebells under a beech tree. There is a green woodpecker in the tree, along with a little wood warbler, while a nesting woodcock lies well-hidden and very still in the undergrowth in the extreme bottom right. A crab apple tree is in full blossom in the background.

The Bluebell (Latin name: Hyacinthoides non-scripta) is one of the most-loved and celebrated of Britain’s wild flowers, regularly voted as Britain’s favourite flower . The experience of walking through a “bluebell wood” in full flower must surely be of the finest “gentle” nature experiences that Britain offers (we don’t have cage diving with great white sharks or charging bull elephants but we do a great line in spring-time flowers!). Britain has 50% of the world’s bluebell populations. Apart from here, significant populations are only found in the similar Atlantic climates of northern France and the north of Spain. Plantlife, our leading plant conservation charity, describes the status of bluebells as follows: “Although still common in Britain, Bluebells are threatened locally by habitat destruction, collection from the wild, and from the escape of Spanish Bluebells from gardens and subsequent cross-breeding and loss of true native populations [an issue that makes it onto the Today programme each Spring now, as regularly as the report of the first cuckoo pops up in “The Times” letter page!]. Bluebells are now protected in Britain from illegal commercial harvesting, which has provided them with a safeguard, but losses from habitat destruction remain.” The New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora, in 2002, reported that the distribution is relatively stable. Also, a lovely new book (new to me anyway), “The Scots Herbal” by Tess Darwin arrived in the post today – lots of useful info on Scottish plants and their uses – for instance, you can make a glue out of bluebell bulbs (I knew this already – Ray Mears did it in his Bronze Age Britain TV show by chewing up the (toxic) bluebell bulbs, and he then used the glue to stick feathers as flights onto the shaft of a flint-headed arrow he had made). So there you are, bluebells – lovely AND useful...


The beech tree (Fagus sylvatica) coming into leaf was one of the later tree species to colonise Britain after the last Ice Age and so is only native in SE England and SE Wales, but has been widely planted across the whole of Britain, not least as a popular choice of hedging plant, and so is now widespread in Scotland too. The New Atlas advises that its natural range in Britain has never been precisely defined, but this range is stable at present. As well as providing beech nuts, or “mast” in Autumn, popular with birds and pigs (and, yes, people too – I’ve eaten them), beech is also a source of firewood (I have a log store full, drying out for next Winter), a high quality, pale hardwood for wood work/ wood-turning etc and other, more unusual uses – at the moment, we have a batch of a beech leaf liqueur, beech leaf noyau, in preparation, made by pouring a bottle of (admittedly, cheap) gin over young beech leaves and letting it sit in a sealed jar for three weeks, before adding a solution of brandy and sugar. We made some last year and it is delicious. Our recipe came from Roger Phillips’ “Wild Food” book, although I found it also in Richard Mabey’s “Flora Britannica”.


I won’t say much about the crab apple in blossom in the background – very widespread, probably stable in distribution compared with 1962, according to the New Atlas, but it is pretty difficult to know whether we are talking about a truly wild crab apple (Malus silvestris sens. str.), or one that has hybridised with the introduced “domestic” apple (Malus domestica) whose fruit we more normally eat. I do remember my Dad tricking me into tasting a crab apple one Autumn when we were back visiting family in Ayrshire, his childhood haunt, and having my first unpleasant experience of the stringent crab in the raw! We have a few very prolific crab apples around the town in Stirling, each producing masses of fruit every year, but no one seems to collect and use it – something for the new Forth Valley Orchard Initiative to promote maybe? In common with all the other blossom-producing trees, our crab apples in Stirling had a cracking blossom season this year!


The birds shown here have had a variety of luck since the late 1950s/ early 1960s, as seen from the trends shown here.

(From: British Trust for Ornithology)

The British Trust for Ornithology only has a graph for the green woodpecker (Picus viridis) in England, but you can see above that it is doing pretty well, the population having risen steadily in Britain since 1966, except for a period of stability or shallow decline around 1980, probably the result of a series of harsh winters. BTO reports there was considerable range expansion in central and eastern Scotland between the periods 1968–72 and 1988–91. As green woodpeckers are adversely affected by harsh winters, its success maybe a result of climate change leading to milder winters. Any fans of Bagpuss out there? Professor Yaffle, the brainy old wooden bookend woodpecker in the popular children’s TV show of the 1970s, was supposed to be a green woodpecker, and that name “yaffle” comes from an old country name for the species, based on its loud, ringing call. It was also known as the “rain bird”. My old AA Book of Birds suggests that this is because its call was more clearly heard in the atmospheric conditions before rainfall! I wonder if that has any basis in meteorological fact?


The other two bird species, by contrast, the woodcock and the wood warbler seem to be on the slide, according to the BTO’ graphs. The woodcock (what a Latin name! Scolopax rusticola – sounds like a Doctor Who character) apparently declined rapidly and significantly on the BTO’s Common Bird Census survey plots for the three decades up to 2000. These did not, however, include many areas of coniferous forest where it is most commonly found, and as you can see from the picture, it can be quite cryptic anyway. BTO summarises possible causes of its decline: “Recreational disturbance, the drying out of natural woodlands, overgrazing by deer, declining woodland management, and the maturation of new plantations are possible causes”, but no strong hypothesis yet. And another measure, the numbers shot in Winter (including many birds coming from continental Europe in Winter) (woodcock is regarded as a gamebird as well as a wading bird by taxonomic relationship) have increased around threefold since 1945 and are currently running at a historically high level, so it isn’t really clear what the population trend actually is.


The little wood warbler (Phylloscopus sibilatrix) up in the beech tree has a westerly distribution in Britain and is actually quite unlikely to be seen in Scotland. It has only been surveyed latterly by the BTO, as you can see from the graph, which also shows considerable and rapid population decline since the mid-1990s (as well as an egg-laying date that is becoming earlier in the year, in response to a warming climate). Declines are apparently evident across other parts of Europe but the BTO does not offer suggestions regarding the cause.


The fallow deer (Dama dama) in the picture are not native to Scotland, or even to other parts of Britain. I’m tempted not to say anything about them, or not much. According to the Joint Nature Conservation Committee’s report on the state of British mammals (would you look at the state of them?), the distribution of fallow deer is” Local in Scotland, where its distribution includes three west coast islands.” But it doesn’t say which islands! Fallow deer prefer deciduous/mixed mature woodland and conifer plantations with open areas. The best estimate possible for the total pre-breeding population in Scotland is fewer than 4000, compared to maybe around 350,000 of the native red deer in Scotland. So you are relatively unlikely to see a scene like this in Scotland!

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

On to picture 20, which is fairly simple to cover. It shows a lake or loch, with a nesting coot (which I’ve discussed previously here), a group of male mallards, presumably without mates, gathered on the water (and mallards were discussed in Spring #1 here). Up in the reeds, there are two small brownish warblers, to the right a reed warbler and to the left a sedge warbler singing. In the water below, there are some large bream assembled to lay their eggs.


The common bream (Abramis brama) is a member of the carp family and for advice on its status in Scotland, I turned to Professor Peter Maitland, and specifically his book: “Scotland’s freshwater fish. Ecology, Conservation and Folklore”. The bream is not a native fish in Scotland, but has been introduced to southern Scotland, where it has been established in the Annan catchment for over a century, or longer. It has also been introduced by coarse anglers to waters in the Central Belt in the final decades of the 20th Century. Professor Maitland concludes that the bream has no special protection in Scotland and, as an introduced and potentially damaging species, does not warrant any particular measures!

The reed warbler (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) prefers to live in reedbeds, where it is quite difficult to survey accurately, according to the BTO. Nevertheless, its population seems to be increasing (as shown above), and its range is extending into Scotland, where it is now regularly recorded as far north as the Tay reedbeds between Dundee and Perth. Like most of the other warbler species covered in this blog, its average egg laying date is advancing earlier in the year, in this case by a week between 1968 and 2007.


The sedge warbler (Acrocephalus schoenobaenus) singing near it in the picture is a much more widespread and common summer breeding visitor in Scotland, although its fortunes are much more varied over the last 50 years, as the graph above shows. Detailed analysis of BTO data has shown that much of the year-to-year variation in population size is driven by changes in adult survival rates which, in turn, are related to changes in rainfall on their wintering grounds, just south of the Sahara Desert, in the West African Sahel. Four troughs in population are related to years of poor West African rainfall, with a low point in 1984–85. Breeding records in Scotland have increased by 29% since 1995. Again, this warbler's egg-laying (average) date has advanced by nearly a week over the last 30 years, maybe an effect of warming? The sedge warbler has the most amazing, rambling and complex song that, although jarring at times, is endlessly reworked, including mimicry of other species, and has been compared with that of the nightingale!

Signs of the times: Spring #17

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.

“Ask of Her, the mighty Mother.

Her reply puts this other

Question: What is Spring?-

Growth in every thing -

Flesh and fleece, fur and feather,

Grass and green world all together,

Star-eyed strawberry breasted

Throstle above Her nested

Cluster of bugle blue eggs thin

Forms and warms the life within,

And bird and blossom swell

In sod or sheath or shell.”

Gerard Manly Hopkins, The May Magnificant, 1888

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Spring picture 18 takes us, once again, down into the undergrowth, probably on farmland. I say that as the centrepiece for this is a nestful of partridge eggs. It is surrounded by a variety of flowering plants (white dead-netle, bugle and wild arum) and some emerging fronds of bracken. The flowers have attracted a bumblebee, and there are caterpillars of two moth species, the upper one a yellow-underwing and the lower one is a tiger moth caterpillar.

The partridge, or grey partridge (Latin name: Perdix perdix) that laid these eggs would have paired up with its mate in late January or early February. Ultimately, it will spend the following winter in its family group (or “covey”). Unfortunately, according to the BTO, the grey partridge is one of the most seriously declining bird species in Europe, its decline in the UK of 89% between 1967 and 2007 reflecting this wider decline. “The Birds of the Western Palaearctic” describes the decline as follows: “From early 1950s, steady decline in mean population levels throughout range, varying from 50 to 90%, but delayed in some areas until modern agricultural methods introduced”. The BTO elaborates on this reference to agricultural intensification as the likely cause of the partridge’s calamitous decline as probably specifically the effects of herbicides on the food plants of young chicks' insect prey.

On the floral front, I won’t discuss bracken here as it appears in a few pictures’ time, a little more unfurled! The White Dead-Nettle (Lamium album) is not a native species but has been long established in Britain. The New Atlas of the Flora of Britain and Ireland identifies that its distribution has not changed. Similarly, the distribution of the lovely blue-flowered Bugle (Ajuga reptans) has not changed significantly in Britain since the original 1962 Atlas. It is described in Richard Mabey’s “Flora Britannica” as: “a finely structured and tinted plant of woodland clearings and damp grassland, quite often growing in large troops”. Most of the text accompanying the picture is actually about the wild arum (Arum maculatum), the frankly quite bizarre looking plant in the centre of the picture, with the large pale-green hood. Richard Mabey reports that this species has garnered over 90 local common names, the most well-known being Lords and Ladies, Cuckoo Pint, Red-hot Poker, Willy Lily (I wonder where they get that from?), Jack in the Pulpit, Parson in the Pulpit (and so on, it goes on!). There is a suggestion that Cuckoo Pint comes from “pintle”, a slang word for “penis”. But, as Mabey says, “for all its bawdy associations, the plant itself is a handsome and modest one, pale and sculptural in Spring.” The flower leads, later in the season, to a spike of numerous bright orange berries. The New Atlas identifies little change in distribution in Britan since 1962, but this species is thought not to be native in Scotland anyway.

The moth caterpillars? Difficult to say too much as neither of them is identified in the text to a sufficient species level to say anything very specific. There are several tiger moth species and more than one yellow-underwing species. The garden tiger moth may be the commonest and most widespread tiger moth but Butterfly Conservation, the butterfly and moth conservation charity, has identified that is is declining. The Lunar yellow-underwing moth is the subject of an action plan in the UK’s Biodiversity Action Plan and has just been identified as stable in population after several years of reported decline. Sorry not to say more about these but there isn’t much point as different members of each group are fairing better or worse to different degrees!

Now, I confess to a mild amusement at finding the partridge’s nest and the Lords and Ladies in the same picture here. Below is a photo I took in the very first film in the first camera I ever owned (a little Kodak instamatic that used what I think were called 110 film cartridges – kids, this was pre-pre-pre-digital!). As you can see, I’ve been rubbish at photography all of my life! I was given the camera by my parents for maybe my 8th birthday. We had just moved to the cottage on a farm near Aberlady where I lived for the rest of my childhood until I went off to university.

When we moved in, the garden was pretty untended and we found the partidge’s nest shown in the photo, with some eggs hatched and some infertile or abandoned before they hatched. The nice coincidence with the Ladybird book picture is that, over the wall from the nest, in the margin of the cereal field that bordered our garden, we found Lords and Ladies growing, at the time particularly exciting for the 8-year old naturalist who had been told repeatedly previously by his Dad that this was a very rare plant in East Lothian where we lived. Here I am, all these years later, finding these two memories stimulated by this lovely painting and my old photo.

Signs of the times: Spring #16

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.

“Now the bright morning-star, Day’s harbinger,

Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her

The flowery May, who from her green lap throws

The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.

Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire

Mirth, and youth, and warm desire!”

John Milton, Song on a May Morning, 1660

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

In Spring picture 17, I suspect the image of a sow and her piglets might have been a romanticised image of pig farming, even for the period of 1959-1961 when it was painted. I’m not planning to say any more here about pig farming and how it has changed since then, as this looks more like a pet pig! The other features of the picture are three plant species, gorse, Alexanders and cowslips all in flower and, in the background, some terns over the sea.

Gorse (Latin name: Ulex europaeus), is the large bush with bright yellow flowers in the background of the scene. It is a thorny shrub native to most of Britain and Ireland, although it is an introduced species on the Outer Hebrides, Shetland and Orkney (and the Isle of Man). It generally grows on poorer, slightly acidic soils, and occurs widely in under-grazed pasture land, in coastal habitats, waste ground and along roads and railways. The 2002 New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora reports that gorse has increased its distribution in Britain since 1962, suggesting that this is due to an increase in disturbed (“ruderal”) habitats and the reduction of grazing pressure on lowland heaths and coastal cliff tops since the 1930s. Richard Mabey, in his “Flora Britannica”, describes gorse as “one of the great signature plants of commonland and rough open space, places where lovers can meet, walk freely and lose themselves, if need be, in its dense thickets.” The old romantic! I love the smell of gorse in flower. On sunny, hot days, the overpowering smell of coconut from gorse flowers (also said by some to smell like vanilla) can be amazing! I was privileged to be able to visit an army training area on a coastal dune and heath system near Dundee last week (for a meeting), where the conditions on the coastal heathlands (formerly but no longer extensively grazed) seem to be perfect for gorse – the whole area is aflame with bright yellow gorse bushes.

The large umbrella shaped flowers in the bottom right of the picture belong to Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum), an unusually-named but impressive perennial herb species introduced to Britain during Roman times, and reported in Flora Britannica as being widely cultivated (in monastery and cottage gardens) until it was displaced by celery in the early 18th century. It has a predominantly coastal distribution in Britain (so is very appropriate for inclusion here in this picture) and is often the first fresh foliage of the year appearing in coastal hedgerows. The new Atlas reports that its distribution has changed little since the 1962 original Atlas. It only occurs sporadically in Scotland on the southwest and eastern coasts. Personally, I have only ever seen it on the Pembrokeshire Coastal Path; I think it looks like a wild carrot on steroids.

The third plant in the picture is the cowslips, flowering in the front centre. The cowslip (Primula veris) is a distinctive feature of well-drained herb-rich grasslands. The cowslip was clearly a popular species in Britain, considering the number of local and vernacular names that it has been given – how about culverkeys, hey flower, heggles, bunch of keys (all quoted in Flora Britannica)? It is not widely distributed in Scotland, being restricted as a native species to southern and eastern Scotland. Although the New Atlas indicates that the distribution of clowslips hasn’t changed much since the 1962 Atlas, it is reported in the New Atlas that it suffered a marked decline between 1930 and 1980 due to the intensification of agricultural practices, in particular ploughing up or agricultural improvement of grasslands , and the increase in use of herbicides. Since the 1990s, however, the fortunes of the cowslip seem to have improved, particularly on unsprayed roadside verges, village greens and other public greenspaces, and in new road schemes, where it is often included as a component of the wild-seed mixtures which have become increasingly popular as part of planting schemes. Were the New Atlas to be re-printed in the next few years, it is possible that cowslips would be recorded much more widely in Scotland as a result of such plantings and re-seedings.

The only bird species in the picture, and the last feature to be discussed, is the flock of terns “above the cliff beyond the meadow”, which have “just arrived after their migration flight”. The sound of calling terns is another sound of impending summer to me. I used to hear terns every day in Summer from our garden above the bay where I grew up and the sound never fails to tickle those old memories. There are five species of terns that breed in Britain and the text doesn’t make clear which these are, so I am going to assume that they are Arctic Terns (Sterna paradisaea), the commonest species found in Scotland (although the Common Tern (Sterna hirunda) is commoner in southern Britain). Arctic and Common Terns actually look pretty identical bar one or two minor details of leg and beak colour and are sometimes described as “Comic” Terns (COMmon + arctIC – get it?) if it isn’t clear which they are. My much-loved old AA Book of Birds describes terns thus: their “graceful flight makes then the swallows of the sea” (indeed, the “hirunda” part of the Common Tern’s Latin name refers to the Latin word for “Swallow”). It also describes what is surely the most-well known thing about Arctic Terns, its remarkable annual global migration, as follows: “Twice yearly, the Arctic tern sets out on an amazing journey which carries it from one end of the globe to the other. It nests in Britain northwards to the Arctic, and winters 10,000 miles away in Antarctic seas”, sometimes right to the edge of the Antarctic icepack. It has been said that this bird enjoys more hours of daylight than any other living creature as, except on migration, it spends its entire life at high latitudes in both the northern and southern hemispheres. The Queen thinks everywhere smells of fresh paint, and the Arctic tern probably thinks that there is only Summer!

Where I grew up in the 1970s on the East Lothian coast there was a considerable tern colony on a shingle spit that, occasionally, hosted nesting by all five British tern species (the others are the Little, Roseate and Sandwich Terns). But sadly, the Arctic Tern, although its range has not changed much, has suffered serious population declines in Britain (and elsewhere in northern Europe) in recent decades. Unfortunately, my reliable source of information (and graphs!) on trends, the website of the British Trust for Ornithology doesn’t have any on terns (I don’t know why). In Scotland, the decline has been most severe for Arctic Tern colonies on Shetland, linked to the failure in recruitment of sand-eels, the main fish species used to feed tern chicks. In the period 1981-1987, the collapse of the sand-eel stock was followed by a decline in successful production of Arctic Tern chicks, as shown by this report produced by the Marine Laboratory Aberdeen. Although there has been a decline long-term, I just can’t find anywhere readily, what the current status of the Arctic tern (or the other other four tern species) is – come on, BTO!

New life from old...

There were lots of new fern fronds uncurling out into the wide world in our fernery last weekend - one of my favourite Spring things every year in the garden...

Signs of the times: Spring #14

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.

“I love spring anywhere but, if I could choose, I would always greet it in a garden.”

Ruth Stout

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

In Spring picture 15, we see three little vignettes involving birds – a bold-as-brass male cuckoo calling from a washing-pole, a song thrush incubating eggs in its nest hidden in a bush, and a pair of jackdaws sitting by their nest (in a chimney pot). The other features in the garden are a cherry tree and a flowering currant bush, both in full blossom, and a hawthorn bush in new leaf. I’d prefer to write about the hawthorn in a few pictures time when it is shown in full blossom.


It isn’t made clear what species of cherry tree is shown but, from its relatively large size, I’d guess it isn’t a bird cherry, a relatively small native cherry largely found in northern Britain. From its profuse white blossom, it could be a wild cherry (Prunus avium) (or a cultivar of this) which is, according to the New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora, both widely distributed naturally in Britain, as well as extensively planted as an ornamental or fruit tree in gardens and parks. Also, according to the Atlas, its distribution has not changed since 1962 when the original Atlas was published, although it is also widely planted as an ornamental tree. Richard Mabey, in Flora Britannica, describes the wild cherry, rather charmingly, with its “drifts of delicate white blossom” in Spring and its “fiery mix of yellow and crimson” Autumn leaves, as “arguably the most ornamental of our native woodland trees.” Cherry trees produce a beautiful red wood which is lovely to work with – I’ve turned a bowl from cherry wood. And, of course, it also produces cherries (varying in colour between yellow and red) that are perfectly edible - we pick and eat cherries from wild cherry trees planted in the park near my parents. Apparently they can be used to make cherry brandy in much the same way as sloes are used to make sloe gin (author thinks “hmm!”) But I’m getting unseasonably ahead of myself.


I’m not really minded to spend much time or space on the pink-blossomed flowering currant (Ribes sangineum) as it is not a native species, being introduced to Britain in 1826 as a garden plant and ornamental hedge, and established in the wild by 1916. The New Atlas says it is hard to record any trend in its distribution since 1962 but that it is “probably increasing”.


On to the birds! Most obviously, the picture features a male cuckoo (Latin name: Cuculus canorus) calling from a washing pole. A real sign of Spring, and probably the most onomatopoeic bird call ever. You can hear various recordings here on that great "xeno-canto" birdcall website I've referred to before - amusing to set several cuckoo recordings running at once (I don't get out much)! But for all its importance as a much-anticipated Spring-time arrival (there is serious competition every year to be the first person to inform "The Times" newspaper of the first cuckoo heard), and its role as an inspiration for many old folk traditions, poems, music, and so on, the poor old cuckoo hasn't fared too well in the 50 years since the Ladybird books were written. In particular, since the early 1980s, cuckoo abundance has been in steep decline as shown in the UK graph to the left below, although the right-hand graph shows that there has been an apparent increase of 14% in Scotland since the mid 1990s. The British Trust for Ornithology collates a number of possible causes of decline: "Cuckoo numbers may have fallen because the populations of some key host species, such as Dunnock and Meadow Pipit, have declined"; "Decreases among certain British moths may have reduced food supplies for returning adults, and the species may also be suffering difficulties on migration or in winter" and "Cuckoos increased significantly during 1994–2006 in lowland semi-natural grass, heath and bog but decreased in almost all other habitat types", suggesting that host bird species are faring differently in different habitats. Its decline in abundance has led to its conservation status sliding from green to amber in 2002 and more recently on to the red list of most conservation concern.

(From: British Trust for Ornithology)

As well as for its famous call, the cuckoo is perhaps best-known for its parasitic mode of reproduction, through laying its eggs in the nests of a range of other, much smaller bird species (e.g. hedge-sparrows, robins, wagtails and pipits are all identified in the text for the picture), and its large chick then pushing out the eggs laid by the host birds. The (non-cuckoo) host parent birds then raise the cuckoo chick as their own, despite the massive difference in size once the cuckoo starts to grow. It is definitely a summer visitor. As a child, I was taught a short rhyme by my Dad to remember the timing of its visit:

"The cuckoo comes in April,

He sings his song in May,

In the middle of June, he changes his tune,

In July, he flies away." 

There is some evidence of a slight effect of a warmer climate bringing cuckoos to Scotland earlier by an average of about a day earlier per decade, and predicted to be about a day earlier for every 1 degree rise in average temperature.

The song thrush (Turdus philomelos), tucked away on its nest in the hawthorn bush at the bottom of the picture, is another species with mixed fortunes over the 50 years since the Ladybird book was produced. Song thrush abundance in the UK declined by 49% between 1967 and 2007, with a slight increase again in the final years of that period.

(From: British Trust for Ornithology)

Although the environmental causes are not known, the BTO suggests a number of possible causes for this calamitous decline, including changes in farming practices, land drainage, pesticides and predators as possible contributors, along with possible poor management and deer over-grazing of woodland habitats. It is a little ironic that the song thrush is shown here nesting in a garden environment as it is possible that good quality garden habitat has helped to offset the decline in rural and agricultural habitats for this species. I enjoy watching song thrushes in my own garden. The song thrush is famous for eating snails (and hence is a beneficial species to the gardener), using stone and rock surfaces as "anvils" on which they tap-tap-tap the snail to break the shell. In my garden, song thrushes have taken to pulling ramshorn watersnails out of my pond and using the slab stepping stones as their anvil. Hopefully, things have turned round for the song thrush again, with an increasing population but, according to BTO, but "population levels remain relatively low."

Finally, the jackdaws on the chimney pot. I do love the crows, as readers of earlier posts may recall.  And crows don't come much more likeable than the jackdaw (Corvus monedula), one of the smallest British crow species. Without beating about the bush, the jackdaw is doing pretty well in the UK, its population doubling between 1967 and 2007:

(From: British Trust for Ornithology)

According to the BTO, as with Magpie, Rook and Carrion Crow, "the increase has been associated with improvements in breeding performance and probably reflects the species' generalist feeding habits, which allow it to exploit diverse and ephemeral food resources."

On the behaviour of jackdaws, if I can quote from my beloved old "AA Book of  Birds" from 1969 (1973 reprint): "Most crows are robbers, but none is a bigger thief than the jackdaw. It not only steals eggs and chicks when it gets the chance, but it will sometimes pick up useless inedible objects and hide them away. It will perch on horses and sheep and pluck out tufts of hair to line its nest; and occasionally it even steals a home, making a cranny for itself in the base of the pile of sticks forming a rook's nest". I might take issue with the description of its predation of eggs and chicks as "stealing", which is personifying its predatory behaviour, but this text does capture the relentless poking and pulling you see when you watch jackdaws. I love their obvious curiosity and it is easy to fall into the habit of personifying of their behaviour as "cheeky".

My wunderkind terrier Ella is in a constant state of alert for the jackdaws in our garden and the park, but she can't even get close...