Signs of the times: Spring #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.

“No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.” (Anon.)

A little Spring-time aside: Sometimes it is gratifying to have confirmation from strangers (however unknowingly on their part), that you are right on the money, that you have your finger on the pulse, that you’re in touch with the zeitgeist! Friday’s Guardian newspaper had an article (which I only found out about today, unfortunately) entitled: “Spring about to 'explode' in Britain, conservationists say”, which covers some of the territory that this blog has been trampling with the “What to look for in...” series of posts.


First of all, I love the idea of an unexploded season (“Danger! UXS! Pent-up nature in unstable state – may go off at any time!”). But the article also covers much of the general material I’ve covered in the first three posts in this series, particularly as it relates to the effect of changing climate on the timing of Spring. Apparently, the extra cold and extended Winter means that we may be having a “slow, late, old fashioned spring”, according to Matthew Oakes, conservation adviser to the National Trust. The article also notes that many Spring-time phenomena are much later this year than we have become used to over the past decade or more of warm, early Springs.

According to Steve Marsh, a conservationist with the Woodland Trust which runs a volunteer recording scheme looking at Spring-time and other seasonal nature indicators: “There have been only ten recordings of [the yellow spring flower] coltsfoot when we would have expected hundreds. And it's the same with celandines. Normally we would see them now right across the UK, but this year there has been sparse coverage in the south and midlands and almost none reported in northern England and Scotland". Gratifyingly, the lesser celandine and coltsfoot have already featured in the second post in this series. I received a comment on the post, asking why I had said nothing in the text about coltsfoot – it was because I couldn’t find any information about the timing of its Spring flowering, comparing the 1960s with today. But Marsh added that even this year's “late” spring is early compared to the 1970s. Finally, with a flourish, I ask you to compare with yesterday’s post about herons, the British Trust for Ornithology’s observation in the Guardian that: “Frozen water and plummeting temperatures may have ... severely reduced populations of birds like the kingfisher and heron, who have had less water open water to feed from”!


Now, back to the comparisons of then and now.

Picture 5 is interesting as the chosen images represent the transition from winter wildlife to the harbingers of Spring and eventual Summer. In this picture, we are saying both goodbye and hello! In March, as the text says: “Many bird flocks are on the move”. We see skeins of migrating geese, heading north , back to their breeding grounds in northern Europe, Iceland, Greenland, or Spitzbergen. Their part is over in Spring’s story in Scotland but there will be an opportunity to discuss geese when they return again in Autumn. At the top of the picture, also preparing to migrate back to their breeding grounds in northern Europe, is a flock of fieldfares, a large northern thrush species that forms large flocks in Scotland in winter, often with another smaller northern thrush, the redwing. We see lots of fieldfares in Stirling in winter, in large, noisy flocks. In fact, if we want to have any holly with berries at Christmas time, we need to cut some early and keep it in the greenhouse, as fieldfares and redwings usually strip our garden hollies of berries in under a fortnight when they first arrive. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any information about fieldfare population trends between 1959-1961 and today. As ever, any information welcomed in the comments section of this post!


In the picture, the brown hares and wheatear (the small bird with the grey back in the foreground) represent two themes in the natural history of Spring – the brown hares, the emergence of native, resident wildlife from the struggle for winter survival, and the wheatear, the return to Britain of summer visitors.


The Brown hare (Latin name: Lepus europaeus), in the form of the “Mad March hares” of the picture, is surely one of the key iconic images of a British Spring. I grew up on a largely arable farm in East Lothian in the 1970s and, from our kitchen, we would see hares each Spring in the cereal fields below our house, engaged in these frenetic, madcap “springtime mating games” (as it says in the picture’s text). Brown hares, in British folklore, have long represented a symbol of fertility. For example, the Norfolk Wildlife Trust points out that: “Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility is usually depicted with a hare’s head. Easter originally takes its name from Eostre, and the traditional Easter bunny was originally a hare and linked to pagan fertility rites and the rebirth of spring.” The Mammal Society has a very useful fact sheet about the brown hare here. In respect of “March madness” in hares, it says: “This is part of hare breeding behaviour. The rapid chases are a dominant male driving a rival away from a female he is guarding. "Boxing" is usually a rebuff given by a female to an over-amorous male. It may actually occur at any time in the long breeding season, but is most visible in March (lighter evenings, but vegetation still low).”


The Mammal Society factsheet also points out that the brown hare has suffered a substantial population decline since the start of the 20th Century, although it is still common in many parts of the country. Changing (and more intensive) agricultural practices, and a decline in the control of foxes due to the reduction in the number of gamekeepers are suggested as two of the likely main causes of the decline. The Joint Nature Conservation Committee, in 1995, reported population estimates for hares as: “A mid-winter population, at the start of the breeding season but before the onset of the main hare-culling season, of about 817,500; 572,250 in England, 187,250 in Scotland and 58,000 in Wales. Organised shoots at the end of the winter may lead to a 40% decline.” The Game Conservancy Trust also provides an interesting leaflet here on the conservation of the brown hare. This has the following graph illustrating the decline of the hare, based on a survey of hares shot as game (a decline which seems very marked since the 1960s to today).

(From Game Conservancy Trust)

Wheatears (Latin name: Oenanthe oenanthe) are small thrushes that arrive to breed in Scotland from their over-wintering grounds in Africa in Spring (and from as early as the end of February down south – but not this year, following our long, cold winter). The Guardian newspaper on Friday reported that, this year, wheatears have just arrived in large numbers in southern England. The British Trust for Ornithology reports for wheatear that, although it is a common breeding species in many upland areas, the species was not monitored at the UK level until the Breeding Bird Survey began in 1994. By that stage, its range was already known to have shrunk in lowland Britain since 1968–72, “perhaps due to losses of suitable grassland and declines in rabbit abundance” (wheatears will make use of old rabbit burrows for nesting). There is, as yet no clear trend in abundance since 1994 in Scotland. The wheatear is, however, one of the most strongly declining bird species in Europe, “having decreased at an annual rate of 4% during 1980–2006… Following widespread declines across Europe during the 1990s, the European status of this species is no longer considered 'secure' ... Accordingly, the species has recently been moved from the green to the amber list in the UK.” A very pretty, distinctive and active bird that I have seen all over Scotland’s uplands and coasts but one, it seems, that is in a bit of trouble.

Signs of the times: Spring #3

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 Picture 4, below, shows rooks in their rookery in elm trees with, in the background, a flight of rooks mobbing or chasing off a solitary heron.

 

 

As a child, this picture resonated strongly with me as there were lots of rooks and rookeries around the East Lothian farm and woodlands where I lived. The rook (latin name: Corvus frugilegus) belongs to what I think of as the “cheeky chappy” bird family, the crows (or corvids), containing some of the most intelligent of all birds. Rooks are birds of farmlands and grasslands and I always find it slightly pleasing that, even though their linguistic roots are unrelated, the words “raucous” and “rook” sound similar, as the overwhelming experience of a rookery in Spring is one of sound. Yes, rooks are incredibly noisy when they are all together – not for nothing is the collective noun for rooks, “a parliament of rooks.” As shown in this picture, in Spring, pairs of rooks rebuild the nests they used the previous season. Britain’s rook population is in a healthy state, according to the British Trust for Ornithology, with an estimated summer population of 1 to 1.3 million pairs. The counting of nests in rookeries suggests a shallow upward trend in numbers plus, for rookeries, a 40% increase in abundance between 1975 and 1996 (also according to the BTO). it is suggested that this probably reflects the species' "considerable adaptability in the face of agricultural change". Counting of individuals in the Breeding Brid Survey, rather than nests in rookeries does suggest, since 2000, a The BTO does conclude: "There has been little change in breeding productivity since the 1960s but a minor decrease in brood size is now becoming evident."

These rooks are shown nesting in elm trees. I described the cataclysmic effect of Dutch Elm Disease on Britain’s elm trees (since these books were published) in the previous post in this series.

The wonderful wading bird, the heron (or grey heron) only features in this one picture in the “What to Look for in Spring” book (although it does also feature later in the year). I love the heron, one of Britain’s largest birds, with its dagger beak, what I think of as a graceful, slow flapping flight, sentinel-like approach to fishing, and its loud, harsh cries. In his song, Now westlin winds, Robert Burns described the heron as; "The soaring hern", and my old Observer's Book of Birds describes the heron's flight thus: "When it takes to its great grey wings with dark tips, the unusually slow and languid wing-beats are distinctive."

We used to see herons over our house nearly every day when I was a child, flying between the Peffer Burn Estuary on Aberlady Bay Local Nature Reserve and a major heron colony (or “heronry”) located high up in the branches of a conifer plantation a mile or two inland. I recall the courtship of herons in that heronry, and the demands of their chicks for food, being just as noisy and raucous as that of rooks! The heron in Britain is the subject of the longest-running breeding-season bird monitoring scheme in the world, through the BTO Heronries Census which began in 1928. The best idea here is simply to show the results of this survey, as presented by the British Trust for ornithology on its website:

(Figure from British Trust for Ornithology)

Herons are very susceptible to high mortality during harsh winters and this is clear from the graph above. I think the extremely extended and harsh winter we have just emerged from may also create another low point on this graph. Many bodies of freshwater in the UK have been frozen over for up to two months this winter and, while estuarine and coastal waters have been ice-free, inland heron populations are bound to have suffered. You will see, however, that there has been a general upward trend in heron numbers over the course of the 20th Century, levelling off a little  after the turn of the 21st Century. This upward trend is described as "moderate" for the whole Uk and "shallow" for herons in Scotland. It is thought (as reported by the BTO) that the general upward trend may reflect: "reduced persecution, improvements in water quality, the provision of new habitat as new lakes and gravel pits mature, and increased feeding opportunities at freshwater fisheries". Numbers of herons has apparently also increased across Europe since 1980.

It is also stated that: "High rates of nest failure at the chick stage were noted in the late 1960s, but not subsequently", a fact I believe is almost certainly linked to the decline in the concentration of organochlorine pesticide residues measured in herons since that time. This has been studied since then through an annual monitoring contract issued by the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC, and its predecessor bodies) to the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH, and ITS predecessors!). The programme was started in the early 1960s, when there were serious concerns over the effects of organochlorine pesticides and organomercury fungicides on a range of bird and mammal species in the UK. High concentrations of these toxic compounds are now well-known to lead to a range of causes of reproductive failure in birds. This early work demonstrated the effects of the organochlorines and eventually contributed to the ban on their use in the UK and abroad. The assessment of a range of organochlorines and also the toxic metal mercury in the livers of herons has revealed significant long-term declines in liver residues of organochlorine pesticides and mercury during the monitoring period. These declines appear now to have largely levelled off.  I have copied the relevant trends in these from the JNCC's website below. You can read the original report here.

(From JNCC Report No. 391)

A final issue for the heron in Britain that is worth identifying here as it is directly relevant to Spring-time is that, since 1968, presumably in response to the general warming of the climate and the advance of Spring, the average egg-laying date for herons in Britain is now some 29 days earlier than it was back then, as shown by the BTO here.

Signs of the times: Spring #1

The "What To Look For In..." series of books by Ladybird paint us a picture, season by season of the changing face of the British countryside through a year. But, published, as they were, between 1959 and 1961, the countryside we see around us today, some 50 years later, has been subject to considerable change, both in agriculture and land management practices, and, related to this, in the richness, distribution and overall health of the wildlife (and not all the changes have been negative). We also have lots of bits of evidence that the climate has changed measurably over the last 40 years, with effects on the seasonal timing of natural events (more later). So, here is the first of the posts I will make over the next year, based on the words and pictures of these "What To Look For" Ladybird books. I will be trying to compare the idealised countryside presented to my young self in the early 1970's (itself based on images from some 10 or more years before then) with the countryside around us today and seeing if it is possible to draw any conclusions, in due course, about "the state we are in".


The first picture in the Spring book (click on it to see a larger version) shows a scene supposed to be from the first week of March (so I just missed the chance to coincide with that), with some mallards flying above a lake (or maybe a loch?), alder catkins, pussy willow buds and more waterbirds on the loch - a pair of mallards and a great crested grebe. In the background, a farmer is ploughing up his winter stubble from last year's grain crop.

So, I guess the first thing that's worth saying is that the timing of Spring has changed a bit since 1961. Why do I say that? Well, with all the fuss about the climate change we can expect in the future, we may be conveniently overlooking the fact that it has been happening for a few decades already. The study of phenology, or the seasonal timing of natural events, reveals the annual and seasonal cyclical changes in emergence of flowers and leaves, the hatching of bird chicks, the timing of leaf fall in Autumn, and so on. In 2006, a handbook of climate trends for Scotland was published, covering the years 1961 - 2004. Over the last 50 years, in response to warmer average temperatures and a consequent longer growing season, the average growing season now starts a full three weeks earlier in Scotland than in 1961:



You can find out a lot more about the effects of these changes on wildlife in Scotland in a report published in 2006 by Scottish Natural Heritage.

So, in the first picture in this series, it is likely that the timing of the opening of buds of the pussy-willow will now be taking place earlier than in 1961. That said, I spotted the first opening pussy-willow buds of the year that I've seen here in Stirling yesterday, but this has been the coldest January and February in Scotland for 50 years - and that illustrates the need to differentiate between weather (what's happening today) and climate (the long-term average conditions) when thinking about the effects of climate change!

Other wildlife issues worthy of comment in this picture are, firstly, the mallards. There are both paired-off mallards (in the water) and courting mallards (in flight). Mallards are Britain's and Scotland's commonest wild ducks, well-known from and easily observed in city park ponds, local rivers and lochs, estuaries, harbours and canals. There has, however, been a long-term decline in mallard numbers in the UK in winter. Here is the trend in winter mallard abundance between 1961 and 2008, as collated and analysed by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) as part of its annual Wetland Bird Survey:

From BTO (2009)

The BTO suggests that this decline in winter mallard numbers may be a result of milder winters on continental Europe leading to fewer mallards arriving in Britain to escape the colder continental conditions and find open unfrozen water in Britain. If the breeding population of mallards is examined, by contrast:


you can see that there has been a big increase in numbers. You can read more about this at the BTO's website. It seems this increase may have been partly brought about by the release into the wild of mallards bred for duck shooting purposes.

The other bird species in the picture is the great crested grebe, a beautiful, elegant waterbird with ornate head plumes which led to its being hunted for its feathers in Victorian times, for use largely as plumes for ladies' hats, almost leading to its extermination from the UK. In fact, it was concern over this species, amongst others, that led to the formation of the Society for the Protection of Birds, later the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

The BTO's account for this species, in the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS), says that the "species was believed to be on the verge of extinction in Britain around 1860, when only 32–72 pairs were known in England". A "subsequent increase followed reductions in persecution, aided by statutory protection, and the creation of habitat in the form of gravel pits". An increase in numbers was tracked by special surveys to around 7,000 adult birds in Britain by 1975. The BBS provides the first annual, national monitoring of this species and indicates a shallow increase in numbers since 1994.

The final issue worth commenting on in this picture is the tractor in the background, ploughing, as it says: "wide strips in last year' stubble". First off, a recurrent theme of the agricultural issues in comparing the world of today with the "What to look for" books is the extent to which farm machinery has changed since 1961. The farmer here is driving a small Massey Ferguson-type tractor of the kind I remember from small childhood, with no cab or even a roll-bar to protect the driver (must have been freezing! They bred them tough in those days!) and so totally unlike the massive, soil compacting monsters that are in use on farms these days. I have no idea whether last year's stubble is for wheat or barley, but one of the significant changes in agriculture since the book was published has been a major switch away from the Spring planting of cereal crops, particularly barley, to planting in Autumn. I found one quote: "From the late 1980s, the area of winter-sown barley has exceeded that of spring-sown, whereas as recently as 1970, spring-sown barley acreage was more than ten times that of winter-sown." This change, and with it the ploughing up and subsequent loss of winter stubble and its supply of fallen seed, as well as differences in the usefulness of spring and autumn and winter sown crops as habitats for some nesting birds, has had massive negative consequences for British wildlife, a theme I will certainly revisit in subsequent posts, but it is interesting to see it reflected in the very first of the pictures I have examined in this exercise. So, climate changes, agricultural changes, declines and increases in different bird species. Lots of interesting issues in one simple (but lovely) picture!

The times, they are a-changing - or are they? (Signs of the times)

I am embarking here on a year-long series of blog posts in the core territory of what this blog is really meant to be about - Scotland's nature. When I was a very small boy, I began to accumulate a collection of Ladybird books, mostly on wildlife topics. I now know from browsing collectors' websites that I was collecting books in the Ladybird series 536, on Nature, illustrated by wildlife artist Charles Tunnicliffe and written by biologist E.L. Grant Watson, but as a small child, all I knew was that Ladybird books were a treasure trove of knowledge about wildlife and I was encouraged by my parents to read them. My favourite books from the beginning were definitely the set of four shown above, the "What To Look For In ..." series covering the four seasons. Together, these paint a fascinating documentary in words and pictures of the great annual cycle of life in Britain's countryside through a year. My Dad worked as Scotland's first Countryside Ranger, a new profession in Scotland in 1970, and I grew up from the earliest age very conscious of the flow of the seasons and the predictable patterns of seasonal change as bird species came and went, flowers appeared, fruit grew, etc. And then, opening these wonderful books, there were all these patterns, and more, in word and picture. As well as wildlife, they also portray the seasonal changes in farming and land management practices, perhaps more than a little romanticised!


But these books, which had a huge influence on my young self, were first written and published between 1959 and 1961, some 50 years ago and I was reading them maybe 10 years later. It occurred to me that there is a great opportunity to use these books, and their marvellous illustrations as the basis for a comparison between then and now, looking at the changes that have taken place in these characteristic illustrations of the British countryside over the last 50 years, a period that more than encompasses my whole lifespan.


Hopefully, therefore, over the next 12 months, I will manage to track the progression through the seasons using these books and, through their pictures and words, try to undertake a comparison with the current state of rural Scotland and its wildlife (and the farming practices it portrays too! At first glance, farming may be the area of greatest change compared to the books!). So, please stick with me for the duration, the posts following this, several per season, will hopefully be more interesting than this one!