Signs of the times: Autumn #13

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

"Then the sudden rush

Of the rain, and the riot

Of the shrieking, tearing gale

Breaks loose in the night,

With a fusillade of hail!

Hear the forest fight,

With its tossing arms that crack and clash

In the thunder's cannonade,

While the lightning's forked flash

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

Hear the breakers' deepening roar,

Driven like a herd of cattle

In the wild stampede of battle,

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

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

 

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)






Autumn Picture 13


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


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

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

Sign of the times: Autumn #2

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.

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

George Eliot 

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Autumn Picture 2

This busy little picture shows a number of species exploiting a fine crop of blackberries growing on bramble briars. Three young starlings at the top of the picture have been joined by two greenfinches below. A number of wasps are also feeding on the berries. I looked at starlings earlier this year, and you can read all about them here. I won’t say any more about starlings now, except that these three birds have plumage that is mid-way between juvenile and adult.


We haven’t looked at the greenfinch before, and this picture presents us with an adult male (on the right) and on of this year’s young. A "stout-billed seed eater" (also taking fruit and berries), the greenfinch (Latin name: Carduelis chloris) is one of my favourite garden birds. My digging efforts in Spring are often accompanied by their twanging "tweeee" calls from twittering flocks in the tops of the trees in our and surrounding gardens, and their bright acid green plumage is a welcome splash of colour after the (usually) long winter. Greenfinches have adapted remarkably well to human settlements and rarely stray far at least from suburban areas. In autumn and winter, they will move out into the countryside to feed on stubble fields(if they can still find them in these days of winter-sown grain crops).

The British Trust for Ornithology reports an interesting population story for greenfinches in Britain. The point of this series of blogs is to look at changes in British wildlife over the 50 years since these books were first published. The BTO says, as illustrated in the graph below: "Greenfinch abundance varied little up to the mid 1990s, and there was little change in either survival or breeding performance during this period". More recent data have indicated "population increases widely across the UK, followed by a sudden sharp fall induced by a widespread and severe outbreak of [a parasitic disease] trichomonosis that began in 2005".  The Royal Society for the Protection of Brids provides useful information here on this outbreak, and how you can help the RSPB to monitor its spread.




(From: British Trust for Ornithology)

 As with the starlings, this series of blog posts has looked previously at wasps, here, and brambles, here. Autumn is the time of year when wasps, drunk on the alcohol from fermenting wild fruits like brambles and garden fruits, become more irritable and rather annoying. Most wasps that we see over the summer are workers and will die over the coming autumn, with the queen wasps hibernating (for example, in my log pile and under the insulation in my loft!), to emerge in Spring, build new nests and form new colonies.

Signs of the times: Summer #11

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

“The Starling

Of ol' Bard's fame,

Gathers together

In flocks they came.

Iridescent feathers

Flash in the sun:

A sea of subtle color

On black, each one.

Where'er they go

The people say

"Oh, nasty bird,

Please go away!"

A creeping mold,

Prolific creature;

Yet in it's way

Is nature's teacher.”

Angela S. Young, "Starlings"

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Summer Picture 11
This picture is a busy scene on and around a roof made of very substantial stone slabs (they don’t make them like they used to!). The roof has been colonised by a number of plant species, most visibly by the brightly flowering yellow stonecrop, a Sedum species, on the bottom left of the picture. In the bottom right, another plant, the house-leek, Sempervivum, much-loved by rock gardeners has pushed out its upright flower-bearing stalks. The stone surfaces have also been colonised by a variety of orange, green and yellow lichens. The scene is busy with birds – a young pied wagtail in the bottom centre has just caught a large fly, while two adult and several young starlings have gathered at the base of the chimney, and a family of jackdaws is flying overhead.


The young pied wagtail (Motacilla alba) down at the bottom of the picture is a common, widespread insect-eating species that is doing OK, according to the British Trust for Ornithology's website. The graph below shows that the population has generally increased since 1966, with a few up-and-down movements, and since 1974, there is a possible issue about the populations living on waterways habitats, where there has been a moderate decline.

(From: British Trust for Ornithology)

But eh population of pied wagtails has fared better over the period since the ladybird books were first published than its cousin, the grey wagtail, which I looked at in an early Spring post here. Pied wagtails gather together in large flocks in winter, perhaps including birds which have come in for the Winter from the Continent, and here in Stirling, I regularly see a flock of hundreds feeding on the local golf course early in the morning, while I am walking the dog in the Winter morning dawn gloom

As Jackdaws have already been discussed in Spring, here, I won't say more about them now.


Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris), traditionally one of Britain's most numerous birds, is listed now as Red List species, such is the concern in conservation circles over the rapid fall in breeding population abundance, as shown in the BTO figure for England, below:

(From: British Trust for Ornithology)

This has taken place particularly since the 1980's and particularly in woodland. The BTO further clarifies: "The declines have been greatest in the south and west of Britain; recent BBS data suggest that populations are also decreasing in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the trends were initially upward. The species' UK conservation listing has been upgraded from amber to red as the decline has become more severe... Loss of permanent pasture, which is the species' preferred feeding habitat, and general intensification of livestock rearing are likely to be having adverse effects on rural populations, but other causes should be sought in urban areas" [In other words - we don't know what is happening to cause a decline in urban populations]. Also, between 1966 and 2007, the average egg laying date in Britain is now 5 days earlier, perhaps due to a warming climate?

The winter roosting flights of starlings is surely one of British nature's most extraordinary spectacles - while strictly not a Summer phenomenon, I don't think Starlings feature in the Winter Ladybird book, so this is my chance to share this - the loss of sights like the following would truly be a tragedy:



(likely source of some UFO reports, anyone?)

Seeing the images of Sedum and stonecrop on the roof in this picture reminds of the growing trend for installing living roofs (also called "green roofs") on new properties, as a way increasing insulating properties, slowing the passage of rainwater into the urban drainage system and giving urban biodiversity a much needed boost. If you want to know more about living roofs, I can highly recommend the Living roofs.org website here.

Of the two flowering plants shown here, only one, the yellow-flowering Biting Stonecrop (Sedum acre) (or Wall-Pepper) is truly native to Britain. The New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora says of this plant: "a perennial herb of dry, undisturbed and open habitats on skeletal, or virtually non-existent, acidic or basic soils. Typical natural habitats include shingle, sand dunes, cliffs and steeply sloping, S.-facing rocks. It is also frequent on walls, roofs, gravel tracks, pavements and road verges." Its distribution has not changed since 1962, except in Cornwall and Ireland where it is now less common. Richard Mabey, in his Flora Britannica reveals what he describes as the most cryptic vernacular name of any British plant, for this one, of: "Welcome-home-husband-though-never-so-drunk"!

The other, the house-leek (Sempervivum tectorum), strangely, also shares this vernacular name. The New Atlas says that this is a: "long-lived, evergreen perennial, planted and more or less naturalised on tiled and thatched roofs, old walls, gate pillars and porches, and in churchyards. It is also occasionally found on stabilised sand dunes".  This native of the mountains of central and southern Europe has: "been grown in gardens since at least 1200..., and was often planted on porches and roofs as a supposed protection against fire, lightning and thunderbolts. It was known in the wild by 1629." The New Atlas identifies some reports of localised marked declines since the 19th century, "especially where old cottages and walls have been pulled down and thatch has been replaced by slate."I won't say anything about the lichens here - they are a bit difficult to identify int is drawing and there will be other opportunities to tell their story!