Signs of the Times: Autumn #4

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

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

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies."

John Keats (from “To Autumn”)

 

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

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

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


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

Looking forward to their return in 2011...

Signs of the times: Summer #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.

“The swallow of summer, the barbed harpoon,

She flings from the furnace, a rainbow of purples,

Dips her glow in the pond and is perfect.”

Ted Hughes, from: "Work and Play"





(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Summer Picture 18
Och, a wee holiday away for two weeks and summer seems to have fled by our return at the weekend. I’d better press on! Fortunately, the main subjects of Summer picture 18 are still here in central Scotland, with the swallows and swifts still winging their way around. In the foreground, the seed heads of bulrushes (or reed-mace) from last year have burst to release their downy seeds, while this year’s new seed heads are still forming. A flock of Canada geese is swimming in the background.


Swallows and swifts have already featured in this blog series, where I looked at how they have fared here for the swallow and here, the swift. Although swifts may begin leaving for their African winter haunts much earlier in the summer, the swallow is one of the latest species to depart, mostly by late September. The gathering of noisy flocks on telephone wires is a sure sign of the impending end of the summer season and then, one day, they have mostly all gone, other than the odd straggler, perhaps the product of a later second brood.


Canada geese are not a native species to Britain. In fact, although they have been here for several hundred years and were introduced deliberately (Giant Hogweed, anyone?), they are now regarded as an invasive non-native species. The introduction must have been for ornamental reasons as Canada Geese are reputedly amongst the most inedible of birds (Move along! Move along – there’s no wild food story ‘ere”).


You can find out more about the Canada Goose problem and what is being done about it here, on an advisory site run by the Non-Native Species Secretariat for Great Britain, where you can pick Canada Goose from the list. This site characterises the problem of Canada Geese in Britain as follows:


Ecosystem Impact: Introduced geese are heavy grazers of aquatic and waterside vegetation, and their droppings can increase nutrient levels in water bodies and soils. Trampling and the addition of nutrients can change the composition of plant communities, especially where grazing is intense.


Health and Social Impact: There is considerable concern that the presence of so many large birds in close association with people, for example in urban parks, may be a health hazard. Canada geese are suspected of transmitting salmonella to cattle. The presence of slippery droppings can be a nuisance, especially on paths, playing fields or golf courses, as can possible aggression from nesting adults. Bird strikes involving Canada geese have caused human deaths and injury as well as damage to the environment and loss of or damage to aircraft.


Economic Impact:Canada geese may graze on farmland at any season, occur very widely, and may feed in areas that would be shunned by wild geese. Their grazing and trampling may cause major damage to grassland and crops. Birds climbing out from the water to graze make shallow, well-trodden paths that can damage flood defences and accelerate bankside erosion.


The British Trust for Ornithology reports, of this species: “Canada Geese were first introduced to English parkland around 1665 but have expanded hugely in range and numbers following translocations in the 1950s and 1960s. They increased rapidly, at a rate estimated at 9.3% per annum in Britain between the 1988–91 Atlas period and 2000, with no sign of any slowing in the rate of increase”. That rate of growth looks something like this:

(From: British Trust for Ornithology)

The BTO concludes that: “The economic, social and environmental impacts of rapidly expanding, non-native Canada Goose populations are of growing conservation concern across Europe” [see above!].


On a happier note, the bulrush or reedmace (Typha latifolia) in the front of the picture is a native plant, which the New Atlas of the British and Irish Flora (2002) says is: “an emergent in shallow water or on exposed mud at the edge of lakes, ponds, canals and ditches and (less frequently) by streams and rivers. It favours nutrient-rich sites. It spreads by wind-dispersed fruits, often colonising newly excavated ponds and ditches and subsequently spreading by vegetative growth”. In terms of its success, the New Atlas says of this species that there is some evidence that it increased in frequency in the 20th century in many areas, for reasons that are not entirely clear. It is now much more frequently recorded in Wales, northern England and Scotland than it was in the 1962 Atlas. Richard Mabey, in his Flora Britannica, reports that surprisingly little use has been made of Typha in Britain, confirmed by the only entry for the species in Tess Darwin’s “The Scots Herbal”, where it is reported from an early 19th century account from Orkney which reports that it was added to some poor hay mixture of local plants, of which it was said: “None but the half-starved beasts of Orkney would eat such fodder”!

Signs of the times: Summer #7

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

 

"Many a long hard-working day

Life brings us! and many an hour of play;

But they never come now together.

Playing at work, and working in play,

As they came to us children among the hay,

In the breath of the warm June weather.

Oft with our little rakes at play,

Making believe at making hay,

With grave and steadfast endeavour;

Caught by an arm, and out of sight

Hurled and hidden, and buried light

In laughter and hay for ever."

Dora Greenwell, Haymaking (1865)

(Copyright: Ladybird Books)

Summer Picture 7

I’m a bit excited. I accept that, as sources of excitement go, this is pretty tame but this picture, Summer picture 7, is the one selected to represent all of Summer’s glory as the cover picture for the book “What to Look for in Summer”. And I contend that it would be difficult to argue with swallows, roses, elderflowers, butterflies and hay-making as iconic images of a British summer scene. For the farmer in the picture, on his little tractor, is indeed making hay while the sun shines, as high Summer flourishes all around him.

Swallows were featured in an earlier post, when their arrival was noted in Spring picture 12, so I’ll say no more here except to note that, as they are very busy hawking flies in midsummer, they are probably feeding young, perhaps by now a second brood, the first having flown the nest already. The Meadow Brown butterflies in the foreground (Latin name: Maniola jurtina) are identified in my copy of the State of the Butterflies of Britaina dn Ireland report (produced by a partnership led by Butterfly Conservation) as the most abundant butterfly species in Britain (i.e. the most individuals recorded in surveys), as well as the second most widely distributed (in terms of the number of 10 kilometre squares where the species is recorded), after the Green-veined White butterfly (watch out for your cabbages, missus!).  Since the Summer book was first published (my copy says 1960, exactly 50 years ago this year), the Meadow Brown has been doing well. A generalist species of grassland habitats including downland, heathland, coastal dunes and undercliffs, hay meadows, roadside verges, hedgerows, woodland rides and clearings, waste ground, parks, gardens, and cemeteries, its population is estimated to have increased by 28% between 1976 and 2004 (although there was a slight decrease of -5% in the final few years of that period).

Of the wild plants featured in this picture, the accompanying text says: “The wild, briar rose and elder are the flowers that most distinctly speak of June and midsummer.” The fact is that, as you’ll notice, we are in July and midsummer is nearly three weeks behind us – a typical condition of this series is me struggling to keep up with the timetable of the books, consoling myself only with the fact that the timing of natural events in a Scottish summer is likely to be lagging behind those down south by at least a couple of weeks. As such, even last week, I could look out of my window and see numerous elder bushes in the park, resplendent with their umbrellas of creamy white flowers. And yet,only this weekend, the lovely O and I struggled to find the few remaining accessible flower heads on those elder bushes, to make a final batch of elderflower cordial.

The elder (Sambucus nigra) is indeed an important food plant in the British countryside, which I talked about in Spring here, and promised to talk about in more detail once it appeared in flower in this current Summer picture. The black shiny elder berries that occur later in the year in great bunches like miniature grapes have long been a mainstay of the home-made wine manufactories of rural Britain. But it is the flowers that O and I relish and cherish – in particular, we make litres and litres of fragrantly-scented elderflower cordial every June and July, aiming to produce enough to see us through the long, cold winter with regular tastes of summer sunlight captured in golden liquid form. We’ve managed to produce about 15 litres this year. We use a recipe which includes the use of citric acid powder to prevent any fermentation.

Last year, for the first time, we also made elderflower champagne, which IS, obviously, allowed to ferment. I confess that, although we made about 6 litres, we haven’t tried it yet, even though it is supposed to be drinkable after a week! Now I’m a bit scared, both of the gas pressure in the 2 litre plastic bottles, and the potential alcohol content. But, versatile wild crop that it is, the elder’s flowers can also be eaten, both raw and dipped in batter and deep fried as tempura (which is just a posh way of a Scottish man justifying yet another opportunity dip a piece of perfectly innocent food in batter and deep fry the hell out of it! Deep-fried Mars Bar, anyone? No thanks!). I have to say, elderflower tempura was pleasantly, surprisingly, tasty! The raw flowers are also OK, but I do find the texture a bit odd. Incidentally, the elder is also home to the edible fungus known colloquially as “jew’s ear”, a bit of unfortunate anti-Semitic nomenclature, if ever I heard one. This weekend, we found a neglected corner of King’s Park in Stirling where a few old elder trees are covered in growths of this fungus, some of which, inevitably, we are going to end up eating! I’ll let you know how it goes...

The New Atlas of the Flora of Britain and Ireland indicates that, since 1962 when the original Atlas came out, the overall distribution of elder hasn't changed, but that it is impossible to tell introduced populations from natural ones, as it is both widely planted by people and also spread widely as seeds in bird droppings.

The wild rose dominating the bottom left corner of the picture is the dog rose, Rosa canina, although that Latin name hides a more complicated story, where a number of related groups of wild roses are brigaded under the rosy collective of a Rosa canina “aggregate”. There are also a number of hybrids of Rosa canina and other rose species and, indeed, other, completely separate wild rose species, all also referred to as “dog roses”! No-one said it had to be easy... Anyway, Rosa canina is the commonest and most widespread of these. The New Plant Atlas , while pointing out its complicated family relationships, suggests that its distribution is probably stable over the period since the publication of the 1962 Atlas. Maybe more in Autumn on rose hips and their contribution to our wild food larder...

The final element of the picture worthy of comment is the hay-making process in the background, not least to point out how the general process remains basically the same 50 years later, even although the machinery has changed, particularly the tractor. Grow grass, cut it when the weather is dry, let it dry out a bit in rows on the ground where it was cut, then gather it up to store it. Now, hay is baled; back when this picture was painted, it was a slightly different storage method, as you wil see in the next Summer picture.

A final sartorial point to note – the farmer on his tractor is wearing a pair of red dungarees – surely all farmers now wear blue ones! In fact, the boiler suit has probably largely replaced dungarees as the favoured protection for the hard working agriculture operative! And I am not sure if the flatcap, which seems to be ubiquitous on all agricultural employees featured in these four Ladybird books, has survived through to today as an obligatory piece of farmer’s protective clothing (although, obviously, still much loved by rural huntin’, shootin’ toff-types!).

Signs of the times: Spring #12

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

“Spring would not be spring without bird songs."

Francis M. Chapman

Copyright: Ladybird Books

Yet another waterside scene for picture 13 from Spring, with a lakeside, or lochside picture full of birds. I’m falling behind a bit so I going to try a bit of a compressed post this time – similar amount of information but less time and space occupied! Here we have two nests – one built by a pair of mute swans, one by a moorhen or waterhen. The moorhen appears with chicks in the Summer book, so I will cover it there in more detail. The picture also shows a willow warbler singing from a sycamore tree, a common sandpiper at water level and swallows and sand martins skimming over the water, “hawking flies”.

Any following information on trends, plus the graphs above come from the British Trust for Ornithology. As you can see, the stories of the birds in the picture since (soon after) the Ladybird Spring book was published are very varied.


The Mute swan (Cygnus olor) population in Britain has risen pretty steadily since the 1980s (it was stable before then), according to the BTO: “perhaps reflecting warmer winter weather and the replacement of anglers' lead weights, which had earlier caused many cases of lethal and sublethal poisoning, with non-toxic alternatives”. While lead was still used for anglers’ weights, swans were found dead or dying with many, sometimes hundreds of lead weights in their digestive systems. Their method of feeding, upending and dabbling on the bottom of the water body, loaned itself to preferentially picking up lost lead weights. There is no specific information on population trends for Scotland’s Mute swan populations, nor any noted effects of climate change on egg laying dates for mute swans.


Mute swans probably deserve more space here than I can give them – all British swans are owned by the Sovereign, the inspiration for Henry the VIII’s Swan Barges on the Thames, the Swan Vestas matchbox anyone?, the subject of wonderful urban myths (I was, indeed, told as a child by my father, a man highly knowledgeable in the ways of nature, that a swan can break a man’s arm with its wings – it seems I wasn’t the only one to be told this, so this site made me smile. And the British media do love a good swan story – the latest being the so-called “asbo swan” in Cambridge which has been attacking rowers (no doubt it will prove to be an Oxford swan...), but I refuse to say much more about that given the amount of rubbish already written and spoken about it. The most ludicrous thing I heard about it had to be during a phone-in on Jeremy Vine’s show on Radio 2, where some damned clown actually bothered to phone in to say that if the swan attacked his kids, he would wring its bloody neck. He didn’t live in Cambridge; a) So don’t take your kids down there mate, and b) wring its bloody neck? I’d like to see you bloody try!


The willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus) is almost physically indistinguishable from the chiffchaff which featured in an earlier post. It is different in both habit and song though, and the two warbler species are very easily distinguished when singing. Unlike the chiffchaff, however, the willow warbler population seems to have undergone a significant decline in England and Wales, but with Scottish populations remaining unaffected. BBS [Breeding Bird Survey] figures since 1994 indicate a stark contrast between an initially upward trend in Scotland and in Northern Ireland, and continued severe decreases in England and in Wales. Pressures on migration and in the winter are likely to be affecting the population, as is a reduction in habitat quality on the breeding grounds [presumably not the Scottish ones though]”. It does look like we don’t know exactly what we are doing right for willow warblers in Scotland. The BTO reports that average egg laying dates for this species have become a week earlier, “perhaps in response to recent climatic warming”. Also, the trend down south is more widespread as numbers “have fallen widely across Europe since 1980”.


The Common Sandpiper (Actitis hypoleucos), the small wading bird bottom centre of the picture, is a favourite bird of mine, which I associate with upland burns in Scotland, where its insistent, high-pitched call while bobbing up and down, flitting between river stone perches is one of the best sounds and sights of summer for me. At this delightful website, you can hear a selection of the songs of the common sandpiper. Only the size of a starling, its range covers more than half of the world. Unfortunately, however, like the willow warbler, it seems to be suffering badly in the UK and across Europe. The BTO reports that decline from 1985 onwards (after a more gradual increase) “has yet to be explained.” So that’s that. Hard to do anything about it if you don’t know the cause! The common sandpiper is one of the species that tried to lure predators away by feigning a broken wing when its nest or chicks are threatened. For a more emotional view of the common sandpiper and its ability to inspire, you might read “The song of the sandpiper”, the autobiography of the late John Morton Boyd, a pioneer of nature conservation in Scotland.


Finally for now, swallows (Hirundo rustica) and sand martins (Riparia riparia), seen skimming over the water here, catching insect prey. One swallow does not a summer make, so they say. But the arrival of the first swallow is such an iconic late Spring event for nearly everyone I know. Maybe we all hope that they will bring a bit of African desert heat with them from their African over-wintering grounds. For swallows, the data provided above are for England and you can see there is quite a lot of fluctuation, thought to result from variation in rainfall in the western Sahel prior to the swallow’s Spring migration north through West Africa – wetter conditions mean better survival. But what has happened to the swallow populations in Summer in the UK is also complicated. The BTO explains that “It is likely that, in eastern parts of the UK, the loss of livestock farming and grazed grassland, together with arable intensification, has caused the Swallow population to decline, while an increase in the area of pasture in the west and north has promoted a population increase which apparently has more than compensated for declines elsewhere.” The swallow has, however, been awarded a warning Amber status in the UK, on account of its decline across Europe.


The Sand Martin population shows similar levels of fluctuation to those of the swallow across the time since the Ladybird books were produced. The BTO and (my posh bird book) "The Birds of the Western Palae-Arctic (Concise Edition)" both indicate that, as with swallows, these fluctuations are likely to be the effects of variable rainfall in their over-wintering grounds in the Sahel in Africa (“Rainfall in the species' trans-Saharan wintering grounds prior to the birds' arrival promotes annual survival and thus abundance in the following breeding season”). But the sand martin is a difficult species to assess accurately, as its often-large nesting colonies are formed in unstable sand cliffs of river banks or quarries, etc, that can disappear (or be abandoned) between years. There does not appear to be any long-term trend in the UK, however, although there is concern over an apparent decline since the late 1990s.


The tree featured here, the sycamore, also appears later in the year, in another book, so I am going to defer comment on that until then.