30 Days Wild – Day 3

June 3, 2016 / nrowberry / Leave a comment

Day 3 on the challenge and it’s Friday night. Having got up early yesterday for the dawn chorus, I’d gone for an activity at the opposite end of the day and stayed up late to hopefully catch some nocturnal action in the garden. Gone are the days when staying up late meant drinking or clubbing, now staying up late means getting the bat detector out and spying on hedgehogs. But it’s not a metaphorical school night, so that’s exactly what I’ve been doing – living on the edge!

All this week we’ve seen the bats dive bombing around the garden in the evenings – we can usually see them through the patio doors from the comfort of our sofas. So I thought tonight it would be a doddle to go out and record them. We have a Magenta bat detector, which we’ve used previously and determined that our bats are Pipistrelles, emitting their ultrasound clicks at around 45kHz.

Today has been a lovely warm sunny day, so it seemed ideal batty conditions in the garden. As it started to get dark I sat out with my detector and recorder – I was getting bombarded by moths, which seemed like a good omen, but there was no sign of any bats. I lay on the grass for quite a while – very relaxing as I could hear a bit of the evening chorus going on (felt like yesterday’s dawn chorus in reverse!) I did get a few “clicks” but didn’t actually see any bats – they must have been swooping around next door’s garden behind the hedge. I stayed out for a good hour, but no joy.

So I’ve had to admit defeat for the night. But all is not lost – the bats will no doubt be back in the nights to come and I will try again. I did also get to spend a very relaxing hour watching the garden going to sleep. The warm evening bodes well for the moth trap which is now out, as it is Garden Moth Scheme night. I saw on Springwatch and various social media, that there is an influx of Diamond Back moths getting blown over from the Continent, so with a bit of luck I’ll get some of those.

In the absence of any batty recordings from tonight, here is one we recorded back at the beginning of May. I’m pretty sure the sounds match a Pipistrelle, but confirmation from anyone who knows about bats would be much appreciated.

Day 3 of 30 Lazy Weeds and it’s Creeping Wood Sorrel or to give it the even better title – Procumbent Yellow Sorrel. We get the purple leaved variety a lot in our garden. It is a low growing plant with small but pretty yellow flowers. It does spread very easily and has a knack for growing in places where there doesn’t really seem to be any soil, like the one shown left. It’s small and often overlooked and some gardeners don’t like it because of its persistent nature. But I’d rather have an area covered in this, than bare earth – so as with so many “weeds” it is welcome in the Too Lazy Garden.

30 Days Wild – Day 2

June 2, 2016March 12, 2025 / nrowberry / 2 Comments

Day 2 on the challenge and I feel a bit like a marathon runner (actually I’ve no idea what that feels like and probably never will!) just getting going and setting my pace so I don’t run out of steam. So with that in mind, Day 2’s activity was none too strenuous and involved dragging my lazy bones only as far as the garden. I did however have to get up BEFORE the crack of dawn, so still feel deserving of some kind of medal.

So the reason for getting up at such an ungodly hour – to listen to the dawn chorus. This is something that always seemed such a lovely thing to do (memories of Bill Oddie enthusing about it on past TV programmes perhaps), but somehow I’ve never quite achieved – the lure of the duvet has always been too strong. So 30 Days Wild felt like the time to finally do it.

Unusually, I was organised. A digital dictation machine was borrowed well in advance (couldn’t think how else to record it as my phone is from the dark ages) and a few practice runs attempted – not at ridiculous o’clock in the morning of course, but in more civilised early evenings. We live in a pretty quiet street, but you don’t realise how much noise there actually is until you start trying to record something relatively quiet like bird song. First attempts resulted in 30 seconds of a neighbour hammering something. Next one a dog barked incessantly. Third one sounded as if the Hell’s Angels had decided to do wheelies down our street – all duly recorded (I might have kept that recording if he’d said we were having something that sounded a bit more glamorous and foodie than beans!) At least they proved the sound recording worked.

Sunrise this morning was supposed to be about 5am here in Malvern. According to the RSPB website the chorus begins about an hour before sunrise, so by 4am I was up and out and sitting in splendid isolation in the garden. Last night I’d been stressing a bit that I wouldn’t be able to identify the birds from their songs. I listened to various bird recordings online to try and memorise them – with little success. But as I got up this morning, I thought to hell with that – it’s way too early in the day to be stressing about anything, much better to sit back and just enjoy the birds as they come. I already pretty much know what birds we get in the garden and it seemed unlikely that a nightingale would suddenly start singing without me realising it!

Initially it seemed our garden was silent. I could hear birds singing in the distance but it was too faint to hear properly, let alone record. First noise that would have been audible on tape was a plane going over about 04:05 am – I didn’t even really think we were on a flightpath – just shows what you can notice when you’re alone in your garden in the dark! Gradually the bird song seemed to move closer – like a Mexican wave of tweeting washing over Malvern.

About 5 minutes later, the blackbird started up. I can say this with confidence as I could see him on top of next door’s roof. It was still pretty much dark, but he was singing his little socks off – and really loud. I know I’ve heard blackbirds sing before but I’ve never consciously sat and just listened to one – beautiful but definitely loud. Here’s a brief recording of him.

Once the blackbird had got going, more birds seemed to join in, although I couldn’t identify anything specific from the mix. I would have expected perhaps robins and the wren – if anyone can confirm whether these are on the next couple of audio clips, that would be great. Of course the main thing you can still hear over-riding everything is the blackbird.

About 04:30 the bottom of the garden was filled with lots of cheaping voices – the sparrows had woken up. We are fortunate to have a lot of House Sparrows in the garden and they clearly all woke up together.

As I’m not normally up in the garden in the semi-gloom of pre-dawn, it had never occurred to me that bees might be up at that time too. I had always sort of assumed that they didn’t stir until it got warmer. But while wandering the garden with my microphone, I became aware of lots of buzzing around the raspberry canes – sure enough about half a dozen Tree Bumblebees were making the most of an early breakfast. They are just about audible on this clip.

The robin appeared on the fence about 04:45 and looked at me as if to ask “what on earth are you doing up at this time and does this mean you’re going to feed me?” (and I did).

The bigger birds were the last to get up. Just after I’d seen the Robin, I could hear the woodpigeons faintly in the distance. Just before 5am they finally came close enough to record, although their gentle cooing was rudely interrupted by a Jackdaw squawking.

As everyone in the garden now seemed to be up, I decided it was time for me to go back to bed. It was actually very relaxing sitting in the garden for an hour that early (once my body had got over the shock of being up!) With none of the usual modern day distractions, it was like some kind of sensory relaxation therapy to just sit and listen to the (mainly) natural sounds all around me. I might even be tempted to do it again!

Primroses 30 WEEDS It’s Day 2 as well of my 30 Lazy Garden Weeds – this time the Primrose. It is a native plant and must surely be one of Britain’s most loved wildflowers and I doubt anyone weeds these out. Our garden in spring is a mass of these yellow clusters and the bees love them. They provide a much needed early season nectar source for the bees and they brighten up the garden no end. Even Shakespeare wrote about them in Midsummer Night’s Dream “And in the wood, where often you and I
Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie…”

30 Days Wild – Day 1

June 1, 2016 / nrowberry / 1 Comment

Today is the first day of the “30 Days Wild” challenge, the idea being to do something WILD every day during June. Fortunately they don’t have to be big “somethings” – so I don’t have to climb a mountain or swim the channel each day. Just incorporate something that connects me to nature every day for a month.

How hard can that be? Guess I’ll find out by the end of the month! 30 Days Wild is organised by the Wildlife Trusts and they’ve set up a page with links to lots of other bloggers doing the challenge. So if reading my ramblings isn’t enough, then check out the others at http://www.mywildlife.org.uk/30dayswild/30-days-wild-bloggers/

For Day 1, I thought I’d go and look at the oldest living thing I’m likely to find anywhere in Herefordshire or Worcestershire – actually it’s pretty much the oldest living thing I’m likely to see anywhere! Peterchurch in Herefordshire’s Golden Valley boasts a Yew Tree that is reputed to be about 3000 years old. I’ve never got up close and personal with a Yew Tree, let alone one that old, so the 30 Days Wild challenge seemed the ideal opportunity to do so.

The Yew Tree was pretty easy to spot in the churchyard, which was itself conveniently located next to a pub. As Day 1 coincided with my weekly Wednesday outings for a pub lunch with my 84 year old Dad, my venerable parent got dragged round too – the aged meeting the aged! Here he is looking slightly bemused next to the tree.

The tree stands in Peterchurch’s churchyard and was previously thought to be only about 750 years old, but recent studies by tree experts have determined that it is probably at least 3000 years old. This means it dates back to Neolithic times and due to the Yew’s supposed association with religious sites might suggest that the Norman church could have been built on the site of a much earlier ceremonial place.

The tree is hollow and seems to be growing out the way from its centre, presumably expanding its girth each year (aren’t we all!) There is a lot of charring on the inside of the tree which, while terribly sad that anyone would want to set fire to such an amazing thing, in a way adds to the mystique and atmosphere.

I did something I’ve certainly never done before – stood in the centre of a tree and looked up its trunk to the sky! It didn’t feel at all like I was in a tree or a living thing, more like a beautiful vaulted cave.

The bark alone was a work of art, like a gnarly sculpture or a giant piece of driftwood, beautiful and very tactile.

Although the bark looked like tough, old (and to be honest) dead wood, incredibly there were new shoots growing out of it.

It was amazing to see a tree like this, knowing it has been on this spot for 3000 years. I can trace my family back over 500 years in Herefordshire, but to think that this tree had already been standing here for 2500 years before the earliest known Rowberry trod the Shire is quite incredible.

While there I had this “brilliant” idea to video the tree as I walked around it – thought it would give more of a feel of this ancient being. Turns out this is not as easy as it sounds! Cue shaky footage while I stumble round the tree trying not to trip over gravestones, with my Dad talking in the background (my fault – I should have made it clear to him beforehand that the video would record sound too!)

The video makes it sound as if the churchyard was a lot noisier than it actually was. It was really very peaceful and full of birds (including this pair of thrushes that were doing their best to pretend we weren’t there). Just realised something as I write this – I forgot to hug the tree. If there was ever a tree that deserved to be hugged, Peterchurch’s Yew Tree must surely be it.

It wasn’t exactly a day basked in sunshine today (it had been chucking it down in Malvern earlier), but I think it would be lovely to go back to Peterchurch on a really nice hot day and just sit and contemplate life under the Yew Tree for a while. I’m hoping 30 Days Wild will bring more such revelations – finding things, places, activities that I enjoy this June, then mentally bookmarking them for future enjoyment too.

I’d originally got the idea of visiting the Yew Tree from Herefordshire Wildlife Trust’s suggestions for 30 days wild. What a great suggestion it was – if anyone else is looking for inspiration go to: http://www.herefordshirewt.org/30-days-wild

As a bit of a side-line to 30 days wild, I thought I’d showcase some of the “weeds” that flourish under the Too Lazy To Weed regime (assuming a regime can be a system of having basically no system). So a different weed every day for 30 days. First up the Forget-Me-Not – I’m not sure which species we get in the garden – possibly a hybrid. Whichever they are, I’ve always loved their bright blue cheery little flowers. They’ve been a favourite since I saw a whole meadow of them on a childhood holiday. They flourish in our garden and have seeded themselves pretty much everywhere. They are quite delicate though and after flourishing in a patch one year will easily be superseded by some of the tougher bigger weeds. Why anyone would want to weed these out of their garden is a mystery to me – they are so much prettier than any cultivated exotic plant. And of course the insects love them – pretty and functional – a Win-Win Weed!

Hedges and Maybe Fledges?

May 29, 2016 / nrowberry / Leave a comment

It’s been a mixed week with the trail cam this last week or so. We’ve either had two happy successes in the garden or one success and one disappointment and we can’t work out which. The undecided is our baby blue tits.

We’ve been filming the adults going in and out for a few weeks now. They seemed to be doing a good job feeding the babies and we could hear chicks chirping. Then suddenly about 9am last Wednesday the adults started flying back to the box with caterpillars, stopping, peering in and looking confused. We’d had the trail cam on the box continuously and this was a very marked change in behaviour. For the first couple of mini video clips I thought great – because the adults were hanging around outside, clutching the food which made for much better shots. But after the 20th clip of the same thing, we started to worry. We also couldn’t hear the chicks tweeting any more. There was no evidence on any of the films of predation (next door’s cat had been a likely candidate, but couldn’t reach the box with the chicken wire over it). Could the chicks have all fledged and the camera just missed them leaving the box? Have they just died in the box – why would they, when the parents were doing a good job with the food? Here are a couple of clips of the confused looking adults.

The adults seem to have stopped using the box now, so we could check to see if there are dead chicks in there, but while we don’t know for sure, there’s still hope that they did fledge and it’s a happy ending. The adults are still feeding in the garden and disappear into various trees, so it could be there are chicks hiding amongst the leaves. There’s a lot of general chirping in our apple tree and next door’s damson tree, so fingers crossed they made it.

The definite happy event is that our hedgehog is back! He or she may have been around for weeks, but as we’ve had the trail cam pointed up for bird activity rather than down on the grass we hadn’t realised. So the upside of the end of the bird box activity was that I tried filming downwards at night instead of up! And lo and behold the hedgehog trundled into view. The first film is a bit blurry – wrong lens or LED setting or something technical (blame the operator!)

Second attempt is a bit sharper and I’d added a bowl of catfood as a bit of a temptation which seemed to do the trick.

Previous years we’ve had a pair of hedgehogs (but of course no trail cam to record them), so fingers crossed we have two this year too. So hopefully more hedgehog action to come.

If anyone can shed any light on the blue tit behaviour – any thoughts would be much appreciated. It will be disappointing if they’ve fledged and the camera missed it, but not as disappointing as if they didn’t make it at all. One final happy thought though – when up this morning before 5am to empty the moth trap and check the hedgehog cam, I spotted what looked like a pair of Long Tailed Tit chicks in the apple tree – so one happy little bird family in the garden at least.

Out and About – Haugh Wood

May 23, 2016February 25, 2025 / nrowberry / 1 Comment

Yesterday’s expedition produced not only the result we’d set out for, but a completely unexpected bonus. We’d set out in search of Wood White butterflies – a species neither of us had ever seen before, so one on our hit list to “bag” this year. The new Butterflies of the West Midlands book suggested a walk in Haugh Wood, Herefordshire so we ventured forth once again – it’s becoming a bit of a weekend habit this abandonment of our sofas!

Haugh Woods (there seems to be some debate as to whether it is pronounced Haugh as in Laugh or Hoff as in The Hoff!) is run by the Forestry Commission and is a nationally important wood for butterflies – in particular the Wood White. The Wood White is a nationally vulnerable species, so we’re lucky to have a colony close enough to visit.

The first white butterfly to show its wings though was a Green Veined White. Of course it took a bit of chasing around to confirm that it wasn’t a Wood White – we didn’t discover how small the Woodies were until later on. Still the Green Veined was lovely to see, even if it refused to pose its wings properly upright to see the veins.

It wasn’t long though before another much smaller white flapped by – again it took a bit of chasing around until it stopped long enough to confirm a Wood White. They’re really much smaller than I’d expected and not the most energetic of butterflies, which was good news for us pursuing them!

We eventually saw several more once the showers passed and the sun came out again.

Near the end of our walk a third white species showed up – an Orange Tip.

Throughout the wood we’d also been seeing Speckled Yellow moths flitting about. They are notoriously difficult to photograph, but we finally chased one down back near the carpark.

The real bonus of the trip though was something we only discovered we’d seen when we got back home and downloaded the photos. We had spotted what we thought was a caterpillar trundling across the path, so we’d taken a few snaps and then moved it to safety (probably a good job we moved it, as we had to double back down the path a few minutes later having got lost despite the very clear path markers – I’d hate to have trodden on it!)

Looking at the photos properly back home, it didn’t look like a caterpillar at all. A quick google combined with a plea for help on Facebook and iSpot, confirmed we’d found a Glow Worm larva. It is principally the adult females that glow, although the larvae do glow a bit, but obviously not at 11:30 on a Sunday morning while tootling along a path! So it was hardly a bioluminescent spectacle (like the recent, excellent David Attenborough programme on the phenomenon), but we can still say we’ve seen a glow worm, so I’m happy with that. I feel a trip back to Haugh Woods in the dark may be coming up some time soon though!

Out and About – Wyre Forest

May 18, 2016February 25, 2025 / nrowberry / 2 Comments

The sun was still shining on the righteous at the weekend, so we decided to make the most of it and headed up to the Wyre Forest in search of the Pearl Bordered Fritillaries. We took a slightly circuitous route, via one of our favourite pubs – The Live and Let Live on Bringsty Common. Fabulous pub with great food and lots of wildlife around. Lots of bees and butterflies (Small Copper, Orange Tip, fast flying and therefore unidentifiable whites!) and birds, but only this little wren paused long enough to get its photo taken.

Suitably fuelled we headed off to the Wyre Forest. The Pearly Bordered Fritillaries were our main butterfly target of the day as the Wyre Forest is one of their strongholds in the West Midlands. The Wyre is managed by the Forestry Commission and Butterfly Conservation to restore a diverse woodland environment, providing the right habitats for many butterflies. It’s not only good for butterflies, but is a lovely place to just go for a walk.

Within minutes walking along the old railway track, we’d reached a gateway to a more open area where we’d seen the fritillaries last year. Sure enough, just yards from the gate we spotted our first one.

Needless to say it didn’t hang around to get many photos, so we went back to the track and headed along to an area with sunny sheltered banks. Here there were numerous Pearl Bordered Fritillaries fluttering in the sunshine. We were really chuffed initially to get these distant shots of a pair getting down to business.

But eventually we spotted a pair clearly too engrossed in what they were about to be bothered by us taking photos! I managed to get a few photos of them together. In the photo you can see how pearlescent the central white spot in particular is. I love the underside of their wings – like beautiful stained glass windows.

Of course although the fritillaries were the highlight, there was lots to see besides the butterflies. Spring flowers were abundant, attracting a variety of insects. I’m not too hot on wildflower ID, but I’m fairly sure the following are Greater Stitchwort, Jack-by-the-Hedge (aka Garlic Mustard) and Yellow Deadnettle.

There were also a few day flying moths about, some of which I’d not seen before. The Small Purple-barred (Phytometra viridaria) was a new one, but was thankfully easy to identify.

So all in all a very good day out. The Wyre Forest is definitely worth a visit for anyone wanting to see the beautiful Pearl Bordered Fritillaries.

Out and About – Penny Hill Bank

May 11, 2016March 12, 2025 / nrowberry / Leave a comment

You know how it is, you wait a lifetime to see a Green Hairstreak, then see them two days in a row! Flushed with success of finding them at Cannock Chase the day before, we ventured forth once more – this time to a small reserve in Worcestershire – Penny Hill Bank.

Penny Hill is an area of grassland that has apparently never had pesticides on it, so has a very diverse flora, including several types of orchid. We were probably there a bit early in the year to see many of them, but we did spot this Common Twayblade orchid (Listera ovata) and there were lots of pretty blue Bugle (Ajuga reptans) flowers.

The diverse flora of course in turn attracts a wide variety of insects, particularly butterflies. We’d only been there a couple of minutes before we spotted a Green Hairstreak. Perhaps now, having got our eye in with them at Cannock Chase, we’ll be finding them everywhere!

This was soon followed by another relatively unusual butterfly, the unfortunately named Dingy Skipper (Erynnis tages). The skippers look a bit more like moths than butterflies, but have the typical butterfly antennae – smooth with a slightly bulbous tip. The Dingy Skippers are actually quite pretty in a subtle kind of way. They were also quite flighty, so not easy to photograph – this was the best I could do.

We saw several other species of butterfly – Orange Tip, Green Veined White, and a possibly Large White, but none of them stopped long enough to get a photo.

The field was generally very tidy, with thankfully no rubbish, but there were a few old bits of farm debris lying around, so we checked underneath them. The first revealed a newt, but the highlight of our day though was finding another lifetime first – a slow worm! I had never seen one, so was squealing with excitement when we lifted an old metal sheet and found the slow worm underneath.

We hurriedly took a few photos, before carefully lowering his “roof” back down. As we’d been walking around Penny Hill, it had seemed like possibly adder territory, but the slow worm was a complete surprise. Penny Hill is also home to glow worms – so we may be back there one night in the hope of bagging another first!

The views from Penny Hill Bank were stunning, you could see for miles across Worcestershire. The photo below doesn’t really do it justice. It’s a small site tucked away off the beaten track and not that easy to find (thanks go to a local who pointed us in the right direction), but it’s a lovely, peaceful place to just sit and enjoy the view, whether you’re interested in plants and animals or not.

Chasing Butterflies

May 8, 2016March 12, 2025 / nrowberry / 1 Comment

We went further afield this weekend chasing elusive butterflies – Cannock Chase for Green Hairstreaks (Callophrys rubi) to be precise. Cannock Chase is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) with large areas of heathland and woodland. Several areas within it are protected further as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).

We follow the West Midlands Branch of Butterfly Conservation on Facebook and had been jealously viewing lots of stunning photos on there of Green Hairstreak butterflies – a species that was on our “hit list” of ones to see for the first time. Many of these photos on Facebook had been taken on Cannock Chase, so we decided to head to Staffordshire. Clues gleaned from Facebook and Butterfly Conservation’s booklet on Butterflies of the West Midlands indicated that the carpark near the Glacial Boulder (seen below) would be a good place to start.

So we headed out in hope and expectation, starting at the carpark just a few metres from the boulder. About a minute’s walk from the boulder we found this overgrown ditch which was warm and sheltered – an ideal spot for both us and the butterflies we hoped to see.

Almost immediately I spotted one, then another and we realised we’d hit gold – or perhaps green! There were maybe half a dozen Green Hairstreaks flitting around the bilberry bushes. Some pairs were chasing up into the air – presumably mating couples. The Green Hairstreaks are really small with green undersides with a white streak on. The uppersides of the wings are brown, but we only saw those in flight as they never settle with their wings open. In butterfly heaven we took loads (and I mean loads – thank god for the delete option with digital). So here are a selection of the best of my efforts.

Whilst happily snapping away at our prize butterflies, we met the very man (Terry) who had posted the photos on Facebook in the first place! He was extremely helpful (as have been all the butterfly enthusiasts we’ve met on our walks) and gave us tips as to what else we might see. Thanks to Terry we found a pond we would never otherwise have seen and subsequently spotted a new (for us) bird species too – a Reed Bunting. Apologies for rubbish photo, but they kept their distance, so this was the best I could manage. They looked like large sparrows with a white collar and were grabbing insects out of the air over the reeds.

All in all a very successful trip to Cannock Chase – far better than I’d dared hope for. The Green Hairstreaks are absolutely gorgeous little butterflies and well worth going that extra mile to see.

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