Of beasties and blooms

Views (Williams) Wood - Repelling the invasion

A little while ago the Woodland Trust asked for some volunteers to help Sandra, of the TrUck project, to remove some of the Himalayan balsam which, in their words, "is getting a foothold in a couple of places within the wood". A couple of months ago I had noticed small seedlings beginning to grow amongst the bluebells and other wild flowers. Now those 'seedlings' are taller than I am. If left to grow and spread, they would soon overwhelm the other wild flowers and cause other problems as explained in The River Uck - not so pretty in pink.
 

Himalayan Balsam in Views (Williams) Wood.

Unfortunately, I couldn't join the rest of the party so I went and did some by myself. As described in an earlier post, I have done this before and am happy that I can identify the plants properly.  The work itself is reasonably easy, it is just a matter of pulling up these shallow rooted plants and stacking them by the path.  I was there from about quarter past nine and had the wood more-or-less to myself. The only noise was birdsong and church bells, which was lovely.  While I worked in the shade of the trees, I saw many different types of wild flowers including dainty enchanter's nightshade, speedwell and red campion.
 

Red campion.

As I progressed and the heap of discarded Himalayan balsam got higher inquisitive dogs nosed around my work and their owners stopped for a chat. Later joggers and family groups passed by.
 

Heap of Himalayan balsam.

After about two and a half hours I went home, having spent an enjoyable morning getting rid of an alien invader - and don't worry - I'm not greedy, there is more balsam for other people to pull up.
 
 

Himalayan Balsam and honeysuckle.

Summer bus trip

We’re all going on a summer holiday …

Thank you to Leilani Mitchell of the Link Centre for saying "let's bring a holiday feel into our working week this week shall we? How will you do it ?" So far things I've done have included:

• remembering to look over the top of my laptop to see the flowers and birds in the garden
• strolling rather than scurrying to get the paper.

Just very simple things that don't cut into work time but bring a holiday moment into the working day. On Wednesday this was tested a bit. Not only did I have to do my commute to Leatherhead but the trains were cancelled. Eventually, a bus turned up and whisked us off to Haywards Heath.

Rather than getting annoyed at the detours and delays I thought I would enjoy the impromptu summer bus trip. After all, sitting high up in the coach, I was able to see so much more than I usually do when driving.

 

First - a flash of blue seen from the Uckfield by-pass.  A jay had flown across the road. There are plenty of flowers to see here. Ox-eye daisies, buttercups and, best of all, the unexpected treat of blue meadow cranesbill - I think that's what it was, we were going a bit too fast to see it properly.  As we swept on towards Haywards Heath I was able to see over hedges into fields with contented black and white cows and sheep. Near Chailey Heritage, I spotted the Exmoor ponies that graze the common, keeping the vegetation under control.

Wild orchid amongst flowers and grasses like the ones I saw from the bus.

Some fields are ungrazed and rich with white and yellow flowers stud the ripening, hazy purple-gold of the grass. Just before we entered Haywards Heath I was thrilled to see a field full of wild orchids.

Now that was better than getting steamed up about the delay, wasn’t it?

Garden Bio Blitz 2014

The idea of the annual garden BioBlitz is to list of all the wildlife found in your garden over a 24 hour period. I first heard about it on last year’s BBC Springwatch but didn't get round to doing anything about it until this year. Really it was Ryan Clark (do yourself a favour and look at his photos) whose tweets and retweets encouraged me to have a go this year.

Two male fallow deer - Photo from Bushnell trail camera.

I thought I knew about the wildlife that visits and grows in our large and rather shaggy garden. We know we get deer, foxes and badgers because we have seen field signs (that's poo and footmarks to you) and photos from the Bushnell. Also, I was confident that we have a couple of dozen species of wild flowers, frogs and a small assortment  of "creepy crawlies".

However there were plenty of surprises for me:

• the sheer number and variety of species in our garden
• how beautiful and strange grasses are under a magnifying glass
• we have liverworts between the paving slabs - the last time I paid attention to one of those, I was studying their weird lifecycle at school more than quarter of a century ago
• the wonderful and colourful variety of insect life in our garden and how little I know about it.

Mint moth - about 13 mm - tiny with beautifully intricate markings.

The BioBlitz really encouraged me to look at plants and creatures in the garden properly. For example, it had never really occurred to me to try and identify the tiny brown moths we find in our garden. A few minutes with UKMoth’s keyword search showed me that they are mint moths and I was able to add them to my list.   In the end I found and identified 105 species.

It is very motivating knowing that there are hundreds of others doing the same thing. Also the BioBlitz organisers had set up mechanisms to help people identify their finds via tweets or the iSpot website.

Extract from BioBlitz Info Centre (5th June 2014).

On Sunday morning I got most of the results into iRecord. A few days later I finished off and checked back on the site to see what other people had recorded. I was delighted to find that I was in the top 20 of the Recorders League. Then I spent a little time browsing round the site, and found that someone was doing the BioBlitz only a couple of miles from me. 

Recorder's League. Extract from iRecord, 5 June 2014.

At some point I will go back and set up a filter so I can see what local people are recording and I'll definitely spend some more time in the garden finding out what's there and putting it on iRecord.

So next year, I’ll be back. Meanwhile, this is me, recording wildlife in our garden ...

   

How Doctor Who helped me spot a lizard

Yesterday we took a walk through The Woodland Trust's Views (Williams) Wood to Buxted Park and back. We visited earlier in the spring when the spring flowers seemed to be in a frantic race to bloom before the tree canopy closed over them. Now serene greens of fresh leaves are taking over from the fading flowers.

Serene greens and fading blues in Views (Williams) Wood.

The wood is quieter too as the birds that, earlier, were singing to attract mates and protect territories silently hunt food for their young. Fortunately for them the wood is humming with insect life.

Black headed cardinal beetle.

The most colourful insect we saw was a black headed cardinal beetle. It was eye-catching enough when I first saw it resting on an old stump. Long scarlet wing cases contrast with black head, body and legs. When its comb-like antenna detected me creeping up with my camera, out flashed black wings and it flew away in a swirl of red and black. The larvae of this insect live under the bark of freshly dead broad leaved trees. Maybe they benefitted from last year's coppicing.

The woodland rides are still lined with greater stitchwort, which has now been joined by delicate white caraway (I think) flowers. These still appeared here and there as we crossed the river to Buxted Park.  In the more open parkland, hawthorn are blossoming and rabbits lolloping around in the sun.

Bluebells and hawthorn blossom - Buxted Park

Most of the daffodils in the graveyard of St Margaret's Church have faded but a few of the late, pheasant eye, variety are hanging on. The shaggy grass is full of pea-family flowers: red clover, black medic (which is actually yellow), vivid magenta common vetch and the tiny blooms of hairy tare. As bees work systematically through the flowers, a cloud of shiny micro moths dances above.

Lizard draped round the neck of an angel.

As we walked to the gate I spotted an angel headstone, I gestured towards it and was about to make the usual joke about not blinking (this is from an episode of Doctor Who called Blink) when I spotted a lizard draped round the back of the neck of the angel. In a blink it was gone. I hope it had scurried away from the looming human rather than being zapped back into the past. If it hadn't been for me wanting to make a daft joke about a TV show, I never would have seen the lizard.

Buxted Park Hotel

It looks like some trees have been lost in recent storms and, maybe, some of the Limes that fell in the great storm of 1987 have been cleared away. Parts of the park feel a little more open now and there are some fine views of the Buxted Park Hotel.

Geese and goslings.

Passing between the lakes there are a variety of geese with fluffy goslings. Like us, they fled to the shelter of the trees when a hail storm interrupted the sunshine. We went home to our warm, dry house, leaving the creatures of the park and the wood to fend for themselves.

Celandines and peacocks

I look on the sea of golden stars that covers parts of our garden with mixed feelings. The stars are lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria), a plant that is a beautiful thug.

 

Beautiful but smothering blanket of celandine.

The flowers are very attractive to early butterflies. Yesterday I saw two peacock butterflies feasting on the little yellow stars.


Peacock butterfly on a rather limp daffodil.

The problem with wild celandine is that it spreads like crazy and smothers other small plants such as wood anemone that emerge at the same time of year. The RHS page on Celandine suggests some methods of control. We hand weed them in selected areas but you have to be very careful to remove the bunches of tubers intact. Otherwise you are just spreading them around. Another trick is to make sure that they are sharing space with bigger plants such as hellebores that can stand up for themselves.

There are some cultivated varieties that are a bit better behaved. We have some of the bronze leaved Brazen Hussy. This variety has bronzed, almost black leaves. Although it doesn't spread anywhere near as quickly as its green cousin, you still need to keep an eye on it. The butterflies seem to like it well enough.

Brazen hussy.

There are other varieties too. We quite often find doubles that have spontaneously developed from the singles in our grass. Celandine is a pretty but troublesome plant. Don't let the wild one into your garden if you can possibly avoid it but if you are stuck with it, enjoy the show.

Lambs

Just over a month ago, it all started kicking off in the garden. Now spring seems to be full swing.  The gardens are blazing with daffodils, primroses and all sorts of other spring flowers.  Blackthorn is out and pink blossom is everywhere.
 

Watercolour of spring flowers.

A fox or two has visited most nights and we have had another visit from the badger. We have had all sorts of butterflies including peacock, small tortoiseshell, yellow brimstone, comma and red admirals.

Best of all, while driving round the Uckfield bypass this morning, I saw lambs. Spring really is here.

Sketch of ewe and lambs.