Burwell

If you go down to the wood today… but which tree is which

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I remember when tea leaves came in boxes each with a small picture card, to be collected into sets. One set was of Britain’s trees. Each card had a picture of a tree; from learning the shape of the tree you were supposed to be able to tell the species of the tree. Hmm… I have never found this easy, especially as often our trees don’t have space to grow into their natural shape. So to get their ID sorted I’ve gone for the opposite end of the spectrum – instead of looking at whole trees, I suggest starting with trees’ leaves as they are so distinctive. Leaves are also lovely and fresh at the moment. Just looking at them, I feel better. Yesterday, I took a wander round Priory Wood and gathered leaves from different trees. I’ll focus on three species.

Oak leaves are wavy round the edges

Oak leaves are thin at their base, widening towards their end and wavy round the edges. Oak is one of our longest lived tree species. In the UK, oak is the tree species which supports the most other living creatures. In Priory Wood there is a fantastic old Oak tree, with gnarled, wide girthed trunk and branches.

Hazel leaves are roundish, toothed and hairy, so softish to the touch. If you are not sure if it is hazel, give a leaf a stroke… Once cut, hazel branches grow rapidly and straight upwards from the base of the tree. Hazel used to be coppiced – cut down to the ground – as people used these branches for poles. Our next door neighbour on the allotment off Green Lane still harvests hazel to provide himself – and us – with bean poles. Cutting down of hazel opened up space in woods: as light came in flowers grew and butterflies flew. Where our old woods are being cared for, hazel is once again being coppiced to bring new life back into them.

Hazel leaves are rounded and soft to the touch; hazel branches grow tall and straight; .
Each elder leaf has divided into 5 leaflets, each leaflet is evenly toothed round its edge.

Each of elder’s leaves are divided up into 5 leaflets, each leaflet is toothed round the edge. Elder is easy to spot now as its large, flattish, creamy, frothy flower heads are just opening up. We will soon be able to pick elder’s flowers to make delicious elderflower cordial.

When I got home, I had a happy half hour doing a simple version of brass rubbing with the leaves I had picked. I placed a leaf under a piece of A4 paper and with a coloured pencil, held at an angle, I coloured over it. I just love seeing the shape of each leaf and the pattern of their veins emerge. As I did more, I realised that this works best if you have the leaf upside down – this way the most prominent ‘bulge’ of the veins are against the paper you are rubbing onto.

Doing leaf rubbings is great for learning leaf shapes – and is such fun.

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Tree bees buzzing in our nest box

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Do you have any occupants in your nest boxes? I put up a house sparrow terrace nest box several years ago. This box has several sections adjacent to each other as sparrows like communal living. Now the box is buzzing – literally. Rimsky-Korsakov in ‘The flight of the bumblebee’, here played by James Galway, captures the energy of the bees as they took up residence here. This section’s entry hole is now circled by guarding bees, who edge aside to allow a bee to fly out or in. From the left hand section of the nest box comes chirping of great tit chicks, their constant demand keeping their parents busy flying in and out. And not a sparrow nest in sight!

Bees featured in my childhood: one of my favourite childhood books was ‘Ant and Bee’; with great excitement I remember spending pocket money on a Single ‘Big Rock Candy Mountain’ which, though not entirely PC, always lifted our spirits, so ideal for this time. However, these did not increase my knowledge much about the real creatures, so I depend on Bumblebee Conservation Trust for my information here.

Bees are not always straightforward to identify. Luckily these ones are! Their ginger thorax, black body (abdomen) and white fluffy rear end (tail) are unique, in the UK at least.

A circle of bees guards the entrance to their nest

Tree bees only arrived in the UK in 2001 from mainland Europe. They have spread widely, often nesting in bird boxes and in lofts. Our box is by our garage door, yet the bees rarely take any notice of us as we clatter around carrying garden forks and spades in and out. Only when after my umpteenth attempt to take a photo of them in their dark hole, and had ‘flashed’ them several times close up did they begin to express a bit of unhappiness with increased buzzing!

Common comfrey, a favourite flower of tree bees

A queen chooses her nest site in March or April. Six weeks or so later, the larger worker bees go out to forage, while the smaller bees become ‘House bees’. They are excellent pollinators, particularly liking flowers like comfrey which hang downwards. During May and June a lot of bees may be flying around the nest site. These are males waiting for a queen to emerge and hoping to persuade her to mate with them. Male bees have no sting so there is no need to be concerned. If lucky, drones mate. Colonies die out in late July, with drones living independently for a while. Queens that have mated build themselves up, then hibernate for the winter; in spring the process starts again.

My challenge now is to spot these bees as they pollinate flowers – as The Big Rock Candy Mountain plays round and round in my head. I hope that it helps you dance along today too.

If you have tree bees – or species of any sort – you can enter them on irecord and help build up a picture of which species are where across the UK. This information contributes to effective conservation action.

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update on chalking

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Thank you for your supportive comments about my chalking flower names on pavements. A few times people have seen me as I have been chalking names on Newmarket Road. I’ve asked them what they think. They’ve told me ‘its a good idea’, ‘makes the walk more interesting’, ‘children like it’. This is exactly what I had hoped for.

So I was really disappointed to see that yet again Newmarket Road verges have been cut. The verges look very neat and tidy – I think gradually, imperceptibly, we have become trained to think uniform short cut green is the ideal. Not so long ago we did not have the tools or money to have all this neatness. But this verge – and all the others that have been cut again like this – are ‘dead’. Yet again there are no golden buttercups, or other flowers; bees and butterflies have no food sources, as we walk we have no colours or humming music to lift our spirits; nothing to encourage children to get outside and see what they can see.

In lockdown we are walking more often, and more locally. There is also increasing debate about how we want our world to be post-lockdown. The value of nature around us has become more obvious.

We have choices to make about our world. These choices really matter: For ourselves and for the other ‘life’ that we share this world with. Tina’s windows, a joy as ever, are full of creatures, hedgehogs, bees. Do we want our children only to have these stuffed or crafted versions, as delightful as they are? Or do we want them to see them as they walk round our village – in time, hopefully, on the way to school. Hopefully, in all that word’s meaning.

Pound Hill buttercups

I was delighted to be told there may be a re-think next year about leaving the buttercups to flower on Pound Hill. To let the buttercups flower, will, I think, require a shift in our thinking, to once again enjoying the wavy edges, the longer grass, to recognise again the beauty in the gold of nature. I’d love to know what you think. Scroll to the bottom to the comments box and let me know…

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Swifts, swallows and house martins, the sky’s fast fliers

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Do you keep a note of the first dates each year that you see a particular bird species? I have often wished that I did, so this year I’ve have made a start. My first swift sighting was 1 May, out along Factory Road. But it wasn’t until last week, as I walked between the Co-op and Costcutters, that I saw heard my first ‘party’ of swifts: they ‘screamed’ overhead, swooping in circles through the sky, their black, precision wings enabling them to turn, dip, angle, at high speed.

Often people ask me how to tell swifts, swallows and house martins apart. All arrive quite late in the spring as they come from the middle to southern Africa. They all swoop through the air, as they feed on insects. They often will come down low to water, as that is where there are a lot of insects.

Swifts are sooty brown but look black against the sky and have stumpy tails.

As we often see these birds only when they are silhouetted against the sky, I look at their different shapes to tell them apart. What they are ‘up to’ and the ‘noise’ they are making – I don’t think these birds have much of a song – is also helpful.

Swifts are sickle shaped and black all over. They fly the highest. They scream! They very rarely sit, except to go to their nest. So if you see birds sitting on a telegraph wire, they won’t be swifts.

Adults have long tail streamers, whiteish body and red under their chin.

Adult swallows have tails with long streamers, juveniles have streamers, but shorter. Even in flight, it is often possible to see their whiteish undersides and catch a glimpse of red under their chins. Their upper body is a beautiful glossy deep blue. Swallows will sit on beams in stables or on telegraph wires and ‘chatter’.

House martins are white underneath, and show a block of white on their upper tail as they sweep past.

House martins are slightly smaller than swallows and have more angular shaped wings – think of a triangle. The white on their upper tail is often clearly visible.

House martins often nest under the eaves around Felsham Chase area

If you see them nesting, that will also give you a clue about which bird you are seeing. House martins, as their name suggests, build their mud nests under the eaves of houses. I’ve noticed in Burwell that they love nesting on houses in the Felsham Chase area, but don’t on what look superficially similar houses up Newmarket Road. Please let me know if you understand why!

Swallows build their mud nests in outbuildings and stables, near to horses and cattle, or water, where there is a good supply of insects to feed their chicks. They don’t seem bothered by people being around – they just get on with what they have to be doing, which is getting food to their demanding chicks! Once we are allowed back to Wicken Fen’s visitor centre area you will be able to see them nesting around the café area, on the beams of the boat shed and sometimes the porch of the cycle hire.

I love seeing tiny chicks’ heads appearing above the mud wall of their nest as their parents arrive to feed them. And just think, the adults have flown all the way from Africa to have their young here in our village. That’s quite something..

Swifts nest in roofs, but under the tiles, so if you are lucky enough to have them, you will hear their chicks, but not see them… more of that anon.

Make silhouettes for your window – you can cut out swift, swallow and house martin shapes out of black paper and stick them to a window. As well as having fun making your own ‘flying bird parties’ this will help stop birds from flying into the window – they are more able to see that there is a pane of glass there.

With thanks to the RSPB community blog for the illustrations.

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For this VE day, in lockdown, wild lilies’ delicate beauty

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Wild lilies, known as Ramsons or wild garlic, are flowering in the moist, shady areas of Castle Mound. I would of expected such delicate, extravagant flowers to be the product of generations of cultivation – or belong to a more exotic wilderness. Yet they are on our doorstep.

To find them, start where the spring pours out into a sparkling clear pool. Follow the little stream as it curls round. As the ground becomes squishy underfoot, you will see these brilliant white delicate flowers growing alongside the path. Brush their broad, luscious leaves as you walk and the air fills with the smell of garlic.

This Easter we were not able to have in church the traditional display of Easter lilies, beautifully arranged by Pauline Miller, with a list of names next to them to whose remembrance they are dedicated. I remember my grandmother buying lilies for the Methodist chapel in Southery. Even then they were a £1 each. She paid willingly, in respect of those who had died she had loved.

As I remember all those lost, from my family, from our country, from our world, over the years and most recently, these wonderful wild lilies, bring me comfort. The exuberant beauty of each individual flower, of which there are so many on each plant, tells me that each person is remembered and honoured, for their beauty.

Maybe today we could draw our own lily flower, sparkling with the names of those we love who are alive, or who are alive in our memories. I am going to go and do that now.

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Hedgehogs in action

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Have you recently heard a strange noise coming from outside? At about 10pm last night, we heard persistent grunting, grating, snuffly noises coming from our patio. Was someone sawing wood? I opened the window to see what it was.

Peering through the darkness, I saw two slightly different sized blobs circling each other. As my eyes got accustomed to the dark, I saw they were two hedgehogs! We tried to work out what their noise sounded like. Nathalie suggested carrots being grated, I thought someone unfit running up a steep hill. Mix the two and I think you have it!

with thanks for image to Wikipedia

We needn’t have rushed to look. The hedgehogs kept at their grunting and circling for at least 90 minutes – possibly longer as we went to bed! That’s a lot of carrots grated and hills run up! Just shows we don’t always know what is going on outside our back doors… We hope this means we will have baby hoglets – yes that’s what they are called – in a month or so. As hedgehogs travel 1-2 miles a night, this is not guaranteed.

I have tried to encourage hedgehogs in the garden. If you haven’t already done so, make some piles of logs for insects, and heaps of leaves for cover. There is lots of information about how to encourage and make your garden safe for hedgehogs on the internet. The British Hedgehog Preservation Society, Tiggywinkles wildlife hospital and the RSPCA all have excellent advice and information, including how to build a simple hedgehog home. These can also be bought – a friend of mine was given one for her birthday and to her delight this was used in the first year.

When we had a new fence put up by the fabulous Prospects Trust, based at Snakehall Farm, Reach, we cut a hole in the bottom so that hedgehogs could still travel between our and the next door’s garden and onwards… If your garden fences block hedgehogs from roaming, maybe you could consider cutting some openings.

Now hedgehogs know this hole is for them!

Next how about decorating it? You could use chalk as I have – though paint would be great if you are braver!

While you have the chalks out, why not have a bit more fun? I found doing this very therapeutic…

Banksy eat your heart out…

NB: Costcutters and Tina’s have packets of chalk for sale. Good luck!

And don’t forget these next few weeks to pop your head out of doors in the evenings. You may be lucky and hear grunting…

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Blackbird nesting

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THE holly bush!

Do you have a blackbird nesting in your garden? I had begun to give up hope for this year, when yesterday morning I heard a rush of footsteps up the stairs and Ian – who was up considerably earlier than me – announced, ‘I’ve just seen a blackbird carrying a leaf into the holly bush!’ This morning the male blackbird was keeping an eye on his territory from a nearby tree as the female continued her nest building.

The knowledge there is this extraordinary, as it were other world, going on within metres of where we are going about our lives is a delight. ‘Within metres’ – perhaps this year I have particular pleasure that these birds are free of the worries of Covid, can just get on with laying their beautiful blue eggs, feed their hungry chicks, without thinking about metres, face masks, lockdown…

Male blackbird watching his territory

Which was the first bird you learned to recognise? I remember the magical moment when I was around six years old, that Marjorie Hill, a family friend, pointed to a bird on her drive in Stapleford and taught me that because it was black, with a bright yellow bill, it was a male blackbird. She then pointed to a same shaped but brown bird, with a muddy coloured bill. I hadn’t noticed before that these birds were different. Now, I could identify a male and female blackbird. This was a revelation and started me out on my love of birds.

In addition, I have now learned how to tell if the male blackbirds in my garden are youngsters (in their first year out of the nest), or adults. All chicks are incredibly vulnerable to being caught by predators while they are in their nest. So they develop as fast as possible, so they can fly away as soon as possible. To achieve this, birds have evolved to compromise on the quality of their first feathers; better to have some that will do the job for the moment, than to be eaten and never even use them. Blackbird chicks fly from their nest the brown colour of adult females – if a bit fluffier and more speckled. Once they have been out of the nest for a couple of months, these young birds then replace their most exposed feathers with ones of adult quality – and so also colour. The result for young male birds is a teenager look – some black and some brown feathers. Do any of the male blackbirds that visit your garden look like this? The blackbird perched in our plum tree does. So I know he was ‘born’ last year and that this is his first go at parenthood. I wish him luck!

(Note: he (and the female blackbird) will change all his feathers after he has finished breeding. Once that is done, he will be in full black plumage and we will no longer be able to tell his age.)

I went to help a primary school in Haverhill run a ‘bird week’. The headteacher told me that when she herself was at primary school, they had all written ‘a bird book’ about a bird of their choice. They had done drawings, found out about their nests, what they ate. Her book was ‘The Blackbird’ and forty years later she still felt a special affinity for them – and had loved birds ever since. This is what she wanted to give her pupils in turn.

Robin by Megan, aged 7

If you have children at home, how about folding some A4 pages in half to make ‘a book’ and encourage them to draw and write about one of the bird species they see in your garden or street. I’d gladly publish some of the results in this blog. (Send a comment and I will be in touch.)

The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) runs a Garden Birdwatch scheme, which they have made free during this period. People count how many birds of which species are in their garden for a chosen amount of time a day or week and send this information in to the BTO. We did this and had fun and got to know what was in our gardens and when much better. All the information people send in helps BTO scientists understand what is happening with our commoner bird species and how they use gardens – all of which helps us to know what best to do to keep these birds ‘common’!

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Chalking on pavements – illegal activity

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I’ve just done a first – deliberately taken an illegal action. Unknowingly I committed the same offence as a child, chalking hopscotch squares on the pavement as I played with friends. This morning I knew what I was doing. My offence – to chalk names of flowers on the pavement. I have done this to encourage people to notice them, and, if they don’t know their names, to be able to identify them. I also added a smiley face. Partly for the joy of sharing my delight in these flowers with whoever may walk by. Partly as I think we all need a smile at the moment.

First I had to dig to the back of a cupboard to unearth a box of chalks, not used since my girls played schools, writing lessons with chalk on a blackboard. (Chalk, blackboards, school, for several reasons that seems a lifetime ago.) Then I started: purple for the delicate lilac flowers of field madder; yellow for golden buttercups; white for glorious, lavish May.

As I wrote, skylarks were singing so I added a suggestion for people to listen for them. I sometimes walk along too wrapped up in my own thoughts to raise my head to listen. Then their song catches my ear. As I listen to these birds singing as they rise, my heart lifts too. I remember too when I did not know the song of skylarks, and I would not have dreamt they could be heard from in our village. They were too ephemeral – birds of poetry and music – to be part of our prosaic world. Yet here they are. Our world is not prosaic at all… That is perhaps above all why I have been out chalking the pavements this morning…

To ‘get your ear in’ to skylark song you can listen here. The British Trust for Ornithology have produced a video which describes skylarks and their song. (This compares skylarks with wood larks. To see and hear woodlarks we will need to wait for when we can visit Thetford Forest again.)

I had been wondering about labelling wild plants round the village when I heard of botanist Boris Presseq of Toulouse Museum of Natural History chalking names on the pavements to highlight street flowers in his city. The simple video of him doing so has had 7 million views. He has understood this moment in time and the desire of people to see and get to know the world that is around them. He said: “I wanted to raise awareness of the presence, knowledge and respect of these wild plants on sidewalks. People who had never taken the time to observe these plants now tell me their view has changed. Schools have contacted me since to work with students on nature in the city.”

Boris Presseq and fellow botanists write chalk plant names on the pavement in Toulouse, France.
Boris Presseq and fellow botanists write chalk plant names on the pavement in Toulouse, France. Note, this is prior to lockdown in France. Photograph: Claire Van Beek/Handout

Dee Carlock, one follower put it very well:

It’s a great idea. When you know the names, the plants become more alive to you as individual beings.

People across Europe have started chalking names of plants on pavements. Sophie Leguil is doing this in Hackney.

Meanwhile, I have come back in, dusted chalk off my hands and am watching the rain come down. I hope a few people will enjoy my efforts and have understood their meaning before they are washed away…

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It has to be May’s wild lavish blossom

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May day and each hawthorn tree, bush, bit of hedging is loaded with ‘May’; masses of white, sometimes pinkish, blossom. As if each tree is sending the message: where one would do, here have several thousand instead.

Hawthorn or May has always been seen as a bringer of hope, of the fertility that comes with spring, of purity. So I am revelling in this plant’s beauty now.

There is a tradition too that Christ’s crown of thorns was made from branches of the Hawthorn tree. From this has arisen a reluctance for people to uproot or damage a Hawthorn tree.

Hawthorns lavish blossom is feeding numerous bees, hoverflies and other insect species. Come the autumn, hawthorns are covered in red berries – haws – providing vital food for thrushes, fieldfares, redwings and if we are lucky waxwings, arriving from the continent for the shelter our slightly warmer winters offer.

Hawthorns are easy to identify at the moment, as they are the only trees covered with white blossom. When not in flower, they can be identified by their leaves’ distinctive shape, and habit of curling their sides slightly upwards. Blackthorn is the other common tree or hedge shrub with thorns. Blackthorns leaves are flatter and don’t have a wavy edge.

Hawthorn leaves, with wavy edges, blackthorn leaves are just slightly toothed.

Yesterday I cycled along Factory Road. With thunder booming from across the Fen, I took a photo of this lone Hawthorn tree. Since, I have learned of the superstition that such lone trees originate from lightning or thunder bolts and give protection from further strikes… these are trees for this May of all Mays…

Update – buttercups chopped

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I was devastated to find Pound Hill has been mown again, just as buttercups were covering the grass with their gorgeous golden flowers. The only places the buttercups were saved is where daffodils, non-wild plants, have been planted as the daffodils’ dying leaves have been carefully cut around. The buttercups that happened to be growing amongst them live on…

Buttercups were flowering across Pound Hill
What remains where buttercups were flowering

We have gained so many tools to keep things tidy without much effort. Without realising, our tidiness is destroying something fundamentally precious…

In my first post I mentioned that ‘buttercup’ has been taken out of the Junior Oxford Dictionary. Too few children now use the word to justify it having a place. Concern at the loss of words such as this was so great that fundraising campaigns bought every primary school a copy of Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris’s ‘Lost Words’. This book celebrates nature such as ‘buttercups’, ‘acorns’, and ‘otter’ that are being lost from children’s vocabulary – and worlds. How ironic people raised money to get this book into primary schools, while money continues to be spent cutting down the flowers we are so concerned children no longer know the name of.

I hope we have a rethink about how we want our world to be…