All posts by Chris Gibson

A New Year springs in the Beth Chatto Garden

Britain's Wildlife, WildWivenhoe

Just two months since our last visit to The Beth Chatto Garden (see blog here), and it is as though the winter shutdown never happened…indeed, thus far it really hasn’t, with barely a handful of frosts interspersed with unseasonable warmth. So it was no surprise to see those traditional harbingers of Spring, Snowdrops and Winter Aconites, in profuse bloom.

Being an insect-pollinated plant at this time of year is a rather dodgy strategy, given that insect flight is severely impaired by cold temperatures, but the flowers are still appearing, in the hope of attracting a passing early bumblebee into the illuminated lanterns of Spring Snowflake or the rich nectar-pits of Hellebores.

Some flowers advertise their wares visually, others by scent. And on a still winter’s day, the pool of fragrance surrounding the most extravagantly scented can and does stop us in our tracks. I challenge anyone to walk past a flowering Sweet Box without being uplifted by the olfactory promise of warmer days.

One of my favourite early spring flowers though is notable not for showing off, but for its demure flowering, requiring a search through severe spines, such that every one you find feels like a prize. Butcher’s-broom is showy enough in fruit, large red globes from a year previously, but its subtle flowers are each a gem. Three-parted, signifying its liliaceous ancestry, they are placed in the centre of the ‘leaves’; we may call them leaves but a developmental botanist would call them cladodes, in essence flattened stems, hence the oddly-positioned flowers.

While the new season flowers stole the crystal January limelight, and the previous two frosty nights no doubt kept insect life at bay, a few winter gnats danced in the still air, and a single, nymphal bark-louse demonstrated that Jude’s close-up vision has not suffered from lack of use since the autumn! Add to that a sprinkling of perennial fungi such as Diatrypella quercina, and it is reassuring that, irrespective of the turbulence of political life at the moment, the wonders of nature will keep on giving.

 

Three days of World Heritage in the north….

Travel by Rail

 

UNESCO World Heritage Sites, those places of recognised cultural or natural importance to the whole world, come in many shapes and sizes. And all too often we run off to find those in far-flung corners of the world – take the Taj Mahal or the Great Barrier Reef, for example – but lose sight of those places and their fascinating stories almost on our doorstep.

So it was that we headed out for a few of days by rail last week (incredible value at less than £70 in total, with railcard and Advance tickets) to two of the British sites that neither of us had visited before, Saltaire and Durham, both cultural sites but from very different eras.

Evening in Saltaire was foggy and intensely atmospheric, the diffuse lights in an industrial landscape seemingly transporting us into the art of Atkinson Grimshaw, and perfect for displaying the street art of their Living Advent Calendar.

  

Next morning, still grey skies but the fog had lifted, to reveal the Victorian ‘model village’ industrial architecture for which this site is inscribed on the UNESCO list. The eponymous Sir Titus Salt consolidated his textile empire and all its processes under one roof, on a greenfield site away from the worst of the pollution from West Yorkshire’s ‘dark, satanic mills’, and then set about consolidating his workforce there too, with purpose-built housing, social and civic facilities, astride the Leeds-Liverpool Canal, a vital artery for trade. While it undoubtedly benefitted his bottom-line, Salt’s philanthropy is remarkable by today’s standards. And the workers must have relished the opportunity to escape from some of the worst Victorian slums in Bradford.

   

Salts Mill itself has had a chequered history, almost falling to the demolishers until taken over in the 1980s by a latter-day philanthropist Jonathan Silver, who recognised its potential for post-industrial uses, including as an art space. Recognised AND realised to a considerable extent, though the site is huge and much still awaits transformation. Good reason to pay a return visit? Certainly if the art on display remains as exciting. David Hockney is a great supporter of the Mill, and we had chance to see a range of his work, including some of his most innovative pieces, including his fax-art from the 80s and the more recent i-pad art. His sequence ‘The Arrival of Spring’ particularly spoke to me, based as it is on Woldgate, near Bridlington, one of my childhood stamping-grounds as a budding naturalist.

Thence to Durham, much more classically historical and ‘chocolate-box’ beautiful, nestling within a tortuous loop of the River Wear. The view of the Cathedral and Castle, familiar to anyone who has travelled the East Coast Mainline, was the original inspiration for this trip when travelling down from Edinburgh in the summer, and as we arrived in the dark, it was suitably, dramatically lit, inviting our exploration.

And then again by day, the Cathedral especially magnificent both outside and especially in. Such a pity that, with the angles and light, ornamentation, stained glass and wall art, all inspirational subjects, no photography is allowed inside…but it was still worth the visit. Then there was so much more, the lanes and street layouts, churches and even more modern, though still classic, architecture like the 1960s concrete bridge of Ove Arup. Another familiar from my past, as an alumnus of UEA, where brutalist concrete set the backdrop for my early twenties.

But perhaps best of all, no doubt in part due to the welcome emergence of the sun, was the setting of the city – castle and cathedral as ever-present sentinels above the riverside walks. And there we could indulge in a little pre-Christmas wildlife watching (so much less stressful than shopping!), with Goosanders on the river and fungi fruiting among the trees, including Judas’ Ear, surprisingly on a Sycamore stump, its usual host being Elder.

 

 

Epping Forest: Autumn Glory

Britain's Wildlife

Some years, Autumn exceeds all expectations. And 2018 has been one of those. It all started with that long, hot, dry period from late spring: it is widely recognised that those stressful conditions are a significant contributor to future autumn colours. Then early Autumn: few windy periods, which in some years strip the trees before they have chance to change. And finally the occasional sharp frost in later Autumn, to actually trigger the colour changes.

So it was that today, on what may well be one of the last ‘summery’ days of the year, in the Snaresbrook section of Epping Forest, that jewel in the crown of British historic woodland and plains, straddling the Essex-London border.

And at long last the hoped-for autumnal flush of fungi is under way, another phenomenon which depends on a complex series of environmental triggers, including the sufficiency of autumn moisture before the winter frosts bring the season to a halt.

The smells, sights and sounds of autumn!

Autumn at its best in The Beth Chatto Garden

Beth Chatto Gardens, Britain's Wildlife, WildWivenhoe

The burnished fires of Autumn were rampant under crystalline skies as we strolled round Beth Chatto’s today:

 

Foliage and fruit – a colourful feast for the eyes as well as the hordes of berry-eating thrushes:

  

Usually a feature of the autumn, in common with most of the droughted south-east it seems, fungi were few and far-between:

And the remaining flowers: some expected, others more surprising hangers-on from the summer, but all valuable sources of nectar or pollen for late-season insects:

 

But amazing to see the number of insects on the wing, a nod to the wonderful summer past and a promise that the days will again be getting longer in just six weeks’ time. Hornets, Red Admirals and Common Darters are perhaps to be expected, at least until the first hard frosts, but Caddis Flies and Willow Emerald Damselflies? Strange times are afoot as the seasons disintegrate…:

 

Book Review: The Orphaned Spaces

Reviews

For me it all began in the mid-1970s with the publication of Richard Mabey’s ‘The Unofficial Countryside’. As a naturalist and proto-conservationist, I had grown up fascinated by wildlife in close proximity to humans, in those places without a name apart from ‘wasteland’; at last there was a suitable, non-pejorative name for the places I inhabited as a child, chasing butterflies, building dens, and generally finding my own space.

My fascination with the unofficial countryside has remained unabated. As a professional conservationist one of my proudest achievements was the safeguarding of Canvey Wick (see blog), and the acceptance of what had now become called brownfield or post-industrial land, as having a legitimate part to play in ’proper’ nature conservation.

Forty years on, and there is a new book, introducing a new name – The Orphaned Spaces – written by MW Bewick and illustrated by Ella Johnston. And a new approach, going behind the science and the evident conservation values, into the personal reflections on how such places help mark the passage of time and of our lives. The poetic prose transports me to every orphaned space I have ever been and conjures up the unpredictable magic of the interface between human decay and natural bounty.

Written in diary format, mostly during the winter months, it also succeeds for me in highlighting the role of such places in guiding us through the low season. I am one of those who lives in the shadow of the winter gloom, from autumn equinox until the advancing daylength of January; the improbable pinpricks of nature which adorn our orphaned spaces are essential signposts to a brighter future. This book thus neatly bridges one Mabey theme – Unofficial Countryside – to another – Nature Cure.

The text may seem sparse, but sometimes just a few words can convey meaning which punches above their weight. Take the entry for 24 July:

Travelling thugs on the banks of the river by the derelict furniture warehouse. Giant hogweed and Himalayan balsam are rough brutes. The sewerage pipe trickles into the murk of almost stagnant water and the banks are littered with human detritus. A muddy trainer. Plastic bottles and old tin cans. A jumper. A half-submerged supermarket trolley. Just who is the invasive species?

…thus taking this book into the sphere of natural philosophy, giving voice to some of the questions which need repeating over and over in the modern world of spurious civilisation.

Of course as a scientist and therefore a nit-picker, I have my quibbles. The failure to observe standard typographic representation of scientific names for example. And the assertion of 1 May that ‘There is unique quality to overlooked spaces. More bio-diverse than an arable field.’ – damning with faint praise, to anyone with an ecological background. But such quibbles miss the point of the book…and the fact that I happily read it in one sitting should speak volumes.

And then there’s the subtitle. ‘The Orphaned Spaces: Waste ground explored’. Yes, maybe we called it wasteground as kids, but the adjectival use of ‘waste’, without even ironic quotation marks, upsets me greatly. And I think to anyone who approaches this book with an enquiring mind, you will find its thoughtful contents give the lie to the subtitle.

‘The Orphaned Spaces‘ by MW Bewick & Ella Johnston, publisher Dunlin Press, 2018.

Price £9.99 from Dunlin Press Online Shop.

Also available is a made-to-order boxed set, which should be a thing of beauty as well as a stimulating read.

For more on the wonders of our unofficial countryside, see my blogs on Canvey Wick and Gunnersbury Triangle, and for the delights of post-industrial ‘dereliction’ Orfordness and Wapping Hydraulic Power Station

A few days in London…

Miscellaneous, Travel by Rail

A largely photographic record of three wonderful autumnal days, albeit feeling more like high summer, exploring the capital, tasting the architectural, artistic and natural riches it has to offer.

Canyons of glass and steel, capturing but not quite taming the sky:

 

Surprising juxtapositions  of old with new, like a choral discord unsettling but thrilling. Churches everywhere, the legacy edifices of Wren and Hawksmoor, each subtly different, both inside and out: some uplifting, others deflating:

     

 

From spiritual to secular, a cathedral to power: Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, Victorian engineering predating the practicality of electricity transmission. Now hosting an art gallery, but in reality the rusting fabric is art in itself:

 

Always the River, lifeblood of London and its maritime and mercantile history. Once we oversaw its death, but the Thames is now reborn: we even saw a Seal swimming through Tower Bridge!

  

And for our green needs, not a Royal Park or the wilder stretches of the Thames Path, but this time – and for our first time – the London Wetland Centre. And mightily impressed we were too! Birds from all over the globe, some brought in, others attracted there by its abundant resources: a metaphor for the melting-pot that is London.

#WildWivenhoe Botany & Bug Walks: October – King George V Field, Wivenhoe Wood & Ferry Marsh

Britain's Wildlife, Bug & Botany Walks, WildWivenhoe

‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’, yes, Autumn has crept up on us, and today we looked at some of the ways nature has been able to ‘fill all fruit with ripeness to the core’.

   

A visit to Wivenhoe car park may not be your first choice for a nature walk venue,  but a quick look at the shrubs and bushes soon revealed that even there nature has been hard at work producing berries and seeds.  Colourful, in an array of shapes and sizes , these are all intended to be noticed and eaten by birds and other wildlife, therefore enabling the plant to be multiplied and spread further than could be managed by just letting its seeds fall to the ground. Of particular interest were Berberis, Snowberry, Pyracantha and Viburnum, with Rose hips and festoons of White Bryony.  Hollies were there too, some with and some without berries – the reason? Well, it is the female that bears the famous berries, whilst the male flowers (on separate trees) earlier in the season provided the necessary pollen to fertilise the female flowers, leading to the formation of the berries. Lots of ideas here for those wishing to improve their gardens as a resource for wildlife.

  

It was interesting to walk over KGV and see how the now-cut ‘Meadow’ is faring.  This year’s ‘experiment ‘ in leaving a small portion of the field unmown for a few months proved very successful,  the sheer variety of plants that sprung forth, and the benefit to butterflies, bees and other insects has been enormous. We trust the Council will allow, indeed encourage, this to be repeated next year and beyond.

 

We had hoped to find a variety of fungi today, but a reccie yesterday was disappointing (due to lack of rain over the past few weeks) so we spent only a short time in the woods. A Parasol mushroom was seen on the edge of the wood, and a patch of Honey Fungus on a dead tree stump further in.

We concluded our morning with a walk through Ferry Marsh, following an incongruous peanut trail! It was interesting to see how the marsh has fared through its unprecedented period of inundation this summer.  It was good to see (and hear) the Reeds thriving on the re-wetted marsh, and just bursting into flower, as well as discover a few other marshland plants, including Sea Club-rush and Redshank.

 

The small oak on the edge of the seawall was rich in galls – Spangles, Silk-buttons and Smooth Spangles, as well as Oak Apple and Marble Gall. Each of these home to minuscule creatures, which we can only identify by the shape of their gall home and the plant on which it is found. At the foot of the tree was a tennis ball shaped  Earthball fungus. When prodded this puffed out smoky spores: we had pre-empted the rain drops which were soon to fall and which would do the ‘prodding’ naturally.

What of the bugs promised on our walks? Well, given the cold and damp conditions, most creatures were tucked up in the warm somewhere, but we did find a few things of interest:  Dolycoris  baccarum (Hairy Shield-bug), a crane fly complete with gyroscopic halteres (modified hind wings), several newly-emerged caddis-flies and large Garden Spiders, everywhere, waiting…..

 

All the photos in this report are our own, but due to the poor light today, most were actually taken in more favourable conditions!

Thank you to all who turned out on this less-than-nice day, and to everyone who has supported our Botany and Bug walks this year.  We hope to offer a new season of outings next year and hope that at least some of you will be able to come along.  We may arrange a walk for November if conditions are right, and will advertise it accordingly.

A Cornish Cornucopia…

Britain's Wildlife, Travel by Rail

The last knockings of a remarkable summer, as September slides into October: Cornwall – landscapes, both ancient and modern, and those innerscapes we so rarely take the time to see, let alone appreciate. Thank goodness for holidays, time to wait for lighting, perspective and detail to illustrate and illuminate the world around us.

     

St Michael’s Mount: even as the summer fades, flowers, both wild and cultivated, are still in bloom, some so bold they wouldn’t look amiss on the walls of Tate St Ives up the road. Natural Modernism, complementing the bold colours and shapes of the Patrick Herons. And where there are flowers there are insects…with spiders waiting their turn.

    

At St Ives, ‘twixt cobalt skies and azure seas, traditional seaside pursuits run alongside modern art and architecture. While everywhere there is natural art: rocks splashed with lichens; dappled sunlight filtering through Japanese anemones, illuminating the hairs on a Tobacco flower, and the start of next year’s hoverfly population.

Truro Cathedral – only a century old, but beautiful and artistically inspiring.

Revisiting the delights of rockpooling, with topshell and limpet.

 

 

Windswept, salt-pruned hedgerows, and hidden hollow-ways.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

Ivy everywhere, its intoxicating scent attracting insects galore to late-season riches: Honeybee, Ivy Bee and Painted Lady.

Oaks also demonstrating their role in supporting the web of life: galls on every leaf and branch – artichoke, silk-button and spangles, miniwasps with very different larval homes.

   

In the race to feed before leaves fall, plants being pierced by bugs – Squash, Spittle and Green Shield – and munched by leaf-beetles and caterpillars – Alder Sawfly in its woolly extruded coat, and a Pale Tussock moth larva in defensive posture.

Even on a fairly dull day, Hedge Bindweed seems to generate its own sunlight.

 

And finally some birds. Kingfisher and Dipper in the River Fowey, loved by all. Not so perhaps the ubiquitous Herring Gulls, but really it is us intruding in their space, not the other way around. Struggling in the ‘natural’ world, who can deny them a piece of their pasty?

 

Late Summer in the French Pyrénées

Overseas Tours - Pyrenees

Last week I was lucky enough to be leading a tour for Naturetrek to the French Pyrénées. It was especially interesting for me as the first time I have led a trip to that area for more than a decade, and all my previous tours there have been in May and June. How would it have changed, over the years and between seasons?

Firstly, it’s great to report that overall the area looks pretty much the same as when I last saw it: the magnificent mountain scenery, like the Brèche de Roland, is of course still there, and the scars of ‘civilisation’ (ski development and the like) are no more intrusive than before. Like rural settlements all across our continent, though, our base of Gèdre seems to be in decline, many properties boarded up, even falling into disrepair, and services closing down. But our hotel at least seems to be bucking the trend, no doubt supported by its unique view up the valley to the eponymous Brèche.

Comparing the seasons produces more marked differences, a landscape of snow beds almost continuous above 2000m in some years being replaced by cliffs, rocks, screes and sparse vegetation. Bird-wise, many of the summer visitors had departed already – no swifts and shrikes, and few warblers aside from Chiffchaffs and Blackcaps. And arguably the latter may well have been southbound migrants, along with Pied Flycatchers, Whinchats, Tree Pipits and a lone White Stork, standing incongruously amongst cattle high up in the Ossoue Valley.

Grounded migrants are always exciting, but nothing quite compares with the thrill of migration actually happening before ones eyes and ears. For us it was 20 minutes before lunch at the Col de Boucharo, one of the low ways (only 2200m up!) into Spain: under cobalt skies, we were treated to flickering parties of Swallows, hugging the turf, some 60 in total, along with a Sand Martin, five Meadow Pipits, two Linnets and 20 Yellow Wagtails.

And just prior to that we had bumped into a party of scientists from the University of Exeter who have deployed themselves there for two months to record the details of insect migration, especially hoverflies, over the pass. Just as remarkable as these feats of migration was that  one of the researchers was someone from my rather short list of ‘Twitter friends’….

The ‘big bird’ stars of the show – vultures and eagles – were also in good numbers, seemingly more than on my past visits, good news for the conservation efforts that these birds benefit. We even saw a Lammergeier, that icon of the Pyrénées, demonstrating its prowess at traversing the skies with barely a twitch of the wings over our base in Gèdre, well away from its core breeding areas. Potentially worrying though, the suite of high mountain passerine specialities – Alpine Accentor, Wallcreeper and Snow Finch – could not be found in previously expected locations: this may well represent a genuine change over the years, climate change having moved them up and out of easy reach.

My previous late Spring visits normally coincide with the transhumance of grazing stock to the high pastures, some of it still on foot, and the first hay cut. So not surprisingly, after a summer of munching and two hay cuts, the flowers were much less showy this year. But what was there was sometimes spectactular: damp, flushed hillsides swathed in Devil’s-bit Scabious and Grass-of-Parnassus, and high mountain tracksides with patches of two Pyrenean endemics, the Thistle and Eryngo, sustaining resident and migrating insects alike. Best of all, dry, cropped turf studded with pink stars of Merendera, opening wide on the sunnier days.

  

And then there were the insects, admittedly past their peak but at least as good as in late May, as numerous and often larger as in the case of the bush-crickets and grasshoppers. it was especially exciting to see three Camberwell Beauties, two very confiding, and an equally pristine Map, along with fading summer species such as Swallowtail and Apollo.

 

One of the best insect attractants was Buddleia in the towns. Contrary to often-quoted views that non-natural colour forms are less attractive than the wild type, one white-flowered bush close to Gèdre swimming pool clearly hasn’t read the books. Numerous Large Whites, Silver-Washed and Dark Green Fritillaries, Swallowtail, as many as 30 Hummingbird Hawk-moths at a time, Jersey Tiger and Hornet Hoverfly: a constant roll-call, even in overcast and blustery conditions.

Taking advantage of late-season nectar, pollen and warmth, the best of the rest included a range of tachinid flies, wasps, longhorn and chrysomelid beetles, Saddlebacks, and Great Green Bush crickets which serenaded the setting sun every day in the valleys.

  

Not forgetting those unexpected moments always encountered on a trip such as this, like the dead Asp Viper being ‘dealt with’ by Sexton Beetles, and the Alpine Marmots, ever alert, acting as our eyes and ears for passing Golden Eagles….

A wonderful, diverse week in a simply stunning part of the world.

A full tour report with lists can be found on the Naturetrek website: click here.

#WildWivenhoe Botany & Bug Walks: September – Grange Wood & Whitehouse Beach

Britain's Wildlife, Bug & Botany Walks, WildWivenhoe

 

The sun shone and breeze was pleasant for our walk this morning: thank you to everyone who came along. The main focus this month was the various salt marsh plants, found both along the slopes of the sea wall and on the marsh at Whitehouse Beach. Each is specially adapted to live in the salty conditions, some by virtue of their fleshy, succulent, leaves which preserve moisture (e.g Marsh Samphire and the Seablites), and others by processing salt water and excreting the excess salt (e.g. Sea-purslane). Many of the plants we saw are members of the Spinach family, the most halophytic (salt-tolerant) of families worldwide, mostly edible, and all with unfortunately ‘subtle’ flowers…..

…but there were some species with more showy flowers, including three oft-confused members of the Daisy family: Golden Samphire with yellow rays, and occupying the upper tidal limit, and Sea Aster, in both its forms, one with with purple rays, the other lacking rays completely.

 

Other plants included Cord-grass, in full flower with its feathery pollen receptors poking out, leading to a discussion about its unique and really quite recent formation as a species (come along next year if you’d like to know more!). Likewise provoking a chat about the sex-life of (some) flowers, a Hawkweed was flowering in the wood, and along the highest level of the marsh, Common Toadflax was in lovely flower, a special plant for us as a main foodplant for the Toadflax Brocade moth, one of the highlights of last month’s walk (see here).

 

Due to the exceptional conditions of the summer, and delay in the start of autumn there was very little in the way of fungi in the wood. In fact we only found rather dull example of Wood Mushroom and Parasol, and not the spotty red and white Fly Agaric which we had hoped for,  but which can often be readily seen along the woodland trail, near Birch trees.

As always we were on the watch for bugs and beasties … a few nice examples included the smart red and black sawfly, an Arge species, although difficult to narrow down to an exact ‘Make and model’, there being many similar  versions of this little wasp.  Another sawfly, in the form of a gall caused by it, was found on the leaves of Willow: the gall even had the exit hole showing it had been vacated. Galls, along with fungi and fruits are likely to be the main focus of next month’s walk. A rather splendid Forest (also known as Red legged) Shield bug was discovered,  basking in the sun and enjoying his lunch, by means of his specially adapted piercing beak-like sucking mouthparts. This species is omnivorous,  also preying on caterpillars and other insects.

 On the marsh it was good to see a good number of the rare stripey-bottomed Sea Aster Mining-bee, which feeds almost exclusively on Sea Aster. It therefore emerges only in August-September when is food source is flowering. Its nesting colonies, on sandy ground above the reach of spring tides, cannot be too far away.

 

So what else did we see?  Um, let me think…..oh yes!, thanks to a tip off from our friend Glyn, we were very privileged to witness the majestic flight of a magnificent Osprey, circling at length above us. It was mobbed  by a couple of Buzzards, as one of our group exclaimed ‘3 birds of prey in my binoculars at once!’.   Although our walks being ‘non-birdy’ ( Richard Allen’s successful monthly bird walks are the place for a birding experience in Wivenhoe on a Saturday morning), we had to make an exception!  This bird was probably a migrant, on its way back to Africa. We can’t help thinking that this will be the lasting impression of our September outing. We managed just the odd snatched photo but no doubt Glyn’s magnificent efforts will be posted on the Wivenhoe Forum before too long!

And true to form, check out Glyn’s excellent photos of the bird here, on Page 31…

The Shingles of Orfordness

Britain's Wildlife

Truly one of the great shingle structures of the world, rivalled in the UK only by Dungeness and Chesil Beach, Orfordness is a place I have visited professionally over the past twenty years or so. But now in retirement is the time to enjoy it for what it is, rather than as just another item on my ‘to do’ list…..

And so earlier this week we paid a visit under skies of almost Mediterranean blue, the forecast cloud remaining a few kilometres inland and a smudge of sea fret a similar distance offshore among the windfarms.

As a naturalist, it is the natural aspect of the Ness which takes top billing. A series of low shingle ridges run through it, each the result of a severe storm event some time during its several hundred year history, since the landward port of Orford lost its open sea aspect. Smaller stones thrown up to the highest points of the ridges influence the colonisation by plants such that the natural Ness now presents itself as a series of alternating open gravel and vegetated stripes on the gently undulating surface.

But just as interesting is the overlay of human history, largely military use over much of the 20th century. The litter of history – concrete, wire and metal, and iconic buildings – was imposed on the naturalNess and left its scars on the fragile landscape, but now under the benign management of the National Trust it is gradually melting away, a metaphor for the impermanence of Man.

Shingle structures exist in a state of perpetual tension, both created and eroded by the sea. Orfordness is no exception, still extending southwards through longshore drift, but becoming narrower year-on-year by erosion. The lighthouse, now redundant as a light but still a much-loved land- and sea-mark, teeters on the brink and will soon be reclaimed by the sea … just as happened with the two previous lights built in 1637 and 1780.

Living on an ever-shifting site, and subject to severe drought stress every summer, the wildlife of the Ness is necessarily specialised and able to thrive with little water. But after a summer with no rain for most of June and July, it isn’t surprising that flowers were few and far between. Still though Yellow Horned-poppy was clinging to flower on the ridges, with Babington’s Orache on the slopes down to the sea.

And likewise the insects, few to be seen save for a few bumblebees seeking out the meagre flower supply. But as we waited at the quay for the ferry to return us to civilisation, a Large Velvet Ant came from a hole in the low concrete wall upon which we were sitting. The available records don’t show this as a known site, and indeed its previous East Anglian records are only from a couple of sites further north on the Suffolk coast and a scattering of more inland sites in Essex.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If anything even more exciting, although equally obliging, was a black ground bug that just happened to alight on Jude’s arm as we sat outside the beach café in Orford, awaiting the ferry in the morning. Unknown to us, a few quick snaps enabled Tristan Bantock, the national expert, to identify it as the nationally scarce, south-eastern species Drymus latus, which Nigel Cuming, bug recorder for the Suffolk Naturalists Society, confirmed as the first record for the county.

 

 

Two  superb insects showing why it is a good idea never to switch off looking. Hundreds of hectares of natural habitat, but the stars of the show came to us!

 

#WildWivenhoe Botany & Bug Walks: August – Whitehouse Beach

Britain's Wildlife, Bug & Botany Walks, WildWivenhoe

Those who read our reports regularly will know that they are usually upbeat affairs, rejoicing in the wonders of the natural world….well bear with me and there is a fair amount of that to come… but first I have something negative to comment on, namely LITTER ON WHITEHOUSE BEACH!  Why is it considered OK to leave several picnics’  worth of rubbish in a decomposing-in-the-sun black sack on the grassy sward of the beach?  Don’t worry, someone else will deal with it…..and in fact we did as we didn’t want all the contents to spill and allow yet more rubbish into the surrounding countryside… but couldn’t the revellers have taken it home with them?

Anyway, back to the lovely walk this morning.  The sun was slightly less overpowering than of late and we had a bit of a breeze and cloud cover.  The main focus was the many and varied salt marsh plants, and a walk along the seawall shows the different sections of saltmarsh according to how often the plants are covered each tide, ie on every tide, or only when there is a high spring tide, and every stage in between.  The different vegetation reflects how much the plants can stand being inundated by salt.

Two of the three UK species of samphire grow here in Wivenhoe, ‘Golden’ ( a member of the daisy family), and ‘Marsh’ (a spinach), whilst the third type ‘Rock’ is a carrot.  All show similar characteristics – succulent in that they store moisture in their leaves and stems, and good to eat with a wonderful salty taste (if you can be sure of the water quality where it grows of course).  The question comes to mind, If they do not share taxonomical links, then why are they all known as ‘Samphires’?  Well, an interesting theory is that this is a corruption of ‘Saint ‘ or ‘San Pierre’, ie St Peter, the fisherman.  And as we know samphires go remarkably well with fish.

Sea Purslane is an interesting plant, its cells are mini-desalination processors.  They take in salt water, convert it into fresh and eject the excess salt in little crystals, which coat the leaves causing them to look grey and shiny. Sea Lavender was in flower, the patches of purple clearly in contrast to the generally green saltmarsh flora.

Washed up along the shore line was a veritable blanket of dead vegetation, looking rather like grass cuttings.  This was the Gutweed, a rather (it must be said) unattractive little plant, looking rather like intestines, hence its name , but one which is considered a delicacy by our feathered friends who are soon to return to these parts from their summer vacations.

Other plants worth a mention, some illustrated below, were the pretty Lesser Sea Spurrey , Sea Wormwood,  and Shrubby and Annual Seablites.

A few butterflies and dragonflies fleetingly captured our interest, but we did stay and linger looking at a well-disguised moth on a seed head.  A Toadflax Brocade.  In  fact it was only when we looked at the photographs at home that we realised that there were actually two moths  – such was the remarkable camouflage.

Other interesting beasties included a mating pair of picture winged flies.  There are many types of such flies, each with distinctively and attractively patterned wings, and these guys go by the name of Campiglossa plantaginis, which breeds on Sea Aster, a common salt-marsh plant hereabouts.  Several male Ruddy Darter dragonflies sparkled along the sea wall, but although we searched we did not find any Wasp Spiders.

We hope this has whetted your appetite, as we are planning on re-running the walk next month, by which time more of the salt marsh plants will be in flower, and who knows we may be able to spot that elusive, but magnificent spider.