2nd April
John and Clare worked in the Orchard, substituting cages for tubes and adding a layer of wire mesh on cages where tree growth had provided juicy tips for deer to nibble. Tim and Jane’s Buckthorns in the Pit Wood also needed bigger tubes.
3rd April
John witnessed a pair of Tree Creepers in the far north-west corner of the Pit Wood.
John thought he heard a Willow Warbler singing near the spoil heaps.
Clare and John updated their to-do list with tasks they identified on the west verge of the Pit Wood.
4th April
A Heron appears successful in its early morning hunt in the Big Pond
6th April
Three hares ran away together from near the spoil heaps.
Clare found Marsh Marigold in flower near the spring.
The first Primroses have appeared on Primroseside in the Pit Wood. When they are all in flower, it is a lovely sight, however extremely difficult to photograph in a way that does them justice. Here is one clump instead.
Tadpoles are beginning to emerge from the frogspawn jelly and resemble ‘a flurry of musical notations’. (Lewis-Stempel)
7th - 14th April
Clare and John were away for a week in the north-west part of the Lake District, where Clare found several species of wildflower out well in advance of those local to Liddells - for example Water Avens, Butterbur and Violets.
A magpie seems to demonstrate its superior intelligence by heading across the Alphabet Bridge at the south end of the Big Pond and a Heron perches in wait.
A doe grazes where there has been a smattering of snow.
John Lewis-Stempel writes of the heron:
‘Herons like their mammalian meal motionless, so they stab it in the head with piston-regularity until life has left it. Since prey with no fur is no easy swallow, the heron has a wise ancestral trick to help the animal go down, which is to dunk it in water to moisten the fur, make it slidey. That heron you saw in a field was perhaps not hunting rodents and frogs, but digesting…Sometimes several digesting herons will stand together, in mutual silent, still ceremony. Herons are impressive as well as impassive hunters…successful with 50 per cent of its catching attempts…Ardea cinerea is no faddist, and will take anything that is alive and can be swallowed whole. Ducklings, wader chicks, frogs, shrews, moles all feature on the heron’s menu…Prey is swallowed whole but digestion is so industrially efficient that only a grey paste is present in faeces. Indigestible elements, such as chitin, fur and feathers, are cast up in oral pellets. The heron’s domain is mud and still water. To keep clean in the mire the bird has evolved special feathers on its breast, which it crushes with its feet into granules and spreads over itself. This ‘powder down’ soaks up the muck and grime from its feathers, which it then scrapes off with a serrated claw… Given its strangely human looks, it’s small wonder that the heron is steeped in folklore. Once upon a time anglers believed its feet gave off a scent that magnetised fish, so carried a heron’s foot to bring them luck. The Old English name for heron was hragra; other names now largely fallen into obsolescence include harn, moll hern, hernser, hegrie and hernshaw. Heron comes form the French; the Gallic name is héron cendré. All of them, of course, are superior to the scientific name Ardea cinerea: longie crane… In Hamlet the prince raves: ‘I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.’ Handsaw was a northern folk name for the heron.’ (Still Water: The Deep Life of the Pond)
The clip below shows the heron’s trailing tufts really well and gave Clare the excuse to include another OED Word of the Day: ventilary: Due to or caused by wind.
A mallard duck is alarmed by the arrival of a buzzard, and with good reason - duck eggs would make a fine meal for a buzzard.
Two does run through the Pit Wood while the older buck follows them at a more stately pace.
14th April
Back from their break John and Clare had a walk around, hear several Willow Warblers and while nemorivagant (‘wandering in a wood’, OED Word of the Day 17.04.23) found plenty of examples of anthesis (‘the stage at which a flower is open, allowing fertilization to occur’, OED Word of the Day 27.03.23), with Coltsfoot, Cowslip and Oxlip in flower. Clare had looked up Butterbur after she had seen it last week and found that it was mentioned along with Coltsfoot as belonging to the Daisy family.
‘The Primrose Tribe
Herbaceous plants, mostly of humble growth, inhabiting, principally, the colder regions of the northern hemisphere, and in lower latitudes ascending to the confines of perpetual snow. In this order are found several of our most favourite British plants. The Primrose, as its name indicates (prima rosa, the first rose) is the most welcome harbinger of spring; the Cowslip is scarcely less prized for its pastoral associations than for its elegance and fragrance…the flowers of the Cowslip are made into a pleasant soporific wine.’
from Flowers of the Field, 1885 Rev. C.A. Johns
John and Clare found moss in nine of the nest boxes in which they looked, including four of the new boxes.
The Blackthorn is finally in flower (it has been out for weeks around the county and is referenced in early March in Nature Writing for Every Day of the Year). ‘The phrase a sloe-wind, meaning a cold wind, gives the clue to an old belief …enshrined in the proverb: ‘Sloe-hatching time is the coldest time in the year’. This is the time when the blackthorn breaks into its spectacular blossom; and, strangely enough…this period often coincides with a cold spell distinguished by east or northeast winds. It is likely, however, that the coming together of the cold and the blackthorn blossom is one of accident…[l]ike produces like: the blackthorn in spring simulates the depths of winter - A blackthorn hedge in full bloom does, in fact, look as if it is covered in snow, or a thick hoarfrost - therefore according to the old principle cold weather is an inevitable and logical consequence.’ George Ewart Evans (1909-1988)
‘Sloe or Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa)
‘A well known thorny bush, which presumably derived its name Blackthorn from the hue of its bark, which is much darker than that of the Hawthorn. The flowers appear in March and April, and usually before the leaves have begun to expand. The latter are used to adulterate tea. The fruit is small, nearly round, and so austere that a single drop of its juice placed on the tongue will produce a roughness on the throat and palate which is perceptible for a long time. It enters largely into the composition of spurious port wine.’ Rev. C.A. Johns (1811-1874)
Clare will henceforth label any sloe gin she makes as Spurious Port Wine.
Clare discovered a patch of a dozen Wood anemones (she prefers wooden enemies) that had appeared in the Wildflower meadow. How they arrived is a mystery however they are very welcome. If they flourish, Clare may take some root cuttings and see if they will establish in a woodland patch.
‘…there was a wealth of the white wood anemone … and these delicate flowers, each of so perfect a coinage, were tumbled along the green wayside as if a prince had been scattering largess.’ from English Hours, English Vignettes 1, 1870 Henry James
The buzzard is still intent on keeping an eye on the pond, this time from above in the tree.
15th April
John and Clare planted a dozen Bird Cherry saplings, mostly to join the others on the west verge, and with a few to supplement the ones in the Orchard.
Clare spotted dense areas of Yellow Rattle appearing on the Top Grazing.
17th April
A doe by the pond shows she is beginning to lose her winter coat.
18th - 19th April
John removed the fence down the west verge of the Top Grazing. The fence had originally been to create a twelve foot barrier between the field and the neighbouring land when cattle used to graze the top and there were alpacas in the adjacent field. The fence gave the alpacas protection from any TB the cattle might carry.
He also walked round with his camera and captured a hare in upright mode, a buck couched in the Scrub, Horse Chestnut about to burst into leaf and a mysterious object on a dead Oak branch at the top of the Pit Wood.
Notice that this is the younger of the bucks and unlike the older, is still in velvet
The blob is about two centimetres in diameter. Clare sent a photo to Keith and he thinks it is a slime mould and pointed out that these are not plants, animals nor fungi. Armed with this information Clare started to investigate. An early discovery was an article entitled ‘The mysterious world of the slime mould.’ A second was that there is a Facebook Slime Mould Group - Clare has not joined. Going by a photo on this site, (scroll down to near the bottom of the page), the growth would seem to be a False Puffball.
And then, would you believe it, on Saturday 22nd in a column ‘Garden Friends’, The Guardian reports that the RHS has released a list of the top beneficial wildlife to which gardeners can be sympathetic, and the list includes slime moulds, which ‘should…be embraced’. Embracing might be a step too far however it is encouraging to know that the small blob above is doing its part at Liddells by eating bacteria that decompose plant material and thus contributing to nutrient cycling as the mould in turn will be eaten by invertebrates such as roundworm. Of course the roundworm will first have to climb the tree.
Tim and Jane saw several Commas and Peacock butterflies on their transect walk.
Clare had a huge disappointment when she opened the two hives that had had active bees. In one the bees were all dead and in the other the bees were sluggish, there was a lot of chalk brood and only drone brood - the colony is not viable. Clare will remove all the hives for sterilisation and be without bees for a while.
Walking around after this Clare found the first Violets and Wood Sorrel out. A
small compensation.
‘The sweet Violet is a native of every part of Europe. Lanes, in his Arabian Nights, says sherbet is made of the Violet by pounding the flowers and boiling them with sugar.’ from Wild Flowers Anne Pratt 1855
John was surprised to see evidence that a roe doe has been in the pond. There was footage showing her close to the edge and then the following video - if you slow down the beginning you will see her jumping out. John says that there remains a controversy about whether or not roe deer drink, although he says the better evidence suggests they do.
24th - 28th April
John and Clare went away again for a few days - regular Blog readers may be surprised at these holiday-like trips as neither John nor Clare have shown signs of anything similar in the last few years. Please be assured such ventures are unlikely to become a habit. This time Clare was hoping to tick another item off her bird bucket list - to hear a bittern boom. The boom is made by the male bird to establish territory and attract a female. The boom is made by belching out air. Thankfully the RSPB site Leighton Moss has several booming males and John and Clare heard a lot of booming; at times they were so close to the birds that they could hear the warm-up ritual called grunting. The bird strengthens his throat muscles, which expand to turn his gullet into an echo chamber. His powerful muscles make up a fifth of his body weight and can propel the sound of his boom for more than three miles. They also had a couple of really good sightings of bitterns as well as of 65 other bird species, and heard another 6 species without being able to see them. A big tick on the list. This news item suggests John and Clare could have heard the birds closer to home. Watch here if you’d like to see and hear a bittern booming. Although at quite a distance, John managed to photograph one of the birds and his image shows the bird’s superb camouflage in its reed habitat.
29th - 30th April
Clare and John returned to find a lot more Wood Sorrel and Violets out, Marsh marigolds by the big pond and Bluebells and Stitchwort emerging . They spent a morning making the Top grazing less mountainous by flattening molehills.
There are Water boatmen and Whirligig beetles on two of the ponds. Lewis-Stempel writes about one…'performing a comic turn, sparking round and round on the water’s surface. The eyes are in two parts, enabling it to see up and down simultaneously…the whirligig can trap air against its body for long submerged swims’. from Still Water.
Clare is planning to join listeners across the world early tomorrow morning for International Dawn Chorus day. She is planning to provide evidence of this outing in next month’s Blog.