A natural history of Britain

The ghost orchid still haunts British woods

Photo by Andy Swash

The location is a secret: somewhere in Herefordshire, and in an oak wood.  So secret that it’s taken several months to even disclose the news of its finding to the public.

The last sighting of the Ghost Orchid (Epipogium aphyllum) was in Buckinghamshire back in 1986 and in 2005 it was declared extinct.  But amateur botanist sleuth Mark Jannink never gave up.  He runs a motorbike business for a living, but his passion is wild flowers, and last September his persistence paid off. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Flora of Britain, Wild flowers of Britain | Tags: Epipogium aphyllum, ghost orchid appears in Herefordshire, ghost orchid found, ghost orchid not extinct in Britain, rare flowers of Britain |

Magpies: Not guilty

The clamour for magpie culls is like the baying of a crowd at a witch trial.  There’s no basis in fact for the claim that magpies are threatening British songbirds, only entrenched irrational ideas about corvids.

Organisations like the Songbird Survival Trust have in the past made badly misjudged calls for such culls. The real cause of population declines of species such as the bullfinch and yellowhammer is human activity: unsustainable land management, unecological farming practices and rampant urbanisation.  A new large-scale study published in the Journal of Applied Ecology has confirmed this. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Birds of Britain, Conservation issues in the UK, culling | Tags: cause of songbird decline, magpies and songbirds, magpies not responsible for songbird decline |

The presence of whales in Britain

Photo by TallGuy

The famous whalebone arch on Whitby’s West Cliff is a symbol of the whaling industry that thrived there and in other English ports like Hull and Yarmouth in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The 15 ft bones are from a Bowhead whale, killed under license by Alaskan Inuits, and unveiled by Miss Alaska in 2003.  An even larger arch stood on the same spot, made from the 20 ft jaw bones of a Fin whale, presented to the town by Norway in 1963.

During England’s years as a whaling nation, captains returning from Greenland would bring home these huge bones as souvenirs. Ship crews would tie a pair of whale jaw bones to the mast to let anxious families on land know there’d been no casualties.  Some of the bones were used in construction as house ends. Some were set in fields for cattle to rub against. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Nature trivia about Britain, Sea mammals of Britain | Tags: animal with biggest mouth, Bowhead whales in England, stranded whales in England, the mammal that lives longest, whale bones in Britain, whalebone arch whitby, whales in Britain, whaling in England, whaling in Whitby |

The landscapes of Don McCullin

The photojournalist Don McCullin is better known for his work recording war and urban strife around the world, but his more recent work has concentrated more on black and white landscape photography, often taken during the winter in his adopted Somerset . I find them stark, bleak and beautiful.

Don McCullin notes on his love for winter: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Nature and landscape photography of Britain, Nature in art and literature | Tags: black and white landscape photography, Don McCullin, Don McCullin winter photography, Hartlepool in 1963, Landscape photography of Somerset |

Wild places of Essex

In this intriguing documentary, based on his book The Wild Places, Robert Macfarlane warns us not to write off over-developed and over-populated Britain in the quest for wilderness.  Wild nature is there under our noses, in the most unexpected of places, and Macfarlane helps us focus on it, just as his friend Roger Deakin opened his own eyes.

Essex was chosen as an apparently unlikely location to commune with nature. Condensing a year of exploration, the film shows startling beauty among sewage works and dual carriageways. The contrast is beguiling: a peregrine falcon soaring past Tilbury Power Station is the angelic and the toxic closing-up against one another. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in England, History of the British landscape, Natural history writing, Radio and television nature programmes, Southern England | Tags: bbc nature documentary Macfarlane, exploring nature in England, legacy of Roger Deakin, nature in industrial Britain, red seals in Essex, return of the Water Vole, Robert Macfarlane, The Wild Places by Robert Macfarlane, wilderness in industrial Britain |

Snowdrops, the poet’s flower

Poets love snowdrops.  Even Linnaeus got lyrical when he classified them as Galanthus nivalis, which translates as “milky flower of the snow”  (in Greek,  gala = milk and anthos = flower). For St. Francis the snowdrop was an emblem of hope and the touch of green on the inner petals has often been seized upon as a symbol of spring’s return.  It is uplifting to see the green sword-shaped leaves piercing the snow and the apparently fragile bell-shaped flowers resisting all that winter can hurl at them.

There is some disagreement about when the snowdrop was introduced to Britain: some say as late as the 16th century.  It’s noticeable for its absence in Shakespeare.  Snowdrops grow particularly profusely in damp deciduous woodlands, and flower form January to March: this year the Big Freeze has delayed them.

A list of gardens with particularly good snowdrop displays can be found here.

Posted in Flora of Britain, Gardens of Britain, Wild flowers of Britain | Tags: best places to see snowdrops, British flowers in winter, gardens with snowdrop displays, introduction of snowdrops to Britain, snowdrops and poets, snowdrops as symbols of hope |

Oysters: food for the common people

Archaeologists have analysed the food debris left by Elizabethan theatre-goers in London, obtaining a fascinating insight into their diet.  Sifting through fragments of nutshells, shellfish and pips at the sites of the Rose and Globe Playhouses, they discovered that the poorer spectators - the groundlings or stinkards who stood during the performances - munched oysters and hazelnuts, at the same rate that today’s cinema-goers devour popcorn.  Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Wild foods in Britain | Tags: British oysters, decline of British oysters, diet in Elizabethan England, eating oysters at the theatre, excavating London theatres, John Gay England Observed, London oysters, most popular food in London, oysters on Blackpool beach, traditional food in England |

Animal focused street photography

With an old black and white 35mm camera the photographer Giacomo Brunelli prowls the night in search of his subjects in backyards, small villages, fields, farms and near his home in London. Brunellihas developed a style which he calls “animal focused street photography”.”By pushing the boundaries of nature photography he creates eerie and unfamiliar images, which succeed in capturing the instinctive drama and wildness of his subjects” More here

Photos from here

Posted in Nature and landscape photography of Britain, Nature in art and literature | Tags: Giacomo Brunelli, Photographs of London's wildlife, Wildlife in London |

Kestrel and Barn Owl fight over vole

Amazing pair of images in the Daily Telegraph here of a kestrel and a barn owl’ battling it out over a vole. By wildlife photographer Mark Hancox.

Posted in Birds of Britain, Birds of prey of Britain, Nature and landscape photography of Britain, Scotland | Tags: barn owls in Briitain, Owls in Britain |

Taboos about wild birds

In her classic account of English rural life, Lark Rise to Candleford, Flora Thompson records attitudes to wild birds towards the end of the 19th century.   At a time when egg collecting was a respectable hobby, country boys would engage in wholesale nest robbing and hunting of small birds. The families were chronically poor, and casting a net over a hedge of roosting sparrows would secure a meal:

One boy would often bring home as many as twenty sparrows, which his mother would pluck and make into a pudding.  A small number of birds, or a single bird, would be toasted in front of the fire.

But Thompson notes that the birds in this popular rhyme were left alone: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Birds of Britain, Folklore about British birds | Tags: attitudes to wild birds in Victorian England, bird folklore, Flora Thompson on birds in England, folklore about robins, folklore about swallows, Lark Rise to Candleford, popular rhyme about birds, relationship between robins and people, superstitions about birds, why are robins so popular |

In praise of the little owl

Michael McCarthy laments the sad decline of the little owl (Athene noctua) in Britain in today’s Independent, noting that unlike other introductions, they have not spelled ecological disaster, forming an attractive addition Britain’s birdlife. They were introduced by Victorian gentleman-ornithologists in the 1870s who wished to pay testament to their fame in Greek mythology. Little owls were linked to the godess Athena, perhaps because they bred in her temple, the Parthenon in Athens. The bird also became the symbol of the city, and its bug-eyed image was such a feature of Athenian silver coins – that they were known as “owls”.

Coincidentally, I came across last week this entry by George Orwell spotting a little owl back in January 1940,

No thaw. Unable to unfreeze pipes etc. Saw a little owl today – have not previously seen any of these round here.

• More on little owls from the RSPB (including sound recording of its cat-like call)

Photo by Arturo Nikolai on Wikipedia

Posted in Birds of Britain | Tags: George Orwell and natural history, George Orwell on birds, George Orwell on nature, Introduced birds in Britain, Little owls in Britain, Non-native birds in Britian, Owls in Britain, Owls in mythology |

Unusual snow phenomenon in Frozen Britain

From a distance, they look like hay bales covered in snow. But close-up it becomes clear they are hollow.  A mystified Ron Trevett photographed them in a field near Yeovil, Somerset.  It occurred to him they might be some large-scale prank in the crop circle tradition but for the complete absence of footprints.  In fact, snow rolls are a natural phenomenon, but more associated with the prairies of North America than Britain.  Certain conditions are necessary for their formation: the right texture of snow, temperature and winds.  Strong winds peel off the top layer of snow when it becomes sticky and bowl the roll along until it’s too heavy.  The snow doughnuts, as they’re also known, look deceptively solid, as they can distintegrate in an instance.

Posted in Information about the 2010 cold snap, Weather and climate | Tags: how snow rolls are formed, snow landscape in Britain, snow rolls in Britain, unusual natural phenomenon |

Good things about the cold snap

Photo by VickySings on Flickr

Freezing temperatures aren’t all bad for British wildlife, perfectly adapted to long, cold winters, which until recently were the norm. Cold weather helps to “restore the balance of nature”:

• Hibernating creatures (bats, butterflies, bumblebees etc) are less likely to emerge and then get killed off by a cold snap, as has happened in the past few mild winters
• Birds are unlikely to start nesting too early (again, as happens in mild winters)
• Flowers are less likely to emerge and then get killed off by late frosts
• Viruses, parasites etc are killed off, which will benefit their hosts. (Again, mild winters tend to allow disease vectors to multiply)

In contrast mild winters such as those we’ve seen between 1986 and 2008 bring about:

• Early emergence of flowers and insects
• Early breeding of many birds (sometimes before Christmas).
• ‘Summer visitors’ overwintering (eg chiffchaff)
• A major fall in numbers of winter visitors (eg Bewick’s swan and white-fronted goose), as birds stay further east of the UK.

From the BBC’s Snow Watch

Snow Watch are also collecting wildlife stories from people from around the UK. Read them here.

I thought this post by John White was interesting:

We do have a visiting barn owl but have not seen or heard him for some weeks. We have had visiting redpolls and fieldfares taking all the holly berries. Interestingly there have been very few starlings and sparrows around, and a very plump pheasant is missing. I must admit that we do not encourage the larger birds i.e. rooks, crows, jackdaws and magpies, but they still come. It seems that the three squirrels that live in the holly tree have decided to keep warm in their dray, and have not put in an appearance for days. Badgers have taken to the compost for food. They were very active in the autumn feeding off of our fallen fruits and digging up the gardens for slugs etc. Swans and geese that frequent the reservoirs and canals seem to be staying put.

Posted in Information about the 2010 cold snap, Weather and climate | Tags: Effect of cold snap on wild flowers, Effect of cold snap on wildlife, Effect of cold weather on wild birds, Positive things about the cold snap, Snow Watch |

Cold kills thousands of crabs

The freezing  temperatures may have caused the death of thousands of velvet swimming crabs which have been left littering the shoreline in the Thanet area of Kent. So many velvet swimming crabs - or devil crabs, as they are commonly known - have been washed up in Westbrook Bay over the last week that people have struggled in some places to see the sand. More here

Posted in Information about the 2010 cold snap, Weather and climate | Tags: Cold snap in Kent, Cold snap in Thanet, devil crabs, Effect of cold snap on wildlife, Facts about the 2010 cold snap, Kent wildlife, Thanet crabs, Velvet swimming crabs, Westbrook Bay crabs |

Lundy Island becomes first marine conservation zone in England

The waters around Lundy Island today became the first marine conservation zone in England as part of a project to create a network of protected areas. The Guardian

Lundy is the largest island in the Bristol Channel, and lies 19 km off the coast of Devon. The number of puffins on the island which may have given the island its name, declined in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with the 2005 breeding population estimated to be only two or three pairs, as a consequence of depredations by brown and black rats (Rattus rattus) (which have now been eliminated) and possibly also as a result of commercial fishing for sand eels, the puffins’ principal prey. Since 2005, the breeding numbers have been slowly increasing. Adults were seen taking fish into four burrows in 2007, and six burrows in 2008. More on Wikipedia

See also

• Official website
• Lundy Field Society
• Lundy Birds

Posted in Birds of Britain, Conservation issues in the UK | Tags: Devon, Lundy Island, Marine conservation zones, Puffins in Devon, Puffins in the UK |