Category Archives: Walks around Cambridge and Histon

Wildlife sightings in Cambridge

Returning songbirds

Posted on May 10, 2012 | 22 comments

There’s a particular spot in my local meadow where there are some large clumps of brambles which are home to numerous species of bird including songthrush, blackbird, linnet and house sparrow. And in the summer chiffchaff, willow warbler, blackcap and common whitethroat are all there too. Chiffchaff have been here for a couple of months now, and willow warbler almost as long but I hadn’t yet seen a whitethroat, so I set off last Monday in the hope of seeing the first one of the year.

A cock robin singing to the ladies

There were many species of songbird in the meadow including the robin (Erithacus rubecula: Dansk: rødhals) and the house sparrow (Passer domesticus, Dansk: gråspurv) and the air was alive with the song of all these species.

House sparrow female

Robin and house sparrow are resident species in the meadow and I see them all year round there, but not the chiffchaff:

The chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita Dansk: gransanger), which is a warbler, and willow warbler (Phylloscopus trochilus, Dansk: løvsanger) can be very difficult to tell apart if only seen at a glance, but they can be distinguished by their song, of which more in the next post. This chiffchaff was one of a pair which were calling to each other and flitting around the bushes passing within a few feet of me on several occasions and seemingly unfazed by my presence.

Cock linnet

Resident in the UK is the linnet (Carduelis cannabina, Dansk: tornirisk), they disappear from the fields around Histon in the Autumn, presumably to congregate at a winter feeding ground, and they reappear in the Spring. And they have recently turned up in the meadow. Also resident, and present all year round, is the dunnock…

Dunnock, Prunella modularis, Dansk: jernspurv

… and the chaffinch:

Cock chaffinch, Fringilla coelebs, Dansk: bogfinke

There were no whitethroat back in the meadow last Monday but as you can see there were plenty of other birds. In the last week I’ve also seen kestrel, sparrowhawk and buzzard, blackcap, green woodpecker, jay and magpie.

I recce’d the meadow again this weekend and the whitethroat are now back from wintering in Africa. They are very distinctive and both sexes are easily identified by their strikingly white throat, and the males display by singing from the top of a bramble thicket or a sapling and flit 4-5m vertically into the air and then descend to land in the same spot. They’re lovely little birds, with a very distinctive song, and I’ll hopefully have some pictures to show you in the near future.

22 Comments

Posted in Birds, Garden birds, Migrants, Ornithology, Songbirds, UK wildlife, Walks around Cambridge and Histon

Tagged Accipiter nisus, birds, blackbird, blackcap, bogfinke, Buteo buteo, Buzzard, Cambridge, Carduelis cannabina, chaffinch, chiffchaff, common whitethroat, dunnock, Erithacus rubecula, falco tinnunculus, Fringilla coelebs, Garrulus glandarius, gransanger, gråspurv, grønspætte, green woodpecker, histon, house sparrow, husskade, jay, jernspurv, kestrel, løvsanger, linnet, magpie, munk, musvåge, Nature, ornithology, Passer domesticus, Phylloscopus collybita, Phylloscopus trochilus, Pica pica, Picus viridis, Prunella modularis, rødhals, robin, Rowleys Meadow, sangdrossel, skovskade, solsort, songthrush, sparrowhawk, spurvehøg, summer migrant, Sylvia atricapilla, Sylvia communis, tårnfalk, tornirisk, tornsanger, Turdus merula, Turdus philomelos, willow warbler

The indomitable coot

Posted on May 2, 2012 | 10 comments

The coot (Fulica atra, Dansk: blishøne) is a common water bird found on lakes and rivers in all of the UK apart from north west Scotland. They are related to the rails and crakes, they are extremely aggressive and will see off bigger birds who are sufficiently unwise to encroach on their territory.

Whilst wandering around the lakes at Milton Country Park on Saturday it was early in the morning and the light was really murky, so I experimented with the ISO settings to try and extract some half decent images from the gloom, and in these two images the ISO was 1600 or higher. The high ISO has given the pictures a slightly grainy feel, but that’s to be expected, and I like the colours:

The coot was diving repeatedly and resurfacing with beaks full of weed

I like the colours and the reflection of the beak

Apparently the baldness as in ‘bald as a coot’ comes from the white saddle above the beak, which I think is a tad strange because the chicks really are bald.

Coots are omnivores and their innate aggression extends to their chicks which when food is short they discourage from begging by biting them, sometimes so hard it kills them. It’s a tough existence being a coot chick, they are also regular prey items for other creatures such as herons. On a busy lake with other species of birds the coots are good fun to watch as they chase off allcomers.

10 Comments

Posted in Birds, Countryside walks, Ornithology, UK wildlife, Walks around Cambridge and Histon, water birds

Tagged blishøne, coot, Fulica atra

Carduelis (or Chloris) chloris

Posted on April 24, 2012 | 23 comments

A sound I hear frequently at the moment when I open a door or a window which stands out from all other birdcalls is the call of the male greenfinch. It’s quite variable in tone from fairly high pitched, as in the recording here, to lower pitched where it almost sounds like a whirring mechanical toy.

The bird in these pictures has a reddish hue to it because it was being lit by the evening sun as it was getting lower in the sky, and also from the reflected light of the rusty ironwork and insulators of the electricity supply cables:

Greenfinch male calling from the top of a telegraph pole

The female greenfinch is similar to the male but her colours are much more drab, she is darker grey/brown without the vibrant green of the male.

The greenfinch is a resident breeder in the UK and can be found in gardens and parks at all times of the year feeding on bigger seeds and sometimes insects when rearing youngsters. It has a chunky beak which is typical of finches and is custom built for cracking open seeds.

The taxonomic name for the greenfinch is listed in some references as ‘Carduelis chloris‘, as in my RSPB ‘Complete Birds of Britain and Europe’ by Rob Hume published in 2002, (RSPB – Royal Society for the protection of Birds) ISBN 0751373540, and also in the RSPB Bird Identifier website. But in the BTO BirdFacts website (BTO – British Trust for Ornithology) and in my Collins Bird Guide 2nd edition from 2010, ISBN 978 0 00 726726 2, it is listed as ‘Chloris chloris‘ (Dansk: grønirisk). Somewhat confusingly the BTO entry goes on to explain that the name derives from ‘carduelis‘ meaning ‘goldfinch’ and the Greek ‘khloros‘ meaning ‘green’. So it appears that the two names may be interchangeable. Incidentally, the chemical element chlorine also derives its name from khloros as it exists as a green gas.

He’s turned round to keep on eye on me – his seed-cracking beak clearly visible

The poor old greenfinch has taken a bit of a battering in the last few years since 2005 from the trichomonad parasite which causes a disease called trichomonosis. This microscopic parasite lives in the upper digestive tracts of several birds species including other finches, house sparrows (Passer domesticus, Dansk: gråspurv) and pigeons and doves. I’ve heard that feeders may become contaminated by pigeons from where it infects the smaller birds. It’s particularly unpleasant (as are most parasitic infestations!) because it causes the throat to swell to the point where the birds can’t swallow so they eventually die of starvation.

Fortunately I’ve never seen any evidence of infected birds but if you think you may have a problem you can click here for the RSPB advice sheet which has details on how to identify the problem and how best to deal with it.

23 Comments

Posted in Birds, Buxhall Farm Histon, Countryside walks, Garden birds, Ornithology, Songbirds, UK wildlife, Walks around Cambridge and Histon

Tagged birds, British Trust for Ornithology, BTO, BTO BirdFacts, Carduelis chloris, Choris chloris, Collins Bird Guide 2nd edition, gråspurv, grønirisk, greenfinch, greenfinch colour, house sparrow, ISBN 0751373540, ISBN 978 0 00 726726 2, Nature, ornithology, Passer domesticus, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, RSPB, RSPB Complete Birds of Britain and Europe, trichomonad parasite, trichomonosis, wildlife

Returning migrants and lots more besides

Posted on April 23, 2012 | 20 comments

Occasionally, but fairly infrequently, it’s a struggle to find enough interesting nature to put together a post, and then every now and again so much happens that it’s difficult to fit it all in. Last weekend was one of the latter.

It started to get interesting as I was cycling to work on Friday morning, a bird caught my eye in a hedge outside work and first off I thought it was a bullfinch, which I’ve never seen on Cambridge Science Park before. But then I got a better look at it and it was immediately apparent it wasn’t a bullfinch, it had similar colours but in a different pattern, so I did a quick U-turn to get a better look. It turned out to be a black redstart male in full breeding regalia (Phoenicurus ochruros, Dansk: husrødstjert). He was magnificent but alas, because I was heading to work I was camera-less, so if you’ve never seen one, dig out a bird reference book and check him out, it’s worth the effort.

I went back to work on Saturday morning with my camera to see if he was still there but there was no sign of him so I carried on to Milton Country Park, on the northern edge of Cambridge. It was a bright sunny morning and I arrived there just after 8.30 and it was already warm. And it augured well because it turned into a real bird fest. I was hoping to see some returning migrants and as I got out the car I could hear chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita, Dansk: gransanger) calling in the trees around the carpark. The first migrant I actually saw was completely unexpected and turned out to be a pair of sand martins (Riparia riparia, Dansk: digesvale) which I haven’t seen for years. There were also swallows (Hirundo rustica, Dansk: land svale) flying low over a lake and this is roughly the same time I saw the first swallow last year. Like swallows, sand martins also over winter in South Africa, but unlike swallows they nest in burrows which they excavate in sandy banks. There are some man made burrows for the sand martins at the country park but so far they’ve been ignored by the martins, but the occassional kingfisher pair have availed themselves of the opportunity.

Close to where the swallow was hunting is a small island with a tree on it where cormorants (Phalacrocorax carbo, Dansk: skarv) can often be seen perched. This time there was a carrion crow (Corvus corone, Dansk: sortkrage) sat on top and a pair of common terns (Sterna hirundo, Dansk: fjordterne) were taking exception to its presence and were working as a team to dive bomb it:

A singleton…

… and in tandem

I almost felt a little sorry for the crow, but I’ve watched them terrorise so many birds, especially buzzards and other birds of prey, in a similar fashion that the sympathy was a tad less enthusiastic than it may otherwise have been.

A migrant which was present all over the country park was the blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla, Dansk: munk), in one bush there were a minimum of four and possibly six or even more. They were squabbling away in the bush presumably in the midst of a territorial dispute. I saw the first blackcap of 2012 a few weeks ago at Danbury Common in Essex during my unsuccessful mission to look for adders.

Blackcap male, the female is similar but easily distinguished because her cap is a rusty brown colour.

As well as the migrants the trees and bushes were full of the song of more familiar resident species such as the robin, blue tit, great tit, blackbird and wren. All were energetically vociferous, filling the air with a wonderful cacophany. And amongst these I caught a tantalising glimpse of a much less common species, the treecreeper (Certhia familiaris, Dansk: træløber). Treecreepers are very aptly named and are fun to watch as they hunt insects in the crevices of tree trunks, spiralling upwards in a corkscrew pattern. A pair of sparrowhawk and a pair of buzzard were also busy performing their aerial courtship routines.

There were none of the winter ducks such as tufted duck (Aythya fuligula, Dansk: troldand), pochard (Aythya ferina, Dansk: taffeland), gadwall (Anas strepera, Dansk: knarand), teal (Anas crecca, Dansk: krikand) or widgeon (Anas penelope, Dansk: pibeand) on the water, they had all headed off north to their breeding grounds. But several birds including coot (Fulica atra, Dansk: blishøne) and greylag geese (Anser anser, Dansk: grågås) had chicks on the water:

Greylag geese with six chicks

I paused to try to get a shot of a great crested grebe (Podiceps cristatus, Dansk: toppet lappedykker), all now in full brown breeding plumage:

And as I stretched over the water, trying hard to get a clean shot of the grebe, and even harder not to pitch headlong into the lake, a grey heron (Ardea cinerea, Dansk: fiskehejre) flew low overhead:

It was so low I thought it must have pitched up very close to where I was but on an adjacent lake, and a quick scan revealed it sat in the top of a tree being pestered by the common tern that had earlier been harrassing the carrion crow:

The terns were deeply unhappy with any potential predator, although they were less keen to buzz a pair of sparrowhawks which were in the air above the same stretch of water!

20 Comments

Posted in Birds, Birds of prey, Countryside walks, Ducks, Hawks, Migrants, Milton Country Park, Ornithology, Seabirds, Songbirds, UK wildlife, Walks around Cambridge and Histon, water birds

Tagged Accipiter nisus, Anas crecca, Anas penelope, Anas strepera, Anser anser, Ardea cinerea, Aythya ferina, Aythya fulligula, black redstart, blackbird, blackcap, blåmajse, blishøne, blue tit, bullfinch, burrowing birds, Buteo buteo, Buzzard, Cambridge Science Park, carrion crow, Certhis familiaris, chiffchaff, common tern, coot, cormorant, Corvus corone, Cyanistes caerulius, Danbury Common, digesvale, dompap, Erithacus rubecula, fiskehejre, fjordterne, Fulica atra, gadwall, gærdsmutte, gransanger, grågås, great crested grebe, great tit, grey heron, greylag goose, Hirundo rustica, husrødstjert, knarand, krikand, Landsvale, milton country park, munk, musvåge, Parus major, Phalacrocorax carbo, Phoenicurus ochruros, Phylloscopus collybita, pibeand, pochard, Podiceps cristatus, Pyrrhula pyrrhula, rødhals, Riparia riparia, robin, sand martin, skarv, solsort, sortemejse, sortkrage, sparrowhawk, spurvehøg, Sterna hirundo, summer migrants, swallow, Sylvia atricapilla, taffeland, teal, toppet lappedykker, træløber, treecreeper, Troglodytes troglodytes, troldand, tufted duck, Turdus merula, wigeon, wren

Animal Rescue

Posted on April 16, 2012 | 49 comments

It was Easter last weekend and my parents were visiting. On Saturday I had walked the dog in the fields north of Histon and shortly after entering the field another dog walker told me there was a fox cub (Vulpes vulpes, Dansk: rød ræv) in the undergrowth I had just walked past. So I retraced my steps and sure enough there was this adorable little creature exploring the parapet of the ditch:

It’s body was only 6-7 inches long and I guessed it was the boldest of a litter which had taken the opportunity to wander whilst the mother was out hunting. So I took a few photographs and left it to it’s own devices, and when I completed my loop it was no longer there so I assumed it had returned to the den.

The following day my mother accompanied us for a walk in the hope it was still there, and indeed there it was in exactly the same place, but this time it seemed considerably emboldened and I was extremely concerned that a pet dog may kill it as this was right on a very popular dog walking route. My mother decided that my father should see it and she was going to return and fetch him, so I carried on to walk the dog.

When I got back my mother had been told by someone who lives close by that the vixen had been killed and the cub was orphaned so she rescued it and when I got back it was in a box on top of the piano. Which left me with a dilemma: what does one do with an orphaned fox cub at 4pm on Easter Sunday? It proved to be tricky to find somewhere that took wild animals, so in the end I rang up Wood Green Animal Shelter at Godmanchester, which is only about 12 miles from here, in the hope they would know somewhere that would take the little orphan. And luck was with us, they made some enquiries and gave me the phone number of a lady who lived fairly close by who had reared orphaned fox cubs in the past and was prepared to take ours. So self, mother, the children and the boxed up fox cub were bundled into the car and off we went, and an hour later our little cub was in the hands of someone who was skilled in the art of looking after wild foxes. Result!

It turned out to be a 3-4 week old vixen, who apart from being dehydrated seemed to be in reasonably good shape. She was expected not only to survive but was to be passed on to a wildlife sanctuary for eventual release into the wild. My fingers are crossed that this happens and she has at least one litter of her own cubs. I’m going to try to find out how she does and if I can get an update I’ll let you know.

49 Comments

Posted in Buxhall Farm Histon, Countryside walks, Mammals, Predators, UK wildlife, Walks around Cambridge and Histon

Tagged animal rescue, fox, fox cub, rød ræv, red fox, vixen, Vulpes vulpes, Wood Green Animal Shelter

Aesculus hippocastanum…

Posted on April 15, 2012 | 16 comments

…is the Latin name for the horse chestnut tree. I always think of the horse chestnut as being a quintessential feature of the English countryside which I’ve loved since I was a kid when I’d climb them and hurl sticks up into them in September to harvest the conkers. Continuing on the spring theme I found this exploded cluster of leaf and flower shoots over a path in the middle of Histon and it seemed to sum up the excitement of heading into the summer sunshine months.

16 Comments

Posted in Trees, Walks around Cambridge and Histon

Tagged Aesculus hippocastanum, conker, horse chestnut tree

Turn of the century

Posted on April 6, 2012 | 28 comments

After 20 months of posting this is the 100th episode of The Naturephile. The original plan was to post once a week wherever possible and I’ve averaged around five a month, so that stayed roughly on track. I thought I may struggle to find enough subject material and to acquire sufficient photographs of the necessary quality to post as often as I wanted too, but that hasn’t been a problem, so far.

When I started off writing The Naturephile, the idea I may reach a hundred posts never entered my mind, so to mark the moment I’ve trawled back through the archive to find my favourite posts to give them another airing. I’d anticipated it would be a straightforward venture but of course I’d rather underestimated the amount of subjects/species and photographs I’ve written about. But the number of posts was eventually whittled down to 14.

1) At the end of September 2010 one of natures more brutal rituals was played out right outside my back door involving garden spider courtship. Like other spiders this can easily end up in the death of the male as it did in this case. ‘Araneus diadematus‘ posted on 2nd October 2010:

I really love you… . Male on the left, Shelob on the right

2) A little farther afield are dragon flies, the most common species I encounter are common darters and migrant hawkers. This Common darter appeared in a post on 19th October 2010. I like the symmetry of the fly and the seedhead and the red colour of this male darter against the brown grass.

3) A few years ago when my sister lived in a house (she lives in a kennel now. Only joking, she lives on a narrow boat ;-)) they were digging the garden and this piece of rock turned up. It’s an Acheulian hand axe made from flint and the marks on it are where it was worked with a deer antler. It dates from around 400,000 years ago which means it could have been made by a pre Homo sapiens hominid! It fits beautifully into the palm of my hand and after that many years the edges are still sharp. Even if I was blogging about topiary or book binding I’d have to find a way to slot this in.

4) The winter of 2010/11 was known as a ‘waxwing winter‘. Every winter a few waxwing (Bombycilla garrulus, Dansk: silkehale) migrate to our shores from Scandinavia to overwinter. But occasionally the weather up there is fearsome so the waxwing migrate in large numbers and we then have a ‘waxwing winter’. And I hope you’ll agree the waxwing is a beatiful bird:

A group of waxwing perched at the top of a rowan tree in north Cambridge

5) Another consequence of the bitterly cold winter of 2010/11 was that most stretches of open water were frozen over and our herons (Ardea cinerea, Dansk: fiskehejre) were starving because they couldn’t access their normal food supplies. During this winter a hungry heron appeared in my friends garden and taking pity on its plight he fed it some fish. And of course one fish supper turned into rather more than one so the heron came to expect it, and if dinner was late it came and tapped on the window to complain to the management.

6) Sea mammals of any description are always a delight to see and photograph and one of my favourite places on the planet for doing that is the Farne Isles situated just off the Northumberland coast.

Atlantic grey seal in the North Sea off the Northumberland coast

Our holiday last year was to Northumberland and I can’t go there without taking in a boat trip to the Farnes where hundreds of Atlantic grey seal were basking on the rocks and generally taking life easy in the water.

7) Closer to home, April last year was hot and sunny and a great time to see songbirds in the countryside. One of my favourite birds is the yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella, Dansk: gulspurv) and they’re regulars in the hedgerows around Cambridge.

Yellowhammer male – what a gorgeous colour!

8) A creature I’d never encountered before last year was the great crested newt. My friend told me of a place where they could be found so we ensconced ourselves in the nearest pub in preparation for a nocturnal newt hunt after closing time.

It was a very successful trip, a few pints followed by finding not only the great crested newt but the other two species of UK newt, palmate and smooth newts.

9) As the year rushes headlong into summer and the butterfly season really gets underway I can spend many an hour chasing our Lepidopterans round the fields trying to get that perfect picture. One of my favourites is the common blue and this is about the closest I got to that perfect picture:

Common blue male sipping nectar – one of the best photographs I’ve ever taken

10) As well as being a top location for marine mammals the Northumberland coast is also home to huge numbers of seabirds so it’s a very happy hunting ground for me!

Just poking your head over the seawall at Seahouses can reveal lots of seabirds including oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus, Dansk: strandskade), knot (Calidris canutus, Dansk: islandsk ryle), eider (Somateria mollissima, Dansk: ederfugl), turnstone (Arenaria interpres, Dansk: stenvender) and this redshank (Tringa totanus, Dansk: rødben).

11) RSPB Fowlmere, to the west of Cambridge is famous for its water rail. On a trip there in December 2011 I was tipped off by a local that a particular hide was good for water rail (Rallus aquaticus, Dansk: vandrikse) and one had been seen there that morning, so off I went to try and see it.

My informant was correct. There was just the one bird there, but it scoured the mudflats in front of us for a whole hour before disappearing into the reeds, giving me plenty of good photo opportunities. I was very pleased with the primeval feel of this image with the bird face on infront of the horsetails.

12) In January this year the weather was absolutely freezing causing a small group of red-legged partridge at Tubney Fen, east of Cambridge, to seek the warmth generated by a mountain of dung:

13) My favourite bird of prey is the kestrel (Falco tinnunculus, Dansk: tårnfalk) and they are always to be seen hovering in the skies over the fields around Histon. I love watching the highly specialised hunting techniques all birds of prey in action, but the kestrel beats them all in my opinion:

A male kestrel showing off all his hunting hardware: talons, flight feathers, eyes and aquiline beak

14) And lastly, I couldn’t write a post like this without including my battling blackbirds. Of all the bird species that visit my garden these are the ones that provide the most entertainment:

My garden gladiators locked in aerial combat

These were a few of my favourite posts, favourite for various reasons: the stories attached, the rarity of the sighting or simply the exquisite natural beauty of the subjects. I hope you like them!

And lastly, I’ve been stunned by the numbers of people from all round the world who read The Naturephile and like it enough to follow it or click the ‘Like’ button. Thanks to everyone for stopping by and enjoying a read, I love sharing the nature from my corner of Cambridgeshire with you!

28 Comments

Posted in Amphibians, Anisoptera, Anthropology, Arachnids, Birds, Birds of prey, Butterflies, Coastal walk, Countryside walks, Darter dragonflies, Dragonflies, Falcons, Farne Islands, Fowlmere, Garden birds, Great crested newt, Insects, Marine mammals, Migrants, Newts, Northumberland, Ornithology, RSPB reserves, Seabirds, Seahouses, Songbirds, UK wildlife, Waders, Walks around Cambridge and Histon, water birds

Tagged Acheulian hand axe, arachnids, Araneus diadematus, Ardea cinerea, Atlantic grey seal, bird of prey, blackbirds, Bombycilla garrulus, buntings, butterfly, common blue, Common darter, dragon flies, Emberiza citrinella, falco tinnunculus, falcon, Farne Isles, fiskehejre, garden spider, great crested newt, gulspurv, heron, hominid, Homo sapiens, kestrel, Lepidoptera, migrant hawkers, migration, Northumberland, overwinter, palmate newt, Rallus aquaticus, rødben, red-legged partridge, redshank, RSPB Fowlmere, sea mammals, seabirds, Seahouses, silkehale, smooth newt, songbirds, tårnfalk, Tringa totanus, Tubney Fen, Turdus merula, vandrikse, water rail, waxwing, waxwing winter, yellowhammer

Birds and bee(flie)s

Posted on April 3, 2012 | 20 comments

The day after the cold weather put paid to my snake hunting exploits I decided to take the dog for a quick run in the afternoon. He had just had a small tumour removed from his back leg and so he had a lampshade on his head to stop him chewing his stitches and consequently this walk was only meant to be a short one, and I wasn’t even going to take my camera. But on the way out the door I decided because it was very sunny and very warm I would take my camera. And I’m glad I did because there was wildlife in abundance.

Peacock butterfly, Inachis io, sunning itself on the path

The air was abuzz with insects including butterflies. I really like photographing butterflies and peacocks are good because they present a medium sized challenge. If you approach with stealth and don’t cast a shadow on them they let you get to within a few feet. The peacock is a species that can be seen at any time through the winter as it can wake in response to warmer weather, but they emerge in spring around the end of March/beginning of April, so the timing for this one was spot on. As I was photographing the peacock a sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus, Dansk: spurvehøg) flew past at high speed, much too fast to enable a usable photograph, it’s always good to see a bird of prey because I think it suggests the prey species are in good order too.

Long tailed tit, Aegithalos caudatus, Dansk: halemejse

The field where I found the peacock butterfly has a corner which faces south west and it was sheltered from the wind and bathed in spring sunshine. It was really warm when I arrived there, so I stood still and watched and listened while the dog went off to explore, and the trees around were full of birds including the long tailed tit, above, and a song thrush, below.

Songthrush, Turdus philomelos, Dansk: sangdrossel

While the birds were capturing my attention in the trees, butterflies weren’t the only insects there. In my corner there were also beeflies buzzing around. I was keen to try to photograph them in flight which is a tad more challenging as they would hover for a few seconds before darting off at very high speed in zig zag lines. But they were making the most of the shelter from any breeze that prevailed in this sheltered spot and I spent a good hour trying to photograph them.

Beefly, Bombylius major

The beefly, as the name suggests is a bee mimic. It has a very prominent proboscis which is used to extract nectar, and the fur is part of the bee disguise. It is a very good pollinator but is detrimental to other pollinators.

It is detrimental because it parasitises other bees and beetles. And the way it achieves that is another of those bizarre evolutionary adaptations that even the most imaginative science fiction writer wouldn’t dream of. It mimics bees in order to get close to their burrows where using its legs the female will flick her eggs into the hole where it hatches and attaches itself to the host. Then the gruesome bit: it lies dormant until the host commences pupation and then becomes an ‘ectoparasite‘ which means it remains on the outside of its host but extracts the body fluids to fuel its own growth. After draining its host dry it reaches the pupal stage which can vary hugely in length and they have been known to overwinter before emerging as an adult the following year.

Beeflies have appeared in several blogs in the last week or so and there are some more very fine images here:

http://www.leavesnbloom.com/2012/04/bombylius-major-bee-fly-aerodynamics.html

Rosie from ‘leavesnbloom’ has a wonderful collection of images of Bombylius major and Harlan from ‘The Roused Bear’ has also captured one in Iowa in the U.S.:

http://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/a-fuzzy-bee-fly/

They can be found across the whole planet except Australasia.

More birds which appeared in the trees around while I was chasing beefly were the common or garden greenfinch and chaffinch:

Greenfinch male pecking at a twig
Chaffinch male just taking it easy

Both greenfinch (Carduelis chloris, Dansk: grønirisk) and chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs, Dansk: bogfinke) are common or garden, but are both beautiful birds, and they can be seen here in the U.K. all year round. But a species that isn’t here all year round and returns after its winter migration to north Africa is the chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita, Dansk: gransanger):

The chiffchaff, named after its characteristic song, is a warbler and despite being a small bird they are tough. Their migration takes them south across mainland Europe, across the Mediterranean Sea and into north Africa, to retrace their flight four or five months later in the spring. And despite the hardships associated with such a gruelling endeavour, according to the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), there are around three quarters of a million territories in the UK. They are one of the first migrants to arrive back in the U.K. and can be heard singing as early as late February. But this my first one in Cambridge on the first weekend in April.

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Posted in Birds, Buxhall Farm Histon, Countryside walks, Diptera - two winged flies, Insects, Migrants, Ornithology, Songbirds, UK wildlife, Walks around Cambridge and Histon

Tagged Accipiter nisus, Aegithalos caudatus, beefly, bogfinke, Bombylius major, butterfly, Carduelis chloris, chaffinch, chiffchaff, ectoparasite, Fringilla coelebs, gransanger, grønirisk, greenfinch, halemajse, long tailed tit, mimic, peacock.Inachis io, Phylloscopus collybita, pollinator, sangdrossel, songthrush, sparrowhawk, spurvehøg, summer migrant, Turdus philomelos

Buds and blooms

Posted on March 28, 2012 | 15 comments

Many fellow bloggers out there have been posting some lovely images of spring events and as this time of year is an exciting one from a nature perspective I felt inspired to get out and get some pictures of vernal regeneration in my part of the world.

I didn’t have to wander too far, the apple and hazel trees and the beech hedge in my garden are showing signs of waking up from the winter slumber:

Nascent apple blossom about to burst into life

A catkin – the flower of the hazel tree, above. And below, the diminutive inflorescence that will eventually become a hazelnut.

Hazel trees (Corylus avellana) produce catkins early in the year which are monoecious, which means they are either male or female, the one above is a male one, the females being tiny and hidden in the buds and the pollen is wind dispersed. They provide not only nuts but if left to their own devices hazel ‘poles’ sprout from the ground which grow tall and straight and are coppiced to make fencing, and in the days when wattle and daub was used for building walls the poles were used to make the wattle on which mud was plastered to provide the daub.

Beech leaves sprouting from the apical buds at the top of a hedge

A couple of hundred metres along the road on the grass verge was this cluster of lesser celandines (Ranunculus ficaria)

According to the font af all wisdom that is Wiki, lesser celandine used to be known as ‘pilewort’ because it was thought of as a remedy for haemorrhoids. I like this cluster because all the flowers are in different stages of opening, from a tightly closed green bud to a fully open flower.

Once into the fields the hedgerows were lined with the thorny stems and freshly shooting leaves of the bramble:

Lining the drainage ditches which delineate the field margins in this part of the world are willow trees (Salix cinerea) which need the water that drains from the fields and in the spring are covered in the furry catkins which give the tree its common name of ‘pussy willow’:

Willow catkin – unlike the hazel the catkins of the willow are dioecious, containing both male and female reproductive machinery in the same catkin

The wood of another species of willow tree (white willow, Salix alba) is very light and very strong and is used to make cricket bats and the bark of the willow contains a compound called salicylic acid which is the chemical precursor of aspirin. The analgesic properties of willow bark have been known of for centuries and have been maximised by acetylating salicylic acid to make aspirin. As well as analgesia, aspirin is now used as an anticoagulant to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke and recent studies suggest it may have anti-carcinogenic activity too.

The plants in this post are a random selection from the garden, roadside verge and the countryside within 200 of my house and all of them provide us with something useful. The beech is structural and is ideal for hedging. Apple, bramble and hazel all have edible fruits. Lesser celandine may shrink your chalfonts* and the willow provides drugs to treat pain, heart disease and cancer (not forgetting cricket bats).

* Chalfonts = ‘Chalfont St Giles’ (I’m sure you can work it out)

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Posted in Buxhall Farm Histon, Countryside walks, Flora and fungi, UK wildlife, Walks around Cambridge and Histon

Tagged analgesic, anticoagulant, aspirin, beech, bramble, catkin, coppicing, Corylus avellana, hazel, hazelnut, lesser celandine, pilewort, pussy willow, Rananculus ficaria, Rubus fruticosus, salicylic acid, Salix alba, Salix cinerea, Springtime, wattle and daub, white willow, willow

The North Fields

Posted on March 17, 2012 | 11 comments

If you’ve been reading my recent posts you’ll know they’ve mainly been from the part of my village (Histon, Cambridgeshire) called Rowleys Meadow. I have two routes out of the village, the Meadow and what I call the North Fields, and the terrain is very different. The Meadow isn’t farmed and has many hedges, thickets and trees and is therefore better for birds in the Winter because it has a much higher density of numbers and species. But now it’s officially Spring, after the Equinox on March 20th/21st, I decided to visit the North Fields which are all under the plough. I’ve been over there on a few evenings at dusk and after dark in the last few weeks and heard golden plover (Pluvialis apricaria, Dansk: hjejle) and skylark on the ground but I haven’t been over there in daytime for a while.

The main reason I headed over there was because I wanted to find out if the large numbers of linnet and corn bunting which disappear from the fields every year at harvest time had returned. My first impression on entering the fields was that I should have gone to the Meadow, there was virtually no movement of any kind, but I stuck to my guns and that turned out to be a good decision. I didn’t expect to see corn bunting, which are becoming increasingly scarce on our farms, yet, but I had only gone half a mile or so before I heard the unmistakeable sound of a male calling. I heard him long before I saw him but I knew where he would be perched from where his song was coming from, it is a favourite perch all the time they are in residence:

Corn bunting (Emberiza calandra, Dansk: bomlærke) sitting in a favourite place and singing loud

It’s not the best picture of a corn bunting because the sun was still low in the sky directly behind with a thin layer of high white cloud inbetween. Consequently it was impossible to get anything other than a silhouettte without overexposing the shot, so that’s what I did so his colors can be seen. He wasn’t the only one I saw, there were three altogether, so I hope there’ll be a good few more in the next few weeks.

Another bunting which put in an appearance was a male reed bunting. There were several of these too, and just along the ditch from here was a flock of between 10-20 yellowhammers alternating between a hedgerow and the ground where they were feeding.

Reed bunting male (Emberiza schoeniclus, Dansk: rørspurv)

I didn’t go close enough to photograph the yellowhammers because I didn’t want to disturb them. Well, partly that, but also because I’d been distracted by a pair of hares (Lepus europaeus) chasing each other around in the long grass:

I couldn’t get close enough to get a picture of the whole hare, they were too wary of me and the dog, who’s a lurcher, so their timidity was well justified! But I like the way their ears poked up above the grass with the characteristic black tips.

Skylark waiting on the ground between high speed aerial duels with other larks

The other bird which was present in large numbers was the skylark (Alauda arvensis, Dansk: sanglærke). I stopped counting when I got to 30, and I wasn’t yet half way around my walk. They were on the ground, up high singing the amazing song that is is so much part of a British summer, and chasing each other around just above the ground at high speed in groups of up to around half a dozen.

I saw a TV show some years ago in which skylark song had been hugely slowed down and deconstructed, and they claimed the music of some classical composers (including I think, Beethoven) was based on the same structure. I was left sceptical, not least because Ludwig V was deaf and may therefore have struggled to analyse skylark song. But even so, it was fascinating!

Low level dogfight

High level chase

And singing his heart out

One of my other fascinations is etymology. I think that may originate from speaking two languages, and the first one I spoke, Danish, is one of the precursors of the current one, English, so a large number of English words have their derivation in Danish thanks to our Viking invaders all those centuries ago. The expression ‘larking about’ (and ‘lark’ may well be from the Danish ‘lærke’) originates from falconry. In days of yore, the men would go hunting with their peregrine falcons and the ladies would only be allowed to use the much smaller merlin which couldn’t catch birds bigger than larks. Hence ‘larking about’ became a term of derision based on the size of your falcon.

But I digress. The corn bunting are back, the sky was full of larks and the hares were getting frisky. I’ll keep you posted when the linnet and other summer visitors arrive.