Wildlife on Thames

Just to prove that you don't have to go to the middle of nowhere to see wildlife, this heron posed for the camera by the Thames on a busy riverside in south west London.

We also spotted a crested grebe bobbing along midstream, framed by walls of purple loosestrife lining the banks.

Taking tea on the hill later, we watched a plump, bold grey squirrel lapping water from a dog bowl beside one of the tables. And you can enjoy all this in the heart of civilisation and sophistication while munching chocolate tiffin...

Green tiger beetle

This is a green tiger beetle, photographed on a sandy track on the Isle of Hoy, Orkney, in June. Isn't it gorgeous? That deep emerald green caught my eye, almost like a jewel sparkling at my feet. It was scurrying across the cliff-top path to the Old Man of Hoy, the tallest sea stack in Europe. Who knows, perhaps it likes the view?

If you love beetles, bees, butterflies and other creepy-crawly creatures, have a look at the website for Buglife, the conservation charity for invertebrates: www.buglife.org.uk As you might expect, it's a small but highly industrious organisation doing fantastic work in raising awareness and protecting sites which are home to some of our rarest and most endangered bugs.

And if the bugs die, you can be sure we won't be far behind. They pollinate much of our food and break down a lot of our waste.We need them more than they need us...

conservation grazing

Not everybody wants to leap out of bed at 6.30 on a Saturday morning but it's the best time of day to be out in the meadow if you have cattle to check. There's hardly anyone about - just the odd roe deer browsing and a few sleepy butterflies waking up in the early morning sunshine.

This morning I startled a fox and watched it bound over tall tussocks of grass to the edge of the wood. I wasn't quite speedy enough to catch it on camera but it was a beautiful beast with deep brown fur and a black tip to its tail.

In our main paddock, 19 Fresian steers and one jersey cross (affectionately known as "cadbury) came bounding to meet me at the fence. Dairy breeds are not the normal choice for conservation grazing but they seem to do well on our site. They were given extra feed yesterday as the grass is so dry and were clearly hoping for another delivery this morning. Their loud chorus of mooing made a happy greeting. Empty-handed, I had to send them back to work to eat the scrub and keep the meadow, well, meadow-like.

After the ice age and before humans swarmed in large numbers across the British Isles, most of the land was covered with forest. Grassland and heath were created by clearances for agriculture and remained open landscapes thanks to constant human management - largely by grazing. When extensive sheep and cattle rearing disappeared from lowland Britain after the Second World War, these open spaces quickly scrubbed over and reverted to woodland. With them went the natural flora and fauna adapted over millennia to these habitats.

So grazing is back in conservation and it's big news. One wildlife trust even maintains its own grazing herd; other organisations borrow animals from farmers, offering free food in return for a living mower. The thing is: animals do a much better job than mechanical mowers from a conservation perspective. They graze the sward to a variety of different heights, creating mini-habitats for lots of different flowers and invertebrates.

Since grazing was reintroduced on our site some 15 years ago, the main paddock has been sprinkled with a carpet of violets every spring and attracted the spectacular silver-washed fritillary whose caterpillars feed on them. A rare plant, the wonderfully named corky-fruited water dropwort (above right), was once restricted to a single clump. Since the cows arrived, they seem to have spread it across a huge swathe by carrying the seeds on their feed. Yellowhammers with their distinctive song: "A little bit of bread and butter and a piece of cheese" have also recolonised the meadow.

Orkney

My musings from Orkney are long overdue: I spent ten days on the islands in June, around the summer solstice. In the long-enduring daylight I caught glimpses of so many birds I have never known before, watched common seals basking on the beach with their pups, gazed across thriving heathland at majestic green hills, and photographed delicate Orcadian flora. So much space, light and tranquility. If you love wildlife and wild places, go there!

One day I walked around the coastline of North Ronaldsay, among the sheep grazing seaweed on the beach. There were dozens of common seals hauled out on the rocks, many with young pups. As thick mist descended, they disappeared from view but I could still hear them singing: a haunting, eery sound. It's easy to understand how myths developed about mermaids, and here in Orkney, selkies - shape shifters who could change between human and seal form.

On parts of the shore I was dive-bombed by arctic terns defending their nests on the shingle and accompanied by the squabbling cries of fulmars tucked into nooks and crannies on shallow sandy cliffs. Meanwhile little ringed plovers, turnstones and the (on Orkney ubiquitous) oyster catchers scurried around at the edge of the waves.

More on the birds, flora and a beautiful beetle in future blogs...

Dawn, deer & damselflies

A pair of roe deer were waiting for me at the edge of the glade when I arrived to check on cattle grazing our site very early this morning. The doe was half hidden in dappled shade just beyond our temporary electric fence line; her mate stood just ten metres away from me, proudly displaying his antlers.

For five minutes the young stag looked straight at me, tongue licking the air as he tried to catch my scent, moving a few steps from time to time but showing no signs of fleeing. We gazed at each other as equals in the morning quiet. I kept still, not wanting to spook him. He seemed unconcerned, even when I turned my head as a butterfly caught my eye. Eventually I walked away slowly and he remained exactly where he was. Somehow I felt deeply honoured by his willingness to let me watch him.

An hour later a large hawker dragonfly darted around my head on the edge of a woodland ride. It reminded me of this week's news that the dainty damselfly, absent from the UK for some 50 years, has just been spotted again in Kent, probably blown across the Channel on a southerly breeze. It is only about three cm long with beautiful pale blue bands along its abdomen.

The previous UK population, confined to a single pond in East Anglia, was swept away in catastrophic floods in 1953. Now it seems to be spreading northwards across Europe again, possibly as a result of climate warming. Welcome back - I hope you stay!

dormice

What could possibly be cuter than a dormouse - even when it's gazing longingly at its woodland home through a plastic bag. That round face with apple-pip eyes, big ears and twitching whiskers - all designed to find food at night. Their paws have little sticky pads which help them cling to the thinnest of twigs as they scuttle through the canopy.

Don't be alarmed: this business with the bags is standard practice for weighing mice during monthly monitoring checks, all done by qualified and experienced licence holders who carefully return the animals to their nest box unharmed a few minutes later.

Today we were checking boxes in hazel coppice stools along a woodland edge in southern England. We found seven dormice in total, scattered among 50 boxes, including a female with "pinkies" (newborn young, which we left undisturbed), a couple preparing to breed and a pregnant female. Dormice are clearly thriving here, despite their national decline, and small wonder when you look at the food sources around them: hazel trees bursting with ripening nuts, sprawling bramble covered with pink berries and a plentiful supply of insects.

Dormice are exceptionally lively at this time of year, even though they normally sleep during the day. As we tried to transfer them from nest box to weighing bag, they scampered and leapt around a giant plastic sack and tried to escape by running up our arms. Inside the box, they weave cosy nests with strips of honeysuckle bark and moss, on a bed of fresh green leaves. In its heart is a small cavity lined with soft dry grass for the breeding den.

They seem to favour remnants of ancient woodland on the site which offers a greater diversity of plants and insects. The wood borders a field of wheat where we spotted a roe deer among the corn, a silage heap popular with basking adders, and shelters a number of badger setts.

Of course dormice are quite capable of nesting without our wooden boxes. We put them up so that we can monitor population numbers and breeding activity on different sites. If you see one, please leave it in peace. Dormice are strictly protected by law, as a fast declining endangered species, and you need a licence to disturb or handle one.

Badgers

Yesterday was a black and white-letter day for badgers when the Badger Trust won their appeal to stop the cull in Pembrokeshire. It reminded me that I've neglected this blog for far too long and prompted me to write up my badger-watching evening in early June.

It was pouring with rain as we headed uphill through woodland on a chalk scarp to a rudimentary bench positioned above an old sett. These holes are no longer in use as the badgers have moved along the hill, but they still remember the peanuts scattered by the local ranger and return to forage regularly.

Badgers are not the least bit bothered by a bit of rain, especially when it brings worms and other delicious morsels like slugs out into the open. Two badgers were rooting around on the edge of the slope when we arrived, but shot off on hearing our footfalls. A little later a shy rural fox eyeballed us from the meadow below, decided we were dangerous to know and trotted off.

After an hour, three badgers (an adult and two cubs) appeared in the field at the foot of the hill and two emerged from the woods higher up. Slowly they hoovered their way around the piles of nuts, snuffling audibly. They didn't even look up when a large herd of Ayrshire cattle trudged past the fence, mooing loudly and reaching up into the trees for new shoots.

My closest encounter came when a young badger popped up a few metres to my left from behind a large tree stump. He was so near, I could hear him munching peanuts and I'm amazed it took him ten minutes to catch my scent and make his exit.

Birdsong

A symphony of birdsong has been following me through woodland, heath, allotments and gardens over the past two weeks. Is it my imagination or are the birds calling louder and more determinedly this spring, after a long hard winter? I'm certainly recognising more of their calls after persevering with CDs of British birdsong - picking out the laughter of the green woodpecker, the lyrical song of the blackbird and the repetitive plea of the great tit.

Heathland was never my favourite habitat but I'm being forced to revise my feelings about it as I work on a low wetland heath into the spring. The site is alive with tiny lizards waking up from hibernation. I almost stumbled over a tiny woodmouse peeping out of its hole in a heap of dead bracken and we eyeballed each other for a second before it scuttled away.

As I raked up dead bracken last week I felt as if I were sitting in the middle of an avian orchestra, with green woodpeckers playing the melody, greater spotted woodpeckers drumming the percussion, and a curlew trilling its solo performance from the sky.

I've just started reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring - long overdue in my natural history education - and I guess I have her (and her many followers) to thank for saving birds and so many other creatures from the deadly potion of DDT.

Much to my surprise and joy, I have just landed my first part-time job in countryside management and will be helping to look after an ancient common and newer country park near my home. Water voles are thought to be in residence on one of the sites - how I'd love to see one.

Houses for dormouses

We spent yesterday morning putting up dormouse boxes in hazel coppice on a corner of wet heathland. Some 15 to 20 years ago a dormouse was found nesting in a bat box there, and since the habitat is good for dormice, we're hoping to find evidence that they are still around.

The hazel coppice stools were wearing their early spring jewellery - dripping with yellow catkins and sprouting tiny dark red flowers along their stems. Undoubtedly, the first herald of spring. For the first time this month, birds were singing constantly in the wood and we heard a buzzard call as it flew overhead.

We spotted bubbles of dark brown jelly fungus growing on a tree and I took a small piece home to identify with the help of my Roger Phillips fungi bible. After doing a spore print overnight and examining it closely again in daylight, I settled on Witches' Butter. What a wonderful name for a fungus covered in tiny warts. Not edible! We also picked up a freshwater mussel shell, possibly dropped by a mink, and I'm hoping to work out the species with a bit of online research.

Woodland is indisputably my favourite habitat - so rich in biodiversity. I hope some dormice find the nest boxes. I wonder what they make of them - a handy wooden box, with an entry hole pointed away from the prevailing winds, tucked into a favourite food tree, and connected to the canopy by trailing honeysuckle.

naming things

I love learning old English words for things in nature.

'Beam' is the saxon word for tree, as in 'hornbeam', 'whitebeam', also used to describe supporting timbers in buildings.

The best names are those which describe a use or characteristic - such as 'razor strop' for the bracket fungus which grows on birch trees. People once used it, when hard and dry, to sharpen knives and other cutting blades.

The 'penny bun' fungus looks exactly like it's name, but the description does capture the gourmet properties of this highly sought mushroom. And 'King Alfred's cakes' which grow on dead wood are like burnt lumps of charcoal. They make great firelighters too when they're dry.

Let me know your favourites...

small furry animals

Sometimes conservation work seems to involve more disruption and disturbance than anything else: felling trees, clearing and burning scrub...

The other day we moved a pile of new logs up on the North Downs to find a tiny shrew and four field voles living underneath. They scattered in all directions, frantically searching for cover - mainly in the holes just dug for wooden bollards. Eventually we gently persuaded them to disperse a little further afield. Thankfully there were no young under the log pile. At lunch time we spotted a kestrel hovering low over the scrub - hunting homeless voles, no doubt. It moved on after ten minutes without finding prey. Guilty feelings lingered all day.

The cedar logs were cut from a nearby plantation to make bollards, the aim being to stop 4x4 drivers out on a jolly from tearing up the grassland where wildflowers and wild mammals thrive. Inadvertently we had created a temporary habitat pile and welcome home for small mammals battling wintry conditions. Then we evicted them without warning, probably while they were sleeping. The site offers lots of alternative housing, though none quite as cosy, safe from predators or convenient. I loved watching them, but wish we hadn't disturbed them.

On the same slope, a family of weasels has been spotted further along the path. I've never seen one in the wild and went searching with high hopes. I didn't see them, but they probably saw or heard me. Perhaps I'll be lucky next time.

feeding the birds

I finally decided it's time to feed the birds, despite the four cats (only one of which has shown any hunting prowess in the past year and that was with mice). The snow's been lying for four days, the ground is frozen and flakes are still fluttering down intermittently.

Using bamboo canes, I managed to rig up a wigwam in the middle of the garden and wedge a plastic tray of seeds and raisins in the top. Any feeding birds should be safe from the cats while they perch on it at least. The RSPB is now predicting a major impact on bird populations and urging people to put out food in their gardens so I hope I've done the right thing.

BBC news online has a few stories about wildlife struggling to cope with the long freeze. Apparently many aquatic animals and birds congregate around power station outlets in rivers to keep warm - including hundreds of manatees in Florida. Fish-eating birds such as bitterns and kingfishers are really struggling as most open water is covered by thick ice. We may see kingfishers turning up in warmer urban areas.

I'm not generally a big fan of zoos, but I was amused to read that meerkats are cuddling up with anteaters in their enclosure at London Zoo and have discovered that they can get closer to the heaters by sleeping on top of them.

Yesterday we came across a homeless man begging in a doorway on the high street. He'd been unable to find a bed in a hostel for the past few nights and was sleeping in a shed on an allotment, burning a calor gas cylinder to keep from freezing - now his gas had run out. After buying him a cup of tea and some biscuits, I decided to call at a church on the way home, thinking someone might be able to help him. While I was talking to the minister, he asked me if the guy standing behind me in the doorway was the rough sleeper in question - my partner! Lol! After the embarrassment died down, the minister promised to go and talk to the real homeless guy and thought he could find him somewhere for a night or two, although our town (not so far from London) has no real provision for rough sleepers.

Snow and more snow. It's a hard and hungry time to be wild unless you're hibernating. If I didn't have four cats I'd be scattering food in the garden for birds and mice. In the meantime, since it's too bleak to go out and watch the wildlife, I'll share a poem I wrote before xmas while recovering from a cold. Hope it strikes a chord...

Wildlife spectaculars

Not the bloody wildebeest migration
Again!
We know the crocodiles lie in wait:
We've seen the bone crushing
Splash of jaws.

Or is it the salmon-hungry
Grizzly bears
Wading through Alaskan torrents?
Butter-fingered paws mauling, gory fish
Flailing with futile energy.

Lemurs I love:
Sinuous sifaka dancing
Sideways;
Miniscule mouse lemurs,
Impossible primates:
Tiny hands, big, searching eyes.

But it's always the ring-tails,
Strutting their stripey charisma.
You'd think Madagascar
Had a plague of them.

Most of all I mind
The meerkats.
I've watched them leave their burrows at sunrise
To bask in the Kalahari desert.
Please don't give them names
Like Zaphod
And cast them in a furry soap opera.

Those clever capuchins in Brazil
Have got themselves a good agent.
Three times at least this year
They've been seen on TV,
Since their tool-using, nut-cracking antics
Were discovered.

Last week I watched a wood mouse
Watching us
From a bank of bronzy beech leaves.
Sleek, twitching, alert,
Apple-pip eyes, nimble hands and ears tracking our voices.
We had disturbed it and it looked at us,
Perplexed.

Nature Sleeps

I'd love to be in Madagascar now, instead of frosty southern England where nature seems to be fast asleep, or hibernating with the bats until spring comes...But maybe the winter sleep is what makes the sunny months so precious: the brief flight of bumblebees, painted ladies, dragonflies hovering over the water. I'll try to use this pause to learn the calls of British birds, so I can pick them out in the woods when breeding season arrives.