Much has been said about the need to plant more trees to help to lock up carbon to help address climate change. So, it is particularly upsetting to see recently planted trees that have died during our dry summer and others weakened by the drought shedding their leaves early. This stress is in addition to the natural diseases with which they must contend as a matter of course.

Unfortunately, there are also diseases which, in our global economy, were imported from abroad accidentally. One such is the fungus that causes Ash Dieback. This was first identified in the UK in 2012 although there is evidence that it has been present in Europe for 30 years. It originates in Asia where it does little damage to the local ash species, but our ash - Fraxinus excelsior - has no natural defences to it.

Ash is a common species and makes up around 12% of Britain’s broadleaved woodland so its loss will have a significant impact on the landscape. It is estimated that up to 80% of the trees will be killed, although as we are still the early stages of the epidemic, it is hard to judge. Whatever the losses, there will be an impact on those species of wildlife which rely upon ash.

The disease can affect trees of all ages although young ones, and those growing in woodlands with high proportions of ash, seem to succumb most quickly. Trees growing in open locations such as streets or in hedgerows seem less susceptible and there appears to be a level of resistance in some trees which, although infected, survive.

Local woodland managers have already been clearing ash trees and doubtless we will continue to see this in the years ahead. Those of us old enough to recall the dramatic change to the landscape caused by Dutch Elm Disease in the 1970’s will fear the long-term effect of Ash Dieback but will draw some comfort from the way that other species started to fill the gaps left when the elms were gone. But we must hope that further diseases do not erupt to thwart plans to increase our woodland cover as part of the essential work to lock up more carbon.

​by Andrew Graham

Late summer is the time to gather blackberries. In doing so, we do something humans have done for thousands of years; archaeologists have found their remains in the stomach of a neolithic man. Given the right conditions, bushes can fruit prolifically and as long as you can get close enough without getting caught in the thorns, it is possible to collect enough for immediate consumption as well as bottling or freezing for future use. Blackberries have numerous health benefits being high in fibre and full of vitamins like C and K as well as manganese and antioxidants. Vitamin K helps your blood to clot which is useful given the number of scratches you might suffer while picking them.

We generally use the term bramble to refer to a tangled, prickly shrub, usually the plant Rubus fruticosus. Brambles grow abundantly throughout the British Isles coping with almost any environment and are particularly hardy plants. Bushes have long, thorny, arching shoots which root easily, and this helps them to spread forming dense clumps in neglected areas. In this respect they can be an important pioneer species. Dense clumps can supply shelter for young trees, allowing them to establish free from browsing by animals. Eventually, as shade from the tree’s spreading canopy increases, the bramble will die back as it cannot flourish in deep shade.

The young foliage is eaten by deer and there is concern that increased deer numbers are reducing the amount of bramble in some woodlands to the detriment of those species of birds that rely on such understorey scrub for nesting.

In mid-summer the bushes are clothed in abundant pink or white flowers, and these are particularly attractive to butterflies, bees and hoverflies. As well as humans, wildlife enjoys the berries including foxes, badgers and small birds all of which will distribute the seeds in their droppings. In late summer one can often see Red Admiral butterflies feeding on the sugars of overripe berries on a sunlit bush. All in all, although it can be a pest if it gets into our gardens, the lowly bramble is a very important for conservation and wildlife. Enjoy the fruits while you can; after Old Michaelmas Day – 29 September – the devil is reputed to have spat on blackberries so should be avoided. You have been warned…

​by Andrew Graham

One feature of midsummer are the bright pink flowers of the willowherbs. More than ten species of this family – the Epilobiums – are found in this country and at least three will be commonly found hereabouts. All have spear-shaped leaves and flowers with four notched petals. Although the individual flowers are quite simple what makes the plants striking is the number of blooms held on each flower spike.

The most notable in this respect is the Rosebay willowherb. This is a tall, patch-forming plant with conical masses of flowers which, when in bloom supplies splashes of magenta pink in the countryside. They are found in dense stands in any open space such as woodland clearings, roadside verges and waste ground. It is a very successful coloniser and spread vigorously as a result of the two World Wars when cleared forests and bomb and fire sites provided ideal conditions for the plant to flourish. Indeed, the plant got the nicknames Fireweed and Bombweed as a result.

It is able to achieve this colonisation by virtue of its seeds which are tiny and fitted with a silky plume of hairs which act as a sail to catch the wind. As the long, red, seed pods, each filled with hundreds of seeds, split open, so the seeds are wafted away on the slightest breeze. As each plant can produce tens of thousands of seeds, a stand beside a road or railway, will send out a blizzard of seeds on the slipstream of passing cars and trains. These feather-light seeds can then travel for miles on the breeze. 

Apparently, Rosebay willowherb has ninety times more vitamin A and four times more vitamin C than oranges and some wild food enthusiasts eat very young shoots and claim it tastes like asparagus. In Russia the plant was fermented to make herbal tea which gained the nickname “Ivan Chai” in Britain.

The tallest willowherb found in Britain is the Great willowherb. It prefers damper ground alongside rivers and ditches and is softly hairy. It has fewer flowers than its Rosebay cousin but they just as brightly coloured. Its seeds are just as numerous and easily dispersed.

A smaller, common willowherb is the Broad-Leaved which has much smaller paler pink flowers but again generates a profusion of seeds.
Without needing to name the species, it is quite easy to spot willowherb seedlings when they crop up in our flowerbeds. By virtue of their extremely successful seed dispersal mechanism, they do this even though the nearest mature plants may be miles away. Fortunately, they are easy to pull up when young, but you need to do so quickly as the creeping root structure means it can spread rapidly and out compete other plants.

​by Andrew Graham

​

Wiltshire is a stronghold of one of our less well-known butterflies – the Duke of Burgundy. It used to be known as the Duke of Burgundy Fritillary because its pretty orange and deep brown chequered markings resembled those of our other Fritillary butterflies. However, as it is actually from a different family – the metalmarks – the name has now been shortened to avoid confusion.

In the past, the Duke was primarily found in woodlands, where it fed on Primroses growing in dappled sunlight of coppice woodland. However, changes in forest management caused most woodland colonies to die out. It is largely restricted to the chalk and limestone areas of southern England, with scrub, gullies, or slopes to provide shelter, although isolated colonies are also found in the southern Lake District and North York Moors.

It flies from late April into June and hereabouts colonies can be found along the northern side of the Shaston Ridge, parallel with but to the south of the A30. Here it favours the base of the slopes where the soil is deeper and moister. This, and less exposure to the sun prevents the leaves of the cowslips, on which its caterpillars feed, from drying out too quickly. The damage the caterpillars do to the leaves as they feed is very distinctive and can provide evidence of breeding even if no adults are seen.

The Duke is often overlooked as it is a tiny butterfly and can be confused with skippers or small day-flying moths that may be found in the same habitat at the same time of year. They are fast-flying and rarely visit flowers. What sets the Duke apart, is the habit of the very territorial males spending much of their time on prominent perches on the edge of bushes or atop grass tussocks. From there they keep a look out for passing females which are pursued ardently. The male will also sally out aggressively to inspect any approaching insect, and if it is another male, they often do battle, spiralling rapidly upwards in a dogfight. The victor returns to their perch. If you disturb one, the males will often return to the same perch or very nearby, so you just have to be patient and wait for it to come back. These locations, sometimes called leks, seem to be favoured every year by newly emerged butterflies which identify the same locations to defend against all-comers. The females are less conspicuous, flying low over the ground, looking for suitable plants on which to lay their eggs. These flights may take them away from where they emerged, helping to establish new colonies if the right habitat can be found.

An unusual feature of the Duke is that it exhibits sexual dimorphism, in that the male and the female are distinctly different. As we know, most insects have six fully functioning legs, but the male Duke only has four.

by Andrew Graham

Mid-March into early April is the time of a “blackthorn winter”: a cold spell when the blackthorn is in bloom. This is perhaps because the combination of different strains of the species and the varied micro-climates of their growing locations mean that you can find blackthorn in flower somewhere for more than a month, during which it is likely that there will be at least one cold spell. Or perhaps it is that blackthorn scrub, with its clouds of flowers at their peak, look like the bushes have been covered with snow.

The small white flowers bloom on short stalks from buds along the spines and do so before the leaves appear. En masse, the bloom provides a welcome early source of nectar for insects. These pollinate the flowers, which then develop the distinctive blue-black sloes.

The tree grows naturally in scrub, copses, and woodland, and is commonly used to form a cattle-proof hedge. It favours sunny positions, and when left uncut can develop into considerable thickets, such as those in the Oddbrook valley. Mature trees can grow to a height of around 6–7m and live for up to 100 years. The deep brown bark is smooth, and twigs form distinctive, straight, side shoots which develop into thorns. Its trunk and stems form a dense wood which is good for burning and straight stems have been used for walking sticks, including the Irish shillelagh.

The foliage provides food for the caterpillars of several moths. The dense thickets provide sheltered nesting sites for birds, which then feast on these caterpillars, and later on the sloes.

The scarce brown hairstreak butterfly lays its eggs on blackthorn. This is the largest and brightest of the hairstreak butterflies, the female looking a gorgeous golden colour in flight. However, in common with other hairstreaks, it is quite a small butterfly and notoriously easy to overlook. They spend most of their adult lives perched in the tops of trees, out of sight, lapping honeydew from the leaves. If you are lucky, you might see a female when she descends to lay eggs, nearly always on blackthorn twigs in hedges or bits of sheltered scrub.

Our knowledge of the local distribution of this butterfly is improving all the time, due to the efforts of a small number of lepidopterists who tirelessly search suitable locations for these tiny eggs. Correctly identified, these are a reliable indicator of presence, although not necessarily breeding success, but gets around the difficulties of spotting an adult on the wing. The population appears to be spreading westwards from the area north-east of Salisbury. As eggs have been found in the vicinity of Grovely Wood, who knows, they may be present hereabouts without being recorded. Eyes peeled this August/September.

by Andrew Graham

Winter can be a tough time for wildlife and while a number of mammal species will hibernate, many birds deal with poor weather by moving to lower ground or even to a different country. The storms and snowfall of December got many thrushes on the move, and in the weeks following there appeared to be many more blackbirds, redwings and fieldfares in the local fields and hedgerows. It is not just the cold temperatures that they are escaping; a blanket of snow will make food inaccessible forcing them to move to clearer land to feed. Redwings and fieldfares will already have travelled from Scandinavia and Russia to find a milder winter and will keep moving to keep clear of the worst conditions. Similarly, there are increased numbers of coots, mallards, and tufted ducks on Fonthill Lake, where they will spend the winter.

This is all normal but what makes things interesting is when there is real dearth of food for birds in their normal wintering areas. This might be because the food crop (for example acorns, beech mast or fruits and berries) has failed or a species has had a population boom after a good breeding season. This is when an irruption can occur, and huge numbers of birds move to parts of Europe where they are not normally seen. A recent example of this was during the winter of 2017/18 when unusually large numbers of hawfinches were seen throughout the UK. They made a rare sight in the beeches around Fonthill Lake and even popped up in Tisbury gardens. This year it seems to be the turn of the brambling to visit us in large numbers, presumably because of a failure of the beech mast crop on the continent. After reaching the east coast in late September, they had soon spread across the whole country and by the end of November seemed to outnumber the chaffinches in some local beech woods. (You can see this movement graphically on eurobirdportal.org).
​
It has been a particularly poor year for acorns which will hit jays which favour this as their winter food, normally burying thousands in the autumn for later retrieval. They may travel several kilometres from their home range looking for acorns and will be more visible than usual as they do so. But if the acorn supply is exhausted, they too will be on the move. The classic irruptive species is the waxwing, a bird rarely seen in the UK apart from during one of their irruptions which only occur once every 10 years or so when flocks of a hundred or more may be seen. Who knows what this winter will bring?
by Andrew Graham