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 July is the best time of year to see butterflies in the UK as, given warm, sunny conditions, so many species may be on the wing. One great spot in the village is the Community Field behind the Nadder Centre. The herb-rich, unimproved grassland is ideal for the family of butterflies known as browns. Rather confusingly, this includes the Marbled White, as well as the Meadow Brown, Ringlet, all of which can be found here in profusion. Another two browns, the Speckled Wood and Small Heath, may also be seen. The varied flowers supply ample sources of nectar and there is no shortage of the grasses, on which the brown butterflies lay their eggs and their caterpillars feed. The Meadow Browns and Ringlets flutter around in and amongst the grass and flower stems, and can be tricky to separate until they rest and you can get a good look at them. In contrast, stronger flyers, such as Red Admirals, Peacocks and Painted Ladies shoot around above the plants dipping down when they need to nectar or think they see a mate.
In the right conditions, you don’t have to go far to see butterflies. If you have a garden with butterfly-friendly flowers, it’s possible you might see as many as a dozen of the commoner species. If you are unsure how to identify them, then there is a helpful chart available from Butterfly Conservation, the wildlife charity that does what it says on the tin. The chart shows 17 of the commoner butterflies and 3 common or striking day-flying moths which might be mistaken for butterflies. It is provided as part of the Big Butterfly Count (www.bigbutterflycount.butterfly-conservation.org), which takes place for a fortnight from 15th July and is open to anyone with an interest in wildlife. All it involves is picking a spot and spending 15 minutes counting the butterflies and moths you can see. Most people do this in their garden, but you can select another sunny location if you wish. You can do as many counts as you like and even if you don’t see any butterflies, you need to report it as this too is important data. There is also a free app that you can download on which to submit your results and it has more help with identification and distribution maps. The data you collect is used by butterfly specialists to learn more about butterfly populations and habits and to assess where conservation efforts are most important. Last year, more than 150,000 records were submitted, making it the world’s biggest butterfly survey. Why not join this growing band of “citizen scientists” to help the conservation of these wonderful insects? 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 Bats can live up to 30 years. After spending the winter hibernating, bats will now be fully active and feeding. At first light or dusk, on warm dry days, is the best time to look out for them. Some hunt high in the sky while others swoop low over water. The females, which will have been pregnant since the autumn mating season, will set up nursery colonies in May and then give birth to a single pup, usually in June. These pups are very small and, as bats are mammals, will be suckled until they learn to fly and hunt insects for themselves by August.
Although different species frequent different areas, a landscape generally favourable to bats includes varied sites to roost in, such as old buildings, caves, and hollow trees; hedgerows along which to commute to and from foraging areas, woods, copses, lakes, and ponds. This seems to be a rather good description of the Nadder Valley, and it seems to suit bats. Last year, the South Wiltshire Greater Horseshoe Bat Project carried out a programme of acoustic surveys using bat detectors across 40 locations in the Nadder Valley. Of the 18 bat species found in the UK, they detected 13 species, both common and rare. At the same time, a small stone mine was monitored, and this confirmed that it is used by several rarer bats, including the greater horseshoe bat. These data contribute significantly to the knowledge of bats in the area. Unfortunately, bat populations declined severely during the last century. In common with most bat species, those found in the UK feed on insects. Given that even a single tiny pipistrelle bat can eat more than 3000 insects in a night, the well documented fall in insect numbers in our countryside is likely to be contributing to this decline. If they cannot get sufficient food in autumn, when they are building up fat reserves to get them through the torpor and hibernation of winter, they will perish. They are also vulnerable to a range of other factors such as loss and fragmentation of habitat, destruction of roosts, and predation. Bats and their roosts are protected by law, but are still under threat from building and development work that affect the old buildings and trees where they roost or set up maternity colonies. 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 In early March, lapwings return to their favoured place to breed. I can still remember them being such a common bird that their evocative courtship call and swooping flight was well known. Now, their population has declined so much that locally only a few pairs come back to just one field. During the 80's, their ancestors nested in the spring barley sown in 'Three Corner Piece,' a stony small field. But then the fence was pulled down, the field enlarged and wheat was planted so the birds moved on. They were then looked after by the Carter family at Place farm, who would search the maize fields before cultivating around them or who would move the nests to safety. When the Carters left, the lapwings left too, as the fields quickly became unsuitable for nesting. Luckily, at that time an environmental scheme came in, which paid for a ‘Lapwing plot' to be prepared for them annually. At least, they had somewhere permanent safe to breed in the middle of an arable field. Sometimes they would nest off the plot and it would take both myself and Geoff Lambert to find them and put down a marker. But even so, the numbers of pairs were still declining year on year, so I gave them a pond for water and a source of insects. I even cut down some hedgerow trees where crows would perch to predate on the chicks.
As lapwings are long lived (up to twenty years) and the old birds faithfully return each year, a lack of breeding success can go unnoticed for years, until finally, the old birds die and no more birds ever return. This year, Nick Adams (a local ecologist with a long RSPB experience) has recommended fencing an area of grass to be grazed by a couple of sheep, which will provide the lapwing chicks with insects. Let's hope that works! All this shows how farming and the countryside has changed even in my working lifetime, and a species which had adapted to a centuries-old agricultural system, suddenly find themselves relics in a hostile environment. If you want to see and hear lapwings, a good place to go is Winterbourne Downs RSPB Nature Reserve near Newton Tony. The whole farm has been converted to suit the habitat requirements of stone curlews (another endangered bird species), and lapwings just happen to like it too. by Andrew Graham Members of the Society have been busy on practical projects recently. Before Christmas, in the parish meadow (behind the Nadder Centre) we planted nearly 150 trees. A number of trees and shrubs were planted in 2013 in the sheltered, south-western, bottom corner of the field. These are established now and are beginning to knit together. The new planting will augment these. Species planted included oak, birch, hawthorn, willow, dogwood, buckthorn, hornbeam, beech and crab apple. This diversity of species aims to make it as valuable for wildlife as well as interesting to look at. Most of the trees were relatively small, bare-rooted plants; planted correctly, these have the best chance of rapid establishment. Each is supported with a bamboo cane and spiral guard for protection while a woodchip mulch around the base will help to suppress weeds and retain moisture. We look forward to them bursting into leaf in the spring.
We also took the opportunity to weed amongst the young hedge line between the community orchard and the skatepark, again applying mulch to help their establishment. An ongoing project is to lay the hedge which separates the parish meadow from orchard and skatepark. It will involve cutting away some of the existing growth to make the hedge line thicker and more vigorous in the long term. Laying prompts the existing shrubs in the hedge to send up new growth from the base while still growing from the remaining branches that have been laid. This prevents it getting gappy and top heavy and helps the hedge to develop the width which makes it most valuable to wildlife. In the New Year members were hard at work coppicing in Oysters Coppice Wiltshire Wildlife Trust reserve near Semley. The society will also continue to organise coppicing in the community field in years to come. When coppicing, all the small trees and bushes are cut down to the ground over a defined area. This lets sunlight in and results in a flush of flowering plants for a few years until the cut stumps have regrown and shade returns. Some of the cut material is woven into dead hedges to protect the cut stumps – or stools as they are known – and later more is placed over the stools to prevent deer browsing. Many woodlands in Britain used to be managed as coppices but as the markets for the products that they produced – e.g., hurdles, thatching spars, fence rails and posts – declined so did coppicing, to the detriment of many woods’ wildlife. 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 As Christmas approaches, thoughts turn to decorating our homes for the festive season. Along with spruce trees and mistletoe, the plants I most associate with Christmas are the holly and the ivy. As well as providing decoration and being easy to identify, these common plants are important for our wildlife. Although hollies can live for up to 300 years, they rarely attain a large size. As they often grow in the understorey of woodlands, they can develop quite a straggly form as they seek whatever light they can reach. This slow growth makes the white wood very dense and good for a number of uses as well as the traditional walking stick.
Male and female flowers occur on different trees and are white with four petals. The flowers provide nectar and pollen for pollinating insects as well as a food source for holly blue butterfly caterpillars. These feed on the flowers of holly in spring while those emerging from the eggs laid in summer predominantly feed on ivy flowers. Younger trees have spiky leaves, but as trees grow and age, the leaves are more likely to be smooth, especially in the upper branches. Unless a female plant has a male sufficiently close by, its flowers may not be pollinated and will not develop the bright scarlet berries that look so attractive against the glossy leaves. These berries are a vital source of food for birds in winter, and small mammals, such as wood mice and dormice and this helps to spread the seeds. In the autumn and early winter, the fruits are hard and apparently unpalatable. But after being frozen or frosted several times, the fruits soften, and become milder in taste. At this point, favoured trees can be stripped by groups of thrushes which may noisily dispute possession of this food source. Berries of ivy are also in demand as winter food for birds. They are black and are held in clusters on mature plants which are the only ones to produce the yellowish-green flowers. These bloom in small clusters in late summer when most other countryside flowers are over and so attract many bees and late flying butterflies such as the red admiral. Ivy is a woody stemmed, self-clinging climber but can also grow as a trailing plant which roots at many points as it spreads. Ivies have enormous value to wildlife, providing all-important year-round shelter and nesting sites for huge numbers of creatures including birds, small mammals and invertebrates. Ivy has long been accused of strangling trees, but it does not harm the tree at all simply using it for support as it climbs towards the light. As well as its association with Christmas the ivy has a number of symbolic connections. A wreath around the head was thought to prevent drunkenness and it was also thought to be a symbol of fidelity. Newly married couples used to be presented with an ivy wreath and an ivy frond remains a part of many a bridal bouquet today. by Andrew Graham |
Photo: Avocets (Izzy Fry)
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