|
Nature Notes by Ian Bennett
__________________________________________________________________
August
August already! I hope you are making the most of this long, reasonably hot summer. I have been out and about a lot just recently, my friends at RSPB asked me to help out with a Cirl Bunting survey and let me tell you, there is no more effective way of learning an area than to walk both sides of every hedge you come across. I went out on Culdrose air day, so there was even more to interest me, but sadly I missed the Vulcan, although I was reminded about the joke relating to the connection between Mr Spock’s mother and Port Stanley airfield! NO, I WI LL NOT tell you the punch line (Your Editor forbids me to) - if you can’t work it out, you’re too young!
But, I was keenly aware that this is the time of year when our insect life takes centre stage. All the way round I was accompanied by lepidoptera and demoiselles. Demoiselles (caleopteryx virgo) flutter rather than fly. Males take up prominent perches along their breeding territory to display and only leave them to make short forays to ward off intruders. If the intruder is a smaller damselfly or even a butterfly, they will simply flash their wings to deter the intruder rather than fly after them. Several males will attempt to court a female in elaborate chases with the winner eventually displaying to her by energetically fluttering his wings in front of her. Isn’t it strange how much wildlife imitates human behaviour? (Or the other way round, maybe?) Not common, but try looking along overgrown stream banks because they do love lush damp habitat.
Buddleia is out and you can understand why some people used to think that butterflies were some form of fruit of this highly invasive thug. I can forgive it though when you see it on a sunny day absolutely smothered in butterflies.
  
On one bush, I came across I saw Peacock, Red Admiral, Comma, Ringlet, Cabbage White (not so welcome and a couple of others, but further on I also came across a Blue – can’t tell you which because I am hopeless at flutterby identification, but have a look at the last two photos below and tell me if you can think of anything more perfectly beautiful. I watched it move from flower to flower; never hurried, but so precise and delicate.
 Those of you who read my early contributions to Roseland Online may recall mention of the fearsome black rabbit of St Just - the one that used to savage small French cars as they passed innocently towards the KHF. Well, I think he must have bought himself a bike! I was east of Portscatho the other day when I came across wild black rabbits in the fields. They are a little more timid that our local hero, but I still managed to get a blurry photo.
I hope you enjoy the many splendid sights to be seen on the Roseland, although the scale is a little smaller than usual, go and explore a Buddleia bush - it will be alive with beauty!
PS; the Cirls are doing well, enjoying and thriving in the drier early summer that we have all been enjoying. Would anyone be interested in a presentation on the progress the project has been making? I am sure I have enough evidence on the team to be able to persuade one of them to give us a talk, one winters evening. Let me know!
 
__________________________________________________________________
July
 Can anyone remember what I wrote this time last year? No? [But we can look it up in the features archives. Ed. ; ) ] Thank goodness for that, so I can just cut and paste.
OK! OK! June 2010 has been a lot drier and hotter than last year’s version of events, and so the tone of the countryside is also very different. We were commenting on how dried the grass was in the verges and field headlands. Farmers are working all hours cutting and making hay whilst the sun shines but everything has a sleepy, siesta feeling about it. The first of our human summer migrants have reappeared filling the lay bys and car parks with campervans sporting Dutch, Swedish and German number plates. They seem a jolly lot and certainly appreciate the beautiful countryside that surrounds and cossets us. University students have started to reappear although I think they may be quite nocturnal in their habits - they can easily be identified by their pallid colouring as they gather in pubs late into the evening! Later in the summer they can be spotted hauled out on some of our loveliest beaches, doing their best to rid themselves of the “student uni. pallor”. We’ve all raised these ugly ducklings! Sometimes they turn into swans, sometimes... I will leave you to fill in the gap!
But back to nature proper; most resident birds have fledged at least one brood of chicks, we have blue tits nesting in a box we put up and doing their level best to fill the Roseland with their own kind. The latest brood fledged last week. It was great fun to stand off a little and watch the parent birds entice their reluctant off spring out with the delights of juicy green grubs and the threat of starvation if they stayed where they were. You could easily imagine the parallels – “No, I am not bringing your breakfast in; you have to get out of bed, get up!”
So, the hedgerows are full of baby birds, fresh from the nest. If you think about it, there should really be no better opportunity of seeing birds in large numbers. But then think about this; something like a pair of blue tits will lay maybe 15-20 eggs in a season, and they breed for say 3 seasons so the attrition rate needed to even balance a population means that of the 45-60 offspring such a pair could generate only two will survive to carry the gene pool forward. By now we should be ankle deep in dead fledglings! This winter saw huge drops in small bird populations across Europe so hopefully we can all do what we can to increase this year’s survival rate of the newest additions to our local fauna. One bird I have been seeing a lot of recently is the kingfisher down on St Just Pool. But, I have only seen one at any one time, which may be a little limiting in the repopulation process.
 But nature is nothing if not stubborn. I have just been for a short walk in the mid evening, it’s quite grey out there now and a breeze has sprung up. Rain is forecast later and tomorrow, but I just walked up through the village with my telescope and binoculars. House sparrows are in abundance at the moment, as are Dunnock and their broods. I saw two Cormorants fly over and goldfinches scolded me from some telephone wires. I was out much less than an hour, I didn’t go very far, but the peace of the countryside just soaked right in! I hope you get to enjoy the beauty that surrounds.
__________________________________________________________________
June
 This month I have been struggling to resolve that age-old conflict between those who love nature and those who love gardening. We have a vegetable garden just along the village of which we have great hopes, but we have recently been puzzled by various depredations that have significantly impacted on our carrots, beetroot and brassicas. Slug pellets didn’t stop the nightly disappearance of our baby seedlings, so up went the netting. Maybe it was Pigeons? Still the slaughter went on! Then one day a week or so ago we were on our way back from an early morning walk and called in on our little bit of heaven to find a family of Shelduck, mum, dad and three offspring had taken up residence under the netting at the local salad bar! They actually seemed more than a little put out that we should take exception at their marauding ways, but sanity prevailed and off they went, probably to raid someone else’s pride and joy. Hopefully the Cavalo Nero will recover, but it was costing us a fortune in carrot and beetroot seeds!
When time has allowed I have been volunteering with the RSPB to monitor the Cirl Bunting population following the releases they have been making over the last few years. Tempus does fugit and I was extremely frustrated and saddened to realise that I could no longer hear their high pitched calling. Stuart would excitedly point to a hedgerow and let me listen, “There,” he would say, “You must have heard that!” But sadly no, my upper  registers have been eroded away to a ringing “silence”. At one point we even had the telescope focused on a lovely male Cirl Bunting, only yards away and I was reduced to lip-reading the birdsong! How sad, I am just going to have to rely on my eyesight- I must call the opticians for an eye test!
May has been such a month of change, we have gone from below average temperatures to soaring blue skies beaten by a huge sun and filled with skylarks and swallows. But even so, the swifts have only just made it back to skim low over fields that are suddenly brimming with grasses and wild flowers. Is it just me, or is there really a world of difference between a field and a meadow? Field now conjures up a utilitarian food production facility whilst meadows are altogether far more glorious. A meadow is something you want to hunker down into and watch the world through a haze of stems and stalks, seed heads and flowers. This morning we heard the cuckoo calling away down by the shore. I have heard several this year already, so maybe there are more of them or maybe I have been out and about that bit more who can tell?
Stop press! The RSPB and volunteers marched miles of hedgerows over the last few days of May searching out Cirls, Yellow Hammers, Linnets and Skylarks, all of whom enjoy similar habitat requirements. The highlight of my survey was watching two young foxes playing out under the watchful attention of their mother. They all knew I was there but I sat quietly and kept a respectful distance so I was able to watch them for 5 or 10 minutes. What a privilege!
We need to keep our paths open, so I hope you manage to get out and about this month. Don’t let our pathways disappear for lack of use. I may well return to this topic in later months.
__________________________________________________________________
May
As well as images this month, I have included a couple of hyper links (underlined) – not all that factual!
Those of you who remember the original Slartibartfarst in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy will recall how inordinately proud he was of all the “crinkly bits round Norway” that he had created. Well, I have to say our own creeks and drowned valleys are just as wonderfully crinkly! I love the way perspective can change in just a few paces. One moment you are walking over a meadow deep in the countryside, surrounded on all sides by hedgerows bursting into blossom then a moment later you turn a corner or crest the brow of a hill and the coast or a creek pops into view and suddenly your perspective has to shift! No longer are we deep in the English countryside, but we are suddenly placed out on a limb, right out on the edge.
The sea surrounds and affects us on a daily basis, sometimes subtly with gentle effects on the light that has been so valued by artists over the years, other times it can come crashing in, with no relief from Atlantic gales that last saw land somewhere of South America. But we are so lucky to live in an area with so much variety and contrast.
 Last week I was walking down a country lane over near Gerrans; there could have been no more idyllic illustration of an English springtime. A photograph would not have done it justice, and as I always think, the pictures are always better on the radio! Pink campion was competing with the yellow-green heads of Alexanders and both were loosing out to the cascading blackthorn blossom that has turned the whole of the Roseland into a Santa’s grotto of white frosted hedges.
The blossom may be known as blackthorn but the fruits will be better known as sloes when we collect them in October. From beyond the hedge came the rasping croak of a pheasant strutting his stuff or perhaps warning his little woman that there were humans about! Our dog Nolly simply cannot resist that sound! I have no doubt that she wouldn’t have the first idea what to do is she ever came with grabbing distance of a pheasant, she would more likely want to play than to eat, but I also suspect that we will never find out as she is no match for a pheasant when they can spring into the air that quickly!
Anyway, back to this country lane, with the first hints of green on the oaks, and the sycamore was charging into an early lead, with leaves freshly burst from their protective sheaths. The lemony colour of new leaves reminds me of that lip quivering citrus sharp intake of breath that the Alexander the meerkat makes at the end of his adverts!
In just two steps the distant outline of Gull rock had crept into view with the rocky silhouette of Nare Head pushing it forward into the sea and the waves pounding it back. The change in my perceptions was almost a physical thing, from the warmth of an English country lane to the cold ocean (I think sea temperatures are still only 8-9 deg C and it can look a lot colder!) In just 10 yards I had travelled so much further.
You didn’t think you were going to get away without mention of a bird did you? Tut, Tut! As I have recently lamented at length over the loss of bird species as spring becomes summer on the Roseland, I will hardly mention it now, but at the start of April I was lucky on three separate occasions to flush a snipe from long grass in fields overlooking the Carrick  Roads. I hadn’t seen a snipe for years but as soon as it rose from just ahead of me it gave itself away.
Snipe have an absolutely unique jinking flight path. As a game bird they have adapted very quickly in evolutionary terms and know how to upset gun carrying shooters. As soon as they take off, very fast and low, they start jinking left and right until they are well out of range. In the quiet of a field you can even hear their wing coverts as they slither over each other, especially on the bends! How they turn at such an angle, with such grace and at such speed is beyond me, but, for now I will have to be patient as the bird I flushed will almost certainly have headed north to the flow country, that strange wide-open tundra like plain that exists at the very north of Scotland, well beyond the highlands and islands. Up there the nights will be getting ever shorter, until by mid June they are no more than a darkening twilight; all the more time for a breeding bird to forage and to feed hungry chicks.
__________________________________________________________________
April
March started well, we got back to the allotment and enjoyed a really excellent St Piran’s Day celebration at the St Just in Roseland Institute. I know someone didn’t like it, but when nearly a hundred people did, maybe the odd one out came with unrealistic expectations. Oh well, ‘twas ever thus! Back to the wildlife rather than human nature…
It has been great to see our latest residents settling in. We now have lamas living in  the village, no, they aren’t wandering the streets wearing saffron robes and shaving their heads, they are of the South American variety, and very handsome they are! I gather that this summer trekking picnics with lamas are going to be offered, and sound great fun. I will let you know how this develops, but for now, please give their careful owners a wide berth if you see them all out being road trained. After all, if you alarm a lama (that takes a lot of writing, let alone saying!) they can spit at you with great accuracy and their spit has been known to go through paint faster than battery acid (not really). So, we have done the non native wildlife, what about our natives and wild visitors?
Have you noticed that chiffchaffs have a really bad memory? Some stay around here all year, but most head south to Spain and north Africa where they act like continental tourists, getting down to the pool first and leaving their calling cards on all the best loungers, then heading out to night clubs till the wee small hours. They get back to the south west before most other places which makes me think they  probably use the Santander to Plymouth Ferry as a short cut. But, after all that partying, they have forgotten the words! Unlike me who was word perfect in Murder in The Cathedral! (Eventually anyway!) They get back here and all you can hear is chiff chiff chiff… after a few days it dawns on them that this is doing nothing for their tree cred so they ramp it up a bit. The song of the chiffchaff must be one of the most welcome sounds in early spring, but after a while that inane chiff-chaffing from the top of almost every other tree drives me mad!!! Oh well, I guess they mean well.
Another welcome sight is the development of primrose beds and banks. I bet we all have our own special place where we track the development of single, adventurous pale blossoms into hedgerows full of light and colour. Pink Campion joins in and Alexanders take up the back-beat as the pace quickens and rudely syncopating Ransomes send their earthy notes through the trees. Violets punctuate the lush green undergrowth, adding such a subtle scent to the paths. Lots of birds are coming back (despite last month’s rant about migration being a two way street!) with wheatears and some warblers (I know they are warblers but leave further speciation to Nick Tomalin and his expertise- I know my limits). The sea is warming up and even the sea weeds that line our shores are in bloom, and growing strongly. The beaches have done more shifting about this year than we have noticed before with great plateaus of rock coming and going on most of our beaches.
There are hares out and about, rabbits are bouncing up and down fit to bust, foxes have young deep underground which drives the adults to more daylight hunting so you stand a good chance of seeing them out and about and not being chased by the hunt. But enough, spring shouldn’t just be catalogued, it should be enjoyed. Stop reading this drivel and go for a walk! Even your Doctor thinks it’s a good idea! Having said that I really do wonder at the need for the latest politically correct pamphlet from Cornwall council advising people that the Coastal Path can be dangerous! No? Really? Gosh, who’d have thought!
__________________________________________________________________
March: Love is In The Air…
I know that received wisdom states that the pace of the year quickens in the spring as the sap rises, the first spring bulbs raise their timid heads above the leaf litter of autumn that still bedecks the bare treed woodland, but… we birdwatchers should be forgiven for perhaps giving too much regret to the advance of the year. The British Isles probably have more migrants present in the winter than we do in the summer, and most of those are a lot easier to see, firstly because they are birds of open farmland, fields and estuaries, secondly because winter migrants are invariably much larger than our summer visitors and finally because even when they do try and had in trees, the distinct lack of foliage is a great help when you are trying to spot something smaller than your thumb against a bright sky at the top of a tree! Migration was never a mystery to our forebears (even Goldilocks on had three!); it was common knowledge that swallows and swifts spent the winter at the bottom of our ponds, lakes and meres and (this one I have never understood) Barnacle geese somehow sheltered from the worst excesses of our winter by hibernating in barnacles! Nope! I still don’t get it!
 All those spring bulbs must resent the darkening of their native woodland floors as our deciduous forests burst forth into leaf; that is why they flower so early, they are trying for the best show they can achieve whilst they still have access to sunlight. If they left it too late then the trees would beat them to it and there would not be enough sunlight to illuminate a snowdrop, let alone those laggardly blue bells who leave it till the very last minute to strut their stuff! Don’t get me wrong, I love the sight of spring bulbs, violets and all those other harbingers of the coming summer. Down by St Just Creek the trees are covered in catkins and we saw some pussy willow down at Porthcurnick beach just before the end of February. Where we used to live up in Macclesfield (a lot further further north and at about 800 ft a lot higher) pussy willow was almost unknown before mid-April.
Another, sad harbinger of spring is road kill, badgers are moving groggily off to their summer sets (no, they aren’t all heading north for a holiday in Weston-super-mare!) on trails they have used for centuries and which sadly cross too many roads, sometimes with lethal consequences. I found myself wondering what a fatal impact  with something as compact and muscular as a badger must do to a car. To be honest - I hope it’s very expensive! We were coming back from Philliegh the other night (yes, of course we had been to the pup why else would you go to Philliegh on a February night?) when we came across a badger trapped between us and two high Cornish hedges. We came to a halt, but the headlights were still putting him (Her? I guess they know, but then they need to know how to sex a badger a lot more than I do!). The animal wasn’t exactly panicked and went about looking for a way out. This involved a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, but eventually he walked up the road away from us and disappeared into a small copse by the roadside. We were able to watch this handsome beauty for quite a few minutes and felt so privileged to be able to see him on his way. I think there is space for us all, don’t you?
We were down on the beach between Pendower and Rosevine at the end of February. Saturday morning and the sun was shining through a little cumulus – fair-weather clouds if ever there were, but with one or two cirrus telegraphing the arrival of stronger winds from the continent. Down from the heavens drifted the clear  squeal of a buzzard soaring high in the cerulean heavens. No, not one but five buzzards, several of them strutting their stuff and trying desperately to impress the ladies in their number. They stooped and soared, pirouetted and turned on their wing tips in such effortless style and grace. Slowly the thermal they were riding took them along the beach towards Pendower, but they were so high I am sure they could just as easily have drifted north to Ruan Lanihorne and off the peninsular into the Tregothnan woods. The scale of their world is so different to our own, and they ruled the skies, high, high above the petty attentions of crows, rooks and all those lesser birdies that make their lives so mundane at lower levels.
Anyway, spring and summer – bring it on, leaves and all! I hope you get to enjoy the quickening pace of our countryside - be a devil! Go for a walk!
__________________________________________________________________
Ferbruary: Even though I had to be out and about in the car, with one trip up country, I still thought January’s snow was so beautiful. For just a few days, everything is swept clean, covered by a delicate layer of natures Tippex. Imperfections are brushed away, leaving a dazzling, twinkling blanket of freshness. This blanket of white lends a new dimension to how we observe our wildlife. There was a brand new, snowy white page laid over the fields and beaches that allowed us to see what had been out and about when we were tucked up warmly at home.
Along the ridge between St Just and St Mawes we were amazed at the wealth of animal tracks. Rabbits had explored beyond their normal domains just under and  around the bramble patches in huge numbers (or maybe there was just a few hyper active bunnies under there!). Hares had been lolloping across the fields, far more determined in their tracks, clearly on a mission, with only an occasional flurry of investigation through the snow. Also highly focused were the tracks of at least one fox, which may have been the same one that was foraging on the small plot of land just across the road from us during broad daylight. He may have been taking a leaf out of his urban cousins’ book, and considered that the poor pickings necessitated a more audacious hunting stratagem. We hear them barking regularly during the night, and I reckon there are at least three that live within shouting distance of our house. Down on the beaches the larger treads of Gulls, Ducks and Waders crisscrossed the white-topped sand and stones, webbed feet showing their load spreading abilities as Herring Gulls stalk across the top of snow whilst smaller birds with un-webbed toes make heavier work of it
One morning whilst the sun was still very low we could easily pick out the tiny shadows lying within the tracks of various birds; small birds (LBJ’s to bird watchers and twitchers alike) like Robins, Dunnock and Finches leaving the shelter of the hedges to forage at the margins of the snow left their tiny scratches in the soft snow. Further out the tracks became more substantial; our Thrush population is hugely increased at the moment as is there diversity. Our resident complement of Blackbirds and Song Thrushes have been joined by great swathes of Mistle Thrushes, Field Fares and Redwings. If anyone does spot a ring Ousel, please let me know then we will have the full set! (It’s a fairly rare visitor to northern upland  moors and unique in that, in the thrush family it is a summer visitor)
So, lots of evidence of the wildlife that surrounds us laid bare for us to see, and then slowly it fades back into the fields and leaves the blackened hedgerows to shelter the first signs of spring. Already we have seen early primrose’s regretting their precociousness at being out so early. On one of our favourite walks we saw how one sentinel snowdrop had been joined by hundreds of its compadres, to shy yet glorious effect in a sheltered copse of woodland carpeted by collapsed ferns and ivy.
Many of you will know that the RSPB and National Trust have been working with local farmers to reintroduce Cirl Buntings into the area. I have been reluctant to report on such an important development, primarily because I know so little about it, and, in its early stages I knew that discretion and a low profile would probably do more good than harm. But, there comes a point in any project when you have to gear up and spread the message more widely, so I am delighted that Nick Tomalin, the RSPB’s Project Officer, has agreed to contribute occasional articles on the progress of this important project. I look forward to liaising with him.
 But, why is this an important project? Surely the presence or absence of one fairly nondescript Bunting is, in the overall scheme of things, not of great importance. Well, yes, I think it is important, not least because biodiversity is such an important measure of the health of our environment. Environments with diverse flora and fauna are so much more resilient to disease and pestilence. With more interlinked populations of plants, birds and animals all relying on each other, the whole becomes stronger. Managing our countryside to deliver a rich and varied wildlife means we are actually managing it, nurturing it to be able to sustain ourselves in the long run. Monocultures have had their day and we need to recognise our place within a diverse, strong and balanced environment.
Small wires have little strength on their own, but mix up enough of them and they can hold up bridges!
__________________________________________________________________
January:I am finally writing these notes in January, but as most of the highlights we noticed out an about on the Roseland came late in the month I hope you will bear with me! The common seals have returned to St Anthony’s Head. I guess they first appeared in late October, but by mid December there were at least 8 adults with two immature pups getting in and out of the middle tide.
Frost always brings the birds flocking back to our feeders, maybe someone, somewhere has correlated bird types with temperature but over Christmas a male bullfinch joined our resident blue tits, great tits, coal tits, dunnock, wrens, long tailed tits, chaffinch, goldfinch and blackbirds. We still have a pair of blackcaps that visit the mixed seed feeders and what I think is a straggling garden warbler which should be right down in the south of France or even as far as Spain by now. Maybe it decided the exchange rates meant it couldn’t afford to winter abroad this year! A few weeks ago we were coming back from Bristol and noticed a flock of lapwing swooping over the Somerset levels. I commented that I hadn’t seen lapwings on the Roseland and hey presto! A beautiful flock of maybe 75 lapwings was swooping and wheeling over the field across the road from the house. These are such graceful birds to watch, even when standing out in a field. Another favourite of mine that is currently spending most of its days either skulking on the top of telegraph poles re soaring effortlessly over the creek  slopes is the buzzard – they are everywhere at the moment and must surely have overtaken the kestrel as our most populous raptor, at least locally. I always think buzzards look like they are having a great time, even if they are sitting hunched up against a westerly gale, they look like they are ready to party hard!
We saw our first wild snowdrop between Christmas and New Year, I think it is probably regretting being too previous what with the frosts we have had since. At this time of the year the weather has a fine line to walk between fine clear skies and plummeting night-time temperatures and cloudy overcast skies full of rain. Sunny and cold or mild and wet! I know which one I prefer – you can always rug up against the cold but try keeping the rain out!
_____________________________________________________________________
Click here to read Ian's 2009 Nature Notes |
