An Interesting Fungus

The fungus Skeletocutis nivea, Byfield,  28 January, 2013

A bright early morning sun coaxed me out for a brisk walk, but the sun was being mendacious. A sharp overnight frost had put a crust of ice on puddles and temporarily halted the thaw, leaving lingering patches of snow. Being a fool plucky Brit I pushed on, skirting the cricket pitch, knowing that my fortitude would be rewarded. At fine leg (or deep mid off) stands an oak tree and I was pleased to see that it bore several fruiting bodies of the fungus Skeletocutis nivea, known as Hazel Bracket. It is not rare but is easily overlooked. These specimens were about three metres above the ground and I would probably have missed them but for a Grey Squirrel prompting me to look up.

Young Yew, Taxus baccata, Byfield Pocket Park

I was pleased to note that a number of sapling Yew trees are flourishing in the Pocket Park. Like Holly, this species is doubtfully native to Northamptonshire but - also like Holly - has probably been bird-sown from the churchyard. 

Ten minutes later I was in the churchyard, where Snowdrop flower buds are swollen to the point where a few hours of sunshine will cause them to open. It won't be today! The Yews have been stripped of fruit long since by birds eager to feed on the red flesh (aril) surrounding the seed. The aril is not toxic and the highly poisonous seed will pass harmlessly through a bird's gut to be voided elsewhere.

A Stroll down The Twistle

The Twistle is a twisting road forming the western boundary of Byfield and, with the sunshine clearing away the last, stubborn patches of snow (what a rapid thaw it has been!) Chris and I decided to walk its length. Here and there bunches of keys (technically samaras) clung stubbornly to Ash twigs. The Ash is an atypical (to my mind) member of the Olive Family, and looks little like its relatives lilac, privet and Forsythia. Some of the roadside hedging, including quite a lot of Elm, had been savagely cut back with a heavy-duty flail but in two or three years the scars will be just a memory.

Ash keys, Byfield, 27 January, 2013

 A little further on our walk we crossed a cutting of the old S.M.J.Railway (The Stratford upon Avon and Midlands Junction Railway), the old track bed noisome with rubbish but now full of flood water. 

Litter-strewn track bed of the S.M.J.Railway

Aubretia in a limestone wall, Byfield, 27 January, 2013

And so back to the village where, having braved all the recent weather, Aubretia Aubrieta deltoides, was in flower, hoping to attract the attentions of an early bumble bee. With the thoughts of insects in mind I gathered a few leaves of Cherry Laurel, Prunus laurocerasus, before we made our way home. These leaves are laced with cyanide in the form of hydrogen cyanide. This will knock out insects (and kill them if left too long) so I use it to subdue specimens whilst being examined. Sometimes an insect examined and left for dead will have recovered a few hours later and I have to re-catch it from the windows of my study.

Not the most exciting of walks perhaps but it blew away the cobwebs and built up an appetite for our evening meal.

Ivy: a feast in two acts

In my last blog, "Migrant Thrushes", I wrote of bushes being stripped of their fruits, and indeed this is true - but help is at hand. Ivy is one of the last native plants to flower, its nectar providing a final feast for many insects. As they gorged themselves on this sugary bounty they fulfilled their function of pollinating the plants and now, in the dark days of January, we are seeing the results; the berries are steadily swelling and beginning to take on purple tints. It won't be long before many creatures are again gorging themselves - not just birds such as thrushes and pigeons but mice, badgers, squirrels and even foxes will be tucking in. This is not surprising since the pith of ivy fruit is, according to the RSPB, as calorific as a Mars Bar!

There is a downside to all this: as ivy smothers the trunk of a tree virtually all mosses and lichens, starved of light, begin to disappear. This climber is not a parasite and does no direct damage to the tree on which it grows but about four years ago a number trees hereabouts, their crowns top-heavy with ivy, came crashing down in autumn gales, several of them blocking roads. It is not surprising that the growth should be so heavy for there are reports of ivy plants 400 years old.

Although we take ivy for granted, it is an intriguing plant, the only native representative of a largely tropical family, the Araliaceae. Many members of the family form lianas, those vines by which Tarzan made his way through film sets  African forests, to the delight of credulous kids like me who, intent on watching the exploits of Johnny Weissmuller, chose to ignore the strategically placed - and all too obvious - ropes.

The non-fruiting foliage differs from the leaves on fruiting branches, with pale veins making some forms popular with gardeners. John Clare inevitably observed these and wrote:

                         Save grey-veined Ivy's hardy pride
                         Round old trees by the Common side,
                         The hedgers toil oft scare the doves that browse
                         The chocolate berries on the Ivy boughs.

                                       Clare's "Shepherds Calendar", 1827
                                                                                                                                                     

Ivy: palmate leaves on non-flowering branches

Smooth leaves on flowering branches

26 January: some fruit is almost ripe

                    

Migrant Thrushes

Usually, by this time of the year, migrant thrushes, mainly, but not exclusively, from Scandinavia, will have visited our area in large - and sometimes huge - numbers. True, there have been a few Fieldfares about, but in rather small groups; as for Redwings, I have only seen singletons. I suspect that the flocks have moved on, our snow-covered landscape having little to offer. (As for resident thrushes, the local park has a couple of pairs of Mistle Thrushes but, worryingly, Song Thrushes seem to be absent.)

Although both Fieldfares and Redwings will take earthworms and other invertebrates, berries form a major part of their diet, yet hawthorn and other berry-bearing bushes have now been stripped of their fruit. This last autumn was particularly poor for sloes (and garden plums too) so another food source is absent. Birds leave sloes - the fruit of the Blackthorn - untouched until the fruit has become soft and semi-decayed; in this "bletted" state they become acceptable.

So this "Viking Invasion", as Trevor Hold called it, has temporarily stalled - but, like the original Vikings, they'll be back. Trevor penned a short, rather attractive poem on the subject:

                  The riming frost brings Viking
                  invaders from across the sea.
                  The village is besieged 
                  by cohorts of redwings.
                  Battalions of fieldfares.

                  They lurk till dawn in bushes
                  for berries to unfreeze,
                  then strip October's redness down
                  To bare brown boughs,
                  leaving behind mementoes of their pillage
                  like stains of purple blood.

                      "Viking Invasion" from "Chasing the Moon"

As I write it seems that, if our birds can hang on for another twenty four hours, the snow will be on the retreat and the good times will return - and perhaps the thrushes too.
                 

More Bits and Bobs

Tomorrow - or so we are told - a thaw should commence so, as I traipsed* through the Pocket Park I reflected on the possibility that it could be many months before I have snow under my boots again. Beneath the snow the soil is not frozen but is soft and waterlogged. Once the thaw begins we could be in trouble with flooding - again.

Raptors were frequent today, doubtless having to work extra hard to find prey. A Sparrowhawk worked its way, without success, along a hedgerow and a flock of Wood Pigeons scattered as a Buzzard passed overhead, even though they surely have little to fear from this scavenger - or do they? Propane gas guns boomed out at intervals in an endeavour to drive the pigeons off the oilseed rape, but as all the crops are under snow it all seemed rather pointless.

Once again I reflected how, in these conditions, we take note of organisms usually overlooked. Among these neglected groups are the lichens. They make a fascinating study and if I had more time... But then there are mosses, and fungi and snails and ...    
Anyway, Ash trees support many lichens with the species photographed, probably Arthonia radiata, being particularly common. It is found on a wide range of trees but stands out particularly clearly where the bark is smooth.

Arthonia radiata (?) on Ash

Catkins on Hazel Corylus avellana

There are maybe twenty to thirty hazels in the pocket park, coppiced in rotation. Here and there some were already displaying catkins. These are the male flowers and, as the pollen is dispersed by wind, it is not necessary for the plant to wait for insects to be on the wing. Even so, the majority are keeping their powder dry - literally.












* Traipsed. An odd word of uncertain origins but possibly connected with "trespass" and so ultimately from Old French.

Roly-polies and Scabby Little Pigs

A short flight of steps at the end of our garden leads down to the stream. These steps have fallen into disrepair and, prior to interruption by "the white stuff", I was busily reconstructing them. The old structures consisted in part of timber - now much rotten - and, as I removed the damp and crumbling pieces of wood, dozens of woodlice scurried away, seeking shelter. Virtually all were specimens of Porcellio scaber, whose name may be uncharitably translated as "scabby piglet". (Our word "pork" comes from the same root.) This species is generally grey but a few amber coloured specimens are usually present. The back is covered in tiny rough "scabs".

The woodlice weren't seeking shelter from birds. They are not often eaten by birds as each segment of the body hides a pair of glands which secrete a foul fluid, effectively repelling most would-be predators. The woodlice were in fact seeking darkness and damp conditions; being crustaceans woodlice can quickly get dessicated and so die. Another familiar species, Armadillidium vulgare, is able to partly prevent the danger of drying out by rolling into a ball. Some species within this genus can survive in near-desert conditions. Armadillidium has been given an enormous number of common names: pillbug (they were sometimes covered in honey and given to the sick), roly-poly, slater, parson's pigs, tinnyhogs, wood clocks, grammar sows, and so on.

Our pocket park also contains Platyarthrus hoffmannseggi. This is a blind, albino woodlouse which is found in the nests of ants, usually - as in the pocket park - the Yellow Meadow Ant. The ants do not seek to drive these interlopers away so it is assumed that they perform a service, possibly eating, and so removing, faeces. I initially thought that this species was rather rare but, when a few years ago I mapped the woodlice of Northamptonshire (well, somebody had to do it!) I found it to be common and widespread. 

The plates which form the back of a woodlouse are impregnated with lime, so they are often absent from acid environments such as heathland and moorland.

(My son. on reading this blog, asked, "What about Oniscus asellus?" Well, it is certainly present, both in my garden and in the Pocket park. It is a little larger than Porcellio scaber and has a rather glossy appearance. OK Jeremy?)

Garden Birds and Great Apes

Like many thousands of people throughout Britain I have been keeping an eye on our garden birds. The usual visitors have been present: Great Tit, Blue Tit, Coal Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Wood Pigeon, Collared Dove, Blackbird, Fieldfare, Redwing (1), Jackdaw, Dunnock, Goldfinch, Chaffinch and Blackcap (1). Of equal interest - and greater concern - are the missing species. There have been no Starlings, no Song Thrushes, no Greenfinches, no House Sparrows - and the Wren, Troglodytes troglodytes, normally resident in our garden, has failed to put in an appearance.  All rather worrying. I eye our local cats with increasing suspicion.

I have included the Latin name for the Wren because, as I began today's blog I recalled a curious fact. The first person to give a Latin name to the Common Chimpanzee was the great French naturalist Etienne Geoffroy St Hilaire - generally (and unsurprisingly) referred to simply as Geoffroy - who, in 1812, called it Troglodytes niger. It was then pointed out to him that the generic name of Troglodytes could not be used as it had already been applied to the Wren. The Common Chimpanzee is now Pan troglodytes.

All this caused consternation for an up-and-coming dance troupe called Troglodytes' People and they were forced to hurriedly relaunch themselves as Pan's People. (Tony, you have been warned before about silliness...)

On a more serious note, cold may not be a serious problem for Wrens as they are known to indulge in "communal roosting" when individuals, often from a considerable distance, will converge on a suitable site such as an old squirrel drey and pack themselves in for mutual warmth. A nestbox (11x14x15cm) has been known to contain 61 Wrens, tightly packed with their heads pointed inwards. (quoted by Robert Burton, British Wildlife Vol 21. Number 3, p. 159). A bird knowing of a suitable site will call in other birds from the neighbourhood to share the roost and help in the fight for survival.