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By Martyn Stenning
December 2020
I have commented that there is no such thing as disaster in nature, only change. Many changes run in cycles, just like the daily cycle of night, dawn, morning, afternoon, evening and the yearly cycle of winter, spring, summer and autumn (fall). Incidentally, although fall is used in the USA instead of autumn, it is actually an ancient English word commonly used up to the 17th century when it was largely replaced by the Latin word autumn(us). The climate is also changing.
There is also the carbon cycle, water cycle and of course life cycle of every organism that lives. Diseases also tend to go in cycles, and there is a commonly quoted cycle of rabbits and myxomatosis caused by the rabbit myxoma virus. Rabbits control this disease by changing their behaviour. As the population of rabbits breeding underground in warm burrow nurseries increases, the transmission of myxoma virus by the secondary host, which is the rabbit flea, increases. This causes many rabbits to die. Then, those rabbits that breed above ground under bushes, as some do, are more likely to survive because the (cold blooded) fleas are more likely to die of cold during frosts. These rabbits then increase in number but sometimes produce offspring that resume the underground breeding strategy in order to avoid predators such as foxes. This allows the myxoma virus to increase again and so on.
Similarly, there is a well-known cycle of Arctic foxes and Arctic hare numbers. As the hare numbers increase, so fox numbers increase until too many survive to be supported by the over hunted hares and many foxes die of starvation, allowing the hares to increase again and so on.
These population cycles, regulated by climate, disease or predation control the numbers of animals that we see around us. There is no reason to suppose that the same cannot happen among humans. It was predicted by Thomas Robert Malthus (1766 – 1834). We are unlikely to be controlled by predators because we are the planet’s top predator, but we have less control over climate and microbes. In the end, each living thing dies, which is sad for those around it, but then there is room for others to be born, providing joy for those around the birth event.
November 2020
There is no plan(et) B. Earth is our only option. We either preserve it or lose it. I think it is amazing to listen to our oldest environmental campaigner, Sir David Attenbrough and maybe our youngest, Ms Greta Thunberg. Both are apparently in total agreement about the need for concerted global action by everyone to save our only available home, planet Earth. This is an area in which our children will take the lead.
Part of this planet is our garden in Uckfield, close to the border with Framfield. In this garden we have an exotic shrub originally from Mexico called Koeberlinia spinosa. This plant is also known as the crucifixion thorn due to its leaves taking the form of sharp thorns similar to gorse. As I write in early October, this plant is also covered by a mass of sweet smelling tiny white flowers that are providing a late crop of nectar and pollen for a large number of pollinating insects such as red admiral butterflies and bees. Many of the bees are buff-tailed queen bumblebees that have mated with a male and will soon go into hibernation below ground until early spring. After a long sleep underground, they will wake up and lay a few worker eggs to start their colonies. These female workers will start to collect pollen and nectar to provision the colony, fertilising the flowers that they visit as they go, leading to the crops of fruit and veg that we and other animals in turn will eat. After a while, the queen lays some male eggs which will produce suiters for queens produced from other colonies. Our queen will also produce some new queens to mate with suiters from other nests and so on. Additionally, many of these bumblebees will be eaten by insectivorous birds and other animals that make some kind of contribution to our global ecosystem upon which we all depend for every meal we eat, breath we take and waste we produce.
One of the joys of autumn that have stayed with me since being a child is seeing the red admiral butterflies visiting fallen apples, Michaelmas daisies and other autumn produce. Red admiral males are territorial and have to impress a female before mating. Many red admirals then migrate to warmer latitudes for the winter. Others hibernate until the spring. The female will usually lay her eggs on stinging nettles upon which her caterpillars will feed before pupating and becoming adults.
October 2020
Humans need houses. Of that there is no doubt. But what about the millions of living things that make up nature’s biodiversity with which we share the planet and which provide us with the hidden ecosystem services upon which we all depend? Do these living things need a home also? If they exist near our dwellings, does this mean we always have to sacrifice them to make way for more brick boxes and tarmac roads?
For more than 30 years, I have been privileged to expedite ecological research in a woodland of exceptional biodiversity which is part of an even larger ecological unit in the NW of Uckfield. This unit is known as Downlands and The Rocks. It was here that I collected ecological data for my University research and eventually my book called ‘The Blue Tit’. However, it seems that because it is so close to Uckfield, this land and all it contains must be considered a prime site for yet another housing estate. From Downlands, it is possible to see the South Downs National Park and the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, which, in my view, Downlands should be part because of its own scenic beauty and high biodiversity. This was part of the old Streatfeild country estate preserved by this local family since about 1780 but then sold in packets of land during the 20th century. Downlands, Lake Wood and The Rocks are all that remains of this English heritage landscape. A quiet refuge for over 70 species of birds, 20 species of mammals, more than 140 species of butterflies and moths, thousands of other tiny animals and plants of all sizes from the liverworts of the ghyll valleys to mighty ancient oak trees of the woodland forest. There are 5 species of amphibians including great crested newts and 4 species of reptiles.
Nature needs a home as much as humans. We are actually part of nature because we contribute to it and take from it. Nature provides us with air, water, food, it recycles our waste and provides natural therapy for our troubled minds. I believe that we have a duty of stewardship to protect those places that are home to a rich diversity of non-human living things with which we share the planet and on which we have a mutual dependence. It is sometimes difficult to understand that we depend on some animals such as mosquitos and wasps, even rats and venomous snakes. However, each one has its place in the web of life.
September 2020
The first sounds to be made by an animal on planet Earth probably came from an insect, more than 400,000,000 years ago. These were probably primitive cicadas or crickets. In England, we have a few insects that make noises such as grasshoppers, they do this by rubbing parts of their chitinous exoskeleton against another part, e.g. legs against wings. Insects also often make a noise when they fly, such as mosquitos, bees and wasps, warning us of their presence with a buzz.
Boris, Emmanuel and COVID-19 have finally allowed us to visit our nature refuge in France. Here, the insects have gone mad and there are vast numbers of them singing in chorus, especially during warm nights. The old barn is full of wooden cavities. These in turn are used for reproduction by a huge variety of ants, bees, wasps and sawflies. Collectively, known as Hymenoptera, Latin for membranous wings, describing their incredibly fine thin flying apparatus.
We have seen carpenter wasps and bees, paper wasps, grass carrying wasps, masonry wasps, both solitary and social wasps and bees, semi-social wasps and ants that are almost always social, also European and Asian hornets that are really very large social wasps. The other day, I was amazed to see what looked like a very large fat green caterpillar flying into a hole in a timber pillar. It was apparently being carried by a female grass carrying solitary wasp, which had paralysed it with its sting, was a fraction of the size of the caterpillar and was mainly black with transparent wings. The wasp took it into its wooden hole and laid an egg on or inside the caterpillar, then it spent about two days carrying many single blades of dried grass into the hole and finally arranged the grass into a closely woven nest around the caterpillar. The wasp’s egg will eventually hatch out and eat the hapless caterpillar and grow for a while before metamorphosing into an adult solitary grass carrying wasp. It will then emerge from the cavity and will carry on the tradition.
By day we also see many species of butterfly including scarce swallowtails, fritillaries and varieties of blues. Also, preying mantids and huge crickets, even an Egyptian locust! We also hear the diurnal cicadas endlessly zizzing their stridulation song high in the elm trees.
August 2020
So, where have we got to in the process of saving the planet? I heard a saying this morning at the on-line funeral of Uckfield’s wildlife Ranger Geoff Pollard. The minister said that it is not what you own that is important but how much your life matters. We have heard much recently about “black lives matter”. My feeling is that all life matters in some way; from the humble oceanic green plankton cells that make about 70% of our oxygen to the giant top predators, such as lions and polar bears that control populations of the prey that they eat. Every living thing is part of a food web, and we humans are blessed with the intelligence to manage life on earth. So how are we doing?
Geoff Pollard was the Ranger managing Uckfield’s 2 Local Nature Reserves and other wild places such as Boothland and Nightingale woods. Geoff was doing something professionally that maybe we could all be doing in aspects of our lives. Sadly, he died suddenly at work. When we choose our purchases, we can try to see if they are from a sustainable source. We can avoid using pesticides unless it is truly essential. We can manage our gardens sympathetically for wildlife.
I am writing this from France, at a Bergerie Landaise, which is essentially a shepherd’s house in a field with a small copse of elm trees. We are trying to manage this site as a sanctuary for wildlife, which made it difficult when we arrived here this week after 6 months without human intervention, 3 of which were in lockdown due to COVID-19. The outcome is that the field has grown a fine crop of hay, the harvesting of which I am taking a break from to write these notes. Hay making is a sustainable way of interrupting natural succession from grassland to woodland which humans have been doing for thousands of years. Many animals, such as earthworms, butterflies, moths, grasshoppers, bush crickets, lizards and snakes, moles, mice and voles, house sparrows, buntings and herons (yes herons love to hunt moles on grassland when they cannot find a fish), harriers, owls and kestrels, hares, rabbits and foxes have adapted to this practice and adjust their lives accordingly. Having trees nearby allows many more species of bird, such as blackbirds, thrushes, doves, finches, several species of titmouse, treecreepers, woodpeckers and orioles to join the throng.
July 2020
We should never forget that we are part of nature. Everything we do is an interaction with the natural world around us. We take and we give back. Every molecule of oxygen that we breathe has come from an organism that excretes it as a by-product. These are not only plants, but also algae such as seaweeds, which, incidentally, are not plants. They do not have a vascular system or roots. Also, there are photosynthetic bacteria and other planktonic organisms such as euglena and paramecium. The latter actually has a symbiotic relationship with a green alga that lives in its cytoplasm where it produces oxygen.
While we are on the subject of symbiosis, it is likely that each one of us has more bacterial cells in and on our bodies than human cells. We cannot live without them. However well we clean ourselves, they are still with us, actually looking after us in different ways. Good bacteria in our digestive systems are particularly important. Everything that dies becomes part of the planet’s soil, atmosphere and new life thanks to the amazing water and carbon cycle and the ecosystem services provided by mini beasts such as insects, molluscs, crustaceans and myriapods (millipedes and centipedes), annelid worms and of course, bacteria.
Ecosystem services come in so many other forms, such as pollination by insects of most of our edible fruit and vegetables. Fish to eat from the sea and other animals we use such as sheep, fowl and cattle. All our building materials all ultimately come from the ground, even those used in manufacturing cars. Our clothes are formed from plants and animals, or else from the ‘synthetic’ fibres manufactured from fossilised oil, which itself is a decay product from life that existed millions of years ago. Glass is sand, wood is trees, bricks are clay, screws and nails etcetera are metals refined by crushing and cooking rocks that contain them, allowing us to extract and make new useful things with them.
Having laboured the point, we must pay back nature’s bounty by preserving natural places for it in our world, both locally and globally. If we fail in that and exploit it too much, e.g. burning excess fossil fuel and destroying too much natural habitat, nature’s response is to follow the laws of physics and change many aspects of life as we know it.
June 2020
Staying safe has meant that most of us have had to stay at home in social isolation. This has presented me with an opportunity to get to know the animals that are using our Uckfield garden more closely. Just sitting in the garden revealed 16 species of birds within about 30 minutes recently. These were blue tit, great tit, wren, house sparrow, blackbird, song thrush, magpie, jackdaw, carrion crow, buzzard, swift, chaffinch, robin, woodpigeon, collared dove and blackcap. In addition, from my garden, records have included, flying over and within, herring gulls, herons, mallards, ravens, Canada geese, goldcrests, long-tailed tits, goldfinches, starlings, coal tits, great tits, greenfinches, bullfinches, nuthatch, great spotted woodpecker, a hawfinch and tawny owl.
We were sitting in the garden yesterday and a female woodpigeon was sitting on her nest uttering an intermittent growling call to her mate who was collecting twigs for her nest in our field maple tree. He perched next to her and passed one to her in turn before flying off to collect another. The female incorporated each one into her nest beneath her. Meanwhile, on the roof of a neighbour’s house, a carrion crow was sitting on a chimney stack where a pair of jackdaws had their nest in one of the pots. They took great exception to this and were dive-bombing and strafing the crow which clearly intended to make a meal out of their offspring.
Later that day, we saw one of our robins fly into the hedge to feed one of its fledglings. The pair of blackbirds too were feeding their own fledglings and showing them how to deslime a slug before feeding it to one. The blue tits too were going in and out of their birchwood nest-box where the female has been incubating her 9 eggs. We are delighted to have a blackcap singing daily from the oak, birch and cupressus trees at the bottom of the garden this year. These migrants from Africa are usually shy of humans and nest, near the ground, in wildwood and rural hedgerows. There seems to be a trend this year of wild animals moving closer to humans as our activities have been curtailed by the lockdown. This morning I looked out of my bedroom window to see a large healthy red fox roaming round the garden investigating every corner.
May 2020
Nature is an opportunist force. Nothing moves in nature unless there is room for it to do so. A weakness in the Earth’s crust will allow magma to spew forth in the form of a volcano. Chemicals within that action move and react to make new compounds. Some 4 billion years ago 2 new compounds were formed called deoxyribonucleic and ribonucleic acid (DNA & RNA). This is a gross simplification, but these compounds are made up of 5 smaller molecules called nucleotides named 1. Adenine, 2. Cytosine 3. Guanine and 4 Thymine (DNA) or Uracil (RNA). Rather cleverly, these molecules can form chains of DNA or RNA arranged in a myriad of combinations which make up the genome code of every living thing on the planet. All living things are defined as such because they are made up of cells. Each cell contains a nucleus containing these codes. There are also microscopic particles of free existing DNA or RNA covered in a protein coat that are technically not living because they are not within a cell. These units are called viruses. There is a large varied group of these called corona viruses.
About 200 types of viruses cause the common cold. So, the reason why we don’t have a vaccine against the common cold is that we would need about 200 vaccines to deal with them all. However, when you catch a cold, then recover, you should then have immunity to that particular virus. However, you do not have immunity to the remaining c. 199 types of cold viruses. COVID-19 is a new corona virus to humans. Current evidence suggests it probably caused malady in pangolins. In the last 15 years, these pangolins have been hunted to near extinction as they can be sold for thousands of pounds as a gastronomic delicacy and their keratin scales as Chinese medicine. They are now on the IUCN list of endangered species. They eat ants and other insects and move like a sloth both on the ground and in trees. It is thought very likely that the COVID-19 virus was transferred from pangolins to humans via this illegal trade in wildlife during the last 12 months.
This accident of nature is having profound consequences for planet earth. Without any value judgement we could see changes that may be more profound than almost anything that humans, who are of course part of nature, could engineer. Please stay safe!
April 2020
As I write in Early March, frog tadpoles have hatched out in our Uckfield garden pond, the hazel catkins are nearly over and the tree’s tiny maroon flowers will be generating hazel nuts. Hawthorn and elder are breaking forth into leaf and eventually white pearlesque blossom. Among the birds, the robin and blackbird females are carefully building nests in our hedgerows. Celandines have been flowering for some time, but now look out for the pink flowers of ladies smock, also known as milkmaids and cuckoo flower (Latin Cardamine pratensis) a type of cress. These will grow in any exposed damp wayside ditch or bank and adorns the roundabout at Little Horsted in most years.
Spring can be a very personal season as we emerge into longer, brighter days, warmer weather and an awakening of the countryside. It is good to spend time just watching the changes, as nothing stays the same for long in spring. Look and watch the different types of tree bursting into leaf. Understorey species like the ones mentioned above are leafing first to ‘catch the rays’ before the larger ones such as oak, ash and horse chestnut steal their light with their canopy. Listen also, for the singing of the blackbird, robin, wren, song and mistle thrushes, great and blue tit, chaffinch, chiffchaff and eventually cuckoo. They and others will be celebrating the rise of spring with both a dawn and evening chorus. Smell also the fragrance of the wood anemones, bluebells carpeting our ancient woodlands in April and May and eventually honeysuckle or woodbine and wild roses adorning our hedgerows.
Nature abhors a vacuum. So, every damp space on the planet Earth’s soil’s surface will be colonised by something. Usually, first algae, bacteria and fungi, then moss, grass and broadleaved herbs also known as forbs. Some of the latter are vigorous and grow large like nettles brambles and hogweed. But, beneath these, acorns, haws, beech nuts and horse chestnuts will germinate, protected by these herbaceous bullies, then with autumn the herbs die back, tree seedlings are revealed and continue to put on height and eventually outgrow the herbs, shade them out and form a woodland habitat. This is called succession and will always happen without intervention by humans. In short, in every grassland there is a woodland trying to get out!
March 2020
In order to survive, all forms of life that we see around us have adopted a bizarre range of life strategies. I have recently been watching European common cranes spending the winter in southern France. Last March, we heard early arriving cuckoos in France calling in March!
This year, we watched several trios of cranes consisting of a male, female and one offspring feeding and preening together, getting ready for their long spring migration flight to northeast Europe. The youngsters were following their parents wherever they went looking for food, consisting of mainly unharvested maize seed heads and insects etc. When the time comes in February/March, the young birds follow their parents on migration towards Scandinavia and the Baltic states for the next breeding season. We watched a chevron of 35 cranes doing just that. During migration young birds separate from their parents and become independent, or get chased off when the parents start nesting. However, young cranes do not breed for several years, but still migrate to find sufficient food and, eventually, a mate and a nesting site.
In contrast to cranes, a cuckoo never knows it’s true parents, but still knows how to migrate and where and when to move. Not only that, but they also know to specialise in eating hairy caterpillars, a food that their surrogate parents never fed to them! All cuckoos are raised by surrogate parents whose nest has been used by a female cuckoo to lay a solitary egg in. Female cuckoos can lay from 12 to 22 eggs per year, each in a separate nest built by another bird species such as a reed warbler or meadow pipit for example. By the time the egg hatches, the adult cuckoos have left the area and will probably be migrating back to Africa. So, the nestling cuckoo will probably never even hear its parents calls, but will still know how to make those calls next spring. It is only the male that makes the familiar cuckoo call. Also, later in the year, the baby cuckoo will know exactly how to get to Africa for the winter without being taught how to get there by any other bird.
Herein lies the mystery of how much in animal behaviour is nurture and how much is inherited natural behaviour that can be described as some kind of genetic memory? Also, do we have any of this?
February 2020
One of the most puzzling biological things to me is the bizarre variation in the longevity of individual animals. We humans regularly live to 70 years these days, and often much longer such as the dancer recently featured on the news who was 98 and still winning dancing competitions. However, our dogs (genetically, tame wolves) only live to about 14 years, but seem to have healthy lives. Tortoises regularly exceed 100 years before dying, but adult mayflies only live for one day, and do not even have mouths or any other means of eating or securing energy. Herring gulls and other seabirds frequently live longer than 30 years, but blue tits are lucky to make it to one year. Slow worms can also live to 30 years or more and breed for most of those years, but pacific salmon all die after their first attempt at breeding.
Why is there so much variation in the length of time an organism can live. A yew tree such as the one in the cemetery of St Margaret’s Church in Buxted park can live to excess of 3,000 years old and produce hundreds of seeds every year if it is a female, but if you plant a grain of wheat, it will grow and produce about 22 seeds per head and 5 heads (110 seeds) per plant which will die in less than one year.
We all hope to live as long as possible and have a productive life, but why don’t all organisms try to live as long as possible, some clearly do, but others are programmed to die after a very short time. The pyramid of numbers in the trophic levels within an ecosystem makes a fascinating study. For example, I have been studying blue tits recently, and I found that the caterpillars of several moth species can almost completely defoliate (eat all the leaves) of a mighty 300-year-old oak between April and June. However, one family of blue tits can consume up to 1000 caterpillars on a single day for 18-22 days before the young birds leave the nest, they will carry on eating them after that as well. However, one family of sparrow hawks can consume the equivalent of 40 blue tits per day for 24-30 days in the nest before fledging.
The perpetuation of life on planet earth depends on the rapid reproduction of many organisms and consumption of others to support a complex ecosystem and the beautiful diversity of life that we all see.
January 2020
The science of Ecology is one of the newest academic disciplines taught at Universities, and did not really exist until about the 1950s. Prior to that, we had nature study, the sort of thing written about by the Reverend Gilbert White in the Natural History of Selbourne published in 1788-9. Prior to that we also had taxonomy (classification of living organisms) in the form of a book called Systema Naturae written by Carl Linnaeus and published in 1735. Later, we also had The Origin of Species written by Charles Darwin and published in 1859. However, most of this was natural history, and most of the animals that were studied were actually shot dead by the people writing about them. The plants were collected and dried and displayed in herbaria and the animals in natural history museums that also contained collections of pinned dead insects. Killing things was excusable and seen as sport.
During the 1950s and 60s wildflower and bird guidebooks started to appear. Then with television came programmes such as ‘Look’ with Peter Scott (son of Captain Scott of the Antarctic fame). We also had Johnny Morris at Bristol Zoo as a keeper and Desmond Morris with Zoo Time from 1956 and through the 1960s. Meanwhile, schools and universities were teaching Biology along with Physics, Chemistry and Geography, but the subject of Ecology never really emerged on its own until about the early 1970s. Ecology comes from the Greek words ‘oikos logos’ which mean ‘home study’. So, the science is the study of the ‘homes’ of plants, animals and other organisms such as fungi, bacteria, algae, slime moulds viruses etc. During this time, new kinds of books began to appear such as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring which tells of a terrible world resulting from the over-use of pesticides resulting in the loss of all song-birds – hence ‘Silent Spring’. This book motivated biologists to start looking at the human (anthropogenic) effects of our activities on the natural world around us. Not only that, but we started studying the effects of one organism on another and produced the term ‘balance of nature’. We looked at the water and carbon cycle, trophic cascades and such things as density dependent mortality. Suddenly we had a mature science and just in time too, because if we did not, we would have run into the seriousness of human activity effects on the planet’s ecosystems completely blind.