By Martyn Stenning
December 2022
Autumn and early winter has been exceptionally mild this year, with many meteorological records broken, e.g., the warmest Remembrance Day on record. We are still seeing insects such as butterflies, bees, ladybirds and flies well into November. Also, many trees and other plants are flowering when they should be dormant. We have a fine display of roses in our Uckfield garden. I have also seen fruit trees with just a few blossom flowers out as if their metabolic pathways are responding as if it is spring. Grass is certainly still growing. It is tempting to say, “isn’t this climate change lovely!” However, we had a flood in Uckfield last week and several homes and other properties were flooded and damaged. Nature is showing signs of disruption, notably delays in migratory birds flying south and green leaves persisting for longer.
The wonderful thing is that nature will adapt, and even lend a hand to us humans as we attempt to reverse the changes we see. Green leaves for longer means that more carbon dioxide will be absorbed and lovely oxygen released by the plants. More insects will survive in temperate climates and be food for the birds and other animals that eat them. Excessive rain will ensure that rivers are flowing again and reservoirs will be filling. However, these changes will be painful for many people and other organisms in the front line of these changes. These front lines are mainly in both the tropics and in the polar regions, north and south.
Drought will lead to the evolution of resilient adaptations such as the ability to aestivate. This word is derived from the Latin word aestas (summer). It is similar to hibernation (hibernus – winter). Both are animal strategies to survive extreme climatic conditions. Perhaps the most commonly seen aestivating animals are snails during hot summers. Other invertebrates that do it include beetles, crabs and mosquitos. However, there are vertebrates also that aestivate, including frogs, toads, tortoises and salamanders, even a type of lemur and hedgehog do it. The converse is that fewer animals will have to hibernate. In England, we are seeing dormice remaining active for longer and even breeding well into November. We also expect to see frogs, toads and other hibernating animals emerging and breeding earlier in the spring.
November 2022
The body of Saint James, Son of Zebedee and Apostle of Jesus of Nazareth, lies in a tomb in NW Spain that is visited by countless thousands of pilgrims every year. Traditionally, folk from all over Europe and beyond have had the urge to step out of their home, lock the door and walk independently to this tomb. Many have found the experience therapeutic. My wife Vivien and I are just 2 of them. On 27th April 2019 we walked c. 1100 km from our Bergerie Landaise in France.
54 days later we arrived in Santiago de Compostela on 19th June. One of the amazing features of the walk was seeing, first-hand, the natural world that we encountered along the way. Our departure date coincided with the beginning of the flowering season for many species of orchids and other spring flowers including wild tulips. We first walked through the largest managed forest in Europe, namely the Forêt de Landes de Gascogne. On leaving this forest, we were soon in the foothills of the Pyrenees, the mountain range dividing France from Spain. There was nowhere to go but up, and despite it being May by then, we encountered distinctly wintery weather at the highest points, including small amounts of ground snow. Vultures and bizarre alpine flowers reminded us that we were close to nature. The frequent cold rain and wind were indeed very close natural companions but made the drama real. The descent into Spain, devoid of border posts, brought us back to the sunny joys of May in Spain and many species of flowers never seen before or since.
The walk across northern Spain was a carousel of mountains and valleys with a large high plateau called The Meseta in the middle. The wildlife was fascinating at this time with many birds considered rare in England seen regularly there such as white storks breeding on roof-tops, corn buntings calling from nearly every bush encountered, nightingales in every woodland copse singing night and day. Quail could be heard also.
During daylight hours of November 26th & 27th an exhibition of paintings by Vivien inspired by this walk will be displayed in Framfield Parish Church, including a travelogue talk on Saturday 27th at 14:00 h. Please join us at this tranquil Sussex spot to explore our adventure on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Also known as “The Way”.
October 2022
It is odd that September (current month as I write) actually means seventh month and October actually means eighth month (also, November and December - 9th and 10th months). This is due to odd changes in month names going back many centuries. September is also the month of the autumn equinox which occurs at 02:03 h on 23rd September this year. After this date, daylight time is shorter than darkness time until Monday 20th March 2023, the spring equinox.
September and October is the time when nature makes many changes in preparation for the cool duller days of winter. Birds conclude their post-breeding season moult and so have a new plumage of feathers. Mammals also produce a thicker pelt of fur. Some, like some stoats and mountain hares, actually change colour and become white if they live in colder, higher altitudes and latitudes. Large numbers of birds migrate to warmer locations. Reptiles, amphibians and many insects go into hibernation. Deciduous plants lose their leaves and become dormant above ground.
All these are adaptations to seasonal changes in our part of the world where the climate is temperate or sub-arctic. Our Zoogeographical region is called the Palearctic, which is the largest of the 8 biogeographic regions of the Earth. This extends east from Iberia to Japan and north from North Africa to Svalbard (Spitzbergen) which is north of Norway.
Generally, the closer to the sea we are - the milder the winters, as the sea water is slower to cool down than the land. In Britain, the Atlantic conveyer or Gulf Stream brings warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to our islands, keeping our coastal regions milder than inland. This current of warm water also brings countless millions of elvers (young eels) from the Sargasso Sea which extends west from Bermuda to the mid-North Atlantic Ocean. These elvers have hatched from billions of eggs laid by adult eels that have spent many years living and growing in British fresh-water habitats including Hempstead Meadows and Lake Wood nature reserves in Uckfield. These refuges and our surrounding countryside must be conserved for these and other often unseen but vital species of plants and animals that live along-side us often without us knowing it.
September 2022
The climate change emergency we are experiencing is a bit of a paradox. We are currently experiencing a drought in many places around the world. However, the truth is that with the high temperatures, more surface water from planet Earth has evaporated and is suspended within the atmosphere above our heads and around us, and I mean billions of tons of water! So, why does it not fall as rain? The answer is – that it does, but only when the atmospheric conditions allow it. The Met Office say “The Earth's atmosphere exerts pressure on the surface. Pressure is measured in hectoPascals (hPa), also called millibars. Areas of high and low pressure are caused by ascending and descending air. As air warms it ascends, leading to low pressure at the surface. As air cools it descends, leading to high pressure at the surface. In general, low pressure leads to unsettled weather conditions and high pressure leads to settled weather conditions.” The strength of these conditions is governed by solar energy.
The problem now is that when it does rain, more of it falls than it has in the past and this causes floods. All of this is because greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide and methane are trapping heat energy within the global atmosphere. So, the average temperature of the planet surface is rising leading to more extreme conditions, namely, more heat and more rain. There is also likely to be stronger wind. Such as in 1987.
So, what does this mean for nature (the biosphere)? These factors, heat, floods and strong wind act as selective forces. Those animals and plants etc not coping, will become victims, and those that are able to cope with the conditions, will survive to breed. In the long term, this will lead to new species evolving on the planet. A process that takes many centuries. It was climate change due to a meteor that did for the dinosaurs.
What does this mean for humans? Well, if we are causing these changes by burning fossil fuels, our conscience should induce us to reverse the trend, because this natural selection will differentiate the survivors from the victims. In France, 15,000 people died of heat related causes in the very hot summer of 2003. Also, I am seeing animals in France now that books published in 1999 say should be further south. The one thing that is constant in nature is change. We surely must stop burning fossil fuels.
August 2022
It is early July as I write, and Uckfield is full of fledged birds hungrily looking for food. Now is a good time to put out those bird feeders to help them succeed in the competition for food. I always advise against using peanuts because these can choke and kill nestling birds. However, I do use sunflower hearts which are ideal and popular with many species of birds, and can still be purchased. They can be pricy but it is worth it.
Birds visiting my ‘squirrel buster’ RSPB feeder includes nuthatches, blue, great and coal tits, greenfinches, goldfinches, robins, house sparrows, great spotted woodpeckers. Blackbirds, song thrushes, dunnocks, collared doves and wood pigeons pick up crumbs on the ground dropped by other birds. There are more resident birds at this time of the year in Britain than at any other time because of all the fledglings, but their numbers are regulated by food abundance, and will decline.
There has been a dramatic decline in the numbers of insects in Britain recently, I admit that I do not have the precise answer as to why. Even many predominantly seed eating birds require insects when raising their young, so this is very worrying. Possibilities include the overuse of insecticides, climate change, aerial pollution and disease. I monitor 46 blue tit nest-boxes in Lake Wood every year, and I am pleased to say that 36 boxes were used by pairs of blue tits to breed in. However, many boxes had one or more dead chicks left in the nest which indicates that the parent birds had difficulty in feeding all of the nestlings, leading to brood reduction. Blue tits feeding nestlings require an abundance of moth caterpillars that in turn feed on oak tree leaves. They often lay an extraordinary number of eggs. The largest clutch that I have recorded in Lake Wood is 14 eggs. They lay one egg per day for 14 days. However, they can start incubating those eggs at any time during those days such that eggs laid after incubation start hatching later than the rest that were laid before incubation started. The consequence is that late hatched nestlings are smaller than the others, and are sacrificed if food is scarce.
All we can do is try to care for all levels in the ecosystem so that we fit in with, rather than dominate, the wildlife that shares our planet with us.
July 2022
As in the plant world, there are many forms of succession among animals. We often hear about the pyramid of numbers. The green world of plants supports a myriad of insects, such as aphids, grasshoppers and caterpillars. Their numbers go into the quadrillions on the planet. These in turn are eaten by predatory invertebrates such as ladybirds, wasps, spiders, and also vertebrates such as insectivorous amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. All invertebrates that fly are prey for animals that never land to feed such as dragonflies, swifts and bats. These in turn are food for predatory birds such as falcons which can be considered as top predators at the peak of this pyramid whose numbers are normally regulated by by food abundance. However, disease and sometimes poisoning or shooting of raptors by humans can disrupt this regulation.
It is generally believed that animal numbers are naturally controlled by food abundance and not by predators. However, if predators are removed by artificial human tactics, the prey organisms can experience a population explosion such as can occur if too many foxes are hunted, resulting in an abundance of rabbits. This in turn results in rabbits damaging farmers food crops, and also important species rich plant communities such as the chalk grassland of our own South Downs National Park. This is called a trophic (feeding) cascade which runs through and disrupts different levels of the pyramid of numbers.
A balanced ecosystem is one where predators and prey live along-side each other, just as humans live alongside chickens, sheep, pigs or cattle. The lions of the Serengeti in Africa live alongside abundant antelope and only eat when hungry, and then usually take weakened individuals that are easy to catch. In my garden, grass snakes live alongside the frogs that they eat, which mainly feed on insects and reproduce in my pond.
In Britain, we do not have sufficient balanced ecosystems to maintain our indigenous biodiversity. Habitat loss and degradation due to over exploitation for recreation or commercial gain disrupts too many components of our pyramids of numbers. We can contribute to reversing this trend by campaigning, or managing, our own local environments.
June 2022
Nothing is permanent in nature. Even the surface of the planet is forever moving and changing with tectonic plate movements, usually too small to notice. A forest is a climax community and if humans allow it, satellite images of forest will show no apparent change over a human lifetime. However, most trees have an expected life span. Birches live for about 60 years, beech for about 300, oaks for about 600 and yews over 1,000.
When an old tree dies and falls over, it forms a clearing. Gradually, it will rot away and let the sunlight reach the floor. From that time, there is a period of succession as the ground becomes recolonised. The same happens within an abandoned field. Incidentally, the word field is derived from ‘a felled area of forest’. On bare ground, the first visible organisms are the herbs, usually grasses and other seedlings. Second come the larger plants such as nettles and brambles, following on from that come the woody saplings of shrubs and small trees such as heather, gorse, hawthorn and elder. All these have a low maximum height so that eventually birch, beech, oak, yew and others can push through to the light and out-shade everything below that has gone before.
If the canopy of the forest is not completely closed, parts of these layers can persist, and it is interesting to see how this succession happens every year concerning the leafing and flowering in some woodlands. In a balanced ancient woodland, first the wood anemone leaves appear followed by their white flowers as the bluebell leaves push through and then flower, taking over from the anemones. After that, the hawthorn leaves and May blossom break bud with the honeysuckle and eventually the leaves in the giant trees burst and grow to form a shadowing canopy resulting in a decayed forest floor. The insects follow this succession and pollinate the flowers in all these plants including the trees, which are sometimes also wind pollinated, and eventually form seeds through the summer and autumn. They drop their seeds, then (if deciduous) their leaves and the cycle starts again. Everything green in the plant world is a solar panel, converting carbon dioxide into oxygen and organic material. It is lovely to see the breeze gently coaxing the mature fresh green leaves during May as I write these notes.
May 2022
As I write in April, I am in France and, surprisingly, dawn temperatures are several degrees below freezing. We are here to manage our project of experiencing rural living in France and its natural history. Our accommodation is a bergerie Landaise. This is a 300 year old shepherds dwelling surrounded by fields and trees. We live here with wildlife that you could expect in any good French nature reserve, including 3 species of owls (tawny, barn and little), a rare black-shouldered kite, stonechats, cirl buntings, European cranes flying over on migration, the occasional brown hare visiting our field, regular visits from the local stone marten (a kind of cat-sized weasel). We constantly have wall lizards in and around the house, and occasionally see our resident giant green lizard called Lacerta viridis.
One of my main jobs is to manage the grassland around the dwelling such that there is a diversity of habitats. To this end we mow some of the herbage and let large patches rewild to support the many insects that use the wildflowers that like to grow tall such as black knapweed and ox-eye daisy. The insects that we have here include praying mantids, and a range of large bush crickets and other singing insects that stridulate (sing) all night during the summer. Butterflies such as swallowtails and scarce swallowtails fly in the garden on warm days and use the wild fennel plants to lay their eggs on and feed the hatching caterpillars.
We are regularly visited by the local western whip snake which is about 1 metre long and sometimes shelters in the house. We had a peacock butterfly hibernating in our bedroom for the winter hanging underneath a large oak beam. In 2019, a colony of honeybees moved into the attic but were apparently wiped out by hornets (Asian and European) leaving 14 kilos of honey and useful beeswax for us to harvest. We also get visits from green patterned marbled newts and hear the tree frogs croaking.
Currently, as mentioned, we are experiencing an unusually cold spell, and most of the wild animals are still and silent. However, the lizards occasionally emerge to warm up when the sun shines. We have also seen carpenter bees collecting nectar from the few flowers in bloom.
April 2022
As I write in March, Ukraine is being invaded by the Russian army and we are all wondering where it will lead. Many people have already been killed, which will mean that many other living things (animals, plants etc) will also have been destroyed. I am sure we all share a sense of outrage at this event and hope that it will all be resolved peacefully as soon as possible. This invasion is a disaster for humans, and also an anthropogenic catastrophe for the affected environment and all that it contains. Again, we humans are destroying the life support system upon which all life depends.
However, depressing as these thoughts are, there is one activity that I find therapeutic in these circumstances, and that is experiencing the natural world. For example, I find watching the birds in my garden absorbing; the sunshine and fresh air heralding the developing spring is uplifting.
I had a request today to lead a guided nature walk to raise money for refugees. I think linking the natural world to a human tragedy can be a positive thing. It is an extension of recent calls to reverse climate change by managing our daily lives accordingly. Humans are part of the global life community, and as such we have a responsibility as a species to keep life sustainable for all organisms. The answer is careful management. The majority of the non-Russian world is striving to manage the situation in Ukraine against a background of managing COVID-19 and global warming. This is good and right and we can all do our bit.
Nature shows us how to be sustainable and manage waste, generate oxygen, reduce carbon dioxide, nurture regeneration and fit in with the environment. Dung beetles remove animal faeces, green leaves remove carbon dioxide and generate oxygen, flowers bloom to attract bees which pollinate them to make new seeds, fruit and honey. Soft refreshing rain keeps all life watered so that the plants and animals can feed us. Let us try to be positive and help each other to refrain from making the mistakes of the past which destroyed life. Let us work together to heal the wounds sustained in the natural and human world, such that life can regenerate like an ancient English woodland in the springtime!
March 2022
Continuing with the theme of seasonal change in the natural world, Let’s talk Spring (Printemps in French)! Time for migration of some animals, emergence from hibernation of others, and the springing up of annual flowering plants and the opening of leaves on deciduous trees.
Incidentally, we humans are natural also and respond to seasonal change. Perhaps the first thing we experience, as the days lengthen, is the singing of birds and the emergence of plants, such as winter heliotrope, snowdrop, crocus and daffodil. Hazel catkins also expand during January and February releasing pollen to donate to the tiny red hazel female flowers which also appear. The sea trout migrate up the rivers such as the Ouse and Uck during these months while the flow is good, in order to spawn among the gravel in the head-waters. Elvers (baby eels) too will be heading for Britain in large numbers to grow in our ditches and streams. Overhead, migrating birds such as chiffchaffs and blackcaps normally arrive in March. Our resident birds start to prospect possible nesting places, and early breeders such as mistle thrushes, barn owls and blackbirds may even start nesting and laying eggs in February and March.
The first insects that you might see could be bumble bees which can start flying when the temperature is about 8°C. Most other insects require at least 10°C. Maybe the first butterfly to emerge is the beautiful yellow brimstone that lays its eggs on the underside of buckthorn leaves, or the orange tip butterfly which uses ladies smock (milkmaids) plants. Another sign of spring is the dancing of gnats in quiet. still, warmer evenings during February and March. If you are a gardener you may see more earthworms and slugs as the days and nights warm up. You may also see emerging bats flying around the house lights in the evenings trying to catch the early flying moths as both animals emerge from hibernation.
As days lengthen, herbs, shrubs and trees start to break bud. Nature has ordered a rigid succession of leaf emergence First it is ground flora such as arum, ramsons, wood anemone and bluebell leaves emerging. Then the shrubs such as hawthorn, and climbers like honeysuckle. Finally canopy trees such as oak, along with the insect eggs laid on twigs producing caterpillars to eat the oak leaves and feed the nestling birds.
February 2022
For many years now, I have listened for territorial singing by male blue tits during Autumn. I cannot recall hearing it at all before 21st December, but I will continue to listen. However, every year I do listen for blue tit song on the days leading up to the winter solstice (shortest day c. 21st December), and once again, this year, I did not hear any blue tit song until 22nd December. This is amazing as there is apparently indistinguishable difference in day-length between the 2 days. The definition of solstice is “the time or date (twice each year) at which the sun reaches its maximum or minimum declination, marked by the longest and shortest days”. Is it conceivable that blue tits can discern this? However, from that date onwards, blue tits are working towards a rigidly defined breeding season. Nest-building starts during March at about the equinox and fledging occurs in June at about the summer solstice. Incidentally, the definition of declination is “the angular distance of a point north or south of the celestial equator.” In other words, blue tits are apparently aware of minute daily changes in how low or high the sun gets above the horizon, and not necessarily length of the day. The day after the winter solstice day, the sun gets slightly higher at mid-day than it did the previous day for the first time in most blue tit lives. Most blue tits live less than one year. Blue tit survival may be linked to intelligence.
For their size, blue tits are remarkably intelligent, able to learn very quickly. I acquired a new bird feeder recently, consisting of a Perspex hollow ball with two large holes in each side and a metal perch sitting just below those holes. The ball must be attached to a window with a rubber sticker and part-filled with bird food (sunflower hearts). I set this up, and within a day, only one bird species had learned how to use it. Yes, a blue tit. Since then, the only other species that has learned is a robin. We have had some marvellous views of both species recently.
In 1985, the BBC ran an experiment to find the “Bird Brain of Britain”. Yes, this was won by a blue tit. You can still watch this film on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JB6D2xRutA . You will also see other species of bird challenging for this title. It is fascinating what you can discover by simply spending time watching and engaging with nature.
January 2022
“In the bleak mid-winter frosty wind made moan”. The poet Christina Rosetti (1830 – 1894) wrote these words accurately describing this challenging time of year. All life is challenged by winter, but most living forms have adaptations that allow them to survive the cold. Cold blooded (poikilothermic) animals hibernate meaning they put their lives on hold and go into torpor. Many mammals grow a thicker coat of hair/fur/wool. Many birds migrate from cold regions where food becomes scarce, and fly to warmer places where food is more abundant. The general idea is to adapt and survive.
Plants have also adapted to live in regions where their growth and reproduction is optimal. If you plant a tropical plant in your garden, it will probably die when the frosts come. Likewise, if you try planting bluebells in a tropical country, they will probably die of heat exhaustion.
Badgers have adapted their reproductive behaviour to fit in with the annual cycle of weather in Britain. They make their maternity nests in the late summer or early autumn when the weather is still quite mild. Badgers do not hibernate, but they feed up on earth worms, frogs and other small animals, nuts and fruit during the autumn time of plenty and their activity is reduced during the cold months. Badgers can mate at any time of the year, but the fertile embryos delay implantation in the womb until December, then after about 49 days of embryo development, the babies are usually born underground during mid-February, often from multiple fathers as they tend to be promiscuous all year round. Litters can be from 2 – 6 young. The babies emerge from the sett during the night after about 8 weeks (c. mid-April) of being fed on their mother’s milk below ground. By this time, cold weather is less likely and days are getting longer and food more abundant. The female may continue to suckle the cubs for several weeks beyond then, but they will be learning about finding food for themselves during these outings. This way, young badgers have all spring and summer to feed up, grow and mature.
Living in a seasonal habitat is always going to be challenging, but in the tropics, seasons are less well defined by daylength and temperature, they are more defined by the amount of rainfall they get.