It wouldn’t be Autumn in our natural history calendar without plenty of gazing at a very striking, unmistakable toadstool. To sweeten the wistful days of Summer’s end, fungi sprout up around rotting wood, piles of bark chip and deep beds of leaf litter. Autumn treats us to colour and intrigue before the long cold nights of winter roll in. We soak these fruitful days of colour and pattern up like hornets nectaring on mid-Autumn ivy.

I first encountered a magpie inkcap several years ago whilst working in a local orchard, and when I showed my amateurish photograph to Paul, he was rather intrigued. It whetted his appetite to find some himself. We have since spent the past few Autumns finding the best specimens of this spectacular fungus that we can, and admiring their intriguing beauty.

What fascinates us about this particular species is its almost ghostly character. It rises from beech litter in the form of a pale bulb, and it grows at such a fast rate that it is grown and then gone within the space of a couple of days, like a spectral statue. Indeed, its transformation is so rapid that with extreme patience, one could watch it morph from fresh toadstool to gloopy mess within a day. I haven’t yet had the patience (or time?) to do this. But I fancy that an hour-by-hour photography session might be worthwhile to showcase the shortness of its fruiting lifespan.

The inkcap fungi are the genus Coprinus, and they take their English name from the characteristic messy dissolving of the cap. The cap begins to ‘melt’ from the outer edge inwards, until the stem of the fungus is left with just an inky black goo dripping from it. In times gone by, this substance was indeed used for writing ink.

The fabulous Warburg Nature Reserve, home to around 900 species of fungi, is where you’re almost guaranteed to find magpie inkcaps every year, in varying number. The exquisite chalk downland-hugging beech woodland which makes up a large portion of this reserve, provides the perfect conditions for this curious fungus. Often, several specimens are found in a small area; some burgeoning bulbs nestled in the litter layer, some stood proud of the beech mast with pied umbrellas opening, some with caps flattened, and others just stalks with gloopy ‘ink’ dribbling down.

They are a spectacular species, possibly our favourite. Enjoy them whilst they’re up, and if you have the time and the patience, watch their gooey transformation.

Several years ago, we accidentally started a tradition.

Since 2012, we’d been gradually working our way around the country spotting all the British species of butterfly. This is by no means something new; there’s even a book written which chronicles one person’s quest across Britain to see each one.

In our case however, it sparked an obsession which would bring us back to the Isle of Wight each May/June, and draw us deep into the intimate world of butterfly behaviour; namely that of the Glanville fritillary. This marmalade, black and white butterfly captivated Paul in particular. Personally I can’t say the Glanville is one of my top three favourite butterflies in terms of beauty alone – small blues, wood whites and purple emperors have that prestige.

However, the story of the Glanville fritillary – and the stories of people intertwined with this little orange insect’s tale – are somewhat compelling. And I fell in love with the dramatic chalk coastal landscape of the Glanville’s last natural stronghold. The Isle of Wight embraced me with its fascinating botany and rockpools brimming with fascinating finds.

And so the Glanville became symbolic to me, even though it’s not my favourite insect. It became so, because such was Paul’s love of the butterfly, that we return each year to study them, photograph them, and indulge my other natural history interests. The Glanville’s flight period coincides with the flowering periods of many rare plants of interest, so the annual pilgrimage has become rather a packed and much looked-forward-to natural history trip crammed into the space of usually two days. In our many hours of watching this beast, we’ve learnt many things, and learnt many wonderful stories over the course of the past few years.

The Glanville fritillary (Melittea cinxia) is named after the tragic Lady Eleanor Glanville. Eleanor was one of very few female entomologists born in the 17th century, and as such, she was viewed with disdain and suspicion – women with such avid interests in wild creatures must surely have been dark sorceresses, so people thought. Eleanor had a particular fondness for butterflies. But the Scientific Revolution was a man’s world. Men were the gleaners of scientific knowledge, collectors of insects, writers of books. And women were domestic beings. Those who sought intellectual pursuits, particularly those of biology, were not only treated with deep suspicion, but scorn and ridicule. Lady Glanville’s field activities of searching the hedgerows and meadows for insects would have been looked upon as a sort of madness, uncouth and deeply shameful.

In 1690, she was widowed. Being from a wealthy background, she quickly married again, but her new husband was violent and the marriage proved traumatic for Eleanor. When the marriage finally dissolved, her estranged husband sought to rob Eleanor of her estate, and and he even turned Eleanor’s first child – a son named Forest – against her. When Eleanor died in 1709, there was much battling over her will. Forest successfully contested the will, on the wrongful basis that she was not sound of mind. We now look back at Eleanor as a victim of great injustice and, certainly a victim of the times she lived in. She was just a highly intelligent woman with a scientific, enquiring mind who loved the natural world; what could possibly be wrong or mad about that?

Perhaps we now feel somewhat vindicated on Eleanor Glanville’s behalf,  when we hear her story and know that this exquisite marmalade butterfly is named after her. She did after all discover the butterfly, in Lincolnshire. As such, its name was the “Lincolnshire fritillary”  prior to the insect being later renamed in her honour. I fancy that she would feel immensely proud of the butterfly’s new vernacular.

When we think of the fact the butterfly’s range extended as far as Lincolnshire,  it tells us of how far its UK range has receded. Original populations of Eleanor’s butterfly were found across England as far north as Lincolnshire, on suitable areas of habitat; open grassland with ample bare disturbed ground with an abundance of ribwort plantain (the butterfly’s main larval foodplant). Ribwort plantain is a common, ubiquitous plant, so  the reasons for the decline of the species isn’t a simple case of disappearance of foodplant; it is far more complex and the reasons behind the steep and worrying decline are the subject of much study. Butterflies are highly sensitive to climate conditions, so the reasons are likely linked to climate change in conjunction with increasing habitat fragmentation and shrinkage; particularly that of warm, south facing chalk downland with disturbed ground where ribwort plantain also grows. This combination of factors is perhaps the catalyst.

Whatever the specifics of the reasons for the vanishing of the Glanville, what we do know is that it is on the edge of its geographical range, in the UK. Restricted to the south coast of Isle of Wight, this is the last place where it can be found naturally. Deliberate, unauthorised reintroductions have had mixed success in scattered locations in Southern England. And colonies appear and disappear on the Hampshire mainland from time to time. It is one of the UK’s rarest and most threatened species of butterfly.

The habitat conditions on its last remaining stronghold appear to be maintained largely by the processes of coastal erosion and disturbance on the soft maritime cliffs and chines. These environmental processes are classic of this part of the UK. The warm, south facing soft-stoned chines, undercliffs and downs of the Isle of Wight are battered by the elements and undergo repeated disturbance, exposing bare ground that warms in the sun and sprouts young ribwort plantain by the bucket load – just what the Glanville needs. By the same token however, the butterfly is vulnerable. Violent storms and landslips can wipe out larval webs, and areas of ribwort plantain laiden with eggs can be washed away into the sea. Sudden spells of prolonged, cold, rainy weather can greatly hamper the Glanville’s opportunity to mate and lay eggs – after all, the adult butterfly only has a week or two (it’s adult lifespan) to make hay while the sun – literally – shines.

So you could say that the Glanville lives on somewhat of a precipice. I have to say, however, that in our years of watching the butterflies, and in talking to enthusiasts about them, we’ve learnt some absolutely fascinating things about the resilience of this butterfly on the edge, and how they have adapted to this precarious existence.

A local lepidopterist we spoke to, discovered that caterpillars of the Glanville take refuge in the safety of tiny crevices and holes in stones and pebbles; what an amazingly fine detail of nature to witness. Furthermore, the eggs of the Glanville fritillary are surprisingly tolerant of saline conditions, meaning they can withstand a degree of spray from waves, in stormy times (provided they aren’t washed away completely into the sea, I suppose..)

And so, the Glanville fritillary has its boom years, and its bust years. In their years of plenty on the Isle of Wight, they can be counted in the hundreds. In other years, their low numbers have lepidopterists worrying about localised extinctions. Butterfly enthusiasts and naturalists flock to the Isle of Wight each May/June in the hope of spotting and photographing this rare gem. In the warm sunshine of the middle of the day, they can be frustrating butterflies to photograph, though. They are busy and pugnacious insects, quick to battle with so much as a fly that dares to buzz too close. On hatching, they set about their business of nectaring, mating and (in the female’s case) egg laying, as soon as their intricately patterned wings are inflated. If you live for no more than a couple of weeks, you’d better get cracking with business, so there’s little time to sit still in the daytime.

This can prove frustrating for the observer or photographer. This frenetic existence is busy and tiring to watch! But we soon realised that we could enter into a more sedate and relaxing side of the life of this fast living creature, by venturing out into its world in the evening – something we hadn’t thought of before, and something we’re not sure many other butterfly enthusiasts do.

Watching grassland butterflies by evening is a world away from the busy, bright buzz of the day. It’s an ethereal, magical and intimate natural history experience. When we head down into the chines of a late May evening, the beaches are quiet, the tourists have headed back to their pubs and hotels, and we feel as though there’s just ourselves with our lepidopteran subjects and the sounds of the waves lapping at the shore. The pugnacious, bright-orange winged fritillaries of the earlier sunshine are now in what we believe is their most beautiful state – at peaceful roost. Dotted on every other grass head, is a ‘sleeping’ Glanville or two, wings closed, perfectly showcasing the most beautiful underwing of any British butterfly. It’s a crazy-paving style, dotted affair of magnolia, orange, white and black; each individual’s exact pattern is unique, like our fingerprints. Sometimes the black lines are broken, and sometimes the whites more stained with yellow. When you happen upon a patch of ‘sleeping’ Glanvilles in abundance, it’s a glorious spectacle.

Picture the dramatic chine spattered with soft pink thrift, the sun setting over the turquoise sea, and dozens of postage-stamp sized butterflies folded up to roost on the grass stems. This year one evening, I sat down to relax beside the footpath and I began to lose count of them. When they’re at rest like this, you can get up close and personal. You can see every scale and hair, the fluffy fringes on the wings, the banded antennae. The flighty, restless creature of the daytime sun is now face to face with you, unflinching, though it seemed so wary of you earlier. You are surrounded by these pugnacious, tenacious butterflies on the edge, in their peaceful state.

Just be careful not to go off-piste and tread on the young plants of ribwort plantain on which the eggs have just been laid – the Glanville may be tough, but respect for wildlife is paramount and habitat disturbance is an easily avoided problem.

So what does the future hold for this butterfly on the edge, with its precarious existence and concerning conservation status in the UK? No one can really know, though there is much speculation. It seems that the butterfly can be relatively resilient in its final stronghold on the Isle of Wight, often bouncing back from its poorer years, withstanding occasional seemingly disastrous weather events, and colonising new patches of disturbed coast on the island from time to time. But climate change and other pressures could change all this in the future, as is the case with so many species. There is however one thing I can be sure of. In my lifetime I will see this Isle of Wight icon every May for as long as both it – and I – exist.

As Autumn loudens around me, and I notice the days shortening little by little, I find myself wistfully looking back on the highlights of Summer. I will long remember Summer 2018 as a time of wide eyed joy in nature. One May day on Exmoor this year especially encapsulates this. It would be remiss of me not to put this place into writing.

I actually fell in love with this rugged, dramatic place when I was nine. There is surely no happier place for a wildlife – fanatical nine year old than a place of crashing brooks, square miles of open moorland and towering oak woodland hangers. I even remember – at Dunkery Beacom – my first skylark, as it alighted next to our car with crest raised.

The love of the place never left. As an adult, I’ve been back a couple of times to revel in its wild beauty. Few places in England rival it.

On that May day this year, Paul picked me up around 2am, to make sure we’d be out and about on Exmoor for dawn. As sluggish as I am on an early morning, dawn is the golden hour and it is to be embraced as much as possible.

Horner Wood, a glorious place of ancient oak woodland dripping with ten thousand shades of green, was our first port of call. We always agree among the two of us, that southeastern woodlands – even those in Surrey – do not compare with western oak woodlands such as Horner. The beauty is ethereal and the wildlife is breath taking.

After a few short minutes, the magic started. A dipper feeding its baby. A bobbing, curtsying baby flashing white eyelids as it blinked, little wings quivering like a moth. Dippers are amazing little birds. They are in their element in the crashing, fast flowing streams and rivers of the west and north of the country. It seems like a perilous existence for a dainty looking little bird. But they can walk underwater, spending much of their day picking up freshwater invertebrates and larvae from the bottom of the water, using their stocky wings to hold themselves steady. They even nest right among the roaring rapids, the nest placed on generational sites of crevices in rocks and manmade structures like stone bridges.

We watched the parent-offspring duo flitting from rock to rock for some time. Mum/Dad would dive under to fetch food, whilst the plump baby perched quivering-winged and open-beaked. As the parent returned, the wing quivering and cheeping became frantic, until beak filled. And repeat.

Walking deeper into the wood, the classic songs of western oak woodland came into earshot. The abrupt see-sawing of the pied flycatcher, and the spiralling trill of the wood warbler. Wood warblers are a firm favourite of Paul’s. I knew we’d be spending some time watching these old friends, but the encounter we had with one little chap in particular is something I’ll never forget.

Locating a male holding territory right over the footpath, we spotted him. For the next half hour or so, it felt as if the little yellow and green songster was performing to us, with the rest of the world a million miles away. He sat feet above us, tilted his head back and poured his song out. We could see the feathers on his throat twitch with the power of his voice, and his slightly drooped primaries quiver with effort. Then he’d repeat and hover away, like an effortless moth, alighting on the next branch. We watched him repeat his route from tree to tree, whilst he chanted his melancholy whistles and powerful trill over and over. Sometimes he came so close to us it felt as though we could have reached out to stroke his lemony chest. For that time, we couldn’t tear ourselves away, stood silently, stock still, gazing at this little marvel. This tiny migrant bird, fresh from a winter on Africa, now filling the wood with his powerful voice. We like to think his beautiful song flight was not in vain, and his progeny themselves will land back in a western oak woodland in the UK next Spring.

After deciding to leave our citrus friend, we wandered further, locating several other wood warbler territories along the way. Pied flycatchers were becoming more visible now. These are another western oak woodland gem, and against the vivid greens of the wood, these black and white beauties are a sharp contrast. Their song is a sort of wonky sounding, altogether weaker affair than the wood warbler. It sounds almost an insufficient song for such a boldly marked bird.

In between watches of avian treasure, I scanned the damp woodland floor for flowers. Wood sorrel dotted mossy rocks like nodding angels, and cuckooflower formed delicate sprays by the crashing stream. Maidenhair spleenwort spilled over wet rocks. Meadow saxifrage – a pretty crucifer – was a new flower for me. With closed petals the flowerheads resembled little white globes.

The beauty of early mornings in places like Horner Wood is amplified by solitude. At dawn, very few other folk are around. If you get somewhere early without the sounds of other people’s footsteps and voices, the birds sound louder, and you can hear the early morning stirrings of the deer. By nine or ten am, the footpaths are now busy with walkers, dogs, horses and riders, and the dawn chorus has abated. And then it is time to move on.

A secondary thrill of a day’s natural history on Exmoor are the stunning landscapes you pass through as you go from place to place. It’s a non-stop treat for the eyes and soul Views like this are what we enjoyed en route to our next stop.

Exmoor is renowned for rare bats. We’d heard of a little old church tucked deep away beyond a deep valley, where one can see lesser horseshoe bats at roost. I reasoned with Paul that as we were on Exmoor, we must drop in to have a look. I’d dreamed of such a wildlife encounter for ages.

On arriving at the church, the image before us was indeed very evocative of slumbering bats at roost. This was a dark, rustic dwelling, accommodating perhaps a tiny remnant congregation. A few pews before a small altar. The bats likely outnumbered the churchgoers, I thought fancifully. The evidence of the bats was immediately noticeable. The red carpet of the church was thickly peppered with crumbly droppings.

In fact, various spots around the small interior were peppered with it. Even the altar itself. A little noticeboard dedicated to the bats was located near the imposing door. It detailed the legal protection of all bat species in the UK, the rarity of the bats that roosted in the church, and how the church has a duty to accommodate its chiropteran residents whilst still functioning as a place of worship. The impressive deposits were explained, with a wonderfully accepting air of “This is their home and we just have to work around the poo”.

It didn’t take long to see the famous residents.

“There they are”. Paul was craning his neck to stare up at the nave, where several sleeping lesser horseshoe bats dangled.

Peering through the binoculars, we could see their intricately structured faces and finely pointed ears. They were not only cute, but looked so cosy, hanging together up there. One appeared to turn almost 180 degrees back and forth, to our amusement. I could have stayed to watch them for hours. But our necks were soon tiring from staring up into the nave.

And more sights awaited, before heading for home.

We headed out onto the open moor, the realm of the wheatear and whinchat. These are two birds we often spot on migration in the southeast, but seeing them on territory – in song, in their element – is far more wondrous.

The wheatear is at home among rocks and stone walls. Not far from our parked car, we spotted one at a possible nest site, busy coming and going between a stone culvert and nearby clumps of heather. Their abrupt phrases of scratches and whistles are not something we are familiar with hearing in the southeast. It is a wonderfully evocative sound.

Whinchats favour the little valleys carved by fast flowing streams. They frequent the dense clumps of heather and scattered little bushes on the lower slopes. I don’t remember how many we saw, because they were such active little things. Each bird seemed to stay fairly close to its mate – almost appearing to follow one another as they flitted from place to place to glean insects from the heather. They’d hop down to ground for short spells and re materialise against their rugged backdrop, their chests blazing orange.

The day was now warm, and I cooled myself with dangled feet in the rushing streams that snaked through the valley bottoms. I hopped from rock to rock, surprised at how nimble I still am. I soaked in the songs and colours of the moorland birds. A day touring Exmoor is day of self restoration.

In around 1996, my mother introduced me to a wild animal that would, it turned out, be sort of pivotal and symbolic in my life.

I will never forget seeing it. A water vole. We watched a little log shaped animal with eyes and furry ears set high on its rounded head, skeeter across the pond where the ditch ended, and disappear up the bank a few metres in front of us. I was captivated by it, in this fleeting moment. It’s like a grainy photograph in my mind now, but I remember the words “water vole” from my mother, telling me what this curious little thing was.

Sunday afternoons were for walking in the local nature reserve where water voles have now sadly been extinct for some time. Playing chase, admiring the bluebells, listening to yellowhammers (not yet vanished from that little corner of England), spotting frogs and toads on the march. Having just slightly older parents than many of my peers had, meant I had parents who came from a wonderful generation where they had grown up a bit more in touch with wild animals and plants than later kids. As such, I was brought up with an awareness of nature that was protected and fostered by my mother in particular.

She taught me the wading birds we saw on the shores of our beloved Anglesey. “Oystercatcher”. “Curlew”. I could perfectly impersonate the bubbling, rising call. She scooped rockpool-dwelling creatures into buckets with me, showed me eels, and taught me to mind the jellyfish.

She was also a trained artist with brilliant field-sketching skills. Her work had been in exhibitions since she was only seventeen, and she has a degree in fine art. I’d sit beside her on the beach and try to field sketch too, wondering how she could so aptly capture the mood of the scene in front of us with just a few strokes of colour and perfectly placed lines. I felt impatient and envious.

She always took me to see C.F Tunnicliffe’s recreated studio in the Oriel Museum in Llangefni, and I was hooked. I would peer closely at the fine brushwork in his intricate studies. Wings open, primaries perfectly to scale, the serration in the swan’s bill perfectly drafted. I started drawing birds from a very young age, and birds became my first big obsession. I have since sold my own intricately drafted paintings of birds (and reptiles, butterflies and mammals), and I have even had my work exhibited in a top London Gallery. But I still haven’t the field sketching skills of Tunnicliffe I envied as a child. I returned to the museum again this year to look at his paintings, and peered once again at them, with hiraeth swelling in my blood.

I became a nature reserve ranger/warden by trade. After my pitifully lost, painful years as a teenager, I woke up again around twenty and realised what I wanted to do was devote my whole life unequivocally to wildlife, so I threw myself into it in every way I could. I had very little formal education but worked hard to prove myself through volunteering and spending hours in the field observing wildlife. Re-immersing myself in nature healed me and brought me back to earth, literally and figuratively. I slowly forged a career for myself that I could be proud of, and realised how purposeful my life could actually be.

Today – if I think about it – life seems to have gone in a circle. Water voles may have gone extinct from the little corner of England where I first set eyes on one as a six year old, but they thrive where I now work. I feel a passionate sense of custodianship (gwarchodaeth) over the voles and all the other wildlife that lives on the patch of Britain that my colleagues and I tirelessly look after. I monitor and maintain their habitat conditions, take ‘stock’ of all their numbers and collate annual data on them, train volunteers to survey them, and even take guests out in the 4×4 to learn about their lives, with a chance of spotting (or hearing) them.

When I was stood with my mum at the edge of that little pond in 1996, if someone – by some magical sort of foresight – had told me that in two decades’ time I would be paid to watch over these little animals amongst lots of other sorts, I suppose I’d have been a little bemused. I’ve been in love with the squidgy, ever-eating little rodents for most of my life since. To me, they symbolise, along with the yellowhammers, lapwings, and grey partridges, a deep feeling of sad loss and spark a fire in my belly. To think in my own lifetime – of not even thirty years – pockets of Britain have lost these wonders. They were there when I was small, and now they’re gone. It evokes the same feeling in me, as when I think of how sorely I miss Anglesey. It’s hiraeth. There is no direct, literal English translation from that word. It is a sort of aching longing for what was, for things that were the way they were, in a time gone by, which you feel like you can’t get back.

It is I suppose what drives me to do the work I love. It can be tiring, challenging, exhausting and even frustrating, but I simply don’t know what else I would want to do but work for nature. It is my duty to protect and preserve it, as it has preserved, well… me, really.

Nothing sums up early Autumn to me, more than a day at Dungeness. The great flat shingle promontory is speckled with late summer flowers and dense thickets hide resting passerines on migration, and the brambles are growing heavy with blackberries.

We’ve spent many a day down here at this time of year, back when we were – dare I say it – twitchers. And I use that term lightly in our case since we only ever went after certain favourite birds we really wanted to see, rather than tick off a list. Melodious warblers, Pallas’s warblers, Red necked phalaropes, white winged black terns, are among the avian treats we’ve enjoyed over the years. And of course there are the wrynecks. We still look for the wrynecks, and we still scan the numerous bushes for passing ring ouzels and maybe the odd whinchat.

If you’ve not yet visited the great shingle desert that is Dungeness – either as a naturalist like myself, or just as a sight-seer – make it a priority. When people arrive at this bizarre, flat, arid landscape for the first time, some fall in love with it’s quirkiness and weird beauty and some find it too stark and eerie. In my case, it was the former. I tend to be left cold by ‘flat’ places, but this little far corner of Kent is an exception. When I first came here I was charmed by the unique dry vistas dotted with strange dwellings with ramshackle rockery gardens, the lighthouse, the random often unidentifiable relics lying about the place. It sort of reminded me of a place you might see in an old American film, set in deepest rural Idaho or some such.

Furthermore, I was intrigued by the place’s unique natural history. Vegetated shingle is a rare and fragile habitat, with a great deal of specialist wildlife that relies upon it. I’ve barely even scratched the surface here so far, since I’ve not really even got started on the rare invertebrates that make Dungeness home. I had my mind on plants again today though. Since I decided I needed to improve my handle on botany for my own career development, I’ve sort of homed in on all things green. I was wondering what weird plants might be found here, as I had been reading up a little on the botanical value of vegetated shingle habitats.

Summer is on the wane but I knew there would still be things of interest in flower – enough to keep me amused while Paul foraged the bramble bushes for blackberries… and skulking birds. I’d done a scant bit of research on the botany of Dungeness, but didn’t have anything specific that I wanted to see in mind. I wanted to discover some surprises for myself on this occasion, and practise keying difficult plants in the field.

Owing to Dungeness’s dry, poor soil conditions, viper’s bugloss is absolutely abundant. I’ve never seen so much of the stuff growing – it can be found over the whole area in profusion. I also noticed wood sage, just about everywhere. I did note that most of it was quite ‘stunted’, almost in sort of dwarf form – perhaps owing to the harsh environment.

I found a pretty example of common dodder Cuscutum epithymum. This weird, tangled looking plant is hemi-parasitic on other plants – often gorse – of which there is plenty here. In some places you can see great masses of the stuff sprawling out over the ground in great reddish swathes. In this case, it appears to be engulfing the already stunted wood sage.

The rare, localised Nottingham catchfly was quite an easy find around the wider Dungeness site. I had heard about this plant and was quite keen to see it. The catchflies are a pretty weird group of flowers – their petals curl closed during the day, unfurling at night so the plants’ scent fills the nocturnal air to attract moths. The moths fly from flower to flower and pollinate. As you may be able to tell from the photo, I took this photo lying on my belly, as I wanted to capture the plant with its habitat in shot. I got a photo I was reasonably pleased with, but was mildly accosted by an inquisitive dog in the process, to my annoyance.

I wanted to have a look at some aquatic plants whilst here, to see if I might find anything unusual. I was wondering what might find a niche on the shingly edges of the shallow gravel pits near the power station. I didn’t find anything especially unusual, but a fine display of common water and wetland plants such as purple loosetrife, lesser spearwort, water mint, ragged robin and beautiful sprays of water plantain. I was particularly interested in these fine specimens of branched bur-reed.

In fact, I was so in awe of their weird spikey male flowers (larger than the female flowers) that I dropped my phone in the water as I  took photos. The rather pretty ringed china mark moth in front of me probably distracted me from holding a firm grip on the phone as well.

Anyway, the phone is miraculously absolutely fine. An absolute credit to Motorola.

Satisfied with my foray into common waterside plants, I wanted to see if I might find anything more unusual around the sandy margins of the ARC pits on the RSPB reserve. I’d heard of jersey cudweed growing in the area, but had no idea where. Apparently in some years its flowers grow in the hundreds, and others just in the tens.

I found plenty of scentless mayweed near the viewing screen over the ARC pit, as well as common storksbill. Large flowered evening primrose was probably the most conspicuous flower in the locality – not a native, and not rare, but a nice splash of yellow nevertheless.

scentless mayweed

large flowered evening primrose

My favourite plant in this area was knotted pearlwort. I feel lucky to have found it, with it being such a diminutive little flower with stems that look rather moss-like. It grows in damp, open places like dune slacks. So the sandy, damp location by the edge of the gravel pit where I found it seemed entirely fitting with that. I regret that I didn’t get great photos of it.

Other finds of the day included the rare sea pea, as well as the more unobtrusive looking Canadian and blue fleabanes.

By about 5pm I was done for the day, but I am far from finished here. Dungeness pulls you back time and time again, no matter what your area of interest is. I think it’s my favourite little corner of Kent.

It’s that time of year once again. Summer is giving way to Autumn migration. Wheatears are popping up on the scrapes I’ve just rotovated and decorating my fenceposts at work, yellow wagtails are bouncing overhead and there’s a feeling of possibility in the changing air. Depending on the winds, anything can turn up on our shores.

There are however, a few givens. One of these is that – easterly winds permitting – wrynecks will appear along our eastern and southern coast. They’re on their way to their wintering grounds, having bred elsewhere in Europe. The ones which pop up on our shores are likely the Scandinavian breeders heading south. The easterly Autumn winds can often steer them northwest in our direction.

They formerly bred in the UK, though. There was even a time they were called “the cuckoo’s mate”, since during that golden time of abundance, it wouldn’t have been unusual in some localities to hear the wrynecks sharp ‘kee-kee-kee’ call alongside the cuckoo’s familiar sound.

The reason why they became scarcer and scarcer in the UK until their apparent extinction as a breeding bird is not known for sure. Often the reasons for these occurrences are complex. There could be any number of issues beyond the breeding grounds which affect where they choose to settle to eventually breed. It may however be simply a case of breeding range contracting due to subtle changes brought about by climate change , since they were at the northwest edge of their breeding range as it was. Climate change can have such a chain – effect on everything affecting birds and where they breed. I won’t speculate further or I could be waffling all evening.

But what I do know is they’re a charismatic little bird, and quite weird. Sparrow sized, cryptically plumed woodpeckers. Yes, this dumpy, stocky billed bird is a woodpecker. They don’t drum however, and they’re rarely found up trees. They feed almost solely on ants, so you’ll usually see them on the ground, or roosting in a scrubby bush. They remind me of snakes.

I am proud to say, my better half is a seasoned and dedicated woodpecker enthusiast. In early Spring I am left behind on early weekend mornings as he dutifully heads out in the cold to find and count lesser spotted woodpecker territories, as the little stripy birds begin their courtship and nest building. And in Autumn, he cannot resist a wryneck as it stops off en route to its wintering grounds. As reports come in from wryneck- finders, we head out to catch up with them. I tag along often on such endeavours, so I have probably seen more wrynecks than most. I must apologise for my sounding blase about this. We have spent many hours waiting for visiting wrynecks to show themselves. This was, however until Paul made an important observation on their behaviour. From what we’ve seen, wrynecks tend to stay tucked away for the middle of the day. So, our repeated arriving early to seek the wrynecks had often been unnecessary.

Paul noticed that the bird tends to come out to feed from late afternoon onwards. It is known that they fly by night. Specifically, clear nights, for obvious reasons. I wonder perhaps if they rest a lot during the day, then prefer to refuel soon before flying, hence this general habitat of evening feeding.

You can see the draw of this bizarre looking little bird, from these brilliant photos Paul took a couple of years ago. These pictures also show how confiding they can sometimes be. But you never know if one will be as obliging as this, for they can also be so shy. Who knows, perhaps it’s the individuals that breed in the more sparsely human-populated regions that are so bold – but again that’s just my speculation.

Anyway I thought it wouldn’t be right to herald the start of the season without a special mention of these characters. In our calendar, they’re definitely the harbinger of Autumn.

There is speculation that the odd pair or two may breed in the UK during some years. Such information is rightly kept guarded. Individual calling wrynecks in close proximity staying well into Spring may give cause for some to suspect this. It would be heartening to think that to this day, somewhere within our shores, a pair of wryneck or two may find things enough to their liking to stay put and breed, perhaps in a quiet orchard somewhere.

Looking for a very tiny thing in a relatively big place was the first order of the day yesterday. More specifically, something found feeding exclusively upon something very, very small and localised. I don’t think the saying of “to look for a needle in a haystack” could be summed up better than searching for the very rare Down Shieldbug Canthophorus impressus.

Several weeks prior, I had finally managed to familiarise myself with Bastard Toadflax (thesium humifisum) at a location very close to home. Of all my years wandering over fine chalk grassland sites, I had never observed this little flower. In many places I may well have overlooked it. Not only is it tiny, but it is extremely localised. On finally getting up close and personal with this absolutely exquisite little flower, I was thrilled. It’s less angry-sounding name is ‘star in the grass’, which is so perfect for it, as it does indeed resemble an immaculate little star, discreetly growing in the closely cropped turf on which it grows. The name ‘bastard’ toadflax, is an old fashioned term for it not being in fact a true toadflax (Linaria species). Taxonomically it is very different from this group of plants; it has a woody root system, hemiparasitic on other plants. So, altogether quite different from true toadflaxes.

When enthusing on Facebook about seeing this little plant at last, a friend commented to mention a shieldbug that can be found on bastard toadflax. The down shieldbug – six to seven millimetres long,  drinks exclusively from the tiny star shaped flowers. I am a sucker for shieldbugs, so was intrigued. I don’t believe there are any records of the bug from the site where we’d seen the bastard toadflax, so when Graeme Lyons wrote a very intriguing post about finding the bug at Southerham Farm, a fine chalk downland site in Sussex, I was further keen to see it myself.

There are several species of shieldbug dependent on particular plants. Forget-me-not shieldbug, cow-wheat shieldbug, woundwort shieldbug… and commoner ones such as juniper and gorse shieldbugs. Searching for the cow-wheat one was a bit of a non starter on the only occasion I tried so far, since I neglected to bring a sweep net to search for it on the plant. Instead I just sort of delicately rummaged around the plants in vain. That will learn me to be poorly equipped. Tapping a juniper bush into my net at Noar Hill a couple of years ago yielded plenty of it’s hemipteran namesake. An altogether easier endeavour.

So anyway, we went searching for this particular bug. We scoured the shortest cropped turf we could find, until before long we found some bastard toadflax. Right, that’s the easy bit done I thought – finding a tiny, discreet, localised plant on a 130 hectare reserve. We found a few more isolated specimens dotted around this particular slope. On finding each plant, I carefully hunted around the flowers and around the immediate areas for the dark blue insect.

After a few hours, we were still empty handed, so I have no triumphant news to add, regretfully. But I will say that disappointment is still a relevant part of observing wildlife. Finding rare species can take hard work and many hours and years of study too, so one can’t always expect instant gratification even when armed with information from others’ hours of effort. We will look for the bug again, probably at Southerham and elsewhere. I will search closer to home as well – wouldn’t it feel triumphant and more purposeful to find it in new locations? Just because something is yet unrecorded at certain places, does not mean that an entomological novice such as myself won’t find it.

What is it about the wild and all that lives in it, that I yearn for? Why does my life revolve around wild creatures and plants? I’ve mulled this over in my mind several times now, and I now believe I have compelling answers. It’s actually quite a difficult question, because of course the first thing that comes to mind, is “Because why wouldn’t I love all these beautiful forms of life? You’d have to be dead inside not to.” That’s a very knee-jerk answer, though. Quite emotive, even.

The reasons are far more diverse, and meaningful. Of course, my fundamental belief is a rather altruistic one. I simply believe wildlife matters, because it does. Therefore, I want to devote myself to it. Millions and millions of organisms exists and they each matter in their own right, for their own ends. I do not believe in an anthropocentric mindset.

But from the self indulgent point of view, from the self nurturing point of view… what is this innate draw to snakes, bees, beetles, crabs, orchids, spiders, lichens, toadstools? From where is it born?  What is the ‘human’ side of all this? Why is there such succour and healing to be found in the wild?

I believe that as humans, we are constantly seeking. We don’t settle much, there’s always something to be pursuing, progress to made, directions to go in. It’s an innate dynamism in many of us to keep wanting the next thing, or better versions of what we have. I’m not referring just to the material. It’s more than that. It’s as though we’d feel totally lost if we were finally faced with everything we wanted, with nothing left to strive or toil for. It’s like that principle of energy never being created or destroyed; we have that within; it never ends. And in the course of our lives, we never stop changing, developing, shaping. Every single thing around and upon us affects the way we act, feel, think. We are always moving, like the very globe we stand on.

Nature is exactly the same. Nothing is static, just like nothing is static within us. Organisms evolve, develop unique and mind blowing adaptations over millennia, and landscapes are dynamic under the influence of the creatures that live within them. Species come and go, animals and plants change and adapt, and they colonise and recolonise new places across the earth, as the earth itself changes. Nature constantly seeks to improve the status quo. Since the dawn of time, there have been more billions of lives than we couldn’t possibly even dare to wrap our little minds around. Nothing will ever stop changing. Again, this comes back to that idea of energy not being created or destroyed. To me, this chimes so loudly with the dynamism in ourselves, that ever present wishing for what’s next and that constant changing and growing in our own inner worlds.

Furthermore, nature’s a never-ending, ever changing, infinite pool of discovery and learning. So it can never cease to feed and quench our appetite for knowledge and fascination. We humans are not only restless, but inquisitive by nature, this is one reason we have evolved to be what we are. What better food for this appetite than ecology? Even the world’s most learned scientist would never stop learning, even if he or she lived forever. There is simply no limit to what we may find, because it never stays the same. It is bountiful, endless. Things become ‘new’ or ‘different’ every moment. We can therefore never tire of it, or resign ourselves from it.

The second big reason, is that nature just carries on, in spite of everything. In a world where we often battle against things that test us and hurt us, we can find nature’s simple stoicism greatly cathartic to bear witness to. When a lapwing’s nest is predated, it lays again. If a lizard is terrified from its sunny lounge, it still returns to the same spot to soak up the rays. And if its tail is attacked by a larger animal, it simply autotomises – stressful as it may be – and grows a new one. When a harsh winter kills off dozens of water voles along a river, the hardy survivors just shag a lot the following spring and make more of their kind, so quickly there are lots of them again. Nature just cracks on with it, in the fiery face of everything. Nature doesn’t do ‘drama’, it does simplicity. It’s not here for any other reason than “because it just is; there’s nothing more to it.” Organisms just seek to survive and perpetuate themselves. Watching all of this ‘keep calm and carry on’, takes us outside of ourselves, and into a sense of ‘it will all be ok, just forget the drama’. In the words of trip-hop alternative rock band Garbage, “The trick is to keep breathing”. No truer a word did Shirley Manson ever purr.

The third point is somewhat linked with the former. Life shits on us sometimes. If you’re lucky, you get a light splattering, if you’re unlucky you have to swim in it. A feeling of no control can be the worst place to be. In times where we’re plunged into freefall, we wish we could regain control. Maybe we wish we could shape our environment and existence, like certain animals do. As if we could perhaps be a keystone species in the biome that is our life. Creatures shape and act upon the environments they live in, simply by existing there. You could say they have governance over their environment. Long before the influence of man changed the earth’s landscapes forever, nature was truly self governing, self regulating. It was, well… natural. Animals that engineered the landscapes weren’t yet hunted to extinction, natural resources weren’t depleted, natural habitats weren’t carved up and displaced. When we think of this time on earth – which we may not even be fully able to comprehend – we may even feel nostalgia for simpler times in our inner lives, free of complication.

The final reason? It’s simple. Nature is in our DNA. Deep within each strand, we’re not really ‘apart’ from any other organism on the earth. Only the unintentional arrogance that we have developed as a species tries to tell us we are. Although we have changed and detached ourselves from the natural world in so many ways, our origins cannot be denied or changed. When we first came to existence, we lived uncomplicated lives governed by the daylight and changes in the seasons, and we were closer to our non human neighbours. We were bare, just blank canvases yet uncomplicated by our own generations of evolution. We were vulnerable at the hands of our environment, not yet having mastered it. So we had to work with it and with great respect, not against. Without doing so, we would not have survived and spread ourselves over the earth. It is such bitter irony that we now unwittingly reject and close ourselves off from what made us thrive. When we first came to exist, we depended intrinsically upon nature for our mere survival. It was our home, our food, our medicine. And it still is, but we don’t realise it.

I sincerely suspect that encounters with the wild and with wild creatures, ignites something within us that harks back to our humble beginnings. That time of unsullied natural abundance. Maybe there’s a sort of ‘trigger’ within. It’s something very primal and powerful, almost intangible but roaringly loud all the same.

And so now, we find ourselves reunited with our first ‘home’, our roots, our ancestors, and with the sense of peace and simplicity we entered the world with as innocent children, when we choose to embrace nature again. Whether it’s via a butterfly in your hand, or a brief encounter with a snake, or stumbling upon a rare and beautiful orchid after a gruelling climb up a hill., you can find it. We then find ourselves at home, at peace, and unfussed again.

Epsom Downs is a busy place, an urban fringe area of open space, as well as the site of the world famous racecourse. Crisscrossed by roads, with ice cream kiosks, golf courses,  people exercising horses, and car parks filling up with dog walkers and kite flyers, one doesn’t see many fellow botanists trawling the busy roadsides.

I almost feel self conscious creeping along with my eyes scanning the short cropped turf. Cars whizz past me, a wind-swept, wild-eyed figure crouching over the ground, like an egret waiting to spear a fish, staring at… what?

The thing is, the place is chock-full of fascinating flowers. I’ve repeatedly found myself up on these verges over the past three years, looking at bastard toadflax (Thesium humifusum), sainfoin (Onobrychis viciifolia), and Autumn lady’s tresses (Spiranthes spiralis) to name a few. It is gorgeous chalk grassland, and I find myself a little amused by the bittersweet juxtaposition of these exquisite plants standing proud just inches from the noise and filth of the main roads. I’d wager most of the people going about their various business on Epsom Downs would be puzzled by my avid interest in a tiny star shaped flower with the ‘b’ word in it…

After a tip off from a fellow enthusiast, I found myself today admiring some bright yellow sickle medick, near the grandstand. I must admit this plant’s taxonomy confused me a little, at first. It’s a subspecies of medicago sativa, but it’s our native one, medicago sativa ssp. falcata – specifically native to East Anglia. It’s naturalised elsewhere, in this case in Surrey. It sort of reminds me in appearance – of milkwort – but yellow.

Other plants found in abundance around this area were some beautiful carpets of common restharrow (Ononis repens), as well as lesser and greater knapweeds, lady’s bedstraw and wild mignonette. But I was hankering after something rarer, having gleaned some precious information. And I needed another arable fix. There was – and is – still so much of Langley Vale’s botanical wonderland I’ve not clapped eyes and feet on.

A short drive from the bustling Epsom Downs, to the quiet of Walton Downs/Langley Vale, took me to a field I’d not yet been to. I had one particular quarry in mind…

red hemp nettle

Another victim of agricultural intensification, pesticides and insensitive crop rotations. Bright pink and exquisitely beautiful, now extremely rare and localised, mainly in the south; red hemp nettle (Galeopsis angustifolia). It is small in stature but I suppose it’s easy to spot owing to its bright colour and habitat preference. It likes bare, disturbed/cultivated ground. Indeed the field of its location appeared grass-free, covered predominantly in flowering plants.

Round leaved fluellen (Kickxia spuria) was sprawling our over the ground in rampant vines, much to my delight.

round leaved fluellen

Other frequent plants were small toadflax and common toadflax, and of course yet more field pansy and scarlet pimpernel. The blue form of scarlet pimpernel grows here too, but I didn’t seek it out. I do see it on the Isle of Wight from time to time though.

small toadflax..

..and the much more common and ubiquitous common toadflax

Having quenched my thirst for arable plants, I hopped back in the car to head along to North Kent.

It’s that time of year where my better half seeks out wrynecks; they are one of his fixations. This means that I have seen rather a lot of them; probably more than most birdwatchers have, and I don’t know if I’d call myself one of those these days. Birding can seem like a ‘busman’s holiday’ to me, since a fair portion of my job involves surveying birds and collating data on them. Don’t get me wrong, I adore birds now as much as I always have, but my obsessions these days tend to be entomological and botanical.

However, this wryneck-chasing of his often brings us to interesting coastal locations, since wrynecks often rock up around the east coast on their Autumn migration. Whilst he busied himself scanning hedgerows and anthills for his cryptic woodpecker quarry, I wandered off along the sea wall. We were at Oare Marshes, near Faversham. We’d left the dry and calcareous, for the salty and wet.

I was curious for what I might find growing on the sea wall and saltmarsh. There is huge fascination to be found in observing plants growing in extreme environments. In this case, high salinity.

The first thing of note was the abundance of golden samphire (Inula crithmoides), glowing in the evening sunshine. Despite its name, I think this is a fleabane, and fleabanes are from the enormous asteracaea family of plants. This is why relying exclusively on English names for plants can be a little confusing. Those of you who are especially eagle eyed, will notice that I have neglected to write all my plants’ Scientific names. My excuse at this moment is that it’s half past midnight.

Sea lavender was probably the dominant flower, growing together with sea purslane. The latter is an edible plant – though used mainly as a garnish – owing to its highly salty quality.

                   above top: sea purslane shown in abundance. Above lower: sea lavender

I was rather taken with this pretty spurgularia, which I am told is greater sea spurrey. This is likely, since I found it growing on the upper reach of the saltmarsh. The leaves are fleshy and turgid.

Another edible plant was common glasswort aka marsh samphire. Unsurprisingly it has a very salty tang but it spoils quite quickly after harvesting, I hear. It’s certainly another funny looking plant. It’s a succulent, so it looks cactus like.

This is a theme with many saltmarsh plants for a reason, it would seem. There is certainly a parallel with cacti – I suppose, both are xerophytes. Succulent, waxy leaves are an adaptation to the plant’s highly saline environment. A highly saline environment catalyses water loss, so this adaptation many saltmarsh plants have, prevents them losing too much moisture, in order to survive.

I can see another botanical obsession coming on – saltmarsh. Just as well I have loads of it to play with at work. (Not literally, I hasten to add – saltmarsh management is a lot about reducing disturbance and allowing various successional stages.)

On a final note for today, I confess.. I’d be lying if I said I did no birding at all. I mean, if you look at this place at high tide, it’s just waders, waders, waders. Autumn migration is just getting started. Who can resist a scrape full of golden plover, black tailed godwit, ruff, ringed plover and little stint?

Oh and this rather spangly spotted redshank just shedding its summer dress…

With the long spate of hot, dry weather on the wane (at least for now), walks in the open countryside are a lot more comfortable. The air is now cool and damp with rain, a welcome retreat from the seemingly relentless humid heat of Summer 2018. Paul and I spend a lot of hours rambling over chalk downland, as we have always been rather smitten with butterflies and orchids. An English chalk downland is the classic rural picture of Summer.

A four mile search for wartbiter crickets on a fine Sussex chalk downland reserve yesterday was fruitless, however. The frequent adonis and chalkhill blues, as well as cheerful wall brown butterflies somewhat lifted our spirits, but we left feeling tired and disappointed without having seen the very rare crickets. I had to concede that I perhaps hadn’t done enough research. There is also the strong possibility that my ever worsening hearing loss is too severe for me to hear the animal’s distinctive stridulating, even though I’m sure if I did hear it I’d know it.

Today called for an easier quest, of the botanical kind. A scenic ramble on White Downs near Dorking, in search of rare and interesting plants was needed to round the weekend off and provide succour for yesterday’s disappointment. My interest in rare gentians was piqued earlier this year, and I was duly treated on the Isle of Wight to the early gentian – an endemic English flower – back in May. Then of course there were the  marsh gentians last weekend at Chobham. Today, having seen recent photos on Facebook of Autumn gentian, we followed some kindly offered directions to find some specimens not far from home.

Before the gentians, I noticed many plants of the impressively sized Ploughman’s spikenard. Although of a noticeable size and featuring densely clustered flower heads, it’s otherwise quite unremarkable looking, I have to say. But on more intimate inspection, the flower heads are vibrant shades of fire – subtly very beautiful. Regretfully my dull photos do not illustrate this. It’s a very English sounding plant, and its name betrays its varied history of various supposed properties, curative, perfuming and insect-repellant alike. A little research on the internet reveals quite numerous uses for the plant in medieval times.

We are still a way from Autumn yet, so the numerous spikes of gentian we saw were yet unfurled. But I was impressed by their number and imagined how glorious they will look once opened in star shaped trumpets. I shall definitely be returning to see them at their peak.

Other chalk loving plants to be found were the diminutive and delightfully named squinancywort. This is another plant formerly used for medicinal purposes; specifically for the treatment of ‘quinsy’, which my mother tells me is something to do with the tonsils. Dwarf thistle, an indicator of good quality chalk grassland (and a much loved nectar plant of the silver spotted skipper), was abundant. Whatever you do, do not accidentally sit on this plant’s ferocious leaves or you’ll be scratching your backside for the rest of the day.  It grows low to the ground and often only the bright pink flower betrays its presence in the sward.

Wild mignonette, another classic chalk downland flower was now in full bloom. It is a bold looking plant, standing proud of the closely cropped turf on which it grows. In contrast, delicate blue harebells nodded in the slight wind. The quaking grass nodded as if in agreement about what a fine place this was to sit and be. 

It has to be said that the chalk downlands have just as much charm in the Summer rain as they do in the sunshine. The landscape is of course quieter with its insects making themselves scarce during the downpours, but it can afford you some very close encounters with ‘drowsy’ butterflies, if you spot them tucked among the grasses.

Silver spotted skippers are a chalk downland specialist, confined to and locally scattered in Southeastern England. It’s a buzzy, busy little insect which like other golden skippers, appears rather moth-like. It can be frustrating to attempt to photograph when active as it rarely settles for long. But in their idle state under the grey sky between showers, they are docile and obliging. You can encourage them onto the hand, if you do so carefully and not at all forcefully. This can be done with many species of butterfly, but there’s something particularly appealing about having such an especially tiny, fluffy butterfly perched upon your hand.

Seeing a beautiful insect sat on my hand gives me a deep feeling of wellbeing. Peering close up at their intricate anatomies and watching their tiny footsteps is a wondrous thing. So when Paul stopped to gorge himself a little on ripe blackberries, I peered into the bramble bushes to inspect the glossy fruits for invertebrates.

A dock bug crept around the sprig from which Paul had plucked a blackberry.

“Oh, dock bugs. Careful not to accidentally take them,” I noted. As I stared a bit more, I noticed more upon more of them until I saw that the brambles were absolutely heaving with them. Every other branch held two or three dock bugs, peering over the spiky leaves or marching over the berries. Most were adult, but a few individuals were in a late instar stage of development. I encouraged a couple into my hand to feel their barely-there footsteps on my palm. 

Aren’t they just the most perfectly formed little things? Have you ever let a truly tiny animal wander over your fingers? It’s the most perfect mood lifter. It’s a most lovely end to a Sunday afternoon walk over the chalk.