Rides and Rings

Last year was the first time I really got out walking in Friston Forest. I’ve always been put off of walking especially alone in forests. It would be easier if all the many paths were marked on a map, but they don’t seem to be.  I always fear getting lost in an environment where you can’t see the local landmarks.

Anyway I took the plunge, walking from near Friston Pond and along a straight well used path back to West Dean. Walking through woodland can be a bit monotonous where the scenery hardly changes and the wildlife is largely invisible, but in butterfly season, this route turned out to be a wondrous experience.

Recently I read the book about the Wilding of the Knepp estate which is near where I grew up. It’s a extraordinary book, and challenges some of the fundamental facts that we are told. So England used to be all forest apparently, miles and miles of dense trees, except that some of our oldest trees like the oak tree don’t grow well in a closed canopy. They really need enough light and space. Throw into the forests some grazing animals, and maybe ancient man clearing some space, and suddenly we have a completely different ecosystem. Within a few yards from the depths of the shady canopies, where the sun could slip through, were riots of wildflowers.

Passing through the ancient woods are old tracks that would once have been riding routes for the hunting of kings and other landowners. These days you are more likely to get flattened by a mountain biker, than a trusty steed, but these forest “rides” were a glorious find. Peacocks, commas, fritilaries and flitting joyfully along the wildflower edges and glades. Here too I first discovered the beautiful ringlet butterflies.

28 Ringlet (Aphantopus Hyperantus)

The spots/eyes on a butterfly are a defence mechanism. If attacked by a bird, the bird will go for the eye spots, rather than the real eyes, and a butterfly can fly surprisingly well with bits of wing missing!

Watching the ringlets I suddenly noticed something brighter higher up in the canopy. I chased it as far as I could. A White Admiral? I think so!

29 White Admiral (Limenitis Camilla)

Wonderful days for butterflies in those sunny forest glades. On my first visit I made it safely out the other end, determined to be back as much as I could! Roll on Summer so I can conquer some of the other woodland trails.

So in 2018, 29 butterflies spotted and photographed, and 2 that got away (white letter hairstreak and orange tip). Plenty more to try and find in 2019.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Leonard Cohen

 

 

Peacocks and the end of the road

noun: peacock; plural noun: peacocks

1. a male peafowl, which has very long tail feathers that have eye-like markings and can be erected and fanned out in display.
2. an ostentatious or vain person.

The Peacock is common but stunning butterfly though I actually spotted very few last year and even fewer that stayed still long enough for a photograph!

27 Peacock (Inachis io)

The beautiful yellow and blue eye spots on a red background are unmistakable.

The butterfly shares its flamboyant colourful eyespots with the bird of the same name.  What a stunning bird it is, quite spectacular! That vivid blue, wow!

This one was spotted at Bentley Wildfowl museum, which has now sadly closed down. It was a wonderful place to see wildfowl close at hand, a great place to photograph and learn to identify wildfowl. It will be sadly missed.

Peacocks always seem to have a haughty arrogance and sense of entitlement, I’ve enjoyed watching them at the Larmer Tree Gardens during the wonderful End of the Road music Festival, at Leeds Castle in Kent, and at a holiday chalet resort in the lake district.

The Peahens on the other hand are much less ostentatious, and just get on with the business of wandering round, feeding and watching the kids!

I don’t need a ship to sail in stormy weather
I don’t need you to ruffle the feathers – on my Peacock Suit

Paul Weller

 

 

Brimstone and clouds of sunshine yellow

Brimstone: another name for Sulphur, a chemical element with the symbol S, a bright yellow substance. Sulphur is the tenth most common element by mass in the universe and the fifth on earth.

It was late August before my butterfly spectrum turned to green and yellow! After a glorious walk across from Alfriston and Jevington, I was near the golf course at the edge of Eastbourne when I spotted my first stationary Brimstone, a gleaming glorious green. The Brimstone has an unmistakeable outline but the colour often blends in with leaves, making it difficult to spot when settled still with its wings closed. These can actually be seen all through the year (and I’d almost certainly seen a few before these were normally disappearing rapidly into the distance, along with an Orange Tip or two!)

It was great to catch one at rest anyway

23 Brimstone (Gonepteryx rhamni)

The previous year I also spotted this brimstone moth in the Cuckmere valley in a hedgerow, presumably waiting for dusk! Quite unmistakeable!

In September, the weather was still mild, and as I sat at Cuckmere Valley eating a sandwich something bright yellow flitted past me. All too soon it was gone, and I finished my lunch and wandered up to Seaford Head, past the dozens of vehicles parked there, entourage for a film being filmed at the Coastguards cottages.  At the top of the hill, there was another flit of bright yellow and this time I chased after it.

This fast flying Clouded Yellow butterfly was busy flitting around and I managed to get a few shots of it at rest, with its sulphur yellow and green wings. Then – just for a second, I got a glimpse of it with its wings open! A glorious bright orange unlike any other butterfly, a glorious sight! Clouded yellows are primarily migrants and can often be seen searching for nectar on the cliffs  of the South coast after their flight over the sea.

24 Clouded Yellow (Colias Croceus)

A more common butterfly is the Green Veined White spotted early in the year near Tide Mills, (actually at the bus stop which seemed a good butterfly hunting ground if it wasn’t for the cars racing along the A259). Often confused with the “cabbage” Large and Small Whites, this delicately coloured butterfly feeds  at the edge of woods and copses, and lays her eggs on crucifer plants, often garlic mustard of cuckoo flower.

25 Green Veined White (Pieris napi)

And last but not least (look away now cabbage growers!) one (in fact two) of the much maligned whites, Large White.

26 Large White (Pieris Brassicae)

A fine and subtle spirit dwells
In every little flower,
Each one its own sweet feeling breathes
With more or less of power.
There is a silent eloquence
In every wild bluebell
That fills my softened heart with bliss
That words could never tell.

Anne Bronte

Skipping work to spot skippers..

Skip: To move along lightly, stepping from one foot to the other with a hop or bounce.

Skippers of boats? Of cricket teams? Small girls jumping over ropes?

No my favourite skippers are butterflies, though from their appearance you might even mistake them for moths. Their “skipping” along flight pattern, no doubt have something to do with their name!

In the Summer of 2018 I discovered four different sorts of skipper, most  of them joyfully flitting around in the long grass of Seaford Head.

The large skipper was probably the easiest to identify, although I wouldn’t say it was exactly large! The characteristic angled basking posture clearly shows off the chequered pattern on both sides of the wings (pictured above with a larger meadow brown)

You can clearly see the black streak of the scent glands of the male.

19 Large Skipper (ochlodes sylvanus)

The small skipper is smaller and has golden brown wings, without the chequered pattern. So it should be easy to spot then? Not so fast if you spot it in the south east of the country, because that also matches the description for the Essex Butterfly which is also common here! These two species hop around in the same grassland habitats and the only way to be sure of the ID is to look at the underside of the tiny antenna!

Hence I spent many  Summer days, pushing through grassland with my camera attempting to chase small butterflies into angles where I could even get close enough to see their antenna, let alone work out what colour it was! The alternative is to catch them in a net to examine them, which I draw the line at!

Quite a lot of my photos then, were rather inconclusive! However these with orange on the tip of the underside of the antenna would appear be small skippers!

 

20 Small skipper (thymelicus sylvestris)

And I’m reasonably confident that these , with a black underside to the antenna, are Essex skippers!

 

21 Essex Skipper (thymelicus lineola)

Back in July I went on a butterfly walk with Sussex Wildlife Trust. There are quite a few interesting member events like this, but working four days a week, means I miss most of them. I decided to take a precious day’s leave for this one, and it was an interesting walk with quite a few butterflies obligingly turning up despite the rather cloudy day. Leader of the walk Michael Blencowe (co-author of the wonderful book “Butterflies of Sussex”) gave us some clues as to the location of the silver spotted skipper. This far more scarce skipper, relies on the sunny open patches of chalky ground that are warmer at ground level. It relies on the heavily grazed turf, laying eggs which overwinter on Sheep’s Fescue grass that are close to bare hollows .

A few weeks later I returned a couple of times on the hunt for this little beauty and finally managed to spot and photograph just one precious butterfly with its white undersides!

22 Silver Spotted Skipper (Hesperia comma)

Some more highlights of the butterfly walk included spotting some Forrester moths, a declining species  of day flying moths, that are on the wing in June and July often feeding on common/sheeps sorrel.

We also spotted a number of emerging six spot burnet moths. Once you know what to look for I found I spotted them everywhere for weeks to come!

Roll on Summer, moths, butterflies and Sunshine!

 

Painted butterflies, and a year that fluttered by

I’m very behind with my blogs for last year! It was just such a wonderful  Summer to be out and about,  and I really didn’t find the time to write up where I’d been and what I’d learned. Not much time to reflect before Spring arrives in earnest!

Catching up with my butterfly counts, well the next one was the painted lady.

A lovely name for a common, but beautiful butterfly. Most of them migrate to the UK all the way from Africa, the Middle East and central Asia, occasionally in huge numbers. The first one I spotted in 2018 was on a muddy path on Seaford Head! They feed in various habitats and I’ve spotted them in a number of habitats including my own garden.

14 Painted Lady (Vanessa Cardui)

Another stunner of a butterfly is the comma. Another mostly orange and black butterfly this one can be identified by the lovely raggedy edges to the wings. In flight it is a little trickier to distinguish it from other fast flying fritillaries. Most of the ones I spotted this year were in woodland clearings in Friston Forest and along paths near hedges and thickets on Seaford Head

15 Comma (polygonia c-album)

2018 was the year I discovered the fritillaries! My first one was spotted on after a walk over the Seven Sisters descending into the Cuckmere valley. This beauty the other side of a wire fence was a very obliging, posing on a thistle. It was only when I got home, that I realised I really needed a photograph the underside of too, to help with identification.  Facebook has its faults, but there are lots of really helpful groups on there, and I soon found some experts who confidently suggested that it was a dark green fritillary. The first one, happily sunning itself, made it easy for me, but most of the others in the Summer had me chasing around like a mad woman after a butterfly disappearing in the opposite direction! On some of my other images from Friston Forest and Seaford Head, you can clearly see the dark green underside.

16 Dark Green Fritillary (Argynnis Aglaja)

I took a lot of photographs over the Summer, and it took a long time to go through them all and try and ID and log them. When double checking them I realised I’d taken a shot of one in Falmer woods (thinking it a comma or dark green fritillary) but that it actually didn’t seem to be either of those. I’m reasonably confident that I’d actually spotted another fritillary, the silver washed fritillary, perhaps a female busy looking for somewhere to lay her eggs. This is a more widespread butterfly, common in Sussex woodlands.  Another beauty!

17 Silver Washed Fritillary (Argynnis paphia)

One more orange butterfly, the small tortoiseshell is a butterfly that used to be common, but has declined by 74% between 1976 and 2012. It overwinters in the UK and can be encountered at almost any time of year, but generally after March. It lays its eggs on young tender shoots of nettles growing in full sun. (Surely a great reason to let some nettles grow!)

This little beauty has black, white and yellow panels on the long edge and a beading of blue lunules round the wing margins.  Sadly the chances of spotting the similarly marked large Tortoiseshell seem increasingly unlikely as it is now exceptionally rare.

 

 

18 Small Tortoiseshell (aglais urticae)

I wonder if there are any of these hibernating in my garden. I can only hope!

“Just living is not enough,” said the butterfly, “one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”

HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, “The Butterfly”

 

 

 

Let’s hear it for the little brown birds

 

A LLB is a birdwatcher’s slang for a little brown bird that you can’t easily identify. These can be a bit of a nightmare to tell apart, especially in dismal light, such as we seem to have had on most of my miserable days off for around the last few months! It is frustrating not being sure if that little bird that just flew off was a common bird or something more interesting! Not that that common ones are any less welcome of course!

(my) sparrows in the garden

I’m getting better at identifying the most commonly seen birds, and it’s great when you do get near enough to positively identify them. It’s often the bird behaviour that gives you the first clue, rather than a reliable view of the brown feathers. Regulars in my gardens are the house sparrows and dunnock. Though both small and brown they behave very differently. The sparrows are normally moving around in the safety of a crowd unless feeding young. They fly first to the bushes beyond our lane, chirping cheerfully among themselves, then after checking the coast is clear, they fly into the garden, either hiding in the hedge, or perching on the trellis until they decide it is safe to attempt a landing on the bird feeder. They are more likely to decide it is safe to proceed when the starlings are also in, which means a lot more competition for the food, as the starlings squabble with any bird in sight. If they can’t find a spot on the bird feeder the sparrows will dive under the bird table to grab the spillages. If they find a spot on the feeder, they too will fight with each other for space.

Dunnock on Seaford Head

The splendid dunnock on the other hand is often spotted alone, or with a mate or chasing a competitor. He will stalk and strut along the back fence in a territorial manner, and always feeds on the ground.  Under the bird table, in the flower beds or even in the flower pots. If the robin has his back to you, he could also be mistaken for the dunnock, having similar movements and feeding habits. But his song is unmistakeable and cheery, marking out the Winter territories in which pairs tend to spread out into wider feeding areas. In late Summer a walk over Cuckmere had robins singing from every corner!

Over Seaford head, a favourite brown bird of mine this year has been the meadow pipit (affectionately nicknamed mipits!) They are frequently disturbed from the grassland, or spotted fence hopping along the coast path.

Meadow pipit at Cuckmere

This is also skylark territory, and you’ll often spot these too. In the air and singing, the skylark is unmistakeable and a wonderful sight and sound. I heard my first one of 2018 at Tidemills last week, so Spring must be on its way! Spotting one in the grass or fence, it’s quite hard to differentiate between the two little birds, though the skylark is slightly larger, and can have a crest on the top of its head, but not always obviously!

Skylark at Tidemills

Towards Splash point on the rocks and jetty there are often rock pipits, which are also similar, though tending to be darker in colouring.

Rock Pipit at Splash Point

They are a bit of a challenge these brown birds, but far from boring!

My challenge this year is to spot and correctly identify a few more warblers and for this I think I really need to learn my bird songs. It’s very rare to get a photo as clear as this one. I’m putting my money on willow warbler due to the light colour legs, but a song or two would also have helped rule chiffchaff out!

Dawn chorus here I come.. just as soon as that interminable rain stops

 

I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

“We are nearer to Spring 
Than we were in September,” 
I heard a bird sing 
In the dark of December

by Oliver Herford

 

 

Bumper berries, thrushes and stinks

Bumper berries, thrushes and stinks

Apparently it’s been a great year for berries due to a warm, dry spring, followed by July and August rains.

On the local roadside slopes I’d noticed a huge spreading mat of red – which I believe is cotoneaster horizontalis! I’ve never seen it so noticeable everywhere before! Quite stunning!

A good year for berries, is good news for birds. A couple of weeks ago I took an early Sunday walk over Seaford Head and was delighted to see not one but three different thrushes feasting on the harvest! This weekend too at Sheffield Park, there were plenty more thrushes feeding in the trees and shrubs!

The first was a beautiful song thrush, a native bird that has declined by 50% in the 25 years to  1995. I rarely spot a thrush and its always a welcome sight

Continuing on my walk I spot a couple of redwings too. In my photos the red wing is not really visible but the marked eye stripe is unmistakeable. Redwings are generally Winter visitors, arriving in October/November so my redwings may have just arrived and be travelling north.

The third one was a fieldfare, also a Winter migrant. Often seen in big chuckling flocks!

On wet and cold November days it would be easy to get depressed about the onset of Winter but there are some advantages . We may have said goodbye for now to some birds such as these swallows busy feeding and preening before heading south..

But the arrival of other birds such as the lovely redwings and fieldfares can only be a bonus. One day I also hope to spot some waxwings feasting on British berries too, in a supermarket carpark or wherever they descend! Bring on the berry eaters!

Not all berries are eaten by the birds. This beautiful one is stinking iris (iris foetidissima) I believe,  found in open woodland, hedges and on seacliffs. Also known as scarlet-berry Iris, Gladdon, Gladwin Iris, Roast-beef Plant, and Stinking Gladwin.  The names come from the smell of the sword-shaped leaves when they are crushed or bruised – a smell that is said to resemble rotten raw beef! The plant has a long history of medicinal use but can be rather powerful.

Another advantage of the bare branches is that birds are getting rather easier to spot!

I’ve spotted a couple of blackbirds back in my garden too! Hurrah for that, they have finally forgiven me for getting rid of the lawn. Possibly tempted in by the rather pitiful crop of crab apples, and the cotoneaster. As the wind blows and the rain falls, I’ll be filling up the bird feeders and watching out!

 

Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!

Autumn Fires

Robert Louis Stevenson

If you go down to the woods today.. Falling, fluttering and flitting

On Monday I took a walk along the South Downs way which goes through a golden leafed Friston Forest towards Litlington.. and on this sunny November day as I crunched through the fallen leaves, I still managed to spot some butterflies.

This speckled wood was still flitting around quite happily, settling on these fallen leaves! Velvety brown the spots are quite a bright cream colour.

( 12 Speckled wood, pararge aegeria)

The first one I spotted this year was near Rye harbour, just as I was coming out of a bird hide. Another week in the Summer I took a walk from Falmer across to Ditchling, and where the path passed woodland, there were dozens of them, mostly chasing each other!

The other thing I didn’t really expect to see was dragonflies (or perhaps damselflies?) They were flitting everywhere in the forest, and then there were dozens down in the rushes by the Cuckmere river.

What a glorious spot it was. I sat on the river bank and enjoyed a snack at my half way point before I followed the river back to the coast, on an almost deserted path.

The red admirals still seem to be everywhere at the moment, rushing around with their beautiful wings, far too busy to have their photo taken! The red admiral is a migrant to Britain and can be seen in many months of the year. Though some survive in this country, most arrive from continental Europe  from  May to early Autumn. In the 17^th century some naturalists called it the “Admirable” rather than the Admiral.. and I can see why. It really is rather splendid with those scarlet markings.

One Summer day I went out for a walk spotting butterflies, and didn’t see any red admirals, but as I sat down in my living room later, one came right up to my window and on stopped my balcony to rest.. Thank you beauty.

(13 Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta)

 

Oh, Autumn! why so soon

Depart the hues that make thy forests glad;

Thy gentle wind and thy fair sunny noon,

And leave thee wild and sad!   Autumn Woods, by William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

Faith in Flowers.. and a cure for scabs and arrow wounds

 

One of my recent birthday presents was a book by Faith Anstey called Flowers in the Field. It’s just what I needed really to start at the beginning! There is no point having a huge reference book of wild flowers if you don’t know where to start. So I’m starting my botany at the beginning, and hopefully it will help me to identify at least some of the wonderful wild flowers I’ve seen this year!

The first lesson is the structure of the flower. So in lesson 1, I learned the following about this lovely common centaury. That as it has five petals it is a dicot, it has all round symmetry and that the yellow parts of the flower are the carpel (stigma, style and ovary) and the male Stamens (anther and filament)

This primrose though having different leaves is also a dicot with all round symmetry but less obvious stamens.

The lily is a lovely example of a monocot which has petals and sepals in multiples of three. Leaves are normally straight blade or simple oval shapes.

Taking a closer look at a scabious flower from my garden, lets you clearly see the stamens with the anthers and the end of the filaments covered in pollen, where the bee is happily collecting it. I love to grow these in the garden, but have also spotted a number of wild ones over the Summer which are hopefully correctly identified!

Devil’s bit scabious, (Succisa pratensis) at Cuckmere. This one is found in damp habitat, and is the main larval food of the declining Marsh Fritillary butterfly (sadly not spotted)

Small scabious growing in short grassland near Crowlink, Seven Sisters

Field scabious in meadows at  Lewes railway nature reserve

The name scabious appears to have come from this herb’s traditional usage as a folk medicine to treat scabies, caused by the plague. Indeed it appears to be an essential of the medicinal garden as my old copy of Culpeper’s complete herbal includes:

“Scabious is very effectual for all coughs, shortness of breath and all other diseases of the breast and lungs. The decoction of the herbs and roots outwardly applied doth wonderfully subdue all hard or cold swellings in any part of the body, is effectual for shrunk sinews or veins and healeth green wounds, old sores and ulcers. The decoction also cures running and spreading scabs, tetters, ringworms and the French pox. The juice cleanseth the skin and removeth freckles, pimples, morphew and leprosy. The herb bruised and applied doth in a short term draw forth any splinter, broken bone or arrow head from the flesh!”

Useful to know. I’ll remember that, next time I’m shot with an arrow while out flower spotting.

 

 

 

Still chasing the blues – searching for my adonis!

 

I was still on the hunt for the Adonis Blue. I read somewhere that Malling Down was a good place to try, so I took a chance, and decided to spend my Monday off walking from Glynde over to Lewes via Mount Caburn and Malling Down. I’d not been up this way for a number of years.

It was not an encouraging start. Drizzle all the way up Mount Caburn and very little wildlife in view except a few sodden sheep. I reached the top and headed north and into Southerham nature reserve. It’s perfect butterfly habitat rich with wild flowers, if only the sun would come out and warm a few butterfly wings. The best I could find were a few moths and a beautiful lacewing in the meadows.

galium carpet moth

common carpet moth

lacewing

I backtracked, trying my best to avoid the golf course where I always seemed to end up dodging golf balls, and carried on around the hill. I ended up rounding the back hill on a path that turned into sheep trails that seemed to get steeper and wilder as I went on! I disturbed a number of pheasants which flew off in noisy protest and also watched a bird of prey (probably a buzzard) hunting in the fertile grassland. It was still gloomy and drizzly and I ate my sandwich walking along.  I eventually came to the edge of a chalk pit, which looked very promising butterfly spotting ground down below (in fact I could see a couple of likely butterfly spotters and their cameras!) However it looked like a steep descent and  I really wanted to start heading back towards Lewes. So I took another path westwards. It’s always a bit difficult to work out exactly where you are on these nature reserves which are open access.  I suddenly came across a sheltered clearing, thick with wild marjoram and vetch, and there at last were some butterflies. Not just any butterflies, but blue butterflies including the one I was looking for!.

Looking at the books the Common blue and Adonis blue can look very similar. However in the field, my first Adonis blue took my breath away. There really is no doubt – what a brilliant blue it really is! Looking more closely, the distinctive black lines that stripe through the white margin and blue wings that also distinguish it. These lines are even visible on the side of the wings.

Absolutely stunning. You can keep your Greek gods, I was very happy with my Adonis blue butterflies!

The path started a steep descent and I was soon back in a lane on my way back to Lewes to warm up in front of an afternoon film in the new cinema.

(11 Adonis Blue, polyommatus bellargus)

Adonis – a divine figure in Greek mythology, portrayed as a beautiful youth and associated with fertility