We see delicious crayfish ravioli and crispy crayfish patties on tempting menus, but the aggressive ‘signal’ crayfish is causing huge damage to our river banks, including the Windrush. They are also destroying our native white-clawed variety.
I know of one sighting in the Limb Brook, but the variety was not confirmed, so I would ask readers for other reports if you see them. Please note the identifying features, below, and then we can check if we have a problem, as well as dinner.
Signal crayfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus) were introduced into the UK by the British Government in the 1970s, intended to be farmed for food, but some escaped (of course!) and they then bread like wild fire across our river network. There, they started eliminating our native variety and destroying our river banks.
Identification features of signal crayfish include:
Water voles spotted in Limb Brook
Graham Soame has seen water voles in the stream in Chapel Road! This is big news because according to The Wildlife Trusts, the water vole is the much-loved British mammal known as ‘Ratty’ in The Wind in the Willows. Unfortunately, the future of this charming little riverside creature is in peril.
Water voles are a vital part of the river ecosystem. Their burrowing, feeding and movement help to create conditions for other animals and plants to thrive - a bit like beavers do, but on a much smaller scale. The Wildlife Trusts and many other organizations are working hard to keep water voles in our rivers and streams and to restore them to places where they have been in the past.
If you see one, please can you tell Graham who is monitoring the situation ( 07932 172873).
The water vole has chestnut-brown fur, a blunt, rounded nose, small ears, and a furry tail. The similar brown rat is larger, with grey-brown fur, a pointed nose, large ears that protrude from its fur, and a long, scaly tail. A water vole’s vital statistics: are Tail: 9.5-14cm Length: 14-22cm (The Wildlife Trusts)
PS: The Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust (BBOWT) has just carried out a survey of the water voles in the Limb Brook. We expect the results to be passed on to the village in the next few weeks.
Martin Spurrier
Apparently, the absence of late frost last winter combined with a mild spring, warm summer and no drought have given us the 2020 bumper harvest that we are still seeing. Limbs full of sloes on Bond’s Lane broke under the burden and hawthorn and Golden Hornet crab apple (I think) were not far behind. The blackberries were a major attraction.
Do you remember your school-day poetry? Undoubtedly, one of the best-known first lines ever must be, “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. John Keats rattled off Ode to Autumn nearly 200 years ago after a country walk to avoid hearing his neighbour’s daughter practising her violin. Here are the first eleven of his thirty-three lines:
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
What a year for berries on our hedgerows! My sloe brandy for next year is looking delicious. It’s not too late to make some, by the way. In fact, the fruit is now perfect as many have split in the brief frost.
Apparently, the absence of late frost last winter combined with a mild spring, warm summer and no drought have given us the 2020 bumper harvest that we are still seeing. Limbs full of sloes on Bond’s Lane broke under the burden and hawthorn and Golden Hornet crab apple (I think) were not far behind. The blackberries were a major attraction.
Do you remember your school-day poetry? Undoubtedly, one of the best-known first lines ever must be, “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. John Keats rattled off Ode to Autumn nearly 200 years ago after a country walk to avoid hearing his neighbour’s daughter practising her violin. Here are the first eleven of his thirty-three lines:
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Graham reports that the village has made good progress with wildflower planting in 2020. Several private gardens now have their wildflower areas, and a number of verges have been planted in small areas by hard working village volunteers.
In a move to promote further self setting, we cut the verges - see photo - where it was possible in Chapel Road at Margery Cross where the wildflowers have taken well, and several folk turned out later to rake over the cut grass - thank you.
Next year they should be even better and we shall see the results of this year’s work to bring more wildflower beauty to the village and with it, we hope, more butterflies, bees, and bugs! In the meantime, we are liaising closely with friends in Eynsham on green matters and are exchanging information and advice.
Martin Spurrier
Wild and not so wild, but lovely, nevertheless! (How ever did the sunflowers survive the gales?)
Wild and not so wild, but lovely, nevertheless! (How ever did the sunflowers survive the gales?)
Yesterday (16th August) we had rare visitor to our garden, hovering among the white phlox. Was it a baby Superman, a tiny bird, or what?
Mr. Google tells me that this amazing little imposter was a Macroglossum stellatarum, a hummingbird hawk-moth, who is a summer migrant from Southern Europe. They are abundant all around the Mediterranean countries and across Central Asia to Japan but comes here only in the summer. That's because it cannot survive our winters, but maybe that is changing as the UK gets warmer.
Above: Our family pictures on my old iPhone. Its wings flap so fast they are a blur.
This beautiful moth is about an inch (25mm) long and has a wing span of 2 inches (50mm). It looks more like a tiny hummingbird than any moth I have ever seen. You can see a short video here.
To hover, it flaps its wings at 80 times a second and you can actually hear them 'humming' while it collects pollen with its long 'proboscis', a nose / tongue-like protrusion that is as long as its body.
The hummingbird hawk-moth prefers to fly in bright sunlight, but it will also take to wing in dull weather, at dusk or dawn, and sometimes even at night. I recorded our sighting with the Butterfly Conservation website and it is now shown on their sighting map.
Martin Spurrier (16.08.2020)
As a child I questioned the existence of four-leaf clovers (other than Alfa Romeo’s Quadrifoglio brand that was used to bring their racing drivers good luck). I thought that it was yet another deception created by adults. So, I went hunting…
My usual Nature Notes expert, Mr. Google, advised me that four-leafers are a rare genetic mutation and that our chances of finding one is about 1 in 10,000. That’s better than the Post Code Lottery, I thought, so set off up Bond’s Lane in search of one of nature’s nicest mutants.
After ten minutes or so, I couldn’t believe it. There it was, a real live quadrifoglio, so I struck before I lost it and took the picture on the right immortalising this discovery. Later that week, I thought I’d sneak up on the clovers again to see if I could find three more, one for each grandchild. Within 15 minutes, I found them, all four-leafers!
Panic! What to do now before they got away?
I quickly pressed them in a book between white paper for a few days and then popped them in nice cheap frames from B&Q. Hey presto, lovely little presents for the children. Happy mutant hunting!
Quadrifoglio Hunting Tips
10,000 clovers take up about the area of an office desk, so:
PS: The Guinness Book of Records notes that the most number leaves on a clover was 56. This was found in Japan in 2009!
The writer is no expert on nature - not like Mr. Google, anyway. So, your additions, corrections opinions and/or suggestions are most welcome. Nature Notes is a miscellany of this and that, but it does try to answer some of the questions we’ve always wondered about… and some that we haven’t.
Martin Spurrier (14.08.2020)
2020 has been a very strange and unusual year. We all have had to adapt and change our normal daily routines. But not for Hedgehogs. They have been going about their daily routines as if nothing has changed. Well it hasn't for them. As with every year, they come out of hibernation, find food and water and find somewhere dry, warm and safe to bring up the children.
If you were a hedgehog, where in South Leigh would be the prime position to live and raise the kids?
Well, looking at our local hogs and where the greatest numbers were seen, they prefer to live in and around Chapel Road.
It all started in April with hogs now out of hibernation and wanting their breakfast, in the evening of course. Most hogs were seen along Chapel Road. Several of them enjoy living in this part of the village and why not, there's fabulous living accommodation, plenty of grassland perfect for feeding, hedgerows and coppices for finding prey and sleeping in. They even have easy access into and between the gardens of Chapel Road. Not only that, they also get fed by some of their human neighbours. They've got it made.
So wonderful are these gardens along Chapel Road that one female, known locally as 'Hetty' decided that she wanted to set up a home for her and her children to grow up in this part of the neighbourhood. She liked the look of John and Liz Ashwell's garden, so she decided to build a nest under some shrubs. The garden also provided 'Hetty' with nesting material. John, Liz and myself had much enjoyment watching 'Hetty' appear from the shrubs, collect dead daffodil leaves and take them back under the shrubs to build a nest in preparations for her hoglets. Of course, John and Liz saw more of her than I or anyone else did.
Although Hetty was seen many times leaving her nest and going on a foraging trip in the evenings, any youngsters that she may have given birth to were never seen leaving the nest with her. It is possible that if she had given birth to them she may have only brought them out when it was late and dark and no-one was watching.
Next door to John and Liz is the home of Ally Urquhart. Ally always puts food out for the hedgehogs and she had several hogs visiting, how could they and Hetty resist the best restaurant in the neighbourhood? Amongst these hogs there were some youngsters which could possibly have been Hetty's but we can never be sure.
To get an idea as to how many hedgehogs were in the area around Chapel Road, Ally painted a different colour spot of nail varnish on many of them. Hetty was easy to identify because as she walked, she swung one of her back legs out. Ally estimates that there were at least six hogs, and maybe as many as eight in high summer. It wasn't easy to count them, especially when it was dark. This is a fabulous number for this area and for any area in any village.
In my own garden I put out hedgehog food in a feed station from early spring hoping to attract a hog or maybe provide food for one that may have hibernated within my ex orchard now a wildlife sanctuary, over the winter. But alas, no. I looked all Spring and Summer, I even checked after dark hoping and wishing that I may see one. By the end of Summer I was giving up hope, but then in early autumn I saw that the hog food was being eaten overnight, I then saw tell-tale droppings of hedgehogs. Wow, I felt excited and relieved that I finally had a hog in my garden. During the summer I put out a new hibernation box that I recently built, I put it under an oak tree which is quite near to the feed station. I like to think that the hog is using it, I don't know as I daren't look as I don't want to disturb it if it's in there.
As I said, there have been several hogs along Chapel Road which goes to prove just how good the habitat must be. If it was poor habitat, there would not be good numbers of hogs. If we were able to replicate this habitat all over the country, we could save the hedgehog. There have been a few sightings of hedgehogs in other parts of the village but by far the greatest number has been in Chapel Road.
Some of you may already know, but I imagine most of you are unaware that our humble hedgehog has been placed on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red Data list and is described as 'Vulnerable to Extinction'. However did our iconic and beautiful hedgehog get to this?
Well, there are many factors as to what's gone wrong and as usual it's down to us humans. I believe, with what we've seen over the last four years with our study, is that the loss of the right type of habitat is a major concern.
We have had little or no hedgehog sightings in areas joining cultivated land. The annual ploughing and / or cultivating must upset the balance of nature for invertebrates within the soil. So that must tell us that ploughed fields growing wheat, barley and beans etc. which are often sprayed with herbicide insecticide and fungicide, is not good news for hogs. But I don't think we're going to see a decline in ploughed fields any time soon.
Here's something very important that we all can do...
If we all connect our gardens, what I mean by that, is to make an access route between gardens normally known as a 'Hedgehog Highway' by making or cutting a 13cm hole in our fences and walls adjoining your neighbours to give the poor hedgehog access into all our gardens which put together, adds up to a lot of extra much needed feeding, sleeping and nesting habitat.
Have a word with your neighbour and agree to give our fast declining hedgehog a better chance of survival. Hedgehogs must now be hibernating or very near ready. So, we must wait until spring before the action begins again.
As usual, any questions or problems such as a hog out during the day in winter, get in touch with me.
Brian Hutchings 07437 358587 or brianhutchings100@gmail.com
The last few months have actually been quite positive on the village Hedgehog front. We thought we only had a few visiting the feeding station in the garden, which was a decline on previous years. However, we decided to test this by marking the regular visitors with a small dot of brightly coloured nail varnish and we soon realised these and others were coming most nights for a nutritious supplementary snack.
‘Hettie’ as named by John and Liz, made regular appearances in the early afternoons, she had a bit of a wonky gait and it seemed to be a female gathering nesting material. She went for her daily walks over the bridge and along the stream wall, much to the horror of the anxious Ashwells, not the steadiest hedgehog on her feet but she managed it, even though we couldn’t fathom why she had decided on this particular route.
Food and water was dutifully left out and much appreciated by Hettie. With it being June and July we can only hope she was a sow preparing to raise a family of hoglets. They tend to have 4 -6 youngsters per litter but sadly not all survive. They leave the nest with mum after 3 - 4 weeks to join her foraging for food and returning to the nest for her milk. After around 10 days of hunting with her, they go it alone - they are solitary creatures and live their life without encountering their siblings.
So, donning thick gloves and with some trepidation we painted small dots on two hedgehogs, hereafter referred to as 'Yellow Spot' and 'White Spot' for obvious reasons.
Yellow Spot was a regular visitor to the feeding station, a medium-sized, darker hedgehog, unflustered by a strange woman wandering down the garden at odd times with a small torch. On occasion Yellow Spot got there early but I was able to creep in and refill the empty feeding station bowls it was staring at with such disgust. No sign of it for the last month, but I am optimistic and hoping to see an extended family at the feeding station at some point; we can but hope.
White Spot is still a regular visitor to the garden, a force to be reckoned with. It is bigger, lighter in colour and much more snorty, snuffly and basically a bit of a grumpy character. White Spot doesn’t like to share feeding stations with other visitors and for this reason I have decided to leave multiple food stations dotted about the garden to allow the quieter and meeker personalities a look in. A successful move, the milder mannered hedgehogs hear White Spot coming (not difficult, it is quite vocal, grunting as it comes) so they either hide or swiftly move to another location.
As a general rule we seem to get around three adult hedgehogs visiting the garden just before darkness. There are at least five in total including White and Yellow Spot plus three hoglets, independent of adults and eating from the food piles. The adults do not seem to challenge the little hoglets, even grumpy old White Spot, which is nice to see.
One medium-sized, dark hedgehog always goes through the chicken netting. Although not ideal, to accommodate this the netting is never switched on at night time. I always check the electric fence every morning to make sure none have encountered problems and got stuck, we rescued one a few years ago that had become entangled.
So, it is looking positive on the village hedgehog front - great news - but these mammals are having a tricky time in our modern world. They are in a fragile state and are very much an endangered species. The food we offer at garden feeding stations is only a complimentary and nutritious snack. This is not their main diet, but to help them when they need to ‘bulk up’ a bit. This is so important in times of drought, cold weather, breeding season (May / June) and in preparation for hibernation (October / November) or later if it is a mild winter. Hedgehogs are well and truly a gardener’s friend and devour many of what we would consider to be garden pests such as slugs, caterpillars and beetles.
Don’t think that if you feed them they will stop eating the grubs, they enjoy the food we provide but their main diet is what they forage for. I leave food and water out all year round, hedgehogs wake up numerous times over the winter and need to find food to keep them going through hibernation. I leave it in a sheltered spot to protect it from the elements.
If you would like to leave food out for them they enjoy meaty cat and dog kibble, (nothing fish flavoured) especially dry food formulated for kittens. They enjoy the wet pouch dog and cat food and always a bowl of fresh water. I have a mixture of various types of kibble in a tub, they seem to enjoy it anyway. There is of course 'hedgehog food' available from pet stores, which is lovely but it is quite expensive.
Ally Urquhart (17.08.2020)
Photo of Waxwings in Aston village taken by Barry Hudson;
note that the red-wax patches are just visible on the wings, but this is unusual.
I was walking through the village on Christmas Eve delivering some late Christmas cards when I set eyes on a bird that I had never seen before in my life. Since I have been interested in birds since the age of about five and have travelled around many parts of the world working as a professional ornithologist, or simply looking at birds for pleasure, this was quite a momentous occasion. And a home-grown one too.
The bird in question was a Waxwing Bombycilla garrulus - see the photo. It is starling-sized with a sort of beigey-brown plumage but what is striking is its punk-rocker style crest which it raises when the mood takes it. It gets its name from the waxy red patches on the tips of its inner flight feathers but in the field one does not see these easily and it just looks as though the wings have nicely scalloped black and white edges. The bird I saw was in the hedge along Chapel Road on the right going towards Witney. And it was doing what waxwings habitually do in winter, which is eating berries.
I had been hoping to see a waxwing this winter because the birding networks were full of reports of them around Oxfordshire, but somehow they were always being reported from somewhere other than where I was. The weather at that time with about a foot of snow was not exactly conducive to driving around looking for waxwings. I had asked various friends to call me if they saw one but that had not produced any leads except to places I was not sure I could get to in the snow.
It turns out that this winter, according to the Oxford Ornithological Society, has proved to be a bumper year for waxwings with a 'spectacular invasion of this species'. They invade from Scandinavia and Russia when the berry crop fails in those areas, moving into Britain from the East. It happens only every few years and in the books it mentions another large-scale invasion in 1965/6. This winter (2010/11) there were one or two records in Oxford in November, but they really moved in big-time in December with 'a peak around the third week when multiple flocks were discovered on a daily basis'. It was roughly estimated that there may have been 700 to 800 birds in Oxfordshire. Reading those details in the OOS Bulletin, made my one bird in Chapel Road seem like small beer, but for me it was still exciting to see just one having never seen it before.
As I write this on 3rd February, waxwings are still around in Oxfordshire and several small flocks have been seen today around Abingdon. In winter waxwings love berries, so if you have some rowan berry crops in your garden, some rose hips or some crab apples, look out for that sandy coloured bird with a puffy crest and black and white markings on its wings. They often occur in small flocks of ten or less. The number of birds tends gradually to tail off during January to March with a few stragglers around until April or May. They nest in pine trees by preference, in northern Scandinavia laying their eggs in mid-June, quite late in the year by British standards. It may be many years before they invade Oxfordshire on the scale they did this year.
Clive Elliott