Very cool. I haven’t seen much wildlife but I haven’t been outdoors much lately. We’ve been getting rain/sleet/snow and now bitter cold. That’s winter in Minnesota!
We do have one, tiny microenvironment by our building’s common front door. When storms come, the winter birds take refuge there so we need to be careful when entering and exiting. They hide under the hydrangea flower heads and leaves until they get a weather all clear to go searching for food. We can’t put bird food out for them because of other small wildlife and their desire to enter our warm homes. Poor birdies.
Here’s a thing. Most of the Wakehurst prairie was cut (as the current alternative to burning) about a month or more ago. But then it started to rain here - November was crazy wet, into the beginning of December. And then it was cold - not as cold as Minnesota, I’m sure, @carnut - but the longest, coldest spell we’ve had around here in a long time, with snow on the ground for around a week. Just at the end of that cold snap, we managed to get out to Wakehurst for the first time in a while and found this - the Atlantic Coast prairie remains uncut:
I don’t know if this was intentional, or Wakehurst was just caught out by the weather and was unable to get around to cutting it. But worth posting anyway, I thought.
Upthread you were speculating about the presence of beavers - did you find any evidence when you were exploring?
Not yet, but I am no beaver expert. I guess I would recognize a beaver den, if that is what it is called, but perhaps not. In those shallow water bodies you see now frozen I have seen swans with their newly hatched chicks in late spring and early summer, they are safe there from predation from above thanks to the branches of the trees and from below, as in the deeper waters in the lake lurk the wels catfishes, which eat a small chick in one gulp. The neighbours claim that only one of the five hatched chicks survived last year. But I have seen no beavers yet. As I understand it beavers make dams to raise the water level, so that the den remains accesible from below the ice when it freezes. If so, they would be further out, closer to the lake, which is deeper. But I will keep an eye on them now you mention it.
The racoons seem to be real though. They are a plague in Brandenburg, first introduced in Germany in a park in Heidelberg about 100 years ago, then brought as pets by US soldiers in WWII (writes Wikipedia). They have no natural predators and reproduce like rabbits. They devour eggs, chicks, frogs, fish… 2017/2018 over 35000 were shot, according to this site, a number that has been increasing steadily in the last years. I guess the pandemic has made the plague worse.
@Treppenwitz It’s very pretty and restful to look at, even though the winter sun on snow can also make it painful to the eyes. Here, the burning usually takes place in spring, not fall because it is early spring when the imported plants start growing. Our natives start later and by burning in spring, we kill the invasives, but don’t harm the native plants.
@Pardel-Lux, look for mounds of twigs and grass that rise above the water or ice and you will likely be looking at beaver homes. They actually live above the water and dive in when they want to exit their homes or escape predators. I do miss counting the mounds I could see when commuting to my job. Now I live on the city side of the wildlife refuge area so I don’t get to see it on the daily.
Inspired by a sighting of returned cattle egrets (just south of London, England) today, I was doing a little reading and happened across this article.
Wow. Here are a couple of interesting paras:
…these unassuming little egrets are downright impressive. In the past 150 years, cattle egrets have self-populated nearly every continent on earth…
…Cattle egrets are a migratory species, with different populations flying long distances to and from their breeding grounds each year. This ability to fly long and far aided them in colonizing new locations, too. It also helped that on arrival they found fields of cattle where, a few centuries earlier, there would have only been forest…
You know what, we’re not doing to badly in this thread. Check out @Pardel-Lux’s response to my musing.
Today I learned a new term for an environment I know fairly well - though in truth I didn’t know it was defined as a specific environment. Ghyll woodland is a specific type of wet woodland,
Due to their isolation and enclosed nature, Ghylls have a unique microclimate, often rich in bryophytes and other moisture loving plant species. Ghyll woodlands are found in the extreme upper reaches of rivers, where springs and streams first form in small, steep, wooded valleys. The steep sided nature of Ghyll’s has also ensured that many Ghyll woodlands have remained untouched and undisturbed by human activity. Ghyll woodlands have an unusual micro-climate and they are therefore unique.
The flora found in these sites is very characteristic of former Atlantic conditions - including lush growths of ferns (such as hay scented buckler fern), mosses and liverworts. Many are likely to be primary woodland sites (potentially dating from the ice-age) and some have received relatively little disturbance, pollution or management. Ghyll’s provide an important function within the wider river catchment. They help to capture and slow down rainfall and overland run-off which would otherwise have a high capacity for erosion in these steep areas. They also provide shade and protection from sunlight, which provides a kind of ‘thermostatic regulation’ to downstream areas of river by cooling down water temperatures. Cool river temperatures are particularly important for the reproduction of a number of fish species.
The Sussex Wildlife Trust article goes on to say that over 6% of the High Weald in Sussex (my home county) is classed as ‘Ghyll’ woodland, but that it is (generally) a rare habitat and (they seem to be saying) restricted to the UK - though this sounds like an odd claim to me.
In any case, it’s a habitat I frequently cycle through on the tiny roads of the Ashdown Forest. Today we were at a woodland discovery trail (Rowfant Trail) which is - for want of a better description - currently in beta testing. Here’s a photo.
Click on the photo for the full image. On the near bank of the stream the dense ground-level foliage is wild garlic. On the far bank bluebells are just emerging. Bothe species are characteristic of this habitat.
Maybe it is the terminology that is restricted to the U.K. (or perhaps the researchers don’t get out much) because I’ve certainly seen similar land over here on the other side of the pond.
You mean Gallium ursinum, Bärlauch in German? I believe I have seen similar landscapes outside the UK too, and even with bluebells too. If the wild garlic you mention is the same as the one I there are people who eat it. I tried it once by invitation, as pesto, and I did not particularly like it. It seems that it can be confused with lily of the valley, which is extremely poisonous (I did not know aboit the possibility of confusion back then, knowing the person who invited me I would not have been reassured).
We have some lilys of the valley in the balcony in bloom right now. The are tiny, beautiful and smell very good. When in bloom they are quite easy to tell apart, the wild garlic and the Lily, but the leaves are very similar indeed. It’s not exactly nature yet but they are headed towards the swamp, where they should feel right at home.
Talking about the swamp: do you see the piece of fence in the picture? It’s cheap metal, just rubbish, and it has impaled one of the slowly falling trees. I wonder how we are going to get that one removed! We are finding so much waste we hardly believe it.
Should that be allium ursinum? That’s what wiki gives - the British name is Ramsons. I’ve never tried eating them but I know people who do.
I’m pleased to see both you and @carnut give the lie to that stuff about ghyll woodland being uniquely British - it sounded like nonsense when I first read it. Ignorance fought!
j
ETA: @Pardel-Lux - looking forward to seeing more swamp updates throughout the spring!
Small swamp update: the plants are growing back, the water recedes very slowly. Here is a fern, growing back:
A week later, and look how they have grown:
and grown…
The grasses in the water are sedges:
And the racoons have survived winter:
Have not seen one yet, but the neighbours say they are cheeky bastards. They eat their strawberries, but only the red part, leaving the white core and the green leaves back. And they like peaches, but only one bite of each. The rest is discarded. We’ll see how we get along.
I believe that is Allium ursinum (ramsons), but it does not have the characteristic pungent smell. I am not goint to eat that, just in case:
The rest of the plants is still very young and tender:
The irises are starting to bloom!
And we had to fell a poplar that was threatening to crash down. The beaver is happy peeling the bark:
I wonder whether the footprints in the post above really are racoons or perhaps they are beavers? Will check the net for footprint identification, can’t be that hard. Racoons are invasive, but beavers are heavily protected, you are not allowed to even scare them away. Fine by me.
Also saw dragonflies, frogs, an enormous slug and many birds I have not learned to identify yet. And my wife believes she saw a salamander. That would be fantastic if there were some there!
ETA: Beaver and racoon prints seems to be very similar indeed. Will need a camera.
No, we are giving it away to neighbours for heating. There is no shortage of dying and rotting wood in there, from almost completely rotten:
to dry and standing, great fun for woodpeckers:
to this mess:
and this:
The neighbours are taking it on the condition that they cut it up and transport it themselves, and seem to be glad to do so. The poor popplar was on the wrong spot and, as you see, the soil is marshy and does not support big trees. It was almost 30 m high and a real danger. And it did not really fit in ecologically, that made the decision easier. It was cut in february, btw, respecting the regulations that dictate that trees can only be felled after an exam by a biologist between november and end february, because no nesting takes place then. The biologist confirmed that no bats or squirrels were hibernating (don’t ask how much such certificates cost).
See post #123. They don’t belong here but it will be impossible to get rid of them now.
But beavers do belong, I am more and more sure that we have more beavers than racoons in the swamp.
Actually, this is pure coincidence - I was out on the bike today and realized that my route was going to take me past my favorite swamp. So I stopped and took a snap - you really need a reasonably sized screen to make much out. If I could have snuck three or four meters forwards I could have taken a better picture, but as I was wearing cycling shorts that wasn’t going to happen.
That is nice! I would never have known before that swamps are so interesting! Look what I found yesterday:
It is a grassy plant with fruits that look spiky, but are soft-ish. The fruits are about 2 inches wide, I missed the flowers they came from. No idea what they are, but they look nice and a bit alien.
Those are a group of caterpillars hanging from a very long thread. I saw three different examples, wonder whether I will ever find out what the butterflies they will become are. Unfortunately they are out of focus, I have studied the instructions of my phone camera in the meantime, hope to do better next time, if they are still around. Otherwise, next year:
