Clare Topping – Page 30 – Enviro-Mentalist

A good year for fungi? – Continued

So is it a good year for fungi – to be honest I am not sure. We certainly found quite a few different types in Gamlingay Wood (don’t ask me to name them – I am assured that a list will be forthcoming), but apparently, although it has been quite damp – good for fungi, quite warm in the days – also a good thing, it has also been cold at night – not good.

So, did I learn much? Not sure – I know the difference between a toadstool and a mushroom – there is none, I know I will never know much about fungi – there are so many different varieties, and I know that there are some that only grow on dead things, some that have a symbiotic relationship with living things, and some that grow on living things often transforming them into dead things. Some are also apparently very fussy (can you get much fussier than growing only on LAST YEAR’S MALE birch catkins).

They also come in a variety of shapes, colours (some are bright purple, not all are brown) and sizes (some are tiny, others are about 12 inches high) and these are only the ones that I saw on Saturday.

A good year for fungi?

At the end of the week I am due to go on my final wildlife training workshop. This time it is fungi. After looking for birds on a wet and windy day in May when it was difficult to hear yourself, let alone any nearby birds, learning to identify flowers in one of the wettest Junes, looking for butterflies on the day after the Midlands flooded I am hopeful that the wet damp weather will this time be to my advantage.

I am boosted in this hope by the large numbers of fungi that I have seen lazing about gardens, fields and housing estates like the shaggy ink cap that I saw on my way to the Country Park at the weekend. Only time will tell.

Commuting – why would anyone want to?

When I first started work a combination of minimum opportunities and the job of my other half meant that I commuted for over an hour each way (this didn’t include the time spent in a petrol station or taking my car for a service every few months). We then made the decision to move to a house approximately half way in between our respective places of work. This still meant a lot of money on petrol and at least 40 minutes each way (when I wasn’t stranded by flood water). So, I made a decision to look for a professional job in my (now) home town. Easier said than done, these are few and far between in Warehouseville. I now have said job, and, will freely admit that it is not the job of my dreams, much less one that uses my full potential or training. However, I am making less impact on the planet, don’t have to worry about the weather, the price of petrol or the latest shed load on the M40. Still, every now and then I have a hankering to look for another job which would inevitably involve getting back in the car.

This week I have taken my beloved to an Open University exam at Birmingham University (not ideal, but it could have been worse). We decided to go along the M42 – and I am now cured – the queue in the other direction seemed to be pretty much constant for the entire stretch, and the warning signs were up for a further queue at the western end of the motorway on the M5. I was in luck I thought – until I queued along the A38 for nearly all of the distance between to the University. All of this makes me wonder why anyone should choose to commute. It is bad for the planet, is only going to get more expensive, without a huge investment in public transport it will only get more difficult, and it takes a huge chunk out of your life. Imagine if you had an extra two hours every day (10 hours a week) to do whatever it is you want to do?

A good day’s birdwatching.

After my early attempts at digiscoping proved futile I thought that I would cheer myself up by having a walk over to the country park. This is my first autumn with my scope, so I am looking forward to seeing all the birds that thought they could hide from me when I only had a pair of binoculars.

I wasn’t disappointed – the ducks are starting to reappear, there were plenty of wigeon, and also a few pochard and teal. There were also a lot of lapwing on the exposed banks, but the highlight for me, and a lifetime first, was a large flock of golden plover. Although they are probably there quite often, without the scope I have not been able to recognise them – they were just another dumpy, wading bird that wasn’t a lapwing or oystercatcher. Along with the usual gull suspects I also spotted four green sandpipers in the far off mud. How did I recognise these birds I hear you ask, I have seen them much closer at Brandon Marsh, and they are quite distinctive from a distance – very white underneath and they tend to bob along as they probe the mud. Saying that there is a possibility that they were something else entirely, I will never know.

Digiscoping – foiled again

I have an obsession with being able to gain a level of proficiency digiscoping. I have the scope, I have a camera (albeit an old one) and the appropriate attachment, all I need are the subjects. After having experienced a birdy bonanza in the garden yesterday I got up bright and reasonably early for a Sunday, and set up my digiscoping equipment in the kitchen and aimed at the bird feeder. What did I see, absolutely nothing. I have no idea why, but my garden has been pretty bereft of birds today – I did see a wren, briefly, and this greenfinch:

Digiscoped Greenfinch

but that was all. I am not sure when I will try again – I have more success photographing the moon with this set up – although that moves as well!

Autumn Tidy Up

I decided that as I am on holiday this week, and have been particularly stressed at work for the last couple of weeks, I should take the opportunity to do something useful and therapeutic. So, I decided to tidy up the back garden, get rid of the courgette plant that seemed to have become home to half of the county’s blackfly population. However, nature, and a growing interest in photography conspired to scupper my well-intentioned plans (not that this is difficult being easily distracted / lazy by nature). Anyway, I was busy tidying up the tomatoes (will they ever ripen, and, if they do, will I get to them before the slugs?) when I spotted :

Garden Spider

Even my modest garden in the middle of a housing estate seems to be teeming with life at long last. I spent part of the morning watching birds on the feeder (I was particularly pleased to see a coal tit popping in and out of the garden), then I discovered various kinds of fungi, and found a frog (was he lost? a matter of opinion – his or mine) hiding under the courgette – until I threw it in the bin (that was the courgette, not the frog in case you are wondering).

Just in case you are wondering about the black and white – I am reading a book about taking black and white photographs and felt like it!

More Environmentally Friendly Transport?

At the end of September Daventry played host to a showcase for what some would consider to be the next generation of transport. This was featured in the National Press and on the National News (briefly). As this was heralded in the local press for several weeks before, it was with a small amount of excitement that I went to go and look at the travel pods!! I have to admit to a small amount of disappointment (why? look at the photos below).

21st Century Travel? Daventry Travel Pod

Whilst it was publicised as only a prototype one can only hope that the next generation of travel pods will look better and travel a little faster than these golf-buggy wannabees. Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for new and innovative transport solutions particularly from a town that several centuries before was a major coaching town, but I am not the type of person that needs convincing. I try to walk wherever I can, but would be quite happy to be able to call up a pod to get to Long Buckby station, but I am not sure that many of the sceptics would be convinced to leave their cars behind when the prototype could be overtaken by anyone not requiring a walking aid (and I saw someone crash the buggy into the grass verge!)

The display that the council had did have some lovely graphics showing what they could look like, and I was informed that there would be a system installed in one of the London airports in the next couple of years, but the monorails looked a little like something that already exists in some American airports. What I wanted to see was something a little more state of the art and modern that would put Daventry on the map, maybe we will get this one day, but it seems a long way off.

Countin’ Crows

I spent my Saturday this weekend counting birds. I have decided to try a few of the local Wildlife Trust’s workshops in order to get more from my hobbies. The first one was the most obvious for me – Bird Monitoring, held at Pitsford Reservoir. (I am hoping to be able to carry out some surveys in Daventry to monitor the effect of all of the expansions on the area’s wildlife.)

I was not sure what to expect, and was concerned that I would be out of my depth, not to mention the change in the weather forecast!

We spent the morning learning about the different types of surveys in use and then tried looking at some of the data from the previous year’s survey. What can I say, there is a lot of data to collect for somewhere like Pitsford, and, not all of it is as easy to interpret as you would think. In the afternoon we went out and about; looking in nestboxes (the Tawny Owl chick being a particular hit) and then trying to count up the number of tiny little birds in those big verdant trees!

What did I come away with – a knowledge of how to carry out a survey, a desire to join the BTO (British Trust for Ornithology), a need to learn to recognise bird calls and songs, and a photo of a Tawny Owl.

A morning’s birdwatching trip to the Country Park.

It seems to have been a while since I went out with my scope, so I thought that I would make a trip to the local Country Park. My main reason for this trip was to see if the terns had returned.

The trip started well with some good views of a male blackcap singing away close to the entrance. I set my scope up to have a look at the water, but it was pretty empty, mainly inhabited by coot and great crested grebes. Still, undeterred I continued wandering round, hoping to get a glance of some vocal chiffchaffs, if nothing else. The woods were full of noisy great tits and strangely quiet blue tits, not to mention the ubiquitous wrens and robins, but other than that there wasn’t very much to be seen.

There is still a pair of gadwall hanging out in the mangrove swamp end of the park, and whilst I was stood perusing this end of the park I go some fantastic views of a pair of treecreepers.

By the time I got to the far side of the water I had tracked down the taunting chiffchaffs, and listened to a pair of male blackcaps challenge each other to a singing duel at the edge of their territories. I think they both claimed victory as they flew away in opposite directions. As I wandered to the dam I was rewarded with the site of a couple of terns cruising the water. At the visitor centre end of the water the male scaup was still very much in evidence whilst he and the other ducks were busy staying out of the way of about six mute swans who all seemed to think that they were head swan.

I think that I will pack away my scope for the next six months at the country park as most of the water birds seem to have moved on and it is the smaller birds that are reigning at the moment. Time to concentrate on improving my photography skills I think.
In addition to the 32 species of bird that I saw (not bad considering that the emerging canopy is making things a bit difficult) I saw some brimstone, small tortoiseshell, speckled wood and orange tip butterflies. Oh yes, and I had a lovely walk through a verdant wood on a warm spring morning, I can think of worse ways to spend a day.

Spring is definitely here.

This may seem a bit obvious, but I think that Spring has definitely arrived now. The birds are singing as well as fighting (it is the only time that I have seen a pair of blue tits working together to drive the greenfinches off the seed feeder – and the greenfinches were definitely afraid, very afraid), the blackthorn is flowering and the hawthorn is coming into leaf. However, as if to confirm my suspicions I saw butterflies along the old railway track. First of all a bright yellow Brimstone fluttered past, then I saw a Comma sat by the path, and some other Brimstones, and shortly later a Peacock butterfly, and another Brimstone butterfly. Here are some photos that I prepared earlier, well in my garden last year:
Comma Butterfly