Calving Times

We saw a cow being born on Thursday. Not an unusual thing on a farm with a herd of 80, yet in the couple of months that I'd worked there I'd managed to miss all the births.

We were actually out on site when the birth started, so got the call 'get back now!', which we did, an arrived as one foot was sticking out. On which note, a quick heads up: if you're eating, or generally squeamish, you might want to skip the rest of this.

Ready? Ok, so the usual sign that they're about to give birth is that they separate themselves from the rest of the herd. Then a 'bag', which is the amniotic sac, pops out and - ideally - bursts. If it doesn't. it's bad for the calf as they can suffocate. Which is why we were there.

So, next out is one foot followed, ideally, by the other. In a clean birth, both should be poking out together, followed by the mouth. In our case, it was the calf's tongue, wiggling round like a tentacle in a bizarre sight. At this point, we intervened, wrapping a length of rope around the calf's two feet and pulling outwards and downwards and assisting both the mother and gravity. Out came the calf, simple as, and, after a quick check over (a healthy and quite large male) we dipped the umbilical in iodine (Elise got that job and spent the rest of the day trying to wash it off her hands), packed the stuff away and the two ropes for sterilisation and left them to it.

And that was it, apart from all the cooing and taking pictures.

More Butterflies

So, here we go again. This is Holt Heath, which looks like this in midsummer. As I think I have explained before, this is a bit of a revelation for me as all my previous - and fairly substantial - experiences of heathland has been in autumn, winter and spring. Heaths can be very bleak and desolate then, and nothing wrong with that, I happen to like bleak and desolate. However, seeing a heath in mid summer, bright with colour and positively humming with life, does rather justify all the winter's efforts.

Anyway, on the subject of 'positively humming with life', here are some of my butterfly and moth spots from the last few days. I am indebted to my old cycling buddy and moth expert Jason for a lot of the idents. He saved me a lot of flicking through butterfly books.

A Gatekeeper or Hedge Brown (Pyronia tithonus), which slots neatly into the 'small, brown' category of butterflies. Speaking of which...

A Wall Brown (Lasiommata megera) on some cross leafed heather.

A peacock (Inarchis io), which is one of the 'classic' butterflies, by which I mean butterflies that I can recognise. Unlike the two above, which are small and fluttery  and have to be chased and then snuck up on, this one just sat on a bit of ragwort, wings spread and letting me snap away. Brazen hussy that it was.

This is a Silver Y moth (Autographa gamma), a visitor from the continent where it is widespread. Unusually for a moth, it's happy flying in daylight.

A Dusky Sallow (Eremobia ochroleuca). Also happily flying in daylight, which somewhat negates the point I made above. I never claimed to be an expert. I love the names, too. Speaking of which...

A Large Skipper (Ochlodes sylvanus). Definitely a butterfly, despite looking like a moth. This butterfly is found all over Europe and Asia, as far east as Japan. Which is pretty cool.

For more info, go to http://butterfly-conservation.org/50/identify-a-butterfly.html or http://www.ukmoths.org.uk/thumbnails/, although the second one is slightly terrifying in it's overwhelming detail.

Anyway, here's the only other song I can think off with 'Butterfly' in the title.It's 'Buttefly' by Crazy Town (the band, not the Danish kid's tv show). It does tend to get stuck in your head at times like these. The tune is sampled from 'Pretty Little Ditty' by The Red Hot Chilli Peppers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn88p4vAwHk and is one of the best bass riffs ever.

Bog Asphodel and Sundews

More pics from the same bog. Here's some bog asphodel (Narthecium ossifragum) in full flower.

Some sundews (Drosera rotundiflora) on a bed of sphagnum moss

And a nice panoramic view of a the same mire in full flower. As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, most of my experience on heathland has been in the winter, when it's all brown and kinda bleak looking, so this comes as a pleasant surprise.

Bullet With The Butterfly Wings

I've mentioned previously about how I tend to prefer taking pictures of plants due the fact that, unlike animals, they stay the heck still.

So therefore, I am marginally chuffed to post this picture of a silver studded blue butterfly: 

The usual procedure goes spot butterfly, see butterfly land nearby, get phone out of pocket, fire up camera, hold over butterfly, focus, take picture. All the while, you're in the vicinity because you have an actual job to do and so have to stop what you're s'posed to be doing and follow the procedure described above. Most times, the butterfly has flapped off by this stage and slowly flits further and further away as you attempt to 'bag' it. This is the original pic:

The silver studded blue is a heathland species, living off typical heathland species such as gorse, heather and bird's foot trefoil and, although there seemed to be loads of them flapping around the area I was in when I took the picture (a marshy part of Holt Heath), is described by the Butterfly Conservation Trust as "A rare butterfly confined to small colonies in England and Wales."  In fact, let them describe it themselves: http://butterfly-conservation.org/50-781/silver-studded-blue.html

Sticking with the insect theme, back home in my own garden, we have spotted these guys on our pear tree:

These we identified as the social pear sawfly (Neurotoma saltuum), for which the food plant is... pear trees. A quick google search reveals lots of tips on getting rid of them but we decided to put our conservation hat on and left them too it. Our pear tree can probably take this one hit for biodiversity.

Anyway, a few weeks after this pick was taken, the cocoon is still there but now empty and the tree is looking fine and dandy, a few leaves slightly chewed but otherwise ok. Don't worry, we'll keep you posted on any developments.

Ask Not For Whom The Bell Heather Tolls...

We're out checking the cows on one of our sites, which was another bit of former heathland pine plantation.  'Checking the cows' involves counting them - none of them have either died, wandered off or given birth - and then giving them a quick visual once over for any obvious signs of injury or illness.

As we ride around the site, I spot a profusion of beautiful purple flowers. Looking around, they seem every where but I don't know what they are. So, I do what I normally do and get my phone out, take a picture and look it up in my wildflower book.

It's a very distinctive flower. I'm not going to say what I thought they looked like at the time, you'll have to use your own imaginations for that, but anyway I looked it up aaaaand it was....

.....bell heather. Yes, bell heather (Erica cinera). With one winter's experience working on Holt heath and two on Godlingston and Studland heaths, plus studying heathland as part of my course I fail to spot one of the commonest heathland plants and one that I've been walking over for years. Oops.

In my defence, all my heathland experience has been in the autumn, winter and spring. At that time of year, heathers are all a nondescript, unhealthy looking brown and you're usually stepping over them to get to the five foot tall, spiky, green and vibrant yellow gorse bushes. But still...

Amphibians

Spotted today, worryingly close to a bonfire: a common toad and a common frog. We looked for a common newt to match the set but couldn't find one.

The Beauty Of Brambles

I was out marshalling a push bike race last weekend. Bike racing has been a big thing for me for a good few years now and my now defunct previous blog, Gordo's World Of Zoom (http://zoom-gordo.blogspot.co.uk/?view=flipcard) was all about bikes and bike racing. Anyhoo, the act of marshalling a bike race involves standing on a corner or a road race circuit and stopping the traffic every time that the race comes through. This was about every 15 minutes on this particular circuit and so the rest of the time is spent chatting to the other marshals about the Tour de France and such, as well as appreciating the local wildlife.

The circuit was around the grounds of Lulworth castle and, with the grounds of the castle on one side of the road, on the other was the fairly nondescript hedge pictured above. The bindweed was in full flower and looking very pretty indeed and it occurred to me that, in this bit of hedge, there was bindweed, bramble and nettles. Add in ground elder (which was not far away) and you have pretty much everything that a gardener hates. They're all classic 'thug' plants, that will take over a garden given half a chance and against which you are fighting a constant war. And yet, in full flower and out in the countryside, would you not say that they look as beautiful as any formal garden?

Ok, so I may have some gardener friends that would argue that point. But still, some while ago I was investigating gardening for wildlife and read up on what sort of plants were best for wildlife. The results came back as brambles, nettles... basically, the best thing you could do for wild life in your garden is put your secateurs down, put the kettle on, put your feet up and let nature do the job for you.

This may be great for biodiversity but was less good for my future job prospects. But, joking aside, brambles are food for caterpillars of the green hairstreak, grizzled skipper and holly blue butterfly, while nettles are the same for the (deep breath) comma, small tortoiseshell, peacock, painted lady and red admiral.

There is an exhaustive list of larval food plants for butterflies on the UK Butterflies website http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/foodplants.php which is worth a read through just for the stupid names of both the plants and the insects (for example: common stork's-bill is a food plant of the brown argus).

Meanwhile, the Butterfly Conservation Trust - based about half a mile away from where these pictures were taken - has a handy guide to gardening for butterflies http://butterfly-conservation.org/11908/gardening.html. It even mentions buddleia, aka the butterfly bush, which is another bane of the gardener's life but I digress.

More Extreme Orchid Spotting

Spotted on the roundabout outside Blandford. A common spotted, I think (Dactylorhiza fuchsia) I believe that this area was seeded with wild flowers a few years ago, unlike the previous roadside orchid spot on the Isle of Harris(http://punkrockecology.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/more-orchids-morchids.html), which was a genuine wild flower in an actual wilderness!

Wildflowers by roadside seems to be the new thing and, although I used to be one of the people who's job it was to mow roadside verges a few years ago, I believe that this is very much a good thing.

More here: http://www.plantlife.org.uk/our_work/campaigns/flowersontheedge/roadvergeexamples

Stag Beetle

A female stag beetle that I spotted out walking the dogs a few days ago. 

Should you spot one, please report it to the People's Trust For Endangered Species and their Great Stag Hunt survey, which can be found here: https://ptes.org/get-involved/surveys/garden/great-stag-hunt/stag-hunt-survey/

More on stag beetles and the the survey here:

 https://ptes.org/campaigns/stag-beetles/

The beetle in question was ambling up a fairly busy street, so I moved it to a garden where it was less likely to be squished or eaten by magpies.

Bring Me The Soil Horizon

Up at my Mother-In-Law's place, there's some construction work going on, shoring up the house next door or some some such. We went to have a look at and there, where the soil had been dug away, was another of those wonderful times that the text book description that you've been looking at in various books for years is perfectly rendered in real life. In this case, a perfect example of soil horizons.

Here's the text book version:

And here's the real deal:

So yeah, looks like a load of dirt, huh? Well, on the top layer is, ya know, grass and stuff and you don't have to be a biologist to know that grass 'and stuff' is organic. Organic - i.e. living - matter dies and then decays, being broken down by microbes and fungi and stuff. This creates what gardeners call a 'rich humus', which is kind of food for plants. Not hummus, that's food for vegetarians.

Anyway, from the bottom of the picture up, is the underlying rock, which is chalk and is fairly typical of the south of England. Chalk is basically dead sea shells, built up over a very long time and is alkaline, if you remember the post I made a couple of weeks ago attempting to explain acid and alkaline soils: http://punkrockecology.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/orchidorama.html 

Also, it doesn't hold water very well, as we can see as the darker brown soil at the top washes out very quickly to light brown and then the pure white of the chalk. This creates the alkaline and not very fertile chalk downland that I also attempted to explain here: http://punkrockecology.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/over-hills-and-far-away.html

If you're a gardener, or a farmer, or indeed if you're a plant, then there is a 'perfect' soil, which is called loam and is a rich dark brown, very mildly acidic and a mixture of clay, sand and silt. Rusty coloured soil, incidentally, is coloured that way precisely because it is full of tiny particles of ferris oxide, or rust, and this rust is an indication of air and water being able to penetrate deep into the soil. White soil, grey soil and black soil (the latter being peat soils, such as that described in 'Orchidorama') show the opposite of this, usually that the iron and everything else is being washed away or that air is not able to penetrate.

If ya wanna get even more geeky, then look up 'munsell soil colour chart', or have a look at the following links:

Soil types explained for gardeners: https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?PID=179

A very tech description of soil horizons: http://passel.unl.edu/pages/informationmodule.php?idinformationmodule=1130447025&topicorder=4

Or you can just slack off and watch this. I like it. It's got a citroën van in it.