Ring of Fire

Can you see the ring of fire that inspired my title?

This is my butterfly from a few days back, the first of November. It is a Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta. Not really a British butterfly at all it is a summer migrant, flying in from Southern Europe and North Africa in the spring and early summer and returning home in the autumn. Well that is how it used to be.

If you Google for the UK Red Admiral you will learn that very rarely it will overwinter in the extreme south of England. Well that is also how it used to be.

You have got a little something on your nose there.

This might turn into a post about climate change. If I asked you for your childhood recollections of October 24th , say from the 1960's you probably would not remember anything specific but if I changed that date to November the 5th... People in the UK would have no trouble at all recalling that exact day, forty or fifty years ago. It is Bonfire Night.

I don't have any specific memories of my own childhood birthdays but I can recall the excitement of bonfire night fifty years ago. It was a night of duffle coats and scarves and woollen gloves. Sparklers,  red faces in the firelight and baked potatoes, it was cold.

I have just been reading on the RSPB website that Red Admirals can be seen until October and very rarely into November. When Fizz and I go out this afternoon if the sun is shining we will see Red Admirals. It isn't rare any more and they will overwinter here in Gloucestershire.

Times have changed and winter is warm.

The last few days the weather has been really fantastic here. Well, it has been cold, with lots of sunshine but we have also had sudden downpours of very heavy rain and then hailstones and then more sunshine. It is very lively and I am really enjoying it.

It is nice that it is cold enough to wear a coat out and that is useful when the rain comes over but I have not even thought about wearing gloves yet, it isn't that cold.

I have chosen my butterfly photographs today to focus on that ring of fire, I think that it is lovely :)

I am going to be keeping a close eye on the insects as we head toward winter. A friend has been asking about Dragonfly sightings. The Migrant Hawker is often seen well into November and I might do a post about that one soon. I would like to see one for myself.

There are some really good Dragonfly spots around here but we need a sunny day and I need Fizz to get a clean bill of health. I am pretty sure that she is not in season and a mistake has been made, that is good because I can take her to public places but I need her owner to confirm that and that she is happy for me to take her out.

The second dog in this video, Buddy, is a male. Can you see why I don't think she is in season?

There is just nothing in her behaviour to suggest such a thing.

So you sort yourself out and then we can go and look for insects. Okay?

I apologise for my absence over the last couple of days. A prolonged power cut meant that I lost most of yesterday but also I have had a lot to do getting the farm straightened out for my landlords return :)

I will be around to visit you shortly.

With Fizz.

Little Snake

Okay I know that I am on dodgy ground here. Many people hate snakes with very good reason.

This post is in response to one that my good friend John Suchled wrote on his blog "Scattered Words." He wrote about the need to keep the yard tidy and about Tiger Snakes. John lives in Australia.

In many parts of the world snakes can and do kill people. If you live in such a place you might think that it would be nice to live in Ireland (no snakes) or New Zealand (no snakes). I like living in England. We have three snakes and they are not dangerous and that is better than no snakes at all in my book.

In England we can enjoy and love our snakes.

We have a Smooth  Snake but I don't have pictures of this one. The Smooth Snake is extremely rare and it's distribution is limited to a few select parts of the country. It is non-venomous and you will be very lucky to see one.

The Grass Snake is another non-venomous one.

I am told that it is often confused with the Adder, presumably because it is snake shaped, it doesn't look anything like an Adder. The general appearance is of a long thin grey snake. It has a distinctive yellow collar and the pupils of it's eyes are round.

Then there is my favourite the Adder.

The Adder is a Viper and it is venomous. There have been fifteen recorded deaths in the UK from the last 150 years. Pussy Cats are more dangerous than Adders. The last death from an Adder bite was recorded nearly forty years ago. The bite is painful and the effects in an adult can last for several months, children recover quicker for some reason. Herpetologists refer to being bitten as being "tagged," an occupational hazard. A bite is very rarely fatal but you should seek medical attention. The most common treatment is to observe you for two hours and then send you home. There are anti-venoms but they are only administered in extreme cases.

Often the snake will not envenomate. It bites without injecting venom because venom is a limited resource.

This is not a dangerous animal. The one thing that you should never, ever do is to TRY TO PICK IT UP.

The most common reason that people are bitten is because they tried to handle the animal. There was a case here in August that made the news, a man was seriously bitten three times by an Adder that he had picked up.

I don't know why anyone would do that, possibly if you had mental health issues and saw something bright and sparkly in the grass...

This post is about the day that I tried to pick up an Adder.

I wasn't exactly unaware, in fact I had been living with these snakes for several years, I had researched them and thought that I knew them well. I just had one more important lesson to learn.

I had bought a piece of woodland in East Sussex and the reason that I chose that patch was because on my first viewing I saw two Adders in a clearing in the wood. I had never seen an Adder before. They were exotic and beautiful, like something out of the jungle. They were also the reason that I bought my first camera.

About 120 acres of woodland had been split into smaller plots and sold to private owners as amenity woodland. It was a little piece of paradise. Almost as soon as we moved in we were contacted by local foresters who wanted the Oak. Playing on the naivete of the new owners, experts assured us that proper woodland management entailed the removal of the Oak that until now they hadn't been able to touch.

It was an obvious scam. The Forestry Commission were handing out grants for the restoration of the Sweet Chestnut Coppice. There was no restoration being done. A coppice is not a place it is a way of life, it requires regular cutting over a period of many years and it is not profitable do continue doing this. With a grant for the restoration and with the Oak contained within the forest it became profitable to go in and do it but once only, there would be no grants or Oak next time.

Col, why don't you love and respect the Forestry Commission?

We have history.

My little bit of paradise was destroyed, well everything around it anyway.

The biggest threat to our Adder population is Human disturbance and as the extraction and processing of the Oak increased my snakes started to disappear.

A few years into my ownership snakes had become thin on the ground. There is a particularly good time to look for Adders, the two weeks either side of May Day, this is their breeding season and they are focused on the task and much less wary of Humans. Some people say that this is the only time that you will see them.

I had been searching the land for several hours without success when walking back along a path that I had only just come along I spotted a little baby Adder.

Sadly it was dead. It lay there completely motionless. A spider crawled over it. I was absolutely gutted that the only snake that I had been able to find was a dead baby.

I didn't feel comfortable photographing it, hardly a triumph, it felt a bit disrespectful.

(remember that I told you that Grass Snakes have round pupils)

Somewhere in my fuddled brain a thought was forming and I swear it was unconscious, I was just wondering what had killed it, I couldn't see any marks.

Without thinking I did the most stupid thing.

Okay it wouldn't have killed me but even the little ones have venom.

What made me so mad with myself was that I knew, other people may be seeing a snake for the first time but it was already embedded in me not to approach them or cause them stress and never to pick one up.

But this one was dead. Lesson learned.

Here is Fizz demonstrating what she will do the next time that I am attacked by a snake.

No you will not. When we meet a snake I shall pick you up and carry you to a place of safety.

If you live in the UK and you are lucky enough to come across one of our native snakes then you are seeing something wild and beautiful. Don't approach it and don't cause it stress. Take a photograph so that you can remember that special moment and let it go on it's way.

Waiting and Watching

Okay we are waiting for the Sparrowhawk.

On Saturday morning I saw a Sparrowhawk make a kill in the back garden, I am pretty sure that it was a successful kill. I have seen this hawk here twice before and so far he has visited the garden got his dinner and then disappeared for a couple of months, he has not been a problem or made any impact on the bird population. I have come to look forward to his visits.

This is the bird on an earlier visit (previously unpublished photographs)

The pictures may seem cruel but predators exist in the world as part of the balance of nature and they have to eat. Predators kill and eat other animals. Starvation is the main cause of death for these birds.

A lot of people don't have much sympathy for the Sparrowhawk because it is cruel. A small bird like this will die quickly as the hawk's talons pierce it's body but the hawk will eat larger prey alive. So do a lot of our birds, Blackbirds don't strangle worms before they eat them but it is a lot easier to feel sorry for a bird than it is a worm. The hawk isn't being cruel, this is just how it is.

This is a juvenile bird and I believe that it is most probably a male. The bird that  I saw on Saturday was a male in it's adult plumage, possibly the same bird. An adult male is a beautiful and striking bird, It's back and wings are steel blue and it has orange cheeks, that orange colour sometimes extends down it's breast. I really wanted to photograph it.

The other thing is...

My bird feeders have remained almost untouched now for five days and I want to know if the hawk that I saw on Saturday has anything to do with that.

At this time of year it is normal for bird feeders to be quiet in the UK, there is an abundance of natural food about but the last time I filled these feeders they were emptied in three days and the change has been sudden.

I decided to watch for the hawk's return. He can come and go in the space of a minute so to know if he is staying here I have to watch constantly, if I take a half hour break I will learn nothing.

He ate on Saturday morning and so I decided to watch from Saturday afternoon until the same time on Sunday. Twenty four hours in a hawks life.

It was a no show. when he didn't show up again on Saturday I felt certain that he would be hungry in the morning but... no Sparrowhawk, so we don't have a problem. That's a pity...or is it.

Instead of a post about a beautiful bird here is a post about me getting annoyed and getting a bad back.

Play with me.

I can't. I'm busy.

You don't look very busy.

This is the garden layout. Take note of the Honeysuckle bush beside the feeder, that is a problem.

I think that the open aspect of the garden has saved us from having any real problems with Sparrowhawks. They are a woodland bird and they like tight spaces where the prey bird will find it's exit blocked. They also like small town gardens with high fences and lots  of shrubbery for the same reason. They are also an ambush predator.

Whine, whine whine.

The first time that I saw the hawk it hid in the bush beside the feeder and it sat there for about twenty minutes before giving up. Every bird in the garden saw it go in and knew it was there. It didn't get a kill on that visit but next time it changed it's tactics.

Excuse me there is something outside of my back door.

I don't know what that is and I am not opening the door to find out.

The next time that the hawk visited it flew openly into the garden, all of the little birds dashed into the honeysuckle bush and the bird perched on top of the feeder.

The honeysuckle isn't offering the birds any protection at all.

If an old fellow with misty bifocals can see them from his kitchen then the hawk can see them from half a mile away. It plucked a Sparrow from the bush as easily as you or I would take an apple from a tree (a small tree that we could reach).

The second kill that I saw followed exactly the same pattern. It is so easy for this Hawk that I do not really understand why it has not taken up residence here but it hasn't.

Don't scratch my door! Excuse me, I have got to deal with this.

What?

                           

Can I come in?

No!

Sometimes when I am sitting motionless and staring out of a window I am actually being very busy.

Can't you do nothing and throw a ball at the same time, or is that what men call multitasking?

Luckily for her I have a soft spot for little animals. :)

This is gonna be so good.

So that is that. No photographs of a beautiful bird of prey, just happy Sparrows...

and a stupidly happy dog.

What a waste of a Sunday...... or was it?