November in North Cornwall
(2007)

Motor-home sunset

Well, it should have been just a week of taking the usual photographs, making notes, marking maps and drawing diagrams whilst wandering about generally poking my nose into stuff....but then Bird-flu hit East Anglia (again) so, while five of the others were sent to join Sam and Joe in Suffolk, I was told to "hang on" in Cornwall for a few more days so that I could yomp around as many of the Cornish water margins as possible in the North of the County in search of ailing wildfowl!

Owned and cared for by the National Trust, Bedruthan Steps (above and below) is a must-see destination for any visitor to Cornwall's rugged Northern coastline. Until a few years ago there used to be a near-vertical and very narrow stairway which enabled visitors to actually descend onto the beach far below. However, violent Winter storms and natural cliff erosion slowly combined to undermine the rock supporting the stairway and eventually made it far too unsafe to use!

Bedruthan Steps looking out towards Park Head and, way beyond that, Dinas Head.
From there, Padstow is just three or four miles away.

The Boss decided that as Cornwall is well known as a major centre for poultry farms of one sort or another and because Christmas is looming (perhaps encouraging one or two of the less scrupulous poultry farmers to possibly "overlook" certain of the more stringent safety issues), I should move on from the excellent and very quiet little Carnewas Farm caravan site that I was staying at just a stone's throw from the National Trust-owned Bedruthan Steps to start (as the Boss's secretary put it) earnin' my bl**din' keep....(but then, I've told you before how the Boss really only likes us to sleep rough or bivouack out of doors in the Winter....preferably in the rain)!

Bedruthan sunset silhouette.

The late change in plan meant that during this particular little adventure, I was only able to take a fraction of my usual number of photographs as the need to cover long distances on foot across a wide variety of terrain meant travelling as lightly as possible with all "non-essential" items and equipment kept to a minimum.

Evening Primrose (a species of Willow-Herb) is one of those plants that almost everybody is familiar with, if only because they occasionally buy Evening Primrose oil from their local supermarket due to its numerous beneficial medical and cosmetic properties. Normally flowering from June to September (until October in the South-West), there were lots of them still in bloom in various, usually south-facing localized areas all along the North Cornish coast. I've eaten both the roots and the younger leaves raw in my time, though the taste becomes increasingly tart and unpalatable as the plant ages. The flowers meanwhile, are at their best towards evening when they open more fully to allow pollination by night-flying moths....however, the plant is sometimes fooled into opening its flowers throughout the day if it's very overcast.
As a matter of interest, I managed to attract 9 species of Moth to the little Moth-trap I placed outside my van on two separate evenings earlier in the week!

Still, I did manage to get a few shots here and there of various bits and pieces and the fact that I counted more than 80 species of flowering wild and naturalized plants (I counted 44 in the same area during a similar week in November twelve years ago), over a hundred species of insect still up and about (including 6 types of butterfly) as well as spotting no less than 7 Willow Warblers, 4 Wheatear and a Chiff-Chaff (all of which should have departed for sunnier climes weeks ago) does tend to suggest that wildlife right across the board appears to be adjusting to our longer, damper Summers and milder Winters as the seasons become less defined and seem to merge into one another far more!

I managed to work my way quite close to a small group of Rock Pipits enjoying a bathing session in a small shingle-banked stream not far from Constantine Beach. There were also what looked suspiciously like two Water Pipits mixed in with them....of which, sadly, this isn't one!

Obviously, I'm not a scientist and I don't know which questions to ask, let alone how to work out the answers....However, we (rangers) do see scores of both connected and seemingly isolated "symptoms" of something very big happening in the countryside every single day of the year right across the UK and we have gradually been able to build up a vast and extremely comprehensive data-base of survey information going right back to 1992.

Low tide at Mawgan Porth....Situated mid-way between Bedruthan and Watergate Bay,
and about six miles North of Newquay, Mawgan Porth used to be one of my favouritist of all surfing
beaches way back in the golden olden days! If you're ever down that way yourselves however, try following the inland footpaths for about three miles up the river valley to St. Mawgan....home to a lovingly created Japanese garden which is very much open to the public. It's well worth a visit if, like me, you're fascinated by all things Japanese. To give you some idea though, I've included a few of the photographs at the end of this section that I took when I spent about an hour there during the week.

Mind you, all that will change as never before if we end up losing the warming benefits of the Gulf Stream....which seems extremely likely in the next ten or twenty years! Remember, the Northern UK is on the same latitude as Alaska, more or less, and without the Gulf Stream to keep us snuggly warm and cosy as toast, we'd soon be experiencing weather conditions of sub-Arctic proportions and, when you consider how we British tend to completely fall apart as a nation if we get so much as a severe frost across more than three counties in a single go, having to suddenly cope with five metre high drifts of snow up against our front doors for five months of the year is a very sobering thought!

The six days and nights I spent at Carnewas, near Bedruthan in the comparitive comfort and luxury of my motor-home were fine thank-you very much and I thoroughly enjoyed walking as many of the coastal and inland footpaths, lanes and trails as I could manage between Padstow and Newquay. However, the three days and nights of non-stop yomping and bivouacking beginning at Crowdy Reservoir, across open country to Bude, down the coast to Tintagel and finally back across to Crowdy was a little more demanding!
For the most part it would be difficult to tell if the majority of the photos I took during my nine days away were actually taken in mid-November or mid-August....the weather was so mild! However, the two pictures (shown above and below) were taken as the sun began to set around 1730 hrs and as I set up camp in the lea of some thick Gorse thicket or muddy bank and as the clouds closed in ready to rain on me through the night. They help to show exactly why it was that I soon began to feel the cold, searching fingers of Winter clawing at my very bones....and why everything suddenly seemed so utterly cold and grey....making the surrounding trees and vegetation appear much more sinister and infinitely more threatening somehow!

There was, of course, absolutely no evidence of bird-flu anywhere....nor would I expect there to be, but I did happen across this poor Gannet that had obviously fallen foul of a mat of what I think is Thong Weed somewhere out at sea. It must have happened quite recently and the luckless bird, whose wings are clearly hopelessly tangled in vegetation, must have drowned after diving into the ocean for food while simultaneously managing to get itself ensnared by the weed! Finally, I guess it must have been washed up onto the beach by the next in-coming tide.
I couldn't really leave the poor thing rotting on the beach however, to become a health hazard for children and dogs especially, so after donning protective gear and checking the bird for any of the more obvious signs of avian flu (just in case), I took it off to the dunes and buried it deep in the sand amongst the Marram Grass and well away from the various footpaths....Then I thoroughly disinfected myself all over before moving on (you really can't be too careful at the moment)!
Meanwhile, I would like to thank the local lady and gentleman dog-walkers who offered their assistance and who kindly provided me with plastic bags in which to place the bird for carrying to the dunes.

The wild Lesser Periwinkle only flowers from around April to May, but it's larger and more robust-looking cousin, the Vinca (Periwinkle) above, makes a show from early Spring right through to Autumn and is very popular with gardeners as a result. In Cornwall however, the Vinca has extended its range into many a roadside hedge and field margin across the county and can be considered a truly naturalized species. I saw them all over the place in North Cornwall and photographed this particular one not far from Crowdy Reservoir.
Continuing to flower into mid-November is pretty good going, even in Cornwall, but with most of the plants I saw still heavily laden with unopened buds, I'd say that, short of a severe frost or two, Vinca will be showing well into December!

It's a funny old mixture in many ways, with some plants clinging to the last vestiges of a very wet and uninspiring Summer and others who are behaving exactly as you'd expect them to by embracing Autumn just as they always have.
I have noticed during the last ten or twelve years especially, that the degree of embracement (if there is such a word) does very often appear to be linked to the actual physical location of certain plants and trees....depending for example, on whether they are growing on a North or South-facing hillside, in a wooded valley, on a village green, in the lea of a building or are simply tucked away somewhere out of the worst of the Cornish weather!
Such things seem to be less and less obvious the further North you travel however, and by the time you get to say, Gloucestershire, there's probably no more than a week or so between the most advanced and the least advanced of any particular species in terms of seasonal change....no matter where they happen to be growing.
The much milder weather patterns of the South-West in general and Cornwall in particular, have always meant that many plant and tree species have enjoyed slightly longer Spring, Summer and Autumn seasons than those growing in most of the rest of the country, but there is no doubt in my mind at least, that those seasonal changes are becoming increasingly blurred and that certain plants and trees are a being just that little bit quicker off the mark when it comes to taking full advantage.

This Stonechat (possibly a first Winter juvenile male rather than an Autumn female) will retain its drab appearance until the Spring.

There was something infinitely fascinating about the way that shafts of brilliant sunlight
kept slicing through these fantastically dark storm clouds gathering over Newquay like a surgeon's
blade cutting through gangrenous flesh....and yes, I did eventually get very wet!

Hedge Bedstraw usually flowers from about June to September (slightly longer in the South and South-West). However, this was just one of many examples in North Cornwall showing absolutely no sign whatsoever of calling it a day for 2007. By no means as abundant as it was in the Summer, there is still plenty of flowering Hedge, Marsh and even some Heath Bedstraw to be found in hedgerows and in woodland clearings or on localized areas of grassland and scrub....or, in the case of Heath Bedstraw, on a handful of dampish heath and pasture-type habitats.

More of that steely-grey Winterlight.

Is this the purple version of an Osteospermum? Well, whatever it is, there was a lot of it still in bloom, mostly in gardens, but a few examples had also managed to find their way onto the odd roadside verge or two and away from housing.

A brief visit (in the rain) to the "Japanese Garden and Bonsai Nursery" at St. Mawgan was a real delight and I'd recommend the place to anyone who enjoys all things to do with gardening....and especially those things of an Oriental persuasion. It's a genuine labour of love. For more information, visit their website at www.thebonsainursery.com

Mid-November....and I was the only visitor in the gardens at the time I took these photos, but this is a place to be enjoyed at any time of year....though I may well make a special effort to return to see the Sakura Blossom in the Spring.
One of the most incredible things I ever saw was the absolutely fantastic displays of blossom flowering on countless Cherry trees in parks, gardens and orchards and on mostly South-facing hillsides all over Kobe in Japan. Cherry blossom is of enormous social and cultural importance to the Japanese and the Sakura in particular is highly significant to many elements of the Japanese police, coastguard and military. Synonymous with the Warrior classes and the Samurai in particular, images of Sakura Cherry blossom were often painted on the sides of the aircraft flown by many of the young Japanese
suicide pilots during the latter days of the Second World War.

Although I was probably a couple of weeks too late to see the best of it, there was still a terrific display of Autumnal colour to be found amongst the many species of Oriental shrubs and trees growing in every viable nook and cranny throughout the gardens (above and below).

My daughter's suggestion that this fantastic-looking fungus might be called "Mushroom Omelette " was closer than she thought because it's common name is actually "Chicken-in-the-Woods"! However, I must have discovered this one at a very early stage of development and well before it's had time to grow into the species' more familiar and extensive arrangement of over-lapping, shelf-like brackets.

It's not every day that you see an example of conjoined Dandelions, but this particular specimen was actually just one of around thirty growing at the edge of a field located a couple of counties away from me. I dug up a couple of the plants intact and sent them off to the Boss complete with soil samples and lots of photographs to see what he makes of it.

An Oil-Seed Rape crop in early April

Charlock, or Wild Mustard as it's sometimes called, is a member of the Cabbage and Cress family and my Mum occasionally boiled the leaves and served it up at meal times just like ordinary cabbage during the Winter and Spring when I was a boy. However, it's also known as the "farmer's scourge" because of its habit of growing amidst crops in such quantities that it can drain the soil of nutrients and even taint the harvest. Modern weed-killers pretty much sorted the problem, but there appears to be a resurgence of the plant in recent years....at least in the South-Western Counties. I've been noticing huge swathes of these bright yellow flowers for several weeks and I can't honestly say that the flowers have entirely disappeared at any time during the milder Winters we've been having. This is, after all, a plant that should only really be flowering from March to June. Today (3rd April), I took a stroll across an arable field brimming with Charlock to have a closer look. What I discovered was quite surprising....I would estimate that each individual plant had an average of 30 flowers in bloom and a further sixty or more in bud and were playing host to around 25 insects per plant (many had far more). Altogether, I counted 37 different species of insect occupying virtually all parts of the fifty plants I examined altogether, especially the flowers! I ended up counting the flowers, buds and insects on each of those plants (ten towards each corner of the field and ten in the middle). This took me nearly an hour. I have no idea how many plants were in the field altogether, but there were perhaps five per square metre and the field was approximately eighty metres by one hundred and forty metres (though some areas were devoid of Charlock altogether). Now, my maths is abysmal, but if you're a very sad person like me. you might like to work out approximately how many insects were being hosted by Charlock in that particular field....then again, you might not! If you had a go, then did you work out the answer to be somewhere in the region of 1, 400,000 insects? That's only the ones on the Charlock of course....in one average-sized field....and it's only bl**dy April!

This obviously, is a VERY rough calculation and I've tried to balance the fact that only about three-quarters of the field was actually covered by Charlock plants by reducing the number of plants per square metre. I've also rounded down each insect count per plant.

Questions....

1....If this is a fairly universal feature of Charlock growth in the South-West, then how much of a knock-on effect will such a relatively new and large invertebrate food resource have further up the food chain? Remember, the apparent resurgence of Charlock in such large quantities is quite recent.

2....How beneficial then (if at all), will such an increase in Charlock growth be in terms of insect numbers overall at this time of year (March/April) and for the huge variety of insectivores arriving or emerging so much earlier in the UK at present?

3....How much effect (direct or otherwise) did the original demise of Charlock across vast areas of arable land have on insect populations and, subsequently, upon insect-dependent species....particularly the birds of hedgerow, common and arable farmland?

Finally, please don't all rush to point out the many failings and short-comings of such a random piece of so-called research. I already know that it has more holes than a beggar's underpants and I dare say that somewhere, someone much cleverer than me will already be researching this properly! Still, it was kind of fun to do and I've always believed that Nature will have a way of finding its own balance....if only we would stop interfering so much!

Winter Daffodils....With Valentine's Day just around the corner, it wont be long before hordes of self-serving morons head out into the countryside to pick each and every daffodil they can possibly find to sell in the town centres for £2 each! We can't be everywhere to stop them being picked (not that asking people makes any difference), so please don't buy them!

Decisions, decisions....Do I put this picture on the "Yellow", the "Blue" or maybe the "Black and White" pages? In the end, I tossed a coin and put it here. I hate making decisions at the best of times....Deciding which slipper to put on first every morning is about my limit these days!

Ochre water margin

Hedgerow surprise!

Canadian Goldenrod or Early Goldenrod? Canadian I reckon!

Oil Seed Rape Bunting

Gorse Blossom is fiercely protected by the rest of the plant from being consumed by ungulates. Rub the petals between your fingers and they sometimes smell of coconut!

Yellow-belly berries

Sunburst Dandelion

Meadow Vetchling....Jewels in the hedgerow

Great Mullein....Member of the Figwort family

Rain, rain....go away....(Good weather for hose-pipe bans!)

You'd probably expect to see these beauties in a vase on your dining room table rather than beside a lake in Devon!