Marching towards spring

hile March continues to fling the occasional snow shower over the hills of Edinburgh, determined daffodils in green corners are quietly insisting that spring is on its way. Watching the seasons has become something of more than idle interest, as my PhD research is all about phenology, or seasonal timing.

Waiting and watching for budburst and blossom, spring will find me wandering woods, tracking trees and gazing into the canopy with my binoculars. Before the first leaves are unfurled, there is much time to anticipate the seasons to follow, remembering the busyness of June skies, when the butterflies come out to play.

One glorious weekend last year, a pilgrimage to Collard Hill and a trip to the Cotswolds with a certain Large Blue butterfly botherer, brought lepidopteran adventures.

There were clouds of Small Blue (Cupido minimus)...

... Electric Adonis Blue (Lysandra bellargus)...

... and a Grizzled Skipper (Pyrgus malvae) or two.

As well as seeing a bashful Cotswoldian Large Blue, which was part of the generation that had been reintroduced using individuals from Collard Hill and other sites in 2011, orchid spikes were scattered across the slopes. Sweet pink Fragrant orchids were interspersed with my first Fly orchids, and back at Collard, some the 'Wasps' had appeared again.

Super Fly (Ophrys insectifera)

Six-spot Burnet moth caterpillar creating its cocoon

Back in the wind-blown present, an essential part of braving the woods and occasional hail is having cake wrapped up in paper, ready to be eaten with cold fingers in five minutes of crisp sunshine. Today this was 'wrinkly apple cake', a vegan version of my childhood favourite. Made with the ageing apples left at the end of a long winter...

3/4 cup non-dairy milk
1tsp apple cider (or other) vinegar
2 1/4 cups plain flour of your choice (I used  1 1/4 cup rye, 1 cup plain white, wholewheat would be nice too)
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sunflower oil
1 tbsp golden syrup or treacle/molasses for a darker cake
2 tsp ground nutmeg (freshly grated is perfect)
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 cup slightly stewed wrinkly apples (sweeten to your own preference)
a handful of sultanas/walnuts if you like them

Preheat the oven to 160C
- Mix the milk and vinegar in a bowl and leave to one side while preparing the rest of the ingredients.
- Mix the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda in a large bowl and set aside.
- Whisk the sugar, oil, syrup, spices and vanilla thoroughly in a bowl.
- Pour the milk and sugar mixtures into the flour, and beat everything for at least a minute.
- Add the apples and dried fruit or nuts if you are using them and mix everything well.
- Pour into a lined loaf or cake tin, sprinkle with brown sugar and bake for ~50 minutes.
This cake is best cooled and eaten the next day on a chilly walk, or with lots of tea at home.

The Woodland Trust and their Nature's Calendar project are partners in my phenology adventures, and I'll be posting updates like this on the Woodland Matters blog as the research progresses, or stalls. I may even report on what baked goods are being taken on jaunts to the woods...

Cold weather comforts

ovember is often full of pumpkins, roots and stews, tea as recommended by Radish below, nourishing baking and that dark steel blue rain reserved for the boundary between autumn and winter. And so it has been, with some added dairy-free kitchen experiments, one of the best being a cobbled together pumpkin and leek quiche.

No soggy bottom here...

To make this you'll want roughly the following:
A blind baked pastry case using pastry of your choice
1 small butternut squash or pumpkin
2 small leeks
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1-2 tsps English or wholegrain mustard
Freshly ground nutmeg
1 packet silken tofu (pressed to remove liquid)
~ 1/2 cup soy milk
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C or Gas mark 4.
- Cook the finely chopped onion and garlic gently in a little olive oil in a large frying pan.
- Add the butternut squash, cut into small cubes (1-2cm ish) and chopped leek. Saute everything gently for 10-15 mins until all the vegetables are soft.
- Blend the tofu, soy milk, mustard and nutmeg until smooth. Season to taste.
- Add the tofu mixture to the vegetables and mix before adding to your pastry case.
- Cook for 30-40 mins until golden brown and set in the middle, and allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before slicing.

Silken tofu experiments also led me to the quickest and richest chocolate pudding... All you need is a block of silken tofu to blend until really smooth with a couple of spoons of cocoa powder and maple syrup, and then add in whatever you like best with chocolate, try peanut butter or finely chopped stem ginger. If you blend this and then add it onto a biscuity base and leave it to set for a couple of hours it makes a beautiful chocolate torte.

I got the chance to visit the lovely Collard Hill, scene of my June Large Blue Butterfly adventures this month, for the end of year wash-up meeting to discuss the season. Somerset was damp and green, and my feet remembered many of the hill's lumps and bumps as we walked the transect route in the rain, discussing the successful increase in Large Blues during 2011. Happily, we were also able to find a Brown Hairstreak (Thecla betulae) egg on the Blackthorn hedge, and peered at its intricate golf ball like indentations through a hand lens. Unfortunately, my camera couldn't get that close.

Lepidopterist finger for scale.

There was some further Lepidoptera related excitement when I went out to the woods one evening with the Yorkshire mothmen... It being chilly there wasn't exactly a lot of activity, but by peering at the trunks of Beech, Birch and Ash trees we found the somewhat elusive flightless females of the Winter moth (Operophtera brumata) and Scare Umber (Agriopis aurantiaria). We also found a pair of copulating Winter moths, sometimes you can watch a female drag the male way up a tree trunk, in order to get to her favoured ovipositing spot. Sadly my photos are not amazingly clear as it was rather dark out, but the local moth blog has some good close ups of the females.

Lady winter's vestigial wings

Birch for a bed...

Scarce Umber girls are stripy

Nippy Novembrr eco-endeavours require some dense sustaining baked sweetness to keep one going, which has mainly been taking the form of flapjack. I like them to be slightly crisp rather than soft and stodgy and my favourite recipe works well with either butter or dairy-free margarine. You'll need:

150g butter or margarine
70g light brown muscovado sugar
3 tbsp golden syrup
pinch salt
125g jumbo oats
125g porridge oats
200-250g combination of dried fruits, nuts, seeds, chocolate.

Grease or line a 30 x 20 x 4cm baking tin and preheat the oven to 180C or Gas Mark 4.
- Heat butter, sugar and syrup gently in a pan until butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat and allow to cool a little.
- Stir in the oats, salt and dried fruit etc. If you want the whole flapjack to be chocolatey then stir in your chocolate here and it will melt through, if not, allow it to cool some more and then plonk choc chunks in so they remain whole.
- Put the mixture into the tin and spread evenly. Bake between 20-25 mins, until golden brown. If you prefer softer flapjack, bake for less time, and if you like crisper, it'll need slightly longer.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool completely in its tin. If you fancy decorating it a little, melt some chocolate and drizzle over the flapjack then allow to cool before cutting.

You can put pretty much anything in this, recently i've tried dried pear and crystallised ginger with dark chocolate, and coconut chips, cranberry and dark chocolate with sunflower and pumpkin seeds. Mmm, time to embark on more winter walks armed with oats...

Coconut and cranberry

Butterflies vs Summer

ather unexpectedly, summer has offered us a sunny renaissance. This week has brought the warmth and calm that was much missed during July and August. I spent those months as a field assistant for a UEA project. Like Mrs Teacup, we were studying the behaviour of a range-expanding butterfly species in core and margin populations. In this case it was Brown Argus (Aricia agestis), with Common Blue (Polyommatus icarus) as our control species.

First Brown Argus of the season!

Also like Mrs Teacup, the summer activities involved chasing butterflies that had been caught and marked, before releasing them on a host plant or nectar source. As our study species were small, and often rather brown, there were many occasions when despondent field assistants peered around, vainly looking for a butterfly that had lured them into a false sense of security, nectaring for minutes on end, before promptly disappearing into the ether.

Ecology takes you to some exotic places, and this project explored the glories offered by Leicestershire and Bedfordshire. Such were our adventures up and down the M1, to sites that were full of dog poo, Dartmoor ponies, sunflowers and lovely landowners, ice cream sellers, dog poo, mites and brambles, motorbikes, cattle, secret glades, dubious dogging carparks, kites and dog poo. At all of these places we wandered, waving our butterfly nets to numerous cries of 'are they fishing?!' from children passing us by. We even got a little bit of sun, when we could watch our butterflies basking surrounded by flags and ragwort...

Boys watch butterflies

Bumblebees, geese and other lepidopteran delights distracted at times, bright Small Coppers, Ruby Tiger moths, visiting Clouded Yellows, Purple Hairstreaks at dusk and many ghostly Chalkhill Blues.

Icy Chalkhill Blue - Lysandra coridon

Another Chalky distracts me

A day off's visit to Canons Ashby, south west of Northampton, provided a gleeful episode of bonding with other visitors gathered around a huge Mulberry tree (Morus genus). Next to the croquet and quoits we stained our fingers and faces with beautiful ripe Mulberries, surreptitiously glancing around for National Trust staff ready to quell our feasting. As I am not currently imprisoned in a William Morris papered drawing room, I am happy to say we got away with it.

Here we go round the mulberry bush, guiltily stuffing our faces.

I returned to Yorkshire in September, to find an empty house and a fecund garden. One afternoon's foraging produced quite a haul of goodies, runner beans, roses, broad beans, strawberries, windfall apples, lavender, and some rather suggestive courgettes, the trombetti plants having rather taken over! Dinner that night was two bean salad, for which you will need:
broad beans
runner beans
walnuts
fresh mozzarella
basil
raspberry or redcurrant vinegar
balsamic vinegar
honey
olive oil
salt and pepper

- Pod and prepare your beans and lightly steam them. Remove from the heat and leave to cool slightly.
- Toast your walnuts in a hot oven for about 5 minutes. Remove and cool before using.
- Make a dressing with the honey, vinegars and olive oil. Season to taste.
- Rip up your mozzarella and mix everything together, adding in some torn basil.
Change cheese/herbs/nuts as you wish.

Before

After

The beans and courgettes are still going, the apple tree is 'rude with fruit' and tomato and pepper plants on the windowsills are laden, oh, autumn's bounty is nearly upon us!

Orange-tip chasing

Mrs Teacup spent April and May in deepest Scotland chasing Orange-tips polewards with a UEA research group, investigating the responses of range-expanding butterflies to climate changes. In comparing populations from the core and margins of the species’ distribution, we hoped to quantify increased dispersal in margin populations, and establish whether a correlation with morphological characteristics (wing lengths) could be detected. We expected margin populations to be flying further and straighter, with a longer wingspan, to aid their dispersal to new thermally suitable habitats. Sciency stuff aside, what a glorious species to eye up for 8 weeks! The challenge commenced in what was forecast to be the hottest April on record – an amazing stroke of luck.

Admiring these insects was a joy - characteristic bright males and the more understated females, both with gorgeous green mottled underwings aiding flawless camouflage. This species has a huge amount of charm. It is no surprise then, that the males were chosen as a pin-up in a public awareness campaign in 1990s for range-expanding species, adorning the front of thousands of postcards sent to the public asking them to report sightings in Scotland. Over 1000 sightings were reported and even today inquisitive members of the public all agree, “there’s a lot more of them around this year”. And lots we found, over 300 individuals were tracked in 23 days, in Carlisle and Kilmarnock.

Northern populations of Anthocharis cardamines like damp habitats, which required much chasing along rivers and streams with wet feet! Upon catching the critters (along with many Green-veined whites), individuals were cooled in a glorified picnic cool-bag to calm them down, before being marked, sexed and assessed for condition. We then released them on food plant (Cuckooflower - Cardamines pratensis, or Garlic mustard - Alliaria petiolata), or a nectar source, and waited for take off. On warm days, tracking with a GPS antenna attached to our backs (no laughing please) was quite an exhausting exercise – these orangey wonderments fly almost 2 metres a second, often through high swards, across brambles and nettle beds – chasing them was a high risk activity, filled with lots of comedy moments launching ourselves head-first into nettle beds as a patrolling male glides away across the river!

On cold days, the waiting game often took 20 to 30 minutes – what a wonderful opportunity to watch this species at close range, basking, nectaring, and even some ovipositing occurred, not to mention a lot of Orange-tip loving! Males often swoop on a hostile female who curves her abdomen out of reach despite repeated attempts to mate. Watching females on host plant was glorious, flitting from plant to plant, nectaring like mad – if butterflies could smile I'm certain there’d be a lot of smiling faces in the sunny meadows of central Scotland J. All in all, a fantastic few months in the field; birds singing and butterflies meandering, through bluebells, red campion, herb robert, wild pansy, daisies and lots of forget-me-not. Forget it? I will certainly not.

June bugs and blues

ow June has flown, in a haze of wind, rain and butterflies... I moved to Somerset at the end of May and was immediately thrown into the whirl of Large Blue butterfly rangering, as they had emerged early, with the first sighting on the 27th May.

My days have since been filled with transects, thunderstorms, sheltering beneath the Turkey Oak, Large Blues a go go, sunburnt noses and a lot of chasing flutters in the distance. Here are a few of my favourite pictures from Collard Hill so far...

View from the office - the 'Land of Counterpane'

Freshly emerged on Wild Thyme

Open wings!

A prickly boudoir for love

Wasp Orchid - Ophyrs apifera var trollii

Marbled White nectaring on Small Scabious

The Land of Counterpane
by Robert Louis Stevenson  

 

When I was sick and lay a-bed, 

I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay,
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

Lovely Lepidopterans

erhaps only the first of many butterfly encounters this summer, a perfectly glorious day was spent Swallowtail hunting by a trio of intrepid ecologists in the notorious wilds, or well kept paths if you will, of Strumpshaw Fen in early May. A visit to reacquaint myself with the joys of East Anglia coincided with the early emergence of these languidly flapping giants of the broads. We watched one particularly vigorous specimen patrol a territory that included a Blackthorn (I think) dripping with blossom, chasing off any butterfly that dared to linger near its flower laden branches. There may even have been an attempt to lure said butterfly closer to us by a camouflage worthy of an undercover birder. Strangely enough the strategy of holding out a branch and 'thinking like a tree' did not seem to convince the remarkably perceptive individuals we encountered. We must have seen over ten Swallowtails in our wanderings that afternoon, and perseverance paid off as we watched and stalked those that obligingly settled on perches.

Swallowtail - Papilo machaon

Favourite perch!

Gazing up at the tails.

Other pleasures of that day included booming bitterns, a distant cuckoo, a terribly noisy wasp and a 2D chick, confidently proclaimed to be a robin by DN the dead bird detective.

My last couple of weeks in Yorkshire brought few moths to the trap, with the occasional bright spot, the quiffed Spectacle (Abrostola tripartita) and lurid but handsome Elephant Hawkmoth (Deilephila elpenor) greeting me on separate occasions. The robust acorn like body of the Cockchafer beetle (Melolontha melolontha) also proved a lethargic visitor, but eventually fanned out its antenna beautifully before being deposited back into the rockery to go about its business.

Ooh, gaudy green and pink hawk.

Beady eye.

Furry back.

Seven leaf antenna mean its a boy.

The summer of butterflies continues, as tomorrow I start as Volunteer Ranger for the Large Blue butterfly at Collard Hill in Somerset. Part of my duties includes writing a daily update on the Large Blue Blog, where details of the first 'big blue' sighting and all the excitement of the flight season will be posted. If it whets your appetite for the delights of Maculinea arion come and visit the hill please! My goodbye to 'Needles and Pin ups', the pub knitting group I wander along to of a Wednesday evening, combined a vaguely accurate depiction of my future weeks with cookie cutters. And lo, the eco-geekiest biscuits I've made thus far were created...

Large and common blues, and grubs!