Misty Hills

It is the season of the short rains in Kenya. The Taita Hills are lush and wet. We sleep to the beat of rain drumming on our metal roof and wake up in a house drenched in mist. The red-chested cuckoo is constantly singing its three note song which sounds like 'it will rain'.

Can you see the man in the cliff with a big nose?

It is a wonderful time to look out for creepy crawlies. As soon as the sun comes out of the clouds the garden is buzzing, humming, clicking and chirping with bees, wasps, moths, butterflies, grasshoppers, beetles, spiders & other arachnids.
 

Two adorable dogs, a puppy to die for and a whiny but sweet cat have adopted us for better or for worse. Mr Dal is very concerned about their nutrition and feeds them wholesome vegan food as a supplement to whatever it is they are hunting. Unfortunately we do not see many birds from our house, we believe they might have been killed as they can be crop-pests.

The cutest little puppy in Wundanyi

It is also my favourite time of year to have countless cups of tea (actually my favourite would be the monsoon but this is just as good). And not just any kind of tea – a special masala tea with ginger and mixture of spices – cinnamon, cardamoms, cloves, black pepper and nutmeg. The most comforting and tasty tea would be made by boiling tea leaves with milk/milk alternative and then adding sugar and spices. But if there is a ready spice-mix to sprinkle on teabag-tea, its just as yummy!

Masala tea and peppermint tea with ginger biscuits - perfect for elevenses (And did you know that according to Wikipedia the term 'elevenses' was first used in East Anglia :))

Adventures in Meddling

runchy gold, rust and red tree shrapnel is carpeting the pavements, darkness is falling at four-thirty, wood smoke is permeating the valley, and autumn is well and truly here. Being alternately mud-spattered or wrapped up in voluminous knitwear at this time of year is strangely comforting, but before settling into such a rhythm, I spent rather a lot of October gadding about...

It started off in glorious Grasmere, before quick jaunts to Scarborough's shores and ghost hunting with Pudding Pie in York, a delightful trip to Brussels and Ghent, before the main event; East Anglia, the scene of so many MSc moments. Given that I am, alas, once again without work, what better way to spend time than bother those of you who do have eco-geeky jobs? So I started off with Mrs Teacup, who now works in community development for local food in Suffolk. She took me to an allotment, which is getting turned into a community orchard, and we happily weeded away in cold sunshine, while other volunteers dug a very big hole.

If you like orchards brandish your garden forks! Well, that's one.

While at Mrs T's, I gazed with interest upon two huge platters of Medlars, gathered from a tree in Dunwich. They were being left to blet (rot to a delicious ooziness) before being eaten. She very kindly gave me a few, and they've slowly been ripening to collapse in my fruit bowl. Tonight I ate my first 'naked' Medlar, and it was lovely. It has the grainy texture, but not the juiciness of an overripe pear, and tasted delicate, almost like partly cooked crumble filling. There is a particularly evocative and almost joyously lascivious description of the bletted Medlar from an enthusiast who urges one to 'nip the medlar in its side as if you are a vampire and its tender, turgid, russet-skinned being is a plump neck. Now suck its guts out.' Ooh er.

Blet you darn Medlars!

Next up was Mr Watervole, who is very busy and important working for the National Trust at Orford Ness on the Suffolk coast, looking after its glorious wetland haven for waders, vegetated shingle, and decrepit abandoned MoD buildings. And a really big nuclear bomb. Mrs Teacup and I got to experience the Orford Ness ferry, saw much damp red Salicornia, watched diggers build new lagoons and walked through the strange shingle at sunset.

If you ask nicely you can ride in the Landrover...

A short, flat train ride took me to Norwich, where I headed to Goat Manor, home of Luscious Lemon, the lovely Grazing Officer at the Norfolk Wildlife Trust. On a truly beautiful blue Saturday we cycled through narrow lanes to Buxton Heath, one of the sites she looks after. In search of the ten or so Dartmoor ponies that graze the heath we wandered around in thick afternoon sunshine, avoiding the mire, but finding no equines. Finally, on our way home we screeched to a halt on our bikes, spying the cheeky faces of the ponies peeking over a gate at a side entrance. They were rather enthusiastically curious, and quite boldly surrounded us. Unfortunately this suggested that they had been fed by visitors to the heath, which is not ideal for semi-feral beasts... Hopefully with a little more interpretation (my favourite!) on site, they will start to keep their distance from people again.

A golden evening on the heath.

They all have names, I just can't remember them...

A rather momentous moment for the blog now, as the first actual Battenberg makes its appearance. . Not homemade, but made especially delicious by eating it off Ms Lemon's wildflower and moth covered crockery! Well deserved after finding two lonesome and chilly Green Brindled Crescents (Allophyes oxyacanthae) in the first moth trapping session at the Manor. One day, it'll be a carefully hand constructed chequered creation gracing the tea table.

Mrs Teacup I hope you approve!

Now that the season of conkers, treacle toffee and dragon breath is upon us, it's time to reacquaint ourselves with those sustaining foods that will, ahem, cushion us against the winter. Behold, the veggie toad-in-the-hole! Oh, there will be more...

Mmm, fluffy and pillowy.

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!

Pedro in India

India was an amazing and immense experience, it would take a 1000 pages to describe everything!

Main point is everything went surprisingly and almost mysteriously well with Radi’s parents, family and friends. They were all very excited, sweet and accommodating. So we are now officially finance and fiancée! Provisionally the wedding will be at Saj Resort in Mahabaleshwar, 5 or 6 hours inland from Bombay, on the weekend of the 13-15^th of January 2011. We’re hoping to have a “small wedding” of 100-150 people.

The landscape of Mahabaleshwar is stunning, it’s high in the ghats with deep valleys, huge waterfalls (Lingmala Falls) and forested plateaus and hillsides. We visited at the start of the trip and loved it. It’s a small town of less than 15,000 full of strawberries and sandals.

After Mahabaleshwar we were driven down to the coast to Tarkarli, a relatively undeveloped resort quieter than bustling places like Goa. Rajeev, one of the families drivers, was hilariously inept at directions (but great at avoiding seemingly inevitably collisions) so everytime Radi fell asleep we ended up getting lost (a lot). Eventually we arrive at a government resort of little bungalows, complete with hammocks outsole, right next to a long stretch of beach. The beach was bustling with people playing cricket, ecstatic kids, swimmers, camel rides, cart rides but best of all where the white-bellied sea eagles and kites gliding close overhead. The next day we took a little boat ride following the coast to see dolphins and gull colony, beyond the shore and beach palm trees loomed mysterious through the thinning morning mist. Next on the agenda snorkelling in shadow of the awesome Sindhudurg Fort, an island completed ringed by thick old stone walls with regular round towers rising straight out of the sea. The water was a bit turbid, and most of the coral bleached (apart from spreading fan-like corals) but judicious use of bread attracted huge shoals of colourful fish to us as we paddled in the intense midday sun.

From Tarkarli we headed 160km south along the coast to Goa, we stayed at a swanky hotel apartment near the famous shacks, clubs and restaurants of Baga beach. Parth and Almitra (Radi’s brother and sister-in-law) came to join us after a day and Goa became a blur of restaurants, bars, rum and karaoke (I gave it all for Johnny Cash’s Boy Named Sue). We visited a really cool bar perched atop a cliff right next to the glittering ocean, an authentic Tibetan restaurant and classy jazz bar which served fancy desserts to die for (including a vegan coconut selection with a yummy Australian coconut cheese which tasted like Wensleydale). Rajeev got the car stuck in the beach sand and was freed by an industrious group of guys who must have set it up as a trap, they demanded 500 rupees for their troubles and gleefully ran off to buy booze from the nearest beach shack, it was all pretty amusing. Parth met an old school friend who coerced us into a night club full of an amazing assortment of clubbers from all corners of the world, the best was a deranged disco-dancing wanabee cowboy. We did manage to visit a quiet little beach hidden around the corner from the craziness of Baga and swam as the sunset into the sea. Radi and I also managed to take a bird watching trip one morning, unfortunately the guide was a reptile expert and wasn’t all that interested or good at birds. We did get to see a Changeable Hawk-eagle and Vernal Hanging Parrots though, very cool.

After Goa we took a taxi and struck south-east inland through farmland and huge verdant hill forests (real forest not little the grotty little remnants we have in the UK!) to get to the Hornbill Resort near Dandeli, which was freakin’ amazing by the way. Radi had booked us into a little slice of paradise, a beautiful rustic tree house cradled in mango and Terminalia boughs above a deep blue river with forest hills all around. Just a little upstream of our arboreal abode dozens of large Malabar pied hornbills played and foraged in the trees of a lush riverine island worrying a pair of Brahmini Kites nesting nearby. White-browed wagtails perched on bare branches poking from the swirling currents, cormorants and herons commuted back and forth and kingfisher could be heard calling all around. We were visited by Malabar giant squirrels in the morning and Gray langurs played the canopy beyond the window. The loo had the best view ever, “www.loowithaview.com” if someone hasn’t invented it they should. Radhika was so excited, she was bouncing of the walls! We did lots in our short time there, kayaking, swimming, white water rafting, morning bird walks, night walks to see giant flying squirrels and nightjars and a visit to a Malabar pied hornbill dustbath a dusk where about 50 birds gather to clean.The white-water rafting was brilliant and exhilarating, we started just downstream of a huge dam and travelled over 10km through 8 rapids. Rahul & I manned the front probably thinking we looked cooler than we did, Radi was at the rear and then there were 3 very weak uncoordinated young indian guys making up the rest of the paddlers making the adventure that little more exciting (avoiding getting bashed by their paddles was a bigger challenge than the rapids!). The ride was stunning, cool, clear, fast flowing water, sparkling in the sun, forest rising all around, no sign of man. As the river was high submerged copses and flooded forest were everywhere, some of the overhanging riverine trees were festooned with scale-like epiphytic orchids so dense that the trunk looked like it was covered in scaly armor.

From Goa it was another long taxi ride to River Tern Lodge (Bhadra Reservoir, Chickmaglur) approaching the dam the arid landscape turned in verdant green rice paddies and betel nut plantations irrigated from the impounded waters. River Tern Lodge was another triumph of Radhika’s brilliant planning. A water landscape stretched out towards the mountainous horizon, the tree clad tops of drowned hills poked from the reservoir and forest ringed the shores in all directions. The lodge was a collection of 30 or so little wooden houses sympathetically set amongst trees and scrub (considerately labelled for the botanist visitors) perched on a hillside above the reservoir. I took a noisy, bone crunching, morning jeep safari on which it was almost guaranteed not to see the tigers in the Bhadra Reserve. As expected no tigers, but the forest was beautiful with the morning light patterning through the canopy. We saw a whole lot of tiger food, spotted deer, sambar deer, barking deer and bush pig and there were some fantastic storks, Wooly-necked and Lesser Adjuntant, near the waters edge. Around midday we had our personal boat safari around the reservoir to see Ospreys and the colony of breeding River terns and Little Pratincole.

View from the room in Bhadra

Malabar Pied Hornbills having a dust bath, Dandeli

Blue-tailed bee-eaters, Goa

Bhadra Sanctuary

Note: Pictures and text by Pedro

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.

The Safari Book

Masai Mara last weekend was fabulous. The highlight of the trip was a lioness with three suckling cubs! And a whole pride of lions walking across the endless grassland and two lionesses eating a zebra and five cheetahs of which three were lying in formation! Also a zillion zebras, hundreds of elephants, giraffes trying unsuccessfully to hide behind acacias, antelopes, gazelles, cute little silver galagos (bush babies!), fat bloated hippos and dangerous looking crocodiles, pink ostrich and a very strange secretary bird with stockings! :)
Well I do exaggerate a bit but we saw so much including some amazing birds. I can email a complete list to anyone interested. We were a little bit surprised at how close the animals let us come. They didn't care at all that 15 cars were surrounding them - the lionesses continued yawning/eating the zebra, the cheetah looked up and then turned away disinterested. I felt a bit let down as if this wasn't the "real" bush. A fantastic experience nonetheless getting to see such spectacular animals up close in the wild. It is crazy to think how many strangely patterned and uniquely beautiful animals there are in East Africa!

A mini crossing!

My favourite family of lions. :)

Silver galago

Secretary bird with stockings!

Kenya has been good to us and in spite of its bad reputation I've only had very positive experiences. I left my phone in a taxi and the driver actually returned it the next day. Also we don't have a car and we've still managed to travel around quite a bit. We went the the Kerio Valley where surprisingly they haven't seen any Indians before! And guess what I get asked about? The size of my nose... We went to the Aberdare National Park and saw some forest elephants, which are genetically distinct by millions of years from the bush elephants. Our lodge was a very curious little place shaped like a huge wooden boat with a viewing area from the 1960s, it was called "The Ark Lodge". You were just supposed to sit there and wait for the animals to come to you! Hehe! We got lucky though with the giant forest hogs, mongoose, porcupine, hyenas and 3 forest elephants going crazy eating great big mouthfuls of salty mud.

We missed our friends and families at our birthdays this year! But we celebrated Pete's birthday with a very yummy and easy to make double-layered vegan chocolate cake with a peanut-butter filling and a chocolate ganache topping! Here's the recipe (adapted from http://www.theppk.com/2008/08/just-chocolate-cake/):

1 cup soy milk
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 180C
. Mix all the wet stuff and then all the dry stuff and then everything together till there are no lumps. Grease an 8 inch pan. Pour in the batter and bake for 32 to 35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted through the center comes out clean.
Gooey Ganache
2/3 cup soy milk, 
1/2 bar of good dark chocolate
, 3 tablespoons honey
Melt everything together!
Use the recipe to make 2 cakes. Put peanut butter in the middle (or whatever you really like) and then just pour the ganache over the cooled cake and kind of tilt the cake at all angles to get the ganache to drip down the sides. Refrigerate to cool and set the ganache. :)

Birthday cake

Oh and I have to mention - a Sykes monkey visited the garden yesterday to eat bird food! I love this place! :)