It’s the turning point for the ground flora in my local patch, Beggarspath Wood – though it is about a month late given this year’s strange weather. The bluebells that provide such a marvellous purple dazzle across the woodland floor, returned without fail this year lasting well into June. Now however that prolonged ecstasy has come to an end, the sweet-scented blooms becoming a slimy, flattened layer of humus. It’s very much the beast to their earlier beauty. But their seeds have been sown for next year, and the humus itself is rich in nutrients that will ultimately benefit all the organisms within this ecosystem’s community.

Before the bluebells of 2013 disappeared however I was out to fetch my annual quota of shots, this year trying some originality by lying on the woodland floor, creating a ‘bug’s eye view’ of looking up into the bluebell. You can measure the success of this below (along with some more traditional compositions.)

There were others among the bluebells – plenty of red campion (pictured at the top of this article), speedwells, stitchworts and ground ivy, pushing through the few gaps left unfilled by their more obvious neighbours. Most have still lasted through, but if Spring was the time of the bluebell then Summer belongs to the bracken. Such plant monocultures plague across the woodland floor, restricting the diversity of other flower species and their dependent species.

For these single-species forest floors are not what you’d naturally expect to find – the reasoning is highly likely due to the extinction of wild boar from our countryside, the only animal capable of eating bracken and who’s rooting activities both prevent one species becoming dominant and enriching the turnover of nutrients in the soil. Subsequently, a rainbow palette of woodland wildflowers, tall and iridescent in their health would decorate our forests. If boar were to return nationwide (which, if their current spread continues unabated, could be the case in 20-30 years) we may not have the bluebell carpet, but perhaps the alternative would be even more beautiful.

Food for thought when you go out to enjoy the bluebells next Spring.

October, the first month in which it starts feeling properly autumnal, kicked off from the first with my two-week work experience at the Cornish Seal Sanctuary in Gweek, near Falmouth.

Checking the flippers of Yulelogs, one of the bull Grey Seals

Target Training Chaff, a South African Fur Seal

Feeding the Resident Grey Seals

In the end, two weeks wasn’t enough. It was a fantastic experience getting to know the huge characters of the Sanctuary’s residents; from the grumpy yet compliant grey seal Yulelogs, the ‘class show-off’ sea lion Andre, to the highly emotional group of Humboldt penguins! The sanctuary is most famous for it’s work in rescuing, rehabilitating and releasing seal pups, and being the season in which they start to come in I was able to take part in some of this week, feeding and taking the temperatures of the very cute (yet very noisy!) newly rescued pups.

And for my days-off? More seals! I visited the wild colony not far from St Ive’s twice whilst I was down there, which could be viewed from the clifftop above (hence the distance in the photo). Being the grey seal breeding season the beach had plenty going on, including white-coated pups wailing to their mothers, and the beachmaster bull scaring off the most daring males simply by glancing at them!

Common Lizard – Seen while walking cliffs by Zennor, Cornwall.

Whilst I was down there I also took the chance to visit Paignton Zoo, a brilliant place run by the conservation charity, Whitley Wildlife Conservation Trust.

Silverback Gorilla ‘Pertinax’

Red-necked Ostrich

Black Rhino

White-rumped Shama

Speckled Pigeon

A quick trip to London to visit my brother also gave the perfect excuse for another zoo trip, which was of course the Zoological Society of London’s historic collection in Regent’s Park.

Philippine Crocodile

Komodo Dragon

Every Autumn for us always hails an outing to Brownsea Island. Slap-bang in the centre of Poole Harbour, it is home to an incredibly biodiverse mosaic of habitats managed by the National Trust & Dorset Wildlife Trust. A huge estuarine lagoon fills with over-wintering waders at this time of year, with particularly large flocks of Avocets and Bar-tailed Godwits. Reedbeds and heathland are surrounded by mixed coniferous and deciduous woodland, which provide an isolated refuge for red squirrels, safe from the conquest of the grey.

Avocets flocking into the Lagoon

Autumnal Fungi blooming on Brownsea

Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel

Sika Deer Stag

Take a walk in the woods literally a garden gate away from my own home, and from mid-April onwards, you’ll find that Spring-spectacular that fills both the hardened naturalist and the everyday person-on-the-street with joy by the combined sight & sweet scent of the scene. It is of course the Bluebell Explosion that many deciduous woodlands across the UK experience for a month or so.

At the time of writing, the bluebells are on their way out, gradually giving way as Summer approaches and the more unruly brackens and nettles begin to sprout from the woodland floor. But of course that’s just another chapter in the great ecological cycle of the woods, the death of the flowers providing a nutrient-rich bounty of humus to improve the fertility of the soil and food for it’s detritivorous residents. The seeds for next Spring have already been sown, and by next year that wonderful scent you get on a fine April day will be wafting through the trees once more.

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Though it seems to come earlier each year (and a bit cliche to say it!), the raucous of hormonal begun in earnest last week. It’s that time again when dozens of males make their move on the seemingly less-than-obliging females, often caught between up to two or three boys trying to spread their genes simultaneously and appearing comically bloated due to the overburden of eggs they carry. But it’s a tough job; males can stay latched on to their ‘brides’ for a good few days. Although my attempts to photograph frogs in the past have rarely succeeded given their skittish nature, a combination of a macro lens, stillness and great patience finally allowed me these few shots of this breeding pair

This highlight of the frog’s calender has I’m sure been the same for many naturalists too. As a young kid, the moment these secretive, weird and incredibly awesome creatures emerged from their slumber in dramatic armies that invaded my back garden pond never failed to amaze me, but the best bit was I knew it was just the beginning of months of afternoons in the garden following their lives. First the inpatient frustration waiting for the spawn to hatch; then, when that miracle occurred just under a month later, watching the tadpoles grow from wriggly black specks to the beginnings of that magical metamorphosis; which in turn, resulted in days seeking and picking up delicate froglets hopping over the lawn.

I bet you 99% naturalists with ponds in their gardens did this when young (and probably still do!), leading me to believe that if you want a kid to grow up loving nature in a society that needs it more than ever, digging a pond and encouraging them to discover the life-cycle of frogs for themselves is one of the most reliable ways of doing it.

Last week was a historic one as my first proper SLR camera arrived, a rather sexy Canon EOS 550D. As I haven’t got the kind of large lenses I require for proper wildlife photography yet (but not for long!), my first outing with it was more of a test drive to get my head around the settings of the new camera, similar in some ways but with obvious differences to my trusty ‘bridge’ camera I’ve been using previously, the Panasonic DMC-FZ38.

As you can guess by this post’s title, the outing was my regular half-term excursion to stay with my brother in London. It was the third time I’d been to the city in four weeks (first to see Dr Faustus at the Globe, second to go to the inspirational new WildlifeXpo), so I’m already quite accustomed to the atmosphere. Whilst I’m obviously far happier in a rural environment where wildlife is more obvious, London is surprisingly rich in interest for wildlife geeks like me (just read Mike McCarthy’s excellent ‘Nature Studies: City of Falcons’ for a taste of why this is the case), and my test drive with the canon was at two of my favourite nature spots in the city: The Zoo at Regent’s Park and Richmond Park, which of course was in full swing with the deer’s annual rut. Continue reading →