"Nothing Here, Just Nature"

With Arctic Poppies and an optional nerds' corner

Jan 28, 2024

One morning, towards the end of the year, I found myself walking up a quiet, gently curved valley. I had never been here before and something felt different. The fields were unkempt and shaggy, buzzing with insects, and strewn with wildflowers. The hedges had thickened, growing up into tall trees. The sun shone brightly and the area filled me with a sense of wellbeing that I couldn’t quite put my finger on until I realised that the land was beginning to rewild. The difference from the bright green buzzcut of the monoculture fields I was used to was profound. I paused at the head of the valley to look back in delight.
Two dog walkers appeared behind me. Aware that I was concentrating on the view, one of them stopped and spoke. “Such a shame, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” I asked in surprise.
“The golf course,” he explained. “All this was a golf course until it closed seven years ago. Look, you can still see a water hazard down there.”
I expressed amazement that this wild landscape had been a manicured golf course so recently.
“Yes, it’s such a shame that it’s gone. Look at it now, there’s nothing here. Just nature.”
Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness by Alastair Humphreys

I have relegated the weekly species account to second place - persuaded to do so by musing on the sadly all too common way of thinking that the preceding quotation presents. There are not that many creatures and precious few plants outside in Quebec this very cold and snow-covered month (or the next, or mostly the one after that) so this is a good time to let my thoughts loose.

Confession. I have never been a ‘twitcher’ in the sense of being the sort of birder who drives and flys huge distances to see rare birds, but I do keep a life list of birds seen and I have visited many wild places in Europe and North America by means of airplanes in order to enjoy wildlife. Mostly on those trips we go somewhere interesting and just see what’s around. No chasing rarities just for a ‘tick’ but a preference for encountering plants and animals in their natural habitats. For most of the rest of the year we are more interested in investigating and getting to know the odd corners and plants and wild creatures that are close to home. Ideally in places that we can reach by walking or cycling in keeping with the accepted rules of “Green Birding” (that’s the title of a book I wrote - proper publisher too - a bit over a decade ago and you will find it on Kindle if interested). This local area is what birders know as their patch and mine, very roughly accords with a 15km diameter circle centred on my back door. That is the size of a standard Christmas Bird Count area and as good an size as any. Certainly, it’s the sort of place that anyone can get to know well over the years without, for the most part, getting the car out too often.

The important thing is to learn and know the wildlife that we live beside. There is much more to be seen than just weeds and black birds. Far more, but it is too easy for too many people to assume that real nature is something that you have to travel a long way to find. Anything in our back yards is almost by definition, assumed not to be all that interesting and so not worth spending too much time with. By knowing the neighbours, we are more likely to advocate for their preservation and to speak up before they are subsumed under golf courses and housing developments, before mature trees are chopped down simply because they drop leaves on the garden and parked cars … as happened in our road a few years ago.

"... we overlook what is right in front of us — the very things which should be of upmost importance ... I may not have changed the whole wide world, but if I have planted and nurtured a tree, I have changed the earth at my feet for good — better for the next generation. Perhaps that’s all I need to do."
Over the Field
Where You Are Is Where You Are
Where you are is where you are. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Perhaps too simple, too obvious — or to put it bluntly — it’s blatantly obvious, isn’t it? But oh, how often we ignore that which is plain, simple, and familiar. When coupled with the passing of years, familiarity has the unfortunate habit of devolving …
Read more
a year ago · 92 likes · 19 comments · Hadden Turner

I have written before in this newsletter about the shock of meeting the guy in the arboretum who said, in effect, “ … all I ever see here are sparrows and blackbirds and I’ve been coming all my life so I know this place isn’t good for birds” when the party I was with had just seen 60+ species in spring migration. He hadn’t seen these wonders because HE HAD NOT BEEN LOOKING. I doubt it’s deliberate, mostly just ignorance, but what I would like people to do is to think on this quotation (paraphrased from a post by Lev Parikian, who also has a newsletter about birds on Substack). Quoted - with one minor geographic change more relevant to the continent I am writing from - “There are nearly 11,000 bird species in the world, and every single one of them is rare or unknown somewhere. So when you see a common, familiar bird, treat it as if this is your one and only chance to see it. It’s all too easy to forget this first principle of birding. All too easy to see a Northern Cardinal on the feeder and think ‘Cardinal, yeah, whatever’, when the instinctive reaction should be ‘WOW- just look at that thing, look at its colours, look at its perky gait OH MY GOD IT’S HANGING UPSIDE DOWN JUST LOOK.’”

That’s the message I want to convey. Don’t be the guy who says “Cardinal, yeah, whatever’” or even worse, “There’s nothing here. Just nature”.

OK - enough of the polemics. There are 1001 Species and more out there to understand and enjoy. Here’s another really interesting one.

Arctic Poppies (Papaver Radicatum)

Absolutely NOT a flower that anyone is going to encounter in the places that subscribers to this newsletter live - but it has been very cold here of late (-22C windchill a few days ago) and there is plenty of snow, and so it came to mind as something readers might be interested in.

It’s an inescapable fact of basic chemistry and biology, that if you are a plant you need some heat to push along the metabolic processes that keep you alive and reproducing. If you happen to live up near the Arctic Circle then finding that heat can be problematic … this plant has found an ingenious means to make things work for it. In summer of 2015 we were birding and botanizing in Iceland - and what an experience that was. In the middle of a nubbly lava field high up in the mountains, and with a vicious wind blowing, we happened upon a few small clumps of Arctic Poppies. The party all fell onto their knees and adopted the traditional “botanists’ position” then started taking photos and scribbling in their notebooks … it’s not only birders who do this art of thing. Frankly, botanists are worse, given half a chance of getting close to a rarity.

These flowers prefer dry and gravelly soils - in this case a weathered lava flow. The stems are thin with fuzzy hairs. The flowers have four large petals that can be yellow or white, or rarely pink. The leaves are dense and hairy. They are native to arctic and alpine zones all around the arctic, in Europe, Asia, and North America. Specimens have been found on Kaffeklubben Island, making it one of the northernmost plants in the world. It appears on the Coat of arms of Nunavut.

What is particularly fascinating about this species - that sea gathering process I mentioned above - is that they are heliotropic and can track the sun across the sky by rotating its flowerhead – much like sunflowers do. This increases the amount of direct sunlight falling on it and the poppies then utilise the shape of its petals to focus that sunlight and the small amounts of heat it provides on the anthers and stamens of the flower. Thereby warming the interior and increasing the efficiency of metabolic and reproductive processes. Being able to reach an optimal flower temperature in a cold, high arctic environment, is crucial for reproduction because temperature mediates flower growth and development, pollen and ovule viability, and influences pollinator visitation. The effect of the shape of the flower is augmented by the internal surfaces of the petals having glossy surfaces.

All that, and lovely to look at too.

There is a relative going by the same common name (Papaver nudicaule), that has been taken up by the horticultural industry. You can purchase specimens to grow in your own garden - they come in several colours.

Corbett AL, Krannitz PG, Aarssen LW. 1992. The influence of petals on reproductive success in the arctic poppy (Papaver radicatum). Canadian Journal of Botany 70: 200–204.

Existential Question - What exactly is a “Species ?”

Redpolls are lovely little finches that come down from the far north in some years to feed in our gardens and parks and wooded areas. Where they appear is dictated by food availability, weather or other similar factors - we don’t see them every winter.

How many species of Redpolls are there? One, three or five? There is controversy about this and I plan to nail my colours to the mast, stir the pot a bit. If we are lucky at this cold time of the year we will start to see irrupting Redpolls, mostly Common Redpolls, around. Mixed with them might be a very few Hoary Redpolls. They are delightful little birds that bring a spring to the birder’s step - but some of them look as different from each other as Alsatians do from Bulldogs, while both being “dogs”.

We are accustomed to thinking about species as a way to define creatures and plants. We assume that these are set in stone. After all apples and pears are quite clearly different species as are Common and Hoary Redpolls. Aren’t they? For birders who keep life lists (as one does) two ticks are always going to be preferable to one tick. However, just because two creatures look strikingly different does not mean they actually are different species. Just look at dogs.

So what do we mean by the word species?

There have been a number of papers published intimating that, once you start looking at the DNA and some other markers, Redpolls are actually all just one species, however different they appear to the eye. The “authority” on common names has yet to make a clear ruling. Lump or split? Our friend, Mark Dennis, has written and excellent short commentary on what lumping them into one species might mean for birders as opposed to taxonomists - please read it at http://tinyurl.com/2uay897t

The evidence (I offer a lengthier treatment further down this page - feel free to ignore it) does seem to be becoming quite clear that the various forms of Redpoll, yes, including the Hoary, are all one “species” and therein lies the problem for ticking birders. The science of taxonomy and the definition of a species is the gold standard but it has within it much nuance. That there are, to quote Mark's article, "uniquely identifiable forms" is unarguable ... so why do we stick so rigidly to what is an outmoded definition of species (by following the ABA and similar organisation's lead) when we have no need to? As a scientist I understand and am interested by the new information coming out of studies into Redpoll DNA/RNA and have no problems with them being one species that just happen to have a variety of appearances (just like humans, in fact). While wearing my birder's hat on the other hand I am equally happy to have four potential ticks for the species - and four or so for Juncos too, come to that. Apples and pears, not the same thing.

So, yes, perhaps a campaign is needed in the birding world to persuade the ABA and others to stop using the word species and lay down some guidelines for "uniquely identifiable forms" instead.

I (and I am not alone) suggest that birders who keep lists cease listing species and start listing forms - Our lists, our rules.

Let’s dig a little deeper. This next bit is for serious recreational birders for the most part, and entirely optional.

I don’t want to make this post any longer, but if you want to know a bit more about species and forms and what can or could be listed by birders without upsetting the taxonomists, then please download this PDF. It’s not very long.