Some of this week’s noticings … and a squirrel

Sunday 19 October

But first … being a “scientist” and, what’s more, one of the biology sort, I was trained long ago to abjure any tendencies towards anthropomorphism and cuteness. However, while this is not a slide into the dark side, the socials did inform me that today is National Harvest Mouse Day. An increasingly endangered species that needs care and attention. Let’s raise our mugs of tea and toast the - undoubtedly, even I must admit - rather cute little guys and wish them well.

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Now, what you came here for …

Nature is slowing down as the temperatures slowly drop and the trees turn to their seasonal, wonderful yellows and golds.

The colours are not quite so striking this year as they usually are - probably due to this year’s drought as much as anything else. This summer has, indeed, been exceptionally dry.

This first photo is the river down the road, looking upstream to the east. There are Canada Geese on the water and those island trees are not infrequently used as staging posts by travelling raptors such as Bald Eagles. The second image is a trail in the nearby Arboretum - celebrating its 80th anniversary next weekend. I will leading a forest walk there as part of the celebrations - come along after lunch if you are in the area.

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Then we have birds. A Pileated Woodpecker and Great Blue Heron. The woodpecker will remain with us through the winter but the Heron will be departing any day now for the south.

Fungi. There are fungi to be seen somewhere, every month of the year but, this is the season when they star. The first is one of the poisonous Amanita species, perhaps Fly Agaric, while the second is known as Turkey Tail, grows on decaying wood and is said to be edible … though whether you would want to eat it is debatable.

Despite its reputation as being “instant death” actual death from eating Fly Agaric is rare … which is a good thing as there are misguided people who sample them deliberately in search of a hallucinogenic experience. Should be so foolish as to swallow some then expect quite rapidly to enjoy nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, excessive salivation, perspiration, watering of the eyes, slowed and difficult breathing, dilated pupils, confusion, and excitability lasting some 12 hours or so. Admire it and then give it a wide berth. It probably won’t kill you but just make you wish it would.

Lastly, it is the season of bird passage and that always includes plenty of Geese. Usually the ones we see passing noisily overhead are Canada Geese, maybe some Cackling Geese travelling with them. Everyone knows what they look and sound like, but for a change, here are some of the gorgeous Snow Geese coming down from the far north …

Why does a garden needs to be low-maintenance

As fall progresses and we put the garden away for a few months, my thoughts turn towards lessons learned and things to look forward to doing next year. If you are contemplating making your plot a bit more wildlife friendly next year, here are some suggestions recently culled from the press, that are easy to implement. Start planning for spring …

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/oct/15/how-to-create-a-nature-friendly-low-maintenance-garden

(The association) which represents garden centres and suppliers, has warned that within the next five years, nearly a quarter of UK householders plan to pave or deck over at least part of their garden, and of those, nearly a third plan to cover more than half of the area. The HTA estimates this could mean a loss of about 8% of the UK’s total private green space, or 409 sq km.

Yes, you are swamped with work and the cost of living and caring responsibilities, and it would be convenient to have a garden that looks after itself – but perhaps a mindset shift is in order. “Why can’t we invest in our spaces and improve habitats and improve our mental and physical health at the same time?” Find what you like to do. Mowing the lawn is tedious you think, so do something else. If you have lots of lovely flowers, and sometimes those flowers outgrow their space, you go out with your secateurs, and you trim them back. That takes five minutes. You can deadhead things and keep everything looking beautiful, while also having a space that works in harmony with the wider environment. Less lawn means less work.

“A meadow is a really low-maintenance option,” says Kate Bradbury, a garden writer and the author of One Garden Against the World. “You could let your grass grow long and leave it wild and cut it once or twice a year, instead of weekly in summer. It will become a really biodiverse place. Very quickly, you’ll get loads of insects using it – small mammals, birds.” Her tiny front garden is “a mini meadow. I have sparrows stripping seeds off my grasses, and it’s really nice to see. We’ve lost 97% of our meadows since the second world war, and this habit of locking away life is really sad.”

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Planning Regulations and Nature

Those of you who occasionally dip into British politics and wildlife matters will have inwardly groaned recently at the government’s plans to reduce environmental protections in favour of developers. This article was published a few days ago and is worth skimming through. If you don’t follow UK news take it as a warning as to what could happen wherever else you are on the planet … it is certainly what PP would do if he ever became the Canadian PM. The pressures from developers to obliterate inconvenient plants and animals is always with us and far too often they get away with it because nobody is watching them.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/16/labour-england-nature-housing-planning-bill

Crucial to the government’s war on nature is the “cauldron principle”. If a species is to be blamed for “holding up development”, it must be one you might find in a witch’s cauldron. The culprits are never dormice, otters, water voles, nightingales, turtle doves or orchids, widely considered cute or beautiful. They are bats, newts, snails and spiders.

Bats and newts have been blamed by successive governments for nastily “standing in the way” of growth. In March, Keir Starmer claimed that “jumping spiders” had stopped “an entire new town”. He added: “I’ve not made that example up.”

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Opening the Door with Butterflies.

The author of these quotes was (see link below for the original article) participating in an event where she had a display case of butterflies.

This tray was like a magnet that unlocked adults’ childlike wonder. They would spot it from afar and get drawn over to me. Then, as they recognised the common species from their gardens—the large white and the red admiral, mostly—they took such pleasure in naming them. It wasn’t long before they were asking what the others were, leading quite naturally onto an organic conversation about which were rare but used to be common, and which were now extinct but prolific just 100 or so years ago.

Placing the beautiful insects people recognise from their own lives alongside those that are endangered or extinct is so powerful—much more so than text and graphs.

What really struck me, though, is just how many people spontaneously and earnestly asked me what they could do to help.

• Such a a simple thing - we might seek more opportunities like to draw in people who really dole the natural world but who seem lost.

The man who wanted to save a butterfly

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Badgers versus Cheap Burgers

The New Statesman had an interesting piece about a committee in the UK Parliament discussing the highly contentious culling of badgers. With regard to the food system and its implications for parliamentarians who “need” all the votes they can get I commend you to tread these two paragraphs. Not entirely divorced from food policy over here either, in essence it is an international problem:

Almost all of the MPs present oppose the culls; they argue for more effective measures, such as vaccinating cattle. It seems fairly clear that the problem has more to do with the modern food system than the ancient woodland. Bovine TB is not spread by badger sneezes but by faeces. A cow produces about 500 times as much faeces as a badger. You’d (be hard pressed) to find a badger turd, but on modern farms cows are to be seen “wading through their own faeces”.

But intensive farming is what it takes to get cheap burgers on the shelves. Supermarkets can squeeze farmers for every last penny of margin and governments will not stop them because doing so would mean higher food prices. Instead, farmers are forced to farm more intensively, and the government – not wanting to further annoy them by imposing better testing or vaccination – compensates them for the diseases that result. It’s modern politics all over: the government tried to please everyone, and ended up paying millions a year to have a protected species executed by firing squad.