Whilst Out Walking in the Arboretum
24 May - a walk, and egg, a plant and quite a few birds
I am not, by nature, all that sociable. Friendly conversational groups of a half dozen like-minded souls are just right. More than a half dozen or so starts to get in the way of good chatting. There are exceptions - though even then, I absolutely draw the line at around twenty people. Above that we are entering crowd territory, often noisily so.
Last weekend I found myself leading a walking group of about 25 mostly grey-hairs (and two small people) on a semi-guided walk in the nearby arboretum. Our small town has an environment committee run by the council with community members and in recent years, in addition to solving the world’s environment problems, we have been organizing events and workshops to bring those members of the community who are interested in nature into contact with experts in different fields (wild gardening being another one). My walk in the woods was one of the planned outings.
The day was glorious, comfortable temperatures in the low-twenties, dappled shade under the trees, early forest flowers to discover and the constant background shouting of an army of Ovenbirds. We did not get the best birding as we started mid-morning rather than shortly after dawn … you can only expect so much of new naturalists 😉 … but we had almost all the trail to ourselves and there were late spring plants to pause and talk about as well as the shouting birds. Exercise was taken - and that would have good, whatever crossed our paths.
Speaking to some of the participants afterwards I realised that events like this are appealing and that it might be possible to repeat the exercise. Maybe in high summer, fall and even winter - we are a hardy bunch up here in the north. There’s lots to see in summer and we would get the entire arboretum to ourselves because (other) people fear the mosquitoes. It can be bad, I will admit but not very often and long sleeves with a dab of DEET, or Icaradine, on exposed flesh almost always saves the day. I shall think about options for the next “WOW in the Arboretum” event … maybe in early October for the colour if nothing else.
I suppose it is inevitable, but I am always a bit disappointed to find that most, if not quite all, walkers on such outings are older people like me. On this trip a woman of my age brought her daughter who was accompanied by a couple of children (who seemed to enjoy themselves) but that is not common. I know from experience that children like going out in nature and seeing birds and flowers and squirrels. They ask intelligent questions, but they are rarely brought by their parents and I wonder why. There is a 20+ year gap in “nature interest” between leaving school and middle age. It can’t be the “I don’t have time” excuse that is usually offered, because those people find time to do other things that take them away from home - why does being in nature get downgraded to lesser importance/interest than other things. I don’t want to say people “should” get into the open air, each to their own, but what happens in those 20 or so years to make a lot of people lose the interest they had when younger? Watching David Attenborough films is not the same as encountering a flower or an insect in your own neighbourhood.
Song Sparrow Egg
This egg was lying on the ground under one of our trees - I am pretty sure (circumstantial evidence) that it’s an egg of a Song Sparrow. I tried to use an AI-powered egg ID app for confirmation and it tried hard to convince me that it belonged to a Common Redshank which is (a) a shorebird and (b) a Eurasian species. Unlikely, I think. Perhaps the app was European in origin?
Song sparrow nests are cup-shaped, built by the female using grasses, weeds, and lined with softer materials like hair and very well hidden in dense vegetation, often not too far from the ground.
It was heavy and cold to the touch. A lovely thing.
Restricted access - again
In May of last year we were very limited in the use we could make of our front door - a pair of American Robins had made a nest in a plant pot … and successfully raised three youngsters over the space of about a month. We could come and go at the back of the house, but the mail carrier etc was not impressed by requests to avoid the Robins. This year the birds’ attention has moved to the back of the house with a new nest in a small tree beside the deck that I can see from my reading chair in the sunroom - I just have to look up to see this about ten feet away. Outdoor drinks in the evening are restricted until further notice. Meals on the deck are out of the question.
Noticing Nature #29 : Jack in the Pulpit
In the arboretum walk mentioned above we happened upon repeated clumps of Jack in the Pulpit plants. Its taxonomic name is Arum triphyllum (or the closely related species Arisaema maculatum) though depending on where you live it will have other common names - examples being cuckoopint, lords and ladies, arum lily, wake robin and even the rather bizarre “kitty-come-down-the-lane-jump-up-and-kiss-me” from Kentish dialect. A local French name that I rather like is petit-prêcheur.
This is a plant that changes its sex. It exhibits sequential hermaphroditism whereby individual plants change sex depending on their energy reserves. Young or stressed plants produce male flowers, while larger, healthier specimens produce female flowers. This has evolved as an adaptive strategy that maximizes reproductive success across varying conditions and is an example of dichogamy, a rare phenomenon in flowering plants. Due to this sex-change lifecycle, the species is sometimes called colloquially as Jack or Jill in the pulpit.
The hooded spathe ( the name of a leaflike bract that encloses a flower cluster forms the pulpit and encloses the spadix (Jack), where an inflorescence of tiny flowers cluster. This structure creates a temporary trap for pollinating fungus gnats, ensuring cross-pollination before releasing them.
All parts of the plants contain needle-like calcium oxalate crystals that cause severe oral irritation when eaten - though why you would eat it, I do not know. I read that this continent’s indigenous peoples did take it for some medicinal purposes after boiling. Must have been desperate.
Look for Jack in the Pulpit in moist, rich deciduous woodlands with dappled shade - just like the arboretum we found it growing in. It is not endangered, but liable to local habitat fragmentation.
Garden Passage - six Warblers and a Thrush
A few of the passing birds that paused in the garden this week, just long enough to have their portraits taken. We have had a few amazing days when it was hard to turn away from the windows overlooking the garden.
A Splendidly Different Book of Birds
In last week’s chapter from my other Substack from the OLD Bookshop (link below) I introduced a recently published book about birds. There are many, many such books, as you know … but this one is quite different. I won’t say more here … follow the link below and see why I am suggesting it. The book’s illustrations alone are worth your time.
A taste of what you might find? Well, there is a small brown bird, the original LBJ, to be found in England. It skulks and it goes by the name of Dunnock - here, as a taster, are a couple of paragraphs from the description of that nondescript bird … accompanied by fine artwork.
FEW PEOPLE NOTICE Dunnock - and fewer still could tell you her name: this dull little forager of picnic table and climbing frame, this dun-brown, dingy-brown sort-of-sparrow, this percher-on-the-barrow, this keeper-out-of-the-way, this dowdy robin, this archetypal LBJ. Dunnock is Cinders before the Ball; the last to be called when the teams are picked; the wallflower at the high-school dance. Dunnock slips through minds as she slips through hedges - barely even touching the edges.
Perhaps the lesson of Dunnock goes something like this: that all creatures have their wild and secret lives; that the seemingly drabbest bird-being hides surprise on surprise, right there in plain sight; that even the quietest bird might open its mouth and share a startling song, or might shift on its nest to disclose a clutch of eggs that are bright and blue as ice to the eyes.
If you enjoy book suggestions - primarily nature books - and bit of whimsy to follow then you might think about subscribing … up to you, no pressure.
And to end, a Great Crested Flycatcher
Thank you so much for this. I loved looking at the pictures of the plants and birds.
You are right about getting children out into nature. We're lucky here in that several NGOs focus on that and on getting them involved in conservation/recycling/etc.
Have to share a wonderful walk we had this week-the hermit thrushes were everywhere-serenading us up and down the entire three miles we walked. No song so soothing to my mind.