Willsbridge Mill, Bristol

12 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by theresagreen in Local Nature Reserves, Nature, nature of woodlands, nature photography, woodlands

Tags

ash keys, catscliffe woods, dark bush cricket, feather moss, haws, red berries, siston brook, spider's webs, willsbridge mill, woodland walks

I am currently staying in Bristol with my son and family, and as they always do when I am here, they make great efforts to take me out to places they know that both I and the children will enjoy.

Avon Wildlife Trust takes responsibility for 35 reserves within the Avon area, with a good few clustered closely around the city.

On Sunday we drove out to Willsbridge Mill, a Local Nature Reserve, which the website describes as ” Set in a peaceful valley on the edge of Bristol, Willsbridge Mill is an impressively restored 19th Century Corn Mill and Long Barn, located within a stunning 22 acre nature reserve.” It continues ” This green oasis, which was once a bustling industrial site, now supports an amazing array of wildlife habitats – woodland, ponds, meadows, scrub, quarries and a demonstration wildlife garden, running along the fast – flowing Siston Brook. The reserve is home to kingfishers, dippers, owls, foxes, badgers, and bats.”

Dragonfly plaque

After several days of rain and general dampness, the ground in the wildlife garden was soggy and its plants bedraggled, there were a few pond skaters skimming over the surfaces of the ponds and a robin piping a few phrases of song, but apart from that there was little movement.

One of the trails around the reserve is the Sculpture Trail, which features ” striking environmental sculptures made from local materials”. There is also a sequence of attractive brass leaf-shaped plaques bearing different designs, which today were the only indicators of the wildlife that frequents the reserve in spring and summer.

Leaves are beginning to change colour and fall

The Ash tree – Fraxinus excelsior, bears its large single-winged seeds – also commonly known as keys, in large bunches

We followed the pathway to Hawthorns are laden with good crops of haws, but there were no signs of these particular ones being eaten yet.

Haws – the fruits of the Hawthorn

On the wooded side of the pathway, on a bramble leaf in a patch of sunshine a Dark Bush Cricket sat having a meal.

Dark Bush Cricket – Pholidoptera griseoaptera

The Dark Bush cricket is a common animal across the southern half of England, occurring in gardens, hedgerows and on woodland edges, where they can often be seen in quite large numbers sunbathing on bramble patches. Males are very aggressive, fiercely defending their territories against intruders. Females lay their eggs in late summer in rotting wood or bark crevices; the young crickets emerge 18 months later, so odd-year and even-year dark bush-crickets never meet.

Bramble festooned with gauzy spiders’ webs – a classic feature of damp autumn days

The pathway through Catscliffe Woods

Common Feather- moss-Kindbergia praelonga growing on a tree trunk

The stream that flows through the woodland is Siston Brook; it flows fast here and its energy once powered Willsbridge Mill’s water wheel. The stream rises five miles away at St. Anne’s Well, just south of the village of Siston and is a tributary of the River Avon, joining it at Londonderry Wharf, near Keynsham.

A fallen tree spanning the brook

A tree has fallen on one side of the stream bank arcing gracefully over the water to form a natural bridge. It has continued to grow, pushing out branches that now grow vertically from the original trunk; those that touch the ground have probably put down roots and appear to be growing as independent trees.

Steps lead temptingly to a higher woodland trail

Berry bounty for birds

26 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by theresagreen in Birds, Nature

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

berries eaten by birds, birds that eat berries, blackberries, blackbird, holly berries, house sparrow, red berries, rowan berries, sloes

This year seems to be an exceptionally bountiful one for berries, which is very good news for birds, insects and other animals that can stock up before winter’s chill descends. Dormice, squirrels, foxes and badgers are very fond of autumn fruit and nuts, as are migratory birds fattening up for winter, and insects such as the hawthorn picture wing fly and micro-moths which feed on spindle berries.

Way back in July I photographed Rowan trees laden with berries that were being eaten by Bullfinches, and the first of the blackberries were already ripe. The rowan berries are all gone now, but other trees and hedgerows are bursting with hawthorn berries (haws), holly berries, wild rose hips, blackberries, elderberries, spindle berries and more.

13/7/11-Rowan berries

Gardens are contributing to the berry bounty too, the pyracantha hedge in our garden has been attractively garlanded with orange berries for a few weeks now and although birds have been picking at them, this past week they have been positively feasting. The House Sparrows in particular have flocked in, quite literally, arriving all together and tucking in to feed while chirping and chattering noisily to one another. Their mass visits have given me the opportunity to asses the Sparrow numbers; the most birds I’ve counted at one visit so far has been 22, but there may have been even more on the other side of the hedge where there are more berries.

House Sparrows tucking into pyracantha berries

Blackbirds have also sampled a few of the berries; they have a great liking for most berries and seem to have inbuilt radar that unerringly detects the exact moment they are ready to eat.

Blackbirds are very partial to berries

The RSPB website has an interesting page on the subject of birds and berries, from which I’ve picked out the following bits of information:

Birds and berries

The intricate relationship between birds and berries has developed into a mutual dependence for survival.Some plants use berries as a clever way to entice birds and other animals to distribute their seeds. A plant that produces berries surrounds its seed in juicy, fleshy pith, rewarding the birds that eat them with vitamins and energy.

24/9/11-Holly berries

Berries are an important food source for many birds during the winter, especially when the ground is too frozen to hunt worms or snails, and there are few insects about.

Some birds, like song and mistle thrushes, blackbirds, redwings and fieldfares, find most of their winter food from berries.

Most berries are either red or black. This makes the berries easier for birds to find them. Evergreens, and plants that produce berries when their leaves are still green generally produce red berries, which show up well against a green background. Black coloured berries are thought to show up better against leaves that have turned yellow or brown.

Blackberries

Blackberries are not true berries. They are aggregate fruits, which are fruits grouped together that contain seeds from different ovaries of a single flower.

Birds in a bush

Thrushes and waxwings prefer berries with smaller seeds, like rowan, as they are really only interested in the flesh, whereas other birds, like hawfinches, can make use of the seed itself, and so are attracted to berries with large seeds, such as hawthorn, blackthorn, cherries, and bullace (wild plum).

18/9/11-Blackthorn fruit, or sloes

Prunus spinosa (blackthorn or sloe) is a species of Prunus native to Europe, western Asia, and locally in northwest Africa. It is also locally naturalised in New Zealand and eastern North America.

The fruits, or sloes are blue-black n colour, small and sour. They are traditionally used to make sloe gin, jam and jelly, and are usually picked after the first frosts in late October/early November.

Fruits such as sloes that have a single stone are also not true berries, botanically they are known as ‘drupes‘. Drupes are fleshy fruits produced from a (usually) single-seeded ovary with a hard stony layer (called the endocarp) surrounding the seed. Other drupes are plums, peaches,apricots and cherries.

Red-berry trail

31 Wednesday Aug 2011

Posted by theresagreen in Bryn Euryn Nature Reserve, Nature of Wales, nature of woodlands

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cotoneaster in the wild, cuckoo pint, haws, hawthorn, hawthorn berries, poisonous berries, red berries, wild arum

11th August

I resumed my woodland walk, passing by a Hawthorn tree laden with red berries.

11/8/11-Common Hawthorn -Crataegus monogyna, fully laden with a crop of berries

Crataegus commonly called hawthorn or thornapple, is a large genus of shrubs and trees in the rose family, Rosaceae, native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere in Europe, Asia and North America. They are shrubs or small trees, mostly growing to 5–15 m tall, with small pome fruit and (usually) thorny branches. The thorns are small sharp-tipped branches that arise either from other branches or from the trunk, and are typically 1–3 cm long. The fruit, sometimes known as a “haw”, is berry-like, but structurally a pome containing from 1 to 5 pyrenes that resemble the “stones” of plums, peaches, etc.

11/8/11-Hawthorn berries, or haws

Hawthorns provide food and shelter for many species of birds and mammals, and the flowers are important for many nectar-feeding insects. Hawthorns are also used as food plants by the larvae of a large number of Lepidoptera species and haws are important for wildlife in winter, particularly thrushes and waxwings.

I have noted several cotoneaster shrubs growing throughout this site, which I have assumed to have arrived there via bird droppings as the shrub is not generally a native of Britain, but is widely planted in gardens.

11/8/11-Berries of Cotoneaster horizontalis

* * There is an indiginous native cotoneaster that is found growing only on the Great Orme: Cotoneaster cambricus (Wild Cotoneaster; Welsh: Creigafal y Gogarth “rock apple of Gogath”) is a species of Cotoneaster endemic to the Great Orme peninsula in north Wales. It is the only species of Cotoneaster native to the British Isles. It has never been found naturally at any other location.

______________________________________________________

I very recently came upon the following on the ‘Plantlife’ website on the very subject of ‘escapee cotoneasters’:

Cotoneaster species

Non-native invasive plants.

Cotoneasters provide an important reminder that even with the best intentions of gardeners, the wind, birds and other animals can help plants to ‘escape over the garden wall’.

Plantlife is particularly concerned about four types of cotoneaster:

Hollyberry cotoneaster (C. bullatus)
Wall cotoneaster (C. horizontalis)
Small-leaved cotoneasters (C. microphyllus agg.)
Himalayan cotoneaster (C. simonsii).

What’s the problem?

These popular garden and landscaping shrubs are also popular with birds who enjoy the berries and spread the seed. This can spread cotoneasters in the wild, where they can be difficult to eradicate.

What are we doing about it?

Find out more about Plantlife’s invasive plant programme by clicking here

_____________________________________________________

Another probable garden escape is Hypericum – St. John’s Wort, also growing in various spots throughout the site and also now bearing red berries.

11/8/11-berries of St John's Wort-Hypericum

A native plant, the Arum lily or as I know it, Cuckoo Pint or Lords and Ladies, is also bearing bright scarlet berries now. I found them in a few places, mostly tucked almost out of sight beneath other shrubbery.

11/8/11-The poisonous berries of the Wild arum

Arum maculatum is a common woodland plant species of the Araceae family. It is widespread across temperate northern Europe and is known by an abundance of common names including Wild arum, Lords and Ladies, Devils and Angels,Cows and Bulls, Cuckoo-Pint, Adam and Eve, Bobbins, Naked Boys, Starch-Root and Wake Robin.

Rowan tree

21 Sunday Aug 2011

Posted by theresagreen in Nature

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bullfinch, bullfinch pair, bullfinches eating berries, red berries, rowan tree, rowan tree berries, rowan tree folklore & mythology, rowan tree poem, rowan tree traditional song

July

I’ve been in the UK since the beginning of the month and have quite a lot to add to the blog that I now have the time to begin. In the course of visiting some members of my scattered family so far, I have travelled from North Wales to Bristol via Leicester and back again and had a mix of weather – a typical British summer really and for me, much easier to cope with than the intense heat that Spain is experiencing now.

Since arriving, my first impressions have been of how beautiful and abundant the summer flowers are this year, both in gardens and in the wild and was surprised by how early some trees and plants are producing ripe fruit, particularly Rowan trees in both Leicester and Bristol that were laden with berries and, also in Bristol, lots of ripe blackberries. I’ve already got quite a lot to share, but I thought I’d get going with a bit about the Rowan Tree.

Rowan– Sorbus aucuparia L.edulis

Gaelic name: Caorthann

Family : Rosaceae

The Rowan tree has been one of my favourite trees since I was very young, having all the qualities I could wish for from a tree; in a garden it looks good all year round, it doesn’t get too big, keeps a good shape, has attractive green ash-type leaves that take on lovely autumn colours and creamy blossoms, but it comes into its own in the late summer -early autumn when it is laden with bright orange-red berries that birds love. It also has some fascinating mythology attached to it, and had at least one song written about it, what more could you possibly want?

: 10/6/10 -A wild Rowan tree photographed in the Gwaun Valley, Pembrokeshire last June, its flowers just beginning to go over

The name “rowan” is derived from the Old Norse name for the tree, raun. Today the Rowan may also commonly be known as Mountain Ash, although it is not related to the ash family, but through the ages it has been known by a myriad of other names. The following is a list fromwikipedia: Delight of the eye (Luisliu), Mountain ash, Quickbane, Quickbeam, Quicken (tree), Quickenbeam, Ran tree, Roan tree, Roden-quicken, Roden-quicken-royan, Round wood, Round tree, Royne tree, Rune tree, Sorb apple, Thor’s helper, Whispering tree, Whitty, Wicken-tree, Wiggin, Wiggy, Wiky, Witch wood, Witchbane, Witchen, Witchen Wittern tree. Many of these can be easily linked to the mythology and folklore surrounding the tree. In Gaelic, it is caorann, or Rudha-an (red one, pronounced similarly to English “rowan”)

: 13/7/11-Bristol-Rowan tree laden with berries

Botany

Rowans are mostly small deciduous trees 10–20 m tall, though a few are shrubs. The leaves are arranged alternately, and are pinnate, with (7-)11-35 leaflets; a terminal leaflet is always present. The flowers are borne in dense corymbs; each flower is creamy white, and 5–10 mm across with five petals. The fruit is a small pome 4–8 mm diameter, bright orange or red in most species.(Due to their small size the fruits are often referred to as berries, but a berry is a simple fruit produced from a single ovary, whereas a pome is an accessory fruit.)

: It seems to be an exceptional year for berries

Food for birds & insects

: 10/7/11-Leicester-Male Bullfinch feasting on rowan berries

The fruit are soft and juicy, which makes them a very good food for birds, particularly waxwings and thrushes, which then distribute the seeds in their droppings. Whilst in Leicester I was delighted to spot a pair of Bullfinch visit a neighbouring tree to enjoy the bountiful crop of fruits there, returning several times during each of the days I was there. (The quality of the photographs is not great, sorry, but I was taking them through a bedroom window!)

: The female bullfinch with a berry in her beak

Blackbirds were also feeding avidly and very frequently, but the only other bird I saw taking an interest was a young Chaffinch.

Rowan is also used as a food plant by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species.

Food & medicinal uses

Traditionally the berries from the Rowan were processed for jams, pies, and bittersweet wines. It was also made into a tea to treat urinary tract problems, haemorhoids and diarrhea. The fresh juice of the berries is a mild laxative, and helps to soothe inflammed mucous membranes as a gargle. Containing high concentrations of Vitamin C, the berries were also ingested to cure scurvy – a Vitamin C deficiency disease. Even today, one of the sugars in the fruit is sometimes given intravenously to reduce pressure in an eyeball with glaucoma.

Caution : Do not eat raw berries!

Caution, however, must be taken when using the berries. They are reported to contain a cancer-causing compound, parasorbic acid. The poisonous elements are neutralized by cooking the berries though.

Mythology, magic & folklore

The European rowan (S. aucuparia) has a long tradition in European mythology and folklore. It was thought to be a magical tree and protection against malevolent beings. In Celtic mythology the rowan is called the Traveller’s Tree because it prevents those on a journey from getting lost.

Rowan was used in all protection spells particularly from fire, or lightning. In Ireland it was hung in the house to prevent fire charming, hung around the necks of hounds to increase their speed, and used to keep the dead from rising. It also had the power to protect people and animals from evil spirits. The IrishDruids held it in particular esteem, for its physical healing as well as its magical properties.

The density of the rowan wood made it very usable for walking sticks and magician’s staves. Druid staffs have traditionally been made out of rowan wood, and its branches were often used in dowsing rods and magic wands. Rowan was carried on sea-going vessels to avoid storms, kept in houses to guard against lightning, and even planted on graves to keep the deceased from haunting. It was also used to protect one from witches.

A Poem about the Rowan Tree:

Beneath the green and berry red
They flutter about
Making a melody with each wing strum
Magical lil’ creatures

Beauties of the forest
Fairies they are called by some
Protecting and guarding against the darkness
Bringing well being to babe’s milk

Sweet Rowan tree
Grace my land and grow
Ward off evil spirits
And remind me of my heritage of long ago

Dance with me in moonlight May
And I shall honor you
With my nurturing hands
And the remembrance of the one who holds my smile

Patricia Gale

And here’s the song, with music so you can sing along…..

Scottish Folk Song: Rowan Tree

Rowan Tree Song

Oh rowan tree, oh rowan tree, thoul’t aye be dear to me,
Entwin’d thou art wi’ mony ties, o’ hame and infancy.
Thy leaves were aye the first o’ spring, thy flowr’s the simmer’s pride
There was nae sic a bonnie tree, in all the country side.
Oh rowan tree.

How fair wert thou in simmer time, wi’ all thy clusters white.
Now rich and gay thy autumn dress, wi’ berries red and bright
On thy fair stem were mony names which now nae mair I see.
But there engraven on my heart, forgot they ne’er can be.
Oh rowan tree.

We sat aneath thy spreading shade, the bairnies round thee ran
They pu’d thy bonnie berries red and necklaces they strang.
My mither, oh, I see her still, she smil’d our sports to see,
Wi’ little Jeannie on her lap, wi’ Jamie at her knee.
Oh rowan tree.

Oh, there arose my father’s pray’r in holy evening’s calm,
How sweet was then my mither’s voice in the martyr’s psalm
Now a’ are gane! we met nae mair aneathe the rowan tree,
But hallowed thoughts around thee twine o’ hame and infancy,
Oh rowan tree.