Otter in the river Wear at Durham city

 

Caught a brief glimpse of an otter fishing in the river Wear, just upstream from Prebends' bridge in Durham city this morning. Only had my phone with me for a video, but lovely to see. I've watched them before along this stretch of river, between Prebends' and Elvet bridges. Also little grebes, goosanders, kingfishers, herons and cormorants are frequent visitors to the river here, despite the presence of rowers.

Orange-sided comb-horn - a colourful daddy-long-legs

 The two commonest craneflies - Tipula oleracea and T. paludosa - are dull-coloured insects but this female orange-sided comb-horn Ctenophora pectinicornis has an orange and black colour scheme that gives it a hint of menace. We found it in old deciduous woodland on the bank of the river Wear in Durham city. The larvae (leatherjackets) of the two commonest craneflies feed on grass roots in pastures but the larvae of this woodland species feed on decaying fallen timber. 

As is so often the case, this specimen has lost a limb. Easily shed limbs might well be a last resort escape strategy, from the beak of a bird or the web of a spider.

Kingfisher on the river Wear in Durham city

 

The river Wear begins its great loop around Durham cathedral peninsula here, at Elvet bridge. It’s always a busy spot. Aside from the rowing crews and scullers training for regattas, there are tourists in hired rowing boats and a constant passage of joggers, cyclists and walkers along the riverbank footpath. Mostly busy people on their way to somewhere, but it’s often a good place to just stand and stare: there can be interesting birds here. In winter there were goosanders fishing. In early spring little grebes took up residence for a while: energetic divers that we timed submerged for twenty seconds, leaving us guessing where they might reappear, sometimes popping up just a few feet away from the bank.  

The footpath was busy today. As I reached a narrow, elevated section of the path I moved over against the wall to make way for a rowing coach, balanced precariously on his bike as he chased his novice crew and bellowed encouragement from the bank. While he passed I glanced over the wall, towards the river and there was a kingfisher, perched on an overhanging willow. A perfect spot for fishing, where the water is clear, where sunlight glints on silver scales of fish that congregate in the warm shallows.

We stared at each other for what can only have been a few seconds, but these birds seem to concentrate surrounding energy and release it in a mesmerising azure and orange spark, an electric shock of plumage that makes time stand still. Totally unexpected, completely captivating: a gift of a bird.

And then it was gone, streaking off upriver, skimming the water, streaking past the oarsman and disappearing under Elvet bridge. King of the river.

 

A Christmas Tale: The Solitary French Horn Player

The last Saturday before Christmas dawned under leaden skies and deteriorated into torrential rain. In need of fresh air and exercise, we decided to walk into Durham city along the river Wear. The rain hammered on our umbrellas and the fast-rising river swirled past, the colour of brown Windsor soup. After almost an hour's walking we had only met one other person who had ventured out into the rain and wind. 

As we rounded the final bend in the river we thought we could hear music, but at first we couldn't see where it was coming from. Then we spotted him - a solitary French horn player standing in the bandstand near the cricket ground, across the river. There was no one else in sight.

We paused to listen while he produced a lively rendition of the hymn 'Thine is the Glory'. When he'd finished he glanced in our direction. We waved, he waved back. We would have cheered, but he would never have heard us across the river, with the sound of the wind, rain and rushing flood water. 

We turned to walk on, as again he struck up a tune: Ray Noble's 'The Very Thought of You'.  

Soon, when we glanced back into the murky December mist he was barely visible and his music was overwhelmed by the sounds of wind, water and traffic as we approached the steps up to the busy shopping centre.

Sheer magic. We don't know who the solitary French horn player was, but he made our day.

Merry Christmas to all visitors to this blog.

A long way from home.....

This little alien weed is gallant soldier Galinsoga parviflora. It's a native of Peru but is currently flourishing in cracks on the pavement and along the road edge outside Durham University's Elvet Riverside building near the centre of Durham city. The plant first escaped from cultivation in Kew Gardens in 1860 and became a common weed in south-east England, but didn't turn up in Durham until it was found in a field near the city in 1940. 

In his classic New Naturalist series book Weeds and Aliens (1961) Sir Edward Salisbury describes how the plant acquired its common name. Its escape into gardens around Richmond in Surrey led to a flurry of inquiries at Kew about this new invasive weed and gardeners were told that it was called Galinsoga, since at that time this Peruvian plant had no common name in Britain. The unfamiliar Latin name quickly became corrupted to the easier-to-remember gallant soldiers and has remained so ever since.

Around Kew the plant was also sometimes known locally as Joey Hooker weed, after Joseph Dalton Hooker who was director of Kew Gardens at that time.

The plant produces numerous seeds - typically about 2000 but as many as 15,000 in large plants. They are tiny and equipped with a small and not very efficient parachute of hairs, so tend to be wafted short distances and are then lodged in crevices at the base of walls where they are washed further in by rainwater. They're also easily transported on clothing.


Galinsoga has spread to many other parts of the world and showed a similar pattern of dispersal from botanical gardens in Holland and South Africa. This is a weed that's on a world tour.


Alien introductions often leave their natural pests and parasites at home when they travel, then slowly accumulate new ones in their new geographical surroundings. This one is hosting a leaf-mining larva of an insect - probably a fly or a micro-moth. You can see the silvery trail around the edge of the leaf.

A Visionary Project....

Today's Guardian Country Diary describes a visit to Low Burnhall farm in Durham, now the site of a Woodland Trust major re-foresting scheme and the subject of an earlier blog post about its wonderful display of wild flowers. The photograph above of the farm was taken in spring about five years ago and the one below ..... 

... was taken from more or less the same spot in late June this year, although with a different focal length lens. The Woodland Trust is in the process of planting 94,000 native trees on this site (including rare black poplars) and the first stage has been to re-seed most of the agriucltural land with grasses and plant up the fields bordering the main road as wild flower meadows.

This year the floral display has been mainly confined to annuals like cornflower, corn poppy and corn chamomile that were sown last autumn, but these meadows also include biennials like viper's bugloss and perennial wild flowers that will make a big impact in future years. The wild flower meadows will be maintained in perpetuity, even after mature woodland develops behind them. Signs in the gateways welcome visitors and although it's the wild flowers that will tempt most people to follow the paths mown through the grasses there are quite a lot of other interesting features too.

The arable weeds like field pansy Viola arvensis that grew amongst the wheat and oilseed rape crops are still there but now the crops are replaced by grasses that support a large population of breeding butterflies like....

... this ringlet.

One of the paths through the grassland leads to this grassy bank between high hedges and rough grassland ...

... where betony...

... and lady's bedstraw are just coming into flower.

The fine old hedges are being extended with new plantings.

The eastern edge of the farm is bordered by the River Wear - with sand martin colonies in its banks and also kingfishers.

Looking northwards you can just make out one of the paths mown through the grassland curving up the distant slope (double-click for a larger image) - visitors are encouraged to wander freely over the site and if you climb to the top of the distant hill there are excellent views to the south.

The River Browney joins the River Wear near the southern boundary, with steep banks that are covered in....

...a dense canopy of butterbur leaves

... and with water crowfoot flowering in the river.

One bank of the River Browney is covered in a fragment of oak wood with some magnificent old trees. This part of the site must look very much like it would have appeared to the first neolithic farmers who arrived here to clear the forest, graze their animals and plant crops over five millennia ago.

Now that deforestation process is being reversed. The site includes important fragments of ancient semi-natural woodland and the new planting, which has already begin with the help of volunteers and schoolchildren, will link these up with a new public-access woodland that will develop over the course of the next century. It will be well worth visiting regularly during the early stages to document progress in this visionary project.

It will be a decade before the woodland grows sufficiently to be recognisable as such and in the meantime most people will probably visit to see the spectacular wild flower display in early summer - and all the bees and butterflies that this attracts.