Goldfinches and sunflowers on the Durham coast

Earlier this month, the largest flock of goldfinches that I've ever seen congregated on the Durham coast. There must have been well over 200 birds, feeding on seeds of the limestone flora on the cliff top above Blast beach. Most seemed to be eating meadowsweet seeds, but there was also a large store of knapweed and hemp agrimony seeds for them to feed on. Many of the birds hadn't moulted into full adult plumage yet and were quite hard to spot on the ground, but when they all took to the air at once they were a magnificent spectacle.   

Further along the coastal path, near Hawthorn dene, two fields have been sown with a wild bird food crop, including fodder radish, quinoa (below) and sunflowers which will provide food for finches and buntings later in the winter, when the supply of wild flower seeds runs low. Last winter similar crops attracted large flocks of linnets.

Making hay while the sun shines on the Durham Coast

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece for the Guardian Country Diary and posted some pictures here of the exceptionally species-rich Hawthorn Meadows on the Durham coast. The botanical diversity is the result of a late hay cut, which allows the wild flowers to set seed. 




Today, when we walked through the meadow....

....  Durham Wildlife Trust's volunteers were haymaking, on a very warm early autumn day. 

Doing it the traditional way, with wooden rakes and pitchforks, is hard work. The smell of warm, fragrant wild flower hay was wonderful.

A little further up the coast, between Hawthorn Dene and Dawdon, they were haymaking in the National Trust meadows with some labour-saving devices.

A hay meadow going to seed

Monday's Guardian Country Diary is an account of a wonderful hay meadow at the eastern end of Hawthorn dene, a Durham Wildlife Trust nature reserve on the Durham coast. 

Most of the Pennine hay meadows are cut at around the third week of July, which allows the farmer to take a decent hay crop but also allows key meadow wild flowers - like hay rattle - to set seed. This meadow is managed entirely for its glorious native flora and so was still uncut when we visited in late August. There were still plenty of species in flower, including knapweed, meadowsweet, field scabious, devils bit scabious and hemp agrimony, but all the plants here were also producing masses of seed. 

This view was taken looking northwards .......

.......... this one is from the coast side, looking towards the wooded dene ...

.......... and this is the view to the south. In spring this field holds thousands of cowslips, together with early purple orchids and wood cranesbill. In summer meadow and bloody cranesbill are prominent. When I walked across here I counted about fifty species without even bending down to have a close look - I suspect that there are least twice as many here. 

Although it's cut very late, it still must be cut and a hay crop taken, because there is a constant rain of seeds in autumn from the wooded dene and without the mower it would soon become ash, sycamore and hawthorn shrub - last autumn's tree seedlings were already well established. 

Field scabious flowers produce these attractive hemispheres of bristly seeds after pollination

The late flowering hemp agrimony is a great attraction for butterflies like this comma.

Devil's bit scabious, one of the most attractive late summer wild flowers in this limestone grassland, and so called because the stumpy root looks like Old Nick himself has taken a bite out of it.

Although vast quantities of seed are produced by the plants here only a small minority germinate in any single year and become mature plants, simply because there is so much competition in a dense sward with so many species. The best germination sites are mole hills like this, which provide a perfect vacant seed bed for any seed fortunate enough to land on them. Every hay meadow needs mole hills.

Green-flowered clover

These are two inflorescences from the same white clover Trifolium repens plant, growing in the cliffs near Hawthorn Dene on the Durham coast. 

On the left, the normal inflorescence.

The inflorescence on the right has been infected with a strange bacterium-like microorganism called a phytoplasma, which causes the flowers to revert to leaf-like structures - a phenomenon known as phyllody. The disease is transmitted between plants by sap-sucking insects.