Kittiwake cacophony

The Tyne Bridge in Newcastle, and the buildings around it, are famous for hosting the largest inland breeding colony of kittiwakes in the world, offering unrivalled opportunities to watch the behaviour of these birds. The noise can be deafening. These two were exchanging greetings today. 

Click here for more about the Tyne Bridge kittiwake colony - and watch a film about these wonderful birds by Cain Scrimgeour

The beauty of the Commonplace

Last week I noticed this Goat'sbeard Tragopogon pratensis flowering amongst the litter beside a pavement in Shieldfield, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and brought one of the buds home, to watch it open in a vase. The alternative name for this plant is Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon because it's supposed to open in the morning and close around mid-day, but this one seemed to be a nonconformist that might more accurately be called Jack-go-to-bed-at 3pm.

Although it does produce the finest of all the 'dandelion clock' type seed heads the flower isn't one that I've ever really looked at closely - and when you do scrutinise it the bloom is rather beautiful. The petals on this plant seem to be more deeply incised that in all the wild flower guide illustrations that I've consulted, giving it a rather shaggy appearance.

The Itinerant Flora of a City

Every year the cityscape of Newcastle changes, as old buildings are demolished and the legacy of polluting industries from the past is cleared away. This site is in the Lower Ouseburn valley, once the location of a devil's caudron of industrial pollution but soon to become the site of 76 energy efficient 'green' homes. 

The patch of land in this picture has been derelict for several years - just a pile of broken bricks and earth bulldozed and then left, so that temporary colonisers took over.

Two years after the land was bulldozed, in the summer of 2011, it hosted the finest display of dyers rocket aka weld Reseda luteola that I've ever seen.

The site was so densely covered with this bee-friendly biennial that I wondered whether it might be the legacy of these plants being used in dye production in the 19th. century; in his New Naturalist book Weeds and Aliens Sir Edward Salisbury suggests that the plant's abundance and distribution often suggests that large populations are relicts of the plants' former cultivation. They have a vast seed output (Salisbury quotes up to 76,000 seeds per plant) and it's possible that the seed could have remained dormant for many decades.

There was also a good display of corn poppies amongst this temporary urban field of wild flowers. Their seeds germinate in even the smallest area of waste ground in Newcastle when they are brought to the surface by soil disturbance and exposed to light and moisture. 

Now that the site has been levelled and the rubble taken away, these plants will be on the move again - carried as seeds in rock, bricks and soil that have been taken away and probably used at another site in another part of Newcastle - part of the itinerant flora of the city.

Summer in the City: Where the Wild Things Are....

Botanically, there are two sides to a city. There's the carefully manicured, redeveloped part that has been purged of any plants that are out of place - and that doesn't get much more sterile than the one above, which is Northumbria University's campus. The only living greenery in this canyon of glass, stainless steel and concrete is the row of lollipop hornbeam trees on the right, with their foliage clipped into a neat cube. The green circles are astroturf (although I did notice that a plucky real fern was just beginning to grow around the edge of one - it won't last long).

For the other botanical face of a city, you need to venture just a few streets away from the centre, where the wild things are.

There you'll find the Buddleia davidii in full flower in late July, adding beauty to old walls.

The flower heads are magnificent this year, perhaps because the shortage of water that usually kicks in in late spring in cities just didn't materialise. All that rain kept the wild flowers growing and flowering ....

 ......but there are no butterflies to enjoy the Buddleia flowers yet.

This is lady's bedstraw, blooming alongside ripening brambles in one  of the less manicured parts of Newcastle. Who knows how this plant, that's usually associated with dry haymeadows, came to be here. Brought in with fodder with horses maybe, before the age of the automobile, and hanging on ever since? Maybe a relict of the distant days when all this was open fields? We'll never know, but it's a welcome reminder of the countryside in the heart of a city.

Pure white trumpets of bindweed clambering through an old, broken down fence. Its brittle underground rhizomes are moved from place to place when soil and rubble is shifted.

Drifts of hawkweed, rose bay willowherb and wild parsnip in an old flower bed that's no longer maintained - maybe one of the less unpleasant consequences of public spending cuts?

Scentless mayweed, a cornfield weed, growing alongside a security fence around a construction site.

Drifts of melilot, growing on a rubble-strewn ex-industrial site. The plant has a powerful aroma of new-mown hay and you can smell it from some distance on a warm day.

A double-flowered opium poppy, a refugee from a long-vanished garden, growing on rubble.

By next year this bank of rubble will be bulldozed away, when this site is redeveloped, but for now it's home to corn poppies, oriental poppies and dyer's rocket .... and a host of other wild plants.

A lot of wild oats are sown in the centre of Newcastle on Friday nights, these were thriving in a neglected flower bed.

Rose bay willow herb on the edge of the Shieldfield industrial estate, five minutes walk from the university campus in the picture at the top of this post.

Ragwort amongst the broken bricks.

Tansy, which has a powerful aroma when it's crushed......

....... with tall stems threaded through a wire fence.

Yellow toadflax growing between a link fence and the pavement.

Wild parsnip puts down roots wherever derelict land provides a temporary opportunity ....

.... to display its tall flower stems .....

... that brighten up even the most brutal urban architecture.

Wildlife Viewed Through Beer Goggles: 3. Urban Birding

After sampling tipple number 4 in this investigation of wildlife-themed beers - Allendale Brewery's Wagtail Ale - I've been keeping a lookout for the bird in question, to justify this tenuous excuse for indulging in alcoholic refreshment. Before I got any further though - and to ensure that I don't get hauled before the Leveson Inquiry for corrupt practices in journalism - I should emphasise that although most of the beers here have come from the same brewery - and there are a few more from the same source still to come - I have no affiliations with the Allendale Brewery whatsoever - its products just happen to be conspicuously available in some of my favourite local outlets. I have some wildlife-themed products from other brewers lined up in the fridge and their turn will come in due course..... and if you are a brewery company that would like your products featured here, just stick a label on it featuring a plant, animal or fungus and I'll add it to my workload. Deathcap bitter? Wild Pansy lager? Great Crested Newt ale? Bring it on......

Anyway, my quest for wagtails led me to this unlikely spot - the Ouseburn in Newcastle, which runs through Jesmond Dene, then under the city to appear again near Byker bridge, where it flows down to the Tyne about a mile downstream of the Tyne Bridge. The lower Ouseburn, once the recipient of some of the worst effluents that the industrial Revolution could invent, is rapidly being redeveloped, and this much-abused waterway is now relatively clean and becoming the focus of all sorts of artistic and high-tech enterprises. It's also a good spot for urban birding, especially along this stretch that the developers haven't had much impact on yet. These are moorings for small pleasure boats, many of which are converted ships' lifeboats. Ironically, the wreck you can see bottom right in this picture is called the Toontanic (yes, really) and - predictably - sank a few years ago (no one hurt) but has been raised and dragged back to the quay.

The stony riverbed looks a bit unsavoury but I often see kingfishers fishing in the pools here at low tide, and redshanks, along with the resident mallards that have already produced their first brood this year. It's also a favourite haunt of grey wagtails ..... 

... like this one catching flies on the wall of the quay .....

..... and this one exploring the stream bed. That vivid orange colouring on the rocks looks a bit alarming but it's probably not as toxic as it looks - it's most likely due to iron metabolising bacteria that thrive in iron-rich water.

You can pretty much guarantee to find grey wagtails here at almost any time of the year .... and the pub called the The Cluny next to the Ouseburn City Farm sometimes has wagtail bitter on tap. Some things are just meant to be..... 

Irrepressible Little Weed

This little annual weed, whitlow grass Erophila verna, is flowering in the cracks between the paving on the edge of the River Tyne, all the way from the Tyne bridge to the mouth of the Ouseburn. Whitlow grass is a winter annual whose seeds germinate in autumn, so that it spends the winter as a tiny green rosette then produces flowers in late winter - sometimes as early as January. By the time spring arrives in earnest its life cycle is over for another year.

Whitlow grass (which is a member of the cabbage family and not a grass at all) is an extremely widespread plant, adapted to  habitats that become drought-stricken in summer (like wall tops and sand dunes) by setting seed before water shortage sets in. It's well adapted to city living ....

...... but I think the most unusual habitat that it thrives in is on the top of meadow ants' nests, where a dense covering of its tiny white flowers can look like a cap of snow in late winter. These raised domes of fine soil become very dry by early summer and when the nest is active the vegetation is constantly buried in soil particles bought to the surface by ants - but by then whitlow grass has finished its life cycle and all that remains is its prolific seed output.

Early Brood

Seen on the Ouseburn just downstream from Byker Bridge in Newcastle this lunchtime. Mother mallard must have started nesting at the end of January!

When you're this young the world is an adventure playground....

Here be Dragons....

Stopping people from blocking your access in the city can be a challenge - here's an interesting, artistic variation on the simple 'No Parking' notice, in an entrance at Stepney Bank in Newcastle.

Urban Farm

If you're visiting Newcastle and cross the Ouseburn (a tributory ot the River Tyne) using this little humpback bridge and then walk under Byker Bridge, you reach ....

.. Ouseburn Farm, which is the subject of today's Guardian Country Diary.

Behind these beautifully designed steel entrance gates lies...

.. a neat little greenhouse made from discarded plastic drinks bottles, a polythene tunnel, raised beds for vegetable growing and on the left here, a fine environmental education centre.

This is a view of the farm from across the Ouseburn, which is in the foreground. These days the water level in the Ouseburn is controlled by a lock gate at its confluence with the Tyne but on the day that this photo was taken the lock was open to let snow meltwater flow into the river at low tide. There are some more photos of the Ouseburn and its wildlife here. The buildings in the background are (on the left) Victorian warehouses that now house artists' studios and Seven Stories (the National Centre for Children's Books) and (on the right) The Cluny, an excellent pub and one of the most popular live music venues in Newcastle. From the mid 19th. century until the mid 1960s this was one of the most heavily industrialised parts of the city. The farm sits on the location of an old white lead works and a flax mill that, along with other industries, discharged into the Ouseburn. After decades of clean-up operations, it now hosts the occasional kingfisher and, on the day that this photo was taken, redshanks that had ventured inland from the coast. 

 

The environmental education centre is a favourite destination for school parties and caters in particular for those with learning difficulties and disabilities. The farm has a flock of sheep (that were away being tupped when we visited) and visiting animals like these alpaca.

Next to the pig pens are these two stone mountings for the beam engine that once powered the flax mill, where linen sails were woven for sailing ships on the Tyne, the remained standing on the lead works site. 

The visiting alpaca are a long way from their Andean peaks in Peru but seem at home under Byker Bridge and approach visitors with cautious curiosity....

... sporting fetching haircuts.....

... and very thick fur that's perfect insulation for the kind of bitterly cold weather we've been having lately.

All the farm animals, including chickens...

... goats...

... and these ginger Tamworth pigs are accustomed to frequent visitors and the farm has created an educational resource and agricultural oasis in what was once a site of intensive industry. While we watched a sparrowhawk came hunting over the farm and just a few yards further along the Ouseburn, in an overhanging bush weighed down by the snow, we found..

... the remains of this goldfinch nest, exquisitely woven from sheep wool that can only have come from the Ouseburn Farm flock..... another landmark in the environmental regeneration of the Ousburn.