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.

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..... 

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....

Hunter in the Heart of the City

Yesterday lunchtime, when we were walking through Newcastle beside the Ouseburn, there was a sudden commotion in the trees and a crow hurtled into view, chased by this ferocious sparrowhawk. The chase lasted for about twenty seconds and at one point the pursuer managed to stretch out a talon and almost grip the crow, but it escaped and the sparrowhawk landed in the tree nearby. It's hard to see what prompted this display of aggression because there was plenty of easier prey around - there's no shortage of urban pigeons to keep this raptor well fed. 


The lower stretches of the Ouseburn, once notorious for industrial pollution and dereliction, are rapidly being cleaned up and turned into a fashionable location in the city. The old derelict Maynard's toffee works has now become a desirable suite of hi-tech offices (check out this series of pictures that shows the remarkable transformation), there's a smart riverside footpath, good pubs, live music, an urban farm, artist's studios - and constantly evolving urban wildlife habitat. In the leafier parts of the lower valley, this sparrowhawk is currently the top predator and the terror of the neigourhood.

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.

Islands in the Stream

Now, I have to concede that this site of industrial dereliction might not look like a good place to spend a morning communing with nature, but it has its charms. This is the Ouseburn, a tributory of the Tyne that flows into the river about a kilometer downstream from the Tyne Bridge in Newcastle. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this was the location of some of the most polluting industries imaginable: lead smelting works, potteries, iron foundries, flax spinning mills, holding pens for imported cattle, surrounded by slum housing and all discharging effluent into the tidal Ouseburn. Part of the Ouseburn Valley was filled in with noxious industrial waste and the tip sometimes spontaneously combusted during hot summers. Slum clearance and industrial decline left it as a site of dereliction until serious regeneration of the lower Ouseburn valley began in the late twentieth century. Old warehouses have become artists' studios, the Cluny pub is now one of Newcastle's best small music venues, there's a city farm, a riding school, music rehersal studios and the National Centre for Children's Books is nearby. The building on the right in the picture above is the posh Hotel du Vin (rooms start at £160 per night), formerly the Tyne Tees Steam Shipping Company headquarters.The derelict building with the chimney is an old Maynard's toffee works, now scheduled for redevelopment as a business centre for high-tech design studios. Nature, of course, has been creeping back here ever since the old industries closed. 

The latest development is a lock at the junction with the Tyne, which has converted the Ouseburn from a linear muddy puddle at low tide into a permanently filled canal ... with a small marina for pleasure boats (mostly converted ship's lifeboats). Just around the bend in the river in the picture above are all the new developments mentioned above.

There are some surprising wild flowers here. This is ramping fumitory, a sparsely distributed species in Northumberland that's usually associated with hedgebanks around arable fields in rural areas.

How come it's here, in the heart of the city? It probably arrived in hay for horses and has clung on - literally, it grows in cracks in walls - ever since.

Brambles (some ripening already) would have been early arrivals, in bird droppings. This is probably one of the best sites for brambling in the Toon, within a  mile of Newcastle city centre.

When nature comes back, people want to come back too. What I find fascinating about the Ouseburn is that, whenever I visit, nature has reconquered a little bit more of what was once an industrial hell-hole.... often with some inspired help from imaginative people. When the lock was built it created a canal with bare concrete walls, so to introduce wild flowers along the water's edge floating islands like this one were constructed, filled with waterside wild flowers and anchored to the wall.

Here's another one, under a mass of flowering brambles dangling over the wall. Purple loosestrife and winter mint are currently blooming in profusion on these islands......

... and the purple loosestrift was at its best this morning. Without these man-made islands there would be nowhere for it to take root.

At a time when almost all wildlife news in the media seems to be bad news, it's uplifting to visit a place like this where a century and a half of destruction is being rapidly reversed. This shoal of fish, cruising the surface waters of the revived Ouseburn this morning, seemed to be enjoying the revival and thriving .........  anybody know what species they are?(double-click for a larger image)

Recovery

There are two reasons for posting this picture of the familiar orange tip butterfly. The first is that thirty years ago, when I first moved to the North East, this was an uncommon butterfly here. Seeing one was something worth getting excited about; now they are very common and even breed on lady’s smock, dame’s violet and Jack-by-the-hedge in my garden. The second is that this photograph, taken today of the first orange tip I’ve seen this year, newly emerged and pristine, was taken in urban Newcastle, on a grass verge beside the lower reaches of the Ouseburn, just before it reaches the Tyne. The lower Ouseburn was once one of the most polluted stretches of river in Britain and until the mid-20th. century was flanked by a devil’s cauldron of industries that dumped waste into its waters. Now it’s well on the road to recovery. I regularly see kingfishers there. So the orange tip shown here symbolises a wildlife good news story – the expansion of a butterfly’s range and habitat recovery. To read more about the Ouseburn’s history, visit http://www.ouseburntrust.org.uk/