From Oxenhoath to West Peckham

It was very breezy and quite cool in the late afternoon as Monty and I got out onto the footpath on the Lower Greendsand above Hadlow that leads from the Oxenhoath East Lodge towards the Village Green at West Peckham. The weather had been a bit better earlier on and that had been used in securing optimal conditions for house painting that is progressing well, as we know that this short Indian Summer will not last much into October.

Not much chance of many insects about today, although an unknown dragonfly moved quickly past me along a slightly sheltered hedge line (possibly a late male Black-tailed Skimmer, from a very brief impression of reasonable size combined with a hint of powder blue on the body).

This walk was therefore mainly about exercising Monty and not taking photographs. The field overlooked by the East Lodge has been left to ungrazed meadow this year, and has presumably formed reasonably robust habitat for meadow brown butterflies and possibly others. Behind the lodge chimney you can see the poplar plantation above the Oxenhoath path continuing to supply a bold splash of gold in the autumn landscape.

Even the ivy in the sheltered hedgerows was a bit less exciting today, still with plenty of black Muscid flies and a few median wasps, but no hoverflies in the very poor conditions. As we walked East across the line of the hills, we moved into the intensive strawberry and raspberry area of polythene tunnels operated by several of the farmers in the area. I have little objection to "the sea of plastic" bewailed by others provided the tunnels are well-shielded, carefully managed to keep environmental impact down and heavily balanced by field crops in rotation to the intensive fruit, with lots of emphasis on tall hedges, tree shaws, streams and woodland. The tunnels usually have had their plastic covers removed for the winter dormant period:

As we got closer to West Peckham we also saw sections of newly constructed strawberry beds open to the elements, waiting for their crops to be planted for harvesting next summer. The South facing slope of light sandy soil is warmed effectively by the sun and cold frosty air drains downhill from it, so it makes excellent soft fruit land. Unfortunately this prominent position also means that it is prominently visible from a distance, thus making any visual intrusion of the tunnels and the plastic-mulched beds much more difficult to shield from long distance views, and giving rise to some local concern about the visual blight created,

Down to East Lock

Walked South this afternoon, after painting bits of the house exterior and part of the garden shed, across the River Medway floodplain to the Whetsted Gravel Pits, crossing the river at East Lock.

As we descended the slope dropping down the river terraces from Golden Green on the path towards the lock, I checked the strip of permanent grass at the bottom of the first field, and it was pretty well covered with cats ear, Hypochaeris radicata, supported by a few plants of dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, hogweed, Heracleum sphondyllium, ragwort, Senecio jacobaea and the occasional hawkbit. Overall it made a pretty picture, but there were relatively few insects, just one or two honey bees on the whole area.

It may well be reaching the end of the season, and we had a lot of rain earlier in September, but the weather has been rather dry for quite a few days now. The oil seed rape seedlings in the second field on the path towards the lock are making very little progress and are now showing at least temporary wilting

Once we reached the lock I had a look around the sheltered plants along the bank-side, but again there was very little about.

In the ditches the only thing still in flower appeared to be the common toadflax, Linaria vulgaris,

The little garden next to the lock cared for in memory of a teenage boy drowned years ago in the river just by here was however blooming

Once we had crossed the river I let Monty free in the meadow pasture which had recently been cleared of sheep (we found them later on a field further to the East on the route back)

Again there wasn't much to be seen on the pasture (I thought back to the early summer before the hay was cut, when the grasses were in flower and the meadow browns were fluttering about) but a fairy ring about 4 m across had appeared in compensation!

Its nice to see the fields cultivated ready for next year's crop, and this is the very heavy clay field just before the gravel pits are reached, with no crop showing yet however.

The ditches around the gravel pits have been cleared, and the excess vegetation removed, allowing more light deep into their channels.

On the way to the gravel pits I saw three hobbies, Falco subbuteo, screeching at each other while dogfighting behind the lines of woods and hedges. Fantastic acrobatic little hawks, it won't be long before they are off to Africa! I have only seen a hobby once before, hunting birds on the college farm, so this was a really exciting sight!

Having reached the gravel pits themselves I didn't really see a great deal except the normal waterfowl and gulls, the standard collection of black-headed, herring and lesser black-backed gulls.

On the causeway across the second pit, there was a quite unusual sight for this area, pretty nearly unique to my knowledge, a sheet of lichen "leaves" with large fruiting golf-tee shaped "podetia". This was almost certainly a species of Cladonia, and I think it was either C. fimbriata or C. humilis. The patch was probably about a metre across and may owe its existence here to the possibly low fertility in this made-up ground - a really interesting find!

and then it was time to head back, past the boats anchored by the riverside for the weekend, their owners enjoying their picnics in the fine evening weather,

until we could see North towards the hills overlooking Hadlow, and the promise of a cup of tea when we get home!

To Hazel Wood with an old acquaintance

On a lovely afternoon I parked up at The Swan at West Peckham, ready to walk downhill towards Hazel Wood. My secondary interest was going to be the footpaths sheltered by high hedges on both sides which in the past have proved to be sun-traps for insects. In the pub car-park I recognised a chap walking past whom I knew from his previous involvement in running Platt Junior Cricket Club when Simon had started there nearly a decade ago. So Monty and I joined forces with Peter and his Patterdale Terrier "Pickle", and I only took a few photos all day. The dogs got a good deal of exercise though!

The sun-trap effect worked very well and the ivy flowers in particular attracted hosts of insects, Diptera, Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera (a very nice Red Admiral, Vanessa atalanta). Amongst these were median wasps and the marmalade hoverfly, Episyrphus balteatus.


The only photos I took however were of a nicely coloured female hoverfly, Myathropa florea, which is fairly easily recognised by the whitish cross-bars across the dark dorsal surface of the thorax. Its so nice to have at least one hoverfly that one can be reasonably certain of when first spotted with the naked eye!

As usual Hazel Wood itself was very still and with little sign of animal life. Its an interesting wood botanically, with a lot of old hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) coppice under oak (Quercus robur), a good traditionally managed mix for high value wood products before the introduction of mass Sweet Chestnut (Castanea sativa) coppice by the Victorians.

I did take one more photo later on, of a common darter dragonfly, Sympetrum stratiolatum, that was resting up in the sun on the sheltered lee of Hazel Wood.

We and the dogs explored the area thoroughly, the pathways, the wood, the hedgerows, the fields of field lettuce, the irrigation reservoirs - for lettuce over by Vines Farm and for Strawberries up by West Peckham (a grey heron, Ardea cinerea, settled on the West Peckham one) and agreed to try a joint walk again, to see how the dogs get on together. Its very good for Monty to socialise with other dogs on an extended timescale, so we'll see how it all goes!

The road to Cougie

Off to the south higher up the valley in the direction of the pony trekking centre at Cougie at the end of the forest track, the scenery just gets fantastic

the hills are relatively well planted and wooded but there is no chance of successful forestry higher up, so there is a definite tree line.

and where there is no forestry planting the pine and birch of the ancient Caledonian Forest thinly cover the lower slopes.

this is the view back down the valley towards Tomich, hidden in the valley of Strath Glass,

The Scots pine, Pinus sylvestris, can generally be told apart from all other pines because of the orange tinge to the upper branches, and this is a fantastic old specimen, characteristic of the native Scottish population rather than imported plantings,

there is quite a lot of other variety amongst the trees and shrubs including this shrubby willow

there are also quite a few herbaceous flowering plants along the roadside such as devils-bit scabious and cats-ear

this is a close-up of the devils-bit, Succisa pratensis, a member of the Teasel family. It gets its name because its roots stop suddenly, as if the devil had bitten them off!

and this is the cats ear, Hypochaeris radicata, with an unknown pollinating fly

while this is Yarrow, Achillea millefolium,

and the bell heather, Erica cinerea

and of course there are some amazing lower plants including these rushes, Juncus

this Polytrichum moss with ripe sporing capsules,

and the Sphagnum that creates so much of the peat that blankets the uplands

There were relatively few insects about, but I did find this bumble bee working the devils-bit. It is a worker of the Bombus lucorum/terrestris complex. As B. lucorum is commoner in Scotland, and B. terrestris is a little less common up North, I would tend to put this as B. lucorum if I had to make a choice. This would be backed up by the clear, not muddy, yellow of the yellow stripes on the thorax and abdomen, and the obviously short face and relatively short tongue. However it would be dangerous to be too dogmatic, so it had better stay as undecided B. terrestris/lucorum.

Quick nocturnal walkabout

As I took Monty out last thing it seemed nearly pitch black beyond the Victorian street lights of the village.
I had taken the torch with me and I shone it on the moss and lichen-covered aspen and beech tree trunks by the side of the road. It was fairly easy to find woodlice, slugs, spiders and small black millipedes, the last possibly being Tachypodoiulus niger - unless the environment is too lacking in lime for it to found here!

It was amazing how much was actively crawling about! The trunks themselves were like tiny tropical forests, very dramatically coloured and textured. The same was true of Pam and Ken's garden walls, including a very active centipede rushing over the garden wall in search of prey. Even the relatively bare garage wall had the same millipedes and spiders easily visible. Again, there were many things at head height or above, all picked out very easily by the beam of the torch.

Unfortunately it wasn't easy to photograph things effectively in the dark, so little to be made of all this rushing about for the blog.

On Saturday I was thrashing back (commonly known as pruning) Pam's shrubs, and doing trips to B and Q, so missed the early afternoon sunshine. I didn't take the camera with me when I finally went out, as it was pouring with rain by now, so I'm afraid it's a very short text-only blog today!

Up the valley from Tomich

On Thursday after hunting around the garden at Tomich, as in the previous post, I walked Monty for a couple of hours along the roadways and tracks further up the valley, and concentrated on the tree foliage.
Most of the trees are birch, alder, sycamore, oak, spruce and beech, the last obviously having been planted in the great days of Guisachan House, the famous country house that dominated the whole life of the valley.
Trying the farm track, the wildlife hedge planting had been supplemented by the Sycamore cultivar, Acer pseudoplatanus ‘ ‘, with the undersides of its leaves strongly flushed purple.

Sycamore is the only Acer that gets significantly attacked by the tar spot fungus Rytidissima with the narrow yellow edge around the black fungal infection spots. This can be very helpful in identifying the tree!

Sycamore also gets other fungal diseases such as this powdery mildew on the young leaves of this sucker. I don’t know what sort of fly this is!

If there isn’t any tar-spot for identification then it’s down to the shape of the leaves, and the angle of the “keys” definitely nearer 45o than 180o from each other.

Not all the trees here are much infected with tar spot. This particular tree was a favourite haunt of a large number and wide range of flies moving over the upper-side of the leaves, and I think they must have been hovering up either the sugary honeydew or perhaps the more protein-rich pollen that gets stuck in the honeydew. This is said to be quite a common habit for hoverflies and others. Sycamore is thought to harbor a higher population of aphids than most trees, and the aphids and other sucking insects are the source of the honeydew, so this, together with a sheltered and sunny position, may be why there were so many flies on this particular tree.

The most common hoverfly was Episyrphus balteatus,

but also seen was this Syrphus (I think) species, most likely to be Syrphus vitripennis from its partly dark hind femur – the commonest species is Syrphus ribesii, but the hind femur in this is completely yellow. It should be a Syrphus species, because the yellow moustache bands reach the edges of the tergite plates (the plates on the dorsum of the abdomen), and then sweep forward rather than back, and either there are no black bands on the sternites, or they don't extend across the full width, the sternites being the plates on the underside of the abdomen. However there are also a number of other very similar genera, and they are all very confusingly alike.

There was also this rather odd looking fly, possibly a Tachinid. Oddly enough at one point it had raised its front legs off the leaf surface. In the same picture you can also see one of the many smaller black flies running over the surface of the leaves,

Beech has also been planted along the trackside and I was intrigued to notice that as the leaves were beginning to turn on most trees, this sapling was still holding on to its dead leaves from last winter! Is this a record I wonder?

I heard a pair of buzzards, Buteo buteo, overhead, and managed to catch one “in full cry”.

A little further on, there was another possible Platycheirus, this time on a buttercup flower.

The tiny bell-shaped flowers of common heather or ling, Calluna vulgaris.

A beautiful leaf of the Norway Maple Acer platanoides ‘Crimson King’, a striking tree in the overall view.

Purple beech often seems a muddy coloured leaf close up

But can again be spectacular when seen at a distance in contrast to lighter green trees

Here are some odd discoloured patches found just on a few beech leaves and not seen elsewhere

And then my eureka moment. I have often thought beech leaves to be very subject to tip (terminal) scorch, but as I’ve been examining the leaves closely of late looking for galls and mines, I also had a closer look at the scorch today – and WOW! Everytime I saw a scorched tip, leading into it was a thin channel, always starting from just beside the midrib, often torn completely through the leaf, so the scorch must in fact be a blotch mine!

If so, then this is Orchestes fagi, the very unusual beetle larva that mines its way through leaves, in this case beech leaves and only beech leaves. So I’ve finally tracked this down, and in really significant numbers, older trees in particular seeming to be highly attacked. (Later note - having checked the NBN Gateway, a chap called Murdo McDonald recorded these mines exactly here, and also at Plodda and Abriachan inter alia, in 2010!) All the larvae have apparently long since pupated and exited the leaf of course. I wonder what the adult beetle eats – is there any significance to the round holes often but not invariably found in the attacked leaves?? I suspect this to be adult beetle damage.

And here at last is the Eriophyid mite that causes the felting lines above the veins, last seen on one leaf only at Bitchett Hill. Again although I looked a fair bit I only saw this on two patches of leaves, one a single line on a single leaf, the other patch two or three lines each on three close together leaves. Why is it in apparently such low numbers? Is it having a very bad time? How does it survive year to year when the leaves fall? Am I seeing very few survivors after two successive very hard winters? And are they confined to older trees? A definite mystery!

I also found just one mine that I initially thought might be a Stigmella – by one of the trees near the river as the road enters the village. However it could also be an aberrant mine from Orchestes fagi, and actually I think this is much more likely, and that's how I've logged it. Interestingly again the leaf has the round holes I am guessing is adult damage.

Here is one of the three apparently oldest trees, all with their heartwood under attack by fungal rots.

What a fantastic day!