Listen out for cuckoos in May. Cuckoos fly all the way here from Africa and beyond to lay their eggs in other birds’ nests. Did you know it is only the male bird that calls “cuckoo”?  A cuckoo was heard calling at Portbury Wharf early this May.

Along the hedgerows

Our resident hedgerow birds are well into nesting by May and many of our summer visitors have arrived from Africa to nest here too. These include Common Whitethroats, Lesser Whitethroats, Reed and Sedge Warblers.

By the pools and on the estuary

House and sand martins, swallows and swifts will be swooping low feeding on insects. Also keep a look out, particularly on the estuary for whimbrels. Whimbrels are a wading bird very similar to curlews with long legs and a long curved beak.

Along the rhynes

This is a great place to look for dragonflies, damselflies and butterflies.

May Spotting Card

How many of these species can you spot on your walks around the reserve?

Find more Monthly ID cards by clicking this link

IT’S DECEMBER!

December is the month of CHRISTMAS and that makes it hard to avoid references to mistletoe, robins, holly and ivy! Let’s learn more about these Christmas symbols which you might spot on a walk around the reserve at this festive time of year.

The Robin

How many Christmas cards will you receive featuring a robin somewhere in the picture? British robins are our favourite, friendly garden bird, largely because they can become so tame and, let’s face it, they are such pretty birds!

It is not hard to see robins on the reserve at this time of year. Many of them might be winter visitors from elsewhere, even from the continent. They will have come here because it’s milder here than further north or east.

Robins sing all through the winter, so listen out for their beautiful, wistful tune as you walk through the reserve. This is what it sounds like:

Robin song recorded by david m. from www.xeno-canto.org

Mistletoe

Now that most of the leaves have fallen off many of the trees on the reserve, mistletoe shows up really clearly because it keeps its green leaves all year round. You will see a lot of it around the reserve if you look out for it.

To germinate, seeds of the mistletoe do not have to pass through the gut of a bird. The seeds are surrounded by a very sticky pulp (viscin) which often stick to a bird’s beak when the berries are eaten. They are then often wiped off onto a branch when the bird cleans its beak. The viscin then hardens to fix the seed to the bark of a new host tree and sometimes these seeds germinate.

	The seed then grows a root, which burrows through the bark of the tree and into the sapwood inside. Here is a picture of this happening on a tree in my garden. The mistletoe gets water and minerals from the tree, though it also makes some of its own food by photosynthesis, which is why it has green leaves.

Holly

If the Robin is the ultimate Christmas bird, Holly must be the ultimate Christmas plant. As the carol says  “the holly wears the crown” and its dark green leaves and bright red berries have become the colours of Christmas.

Unlike many plants, holly has trees of different sexes. You won’t find berries on a male tree; their flowers only produce pollen.

Holly was valued by farmers in bygone days in many parts of the country as an important source of winter fodder. Branches would be cut off trees and, despite the prickles, cattle and sheep fed on leaves.

Ivy

We featured Ivy in a September post. It is an extremely valuable plant for wildlife and, unlike Mistletoe, it is not a parasite, but simply uses the trees that it climbs for support.

If you want to read more about this wonderful plant follow this link – Ivy post

Did you know?

IVY

• Ivy was once thought to be a way of countering the worse effects of alcohol
• “Ale-stakes”, poles covered in ivy, were once used as signs for taverns
• Ivy was traditionally seen as a “female” plant and holly as a “male” one
• Young Queen Victoria once wore a wreath of ivy intertwined with diamonds in her hair
• Traditional schoolgirl rhyme: “Ivy, Ivy, I love you; In my bosom I put you; The first young man who speaks to me; My future husband he shall be.”

MISTELTOE

• Apple, lime and poplar are mistletoe’s favourite hosts, but it can parasitize many different species
• Mistletoe growing on oak trees is unusual and very rare. This may be why the druids were supposed to particularly value mistletoe harvested from an oak tree
• Mistle thrush and blackcap are the two main dispersers of mistletoe
• Like holly, mistletoe plants are either male or female. Only female plants carry berries
• Kissing under the mistletoe may have originated from Norse mythology and probably began in the 18th century when it was first used as a festive decoration in our homes. One kiss was allowed for each berry and after each kiss a berry would be removed until there were none left.

HOLLY

• Holly wood was traditionally used to make stocks and horse whips
• Holly trees were left standing in cut hedgerows “to stop witches running along the tops of the hedges”

Why not try out our December Spotting card:

September is here!

By the meteorological calendar, the first day of autumn begins on 1 September and ends on 30 November. So  autumn is officially here. The weather may be sunny and warm at times, but nature is preparing for the hardships to come. Fruits and nuts are ripening, many animals are fattening up for migration or hibernation – some have gone already!

Birds

On the pools, the ducks will be starting to moult out of their eclipse plumage into their full breeding colours. This will make them much easier to identify. The first of the wintering species will also be starting to appear, though it will be a while before their numbers really build up.

Lookout for the first wigeon, shoveler and teal. There will be lots on the pools by December!

	Shoveler are named for their big scoop of a bill, but the males are most easily recognised by their white and chestnut sides.
	Wigeon are neat and dainty ducks; usually found in good numbers on the North Pools in mid-winter as well as out on the Saltmarsh.
	Teal are the smallest of our ducks and are also fond of the Saltmarsh. They also seem to prefer the cover and shallow water of the South Pool to the open spaces of the North Pool, so this can be the best place to see them well.

In the hedgerows our summer warblers are laying down fat reserves to fuel their long migration flights south. You can often see Whitethroats and Blackcaps feasting on elderberries or blackberries this month and look out for more unusual species moving through.

Two of the birds that will stay with us through the winter also sing throughout the winter months. The Robin has a slightly wistful, but pretty, winter tune that can often be heard on Wharf Lane. By contrast the Cetti’s Warbler has a strident and explosive, though abrupt song that erupts from the thickest scrub. Both birds can be heard now and in the months to come, though most other species have stopped singing.

Insects

Some types of butterfly will still be active and searching for nectar-rich flowers all through the autumn, provided that the weather stays mild for them. Some species of butterfly over-winter as eggs, pupae or even caterpillars, but Peacock and Red Admiral both over-winter as adult butterflies. Before they go into hibernation they must keep feeding up, so you will often see them gorging on the sweet juices of over-ripe blackberries or apples.

Dragonflies

We are approaching the end of this year’s dragonfly season and while the flying adult dragonflies will be dying off their larvae, or nymphs, are still very much alive in the ponds and rhynes. Though it is not too late to look out for Common Blue and Emerald Damselflies, Common and Ruddy Darters and Migrant Hawkers.

The two darters are not always easy to tell apart but you will often see them perched on the tip of a prominent twig or fencepost. From here they will dart out to catch flies before returning to the same perch – hence their name!

Migrant Hawkers are also often still abundant in September. In contrast to the darters, they spend a lot of their time flying backwards and forwards round a small circuit “hawking” for flies. Unlike most other dragonflies they are not territorial and can sometimes be seen in quite big groups, zig-zagging around a sheltered patch close to trees – Wharf Lane can be a good spot.

Some like this female Emperor will be depositing eggs on vegetation in the pools.

While photographing this Emperor a very scarce Lesser Emperor attacked it.  We had suspected that this rare vagrant, which has bred in the UK, was present at PWNR, but we had no photograph to confirm our suspicions. Our luck changed when we managed to capture a (not particularly good) image of a Lesser Emperor attacking the egg-laying Emperor.

Editor’s note: it looks like a rather good image to me!

In conclusion

September can be a lovely month, with lots of warm weather. So make the most of it when it’s fine and get out onto the reserve to see what our wildlife is up to. There’s plenty happening this month – just keep your eyes peeled and enjoy your walks – suitably distanced of course!

and don’t forget to try out our September spotting card:

You can pick them up from Portishead Library or on the nature reserve in the box by Wharf Lane parking or at the end of the Marina path.

PS Did you know that ink has been made from Marble Galls since 2,000 BC? The tannic acid in the gall when mixed with iron sulphate, water and gum Arabic makes a blue-black ink.