B...is for....

It was a chance phone call yesterday that saw me down at the RSPB's Greylake Reserve in Somerset this morning. That call from my friend and erstwhile colleague Brett Westwood involved a well overdue and quite long gossipy catch up, which ended with a discussion over the Baikal teal which has been at Greylake all winter. This bird should be in East Asia but somehow made its way to Britain possibly two years ago, given a handful of sightings across a number of areas in southern Britain, of what is thought to be the same individual. This bird has now been accepted as a bone fide British record by the BOC and as such is now added to the official list of British birds.  Brett mentioned he's keen to see this vagrant from the Far East, however living in the Midlands it's a long drive down, and it wasn't visible when he led a birding walk to Greylake recently. I said I'd have a look over the weekend and report back to him.

I woke up to heavy rain on Saturday morning despite the forecast promising sunshine. Should I go, or stay indoors and sulk? In the end I went. It's about twenty miles to Greylake and I arrived around 11am just as the sun began to break through. My heart sank however as the car park was packed, I managed to squeeze into the last space with a feeling of dread. Images of camouflaged middle-aged men with huge lenses fixed to cameras, tripods be-topped with telescopes and the general chaos of twitchers came to mind.  However I was here, there was nothing for it, I headed towards the hide and viewing screen.

My fears were borne out. I couldn't get anywhere near the viewing screen for what looked like a traffic jam of green shopping trollies loaded with paraphernalia. I tried to get near but a dozen birdwatchers were well dug-in and definitely not moving any time soon. Massive scopes pointed outward through the gaps, cameras too, various bits of equipment littered the floor, flasks and sandwiches in evidence, and, the owners glued to their phones oblivious of what was happening on the reserve.

Failing to push my way to a viewing place, I turned tail and headed to the nearby hide itself. That was a little better, still burgeoning with birdwatchers but I managed to find a suitable corner to peer out of. I looked around, not one birdwatcher was actually watching birds, they were all either in huddles around a scope chatting (and moaning there was nothing to see) or on their phones looking for something, from which the constant pinging would suggest they had found. Do birdwatchers not watch birds through binoculars these days?

I don't mind any of this at all but they do tend to stay in one place for hours hoping for that elusive photograph, in doing so preventing the casual visitor access to their inner sanctum. I'm big enough and ugly enough to barge in but it is intimidating I feel for those less robust.

I settled down. Beautiful views of snipe just outside the hide, Greylake is a good reserve for these lovely waders. Beyond the snipe hundreds of teal, wigeon and mallard, some shoveler, a lot more snipe and a handful of other birds such as moorhen and gadwall. A good number of lapwing too with their lovely call regularly piercing the landscape. Beyond the main scrape great white egret, little egret and grey heron plus the usual smattering of corvids perched on fence posts. It's been a while since I've visited Greylake and the one thing a birdwatcher must do here is scan the pylons which march across the wetland. No perched peregrine this time but a lovely kestrel right on the top in the sun.

It was at this point that a conversation struck up between my nemesis birdwatchers over how few birds there are to see from these hides these days? One bemoaned that "[at Greylake] it's the same birds I see every time I come, it's the same at Catcott, it's just wigeon, more bl##dy wigeon everywhere". I refrained from adding to their discussion and so having had enough of all this I got up and left the hide to escape the conversation bemoaning common species. 

As I exited the hide however a 'chip chip' sound caught my ears. Bearded tit, or moustached reedling as the phenomenal birdwatcher and photographer Carl Bovis referred to them a few years back. Given the males sport a moustache rather than a beard, I like that name, better than bearded reedling. Now, I've learnt a technique when watching these beautiful birds, as they are ventriloquists. That call never seems to come from anywhere near the bird and so what you do is watch for a reed stem in the surrounding area to begin wobbling and then look down to about a foot or so above the water. There, if luck is with you, you'll find the bird, as it creeps along in a direct line foraging from reed to reed. I followed this one for a good ten minutes but it never gave me a good enough view for a photograph. Interestingly not one birdwatcher passing me, as they exited or entered the hide,  asked what I was doing peering intently into the reedbed. Eventually the bearded tit flew off, in doing so startling a Cettis warbler into its exploding song.

While watching this activity my ears picked up that the air was being filled with what I can only describe as 'snap, crackle and pop' to use a well known rice based cereal slogan. It took me a while to tune in before I realised it was individual reed stems either drying out in the sun or expanding in the sun and as they did they popped. I've not heard this before but as a sound recordist it fascinated me. I should imagine however if I turned up with a microphone to capture it, all would be silent.

After this immersion into that reedbed soundscape I fancied a walk, therefore retracing my steps I joined the waymarked reedbed-walk where once again I heard the 'chip chip' of bearded tit, this time however they were invisible. In this part of the reserve people too were invisible, just one chap out looking for grey heron. 

The twenty minute walk terminated in a willow screen which offered some cover from the few birds visible out here, great white egret, four greylag geese, mute swan and a marsh harrier. At my feet however a pond skater caught my eye. The sun was warming the water in a ditch by the viewing screen where I then noticed a swarm of winter crane-fly scudding over the water surface. There are around ten species of Trichoceridae flying in the winter in the UK, they're poorly recorded so there may be many more species yet to be discovered in the landscape. Some observers call them simply winter gnats, I'm amongst that body of observers, lacking the knowledge to identify down to species level. It then struck me that despite the aforementioned conversation possibly still going on at length in the hide, Greylake was providing a number of interesting things to see. 

Many years ago when the social media platform Twitter was gaining popularity I organised a 'Tweet-Up' of like minded natural history buffs. We spent a day on the Somerset Levels, including coming to Greylake where a superb entomologist Richard grubbed around in the undergrowth and in doing so discovered a number of species not known on the site at that time, including a freshwater snail which if my memory serves me well, was new to Somerset. These were good events to be part of, and those species we recorded were submitted to the relevant biological records office. Citizen science in action. It's sad these events fell by the wayside after a few years,  not least as today I'd have enjoyed having someone as phenomenally knowledgeable as Richard alongside me to put a species name to my 'winter gnats'.

I'd been here now for three hours and whilst enjoying being out in the fresh air and sunshine, it was time to call it a day. However on my way back to the car park once again I heard the 'chip chip' of a moustached reedling. This time I took some time following the wobbling reeds as they shimmered along a ditch, and after a dozen or so images of empty reed stems and nothing else, I was finally rewarded with a photograph of the male reedling as it appeared, all too briefly, into the open. This was the icing on the cake for me watching this bird, a species now becoming established in Somerset albeit still with small localised populations.

I had one final B to add to my list of B's I'd collected today, Balkai teal (reason for visit, absent), Birdwatchers (many), Bearded tit (lovely) and finally Beetle. This green ground beetle was crawling across my rucksack as I packed it up. I tried to key it out as a Harpalus affinis, the right size and shape, but this species is one of dry sites, a wetland seems a little too moist a habitat for it.  Then I thought maybe Carabus spp. but they are much larger. Once again my lack of knowledge is letting me down with beetle identification. 

There's so much to learn, or in my case, forget, but I'll not forget this wonderful visit to Greylake. As for the Baikal teal, well it was on the reserve today, though not somewhere the public had access to.

James Allen; Snowdrop King

As days go, a thick fog across the Mendip Hills, dark clouds without energy blanketing the sky, and a half light creating a scene of dullness across the countryside, is not on everyone's list as perfect conditions to venture outdoors on a late winter exploration. But venture out I did to visit the Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival, and even in such desolate conditions as this that visit uplifted the spirits. This Festival, which I believe is now in its seventh year (it began eight years ago but I understand it didn't run during the Pandemic) has amongst its objectives to promote both James Allen and the town of Shepton Mallet to a wider audience. In a small way then it has achieved this goal as after a 45 minute drive from home, myself and Mrs Wessex Reiver found ourselves in this mid-Somerset town looking for snowdrops. For over thirty years I've driven through or around Shepton Mallet, this visit would be the first time I'd actually stopped and looked about the town on foot.

As strangers to the town we had no idea where anything was, however spying the church tower of St Peter and St Paul's, thrusting itself into the gloom, that seemed a good a place as any to begin. Walking along a cobbled alleyway I asked a lady "How far is the school?" I particularly wanted to find the school as within its four walls, according to the events listed on the Festival website, were plant stalls selling snowdrops. This lady was very helpful, and as we discovered later in our visit, we were actually speaking to Amanda Hirst, the Festival Director, who couldn't have been more helpful. 

In many ways the Festival could be called the James Allen Festival, yet most of the population will not know of this exceptional plantsman. Born in 1830 to a wealthy mercantile family in the town, Allen would go on to be dubbed the Snowdrop King for his drive and enthusiasm for the humble snowdrop. By the mid 1870's and 1880's Allen had built up an enviable reputation amongst fellow Galanthophiles through the sourcing of new varieties, bulb swaps, breeding and the sharing of knowledge taking place both here in Britain but also across Europe, with Allen as something of a hub from which this activity revolved. He wrote many articles, initially under the journalistic pen name of 'Hesperus', only finally writing under his own name in 1885. Allen's collection was believed to number hundreds of varieties yet today only two remain that are purported to be directly attributed to his collection, Galanthus 'Magnet' and G. 'Merlin'. It was an outbreak in 1889 of grey snowdrop mould, Botrytis galanthina which over the following years wiped out virtually all of his collection. One can only imagine how distraught he must have felt in losing his life's work.

We received a very warm welcome from the volunteers within the church, it was physically warm too which was welcome on such a damp dark day. Ahead of us at the end of the nave was a most eye catching display of 'common' snowdrops against the matt-black pyramid of wooden crates. I've seen similar displays of auriculas, sometimes succulents many times, but I think this is the first time, for me at least, seeing a stunning indoor display of snowdrops. Elsewhere there were snowdrop based poems by local children, a storyteller, leaflets to browse through and craft stalls selling snowdrop-themed artworks. 

Many snowdrop events take place outdoors, either walking through snowdrop filled landscapes or as we experienced recently at specialist gardens such as East Lambrook Manor. Shepton Mallet's is mostly an indoor Festival which, having begun in 2017 as a much shorter event, is growing year by year so that this year it runs across a full week. There were a couple of walks around the town during the week but it is not an event to come and see drifts of snowdrops, well not yet, as I've read the Festival volunteers have now planted over 500,000 bulbs around the town. That will be a stunning sight in years to come. I can't remember where I'd first heard of this Festival, a couple of years ago I think, then quite recently I'd read about plantsman Alan Down's visit in 2022, which spurred me on to actually put my coat on and go and visit.

From the church we headed to St Peter and St Paul's school, where the serious business of plant sales was taking place. For a while now I've had an inkling to add G. 'Fly-Fishing' to my small collection. Avon Bulbs who were in the school hall discovered and cultivated this variety, sadly though they didn't have one in stock today. Neither did another stall, Elworthy Cottage Plants from near Stogumber, who did have an impressively large number of other varieties. It is a garden I'd like to visit next year when it is open under the National Garden Scheme. Mrs Wessex Reiver also had a long and fascinating chat with Juliet Davis the owner of Kapunda plants near Bath. She is a hellebore specialist and only opens her garden twice a year in March. This year it is March 3rd or 10th, I have a feeling we may be going there in a couple of weeks.

From the school, our penultimate stop was the Baptist Chapel, mostly as this was where the teas and coffees were to be found, a display board of Allen's life and work, plus a memorial tablet to James Allen with a nice simple snowdrop display in front of it. Entirely run by volunteers I do think this is an impressive feat to bring this Festival off successfully, an awful lot of hard work has taken place. In another venue in the town pre-booked art and craft workshops were taking place. We were just looking through the window when the aforementioned Amanda Hirst came out. We had a long and fascinating conversation with her, she really seems to be someone who gets things done.

I wanted to end my visit by visiting Allen's grave, which I'd previously been informed was in the town's cemetery about five minutes walk away, and not at St Peter and St Paul's church where I'd first thought. We set off into the mizzly weather.

I walked right past it. I'd been told to look for a newly created obelisk erected in 2022 by the Festival. In my mind I was looking for a bright sandy-coloured gleaming piece of stonework although as I walked by this huge memorial right by the entrance I did wonder if that might be it, aged prematurely by the damp weather in this part of the Mendips. I should have looked, as it was Mrs Wessex Reiver who spotted it after I'd wandered off. A simple beautifully carved obelisk, detailing the plants Allen was known for, on top of the original memorial base from the Edwardian era. The original obelisk fell to pieces some years earlier. Apparently on the day of Allen's burial in 1906 there was a tremendous snowstorm, swirling around the spring flowers brought in pots and tubs to accompany the funeral cortège. That must have been one impressive sight for a man who devoted his life to these snow-piercers of spring joy. It was nice too to visit an important grave to find it not festooned with information boards or garish tributes, just a simple resting place in a small town in Somerset.

I'd not finished my day however. While in the school one of the stalls, which I can't recall the name of,  was selling freshly-dug-up G. 'Merlin' for £10. As one of the only two of Allen's varieties still in cultivation it seemed apt to buy it here, in Shepton Mallet, only a stone's throw from where Allen lived and is buried. Now finding myself back home it needed potting up quickly. During the week I'd actually bought some terracotta pots, John Innes No.3 compost and grit to pot up the snowdrops I'd bought at East Lambrook earlier in the month. Despite the torrential rain now settling in for the day I popped into the greenhouse. Merlin, with its inner segments entirely green, is now safely potted up in its new home. Only next year will I know whether this and my other pot grown varieties, (part of a new plan), will be successful or not. 

I may need help though, I think I'm fast becoming a Galanthophile.

 

References : 

Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival : https://www.sheptonsnowdrops.org.uk/

James Allen Biography : https://www.sheptonsnowdrops.org.uk/james-allen-snowdrop-king-galanthophile/

Alan Down's Blog : https://down-to-earth.co.uk/bulbous-plants/shepton-mallet-snowdrop-festival/

Kapunda Plants : https://www.kapundaplants.co.uk/

Elworthy Cottage Plants :  www.elworthy-cottage.co.uk

Snowdrops. I wonder when an interest becomes an obsession?

 Snowdrops. Almost exactly a year ago we visited the East Lambrook Manor gardens in Somerset. Then having read later in the year the Manor was up for sale I thought that may have been my final ever visit. However as the Manor is still for sale, it was a joy to know the gardens were open again for another snowdrop season.

We were not meant to come here on Saturday, it just happened. Earlier Mrs Wessex Reiver had an appointment to see a new client near Mark, after which we ended up at the Avalon Marshes Hub for a coffee. It was while sitting there that the conversation turned to snowdrops and when shall we visit East Lambrook. Why not now, the briefest of discussions concluded, and so half an hour later we were walking through the gate.

Chatting to the person taking the £7 entrance fee I discussed how nice it was to actually be here this year as I feared the sale may have prevented another visit. It turns out it's all to be discussed. No buyer yet, but whoever buys this Grade 1 house with a Grade 1 garden will be required to maintain the garden as Margery Fish planted it, however there's no requirement to open the garden to the public. Will I visit again next year? I hope so as I've become fascinated by snowdrops.

Like many I suspect I've enjoyed the arrival of these white beauties forever, without really taking any notice of what snowdrops are. I wrote about their history and presence in 2023 on this blog, therefore I'll not repeat myself. But that visit in 2023 changed my view. Most of the snowdrops I'd seen up until then were in woods, lanes, gardens and churchyard, these are often Galanthus nivalis, the ubiquitous form found across the British countryside. Yet there are around twenty species and now upwards of 2000 cultivars and varieties, many of which can be seen at the National Snowdrop  Collection curated by Margaret and David MacLennan in Cumbria. Next to East Lambrook Manor is Avon Bulbs which has been the source of many new cultivars due to the unbelievable work by their senior plantsman the late Alan Street.

In that Avon Bulbs setup there is a copse of mixed woodland which was planted up with hundreds of varieties as a security bulb-bank of cultivar type away from the nursery. That copse has subsequently produced tens if not hundreds of new, naturally self-seeded, snowdrop sports, discovered, cultivated up commercially and named by Alan Street in over three decades of dedicated botany. Many of the varieties on sale at East Lambrook on Saturday had come from next door so to speak. Sadly not Galanthus 'Fly Fishing' which I had on my shopping list during my visit, a variety Street spotted naturally in the copse and through the intensive process of twin scale cultivation brought it on to general sale.

Somerset could in some ways be thought of as a snowdrop centre, historically at least. Just thirty miles to the north one James Allen in Victorian times brought snowdrops to the general public through cultivar scaling up from natural characteristics he noticed in the Shepton Mallet  area. There is some discussion that Allen was the key driver in the development of Galanthophilia which continues a pace today. Margery Fish who developed East Lambrook Manor was a plantswoman who used snowdrops in her planting, many are still grown, and that attracts the visitors.

That garden today, in the centre of the village, is not large but it is a mecca for gardeners. Chatting to one of the team there they mentioned how important the garden remains to the horticultural visitor but is possibly less known to the wider public. Which is to be expected for a specialist garden. At this time of the year, throughout February, this is a must-visit site for lovers of these delicate snow piercers, so named due to a hardened leaf tip allowing the bulb to push through frozen soil. 

Something else I'd learned recently is how snowdrops attract early insects. It seems within the petal 'bell' of each flower the air temperature can be one or two degrees warmer than outside the flower. These micro heat islands thus attract pollinators, during the cold days of late winter, to come and warm themselves for a while and in return pollination is initiated. Plant-insect associations and adaptions are remarkable.

Many varieties here are growing naturally in soil, some of the more interesting varieties are on display in terracotta pots and by the sales area a wonderfully raised display of type snowdrop in absolutely perfect condition are there to see, allowing for a close up inspection of the subtle differences within essentially hundreds of varieties of a white flower on a green stem. Why then the recent obsession with snowdrops, fast becoming the 21st Century version of tulipmania?

I wish I could answer this. I now look at snowdrops with a different eye to only two or three years ago. I'm not yet becoming a Galanthophile, but I do worry I'm getting too interested in the minuscule colouration or form that can split one variety from another. Sometimes I can't tell the difference but with some single bulbs now fetching  around £2000 someone does and will pay handsomely. Looking at the many visitors buzzing around the bulb stock at the plant centre, where a roaring trade was taking place, I'm not alone in this interest developing dangerously out of control.

I'm glad then I can still step back and pick up on reality, and feel joy at seeing this snowdrop poking through these steps, I saw this same snowdrop last year and I love the fact it's still thriving in that tiny gap. As is a clump of 'Natalie Garton' which I saw last year, and the clump that said to me 'snowdrops are interesting' and not just a beautiful sign of the passage of winter.

Not everything during this visit obsessed on snowdrops. I did mess about with some arty photography and a little bit of wildlife watching, a queen buff tailed bumblebee was lazily quartering the ground, or like this, I think, white lipped snail one metre up a Miscanthus.

I was also fascinated by the hellebores for sale at the nursery area. Most of those for sale had flowers in the maroon, purple, brown and red spectrum. One variety though 'Harvington Yellows' is as its name suggests, a buttermilk yellow. I watched the early flying insects coming to these yellow flowers in preference to other colours. There were Harvington Yellows in two different areas and I watched as one bee flew between these two areas of yellow flowers while ignoring the darker colours. Why these yellow hellebores are preferred I'm not sure but I'm assuming it has something to do with just colour, in which case Mrs Wessex Reiver succumbed and bought three for our garden.

Back to snowdrops however. I did succumb myself to three new varieties for my developing collection, increasing my varieties by 100%, to six.. Last year I bought three snowdrops, two cultivars, 'Marjorie Brown' and  'Natalie Garton', and a species Galanthus, gracilis. On this latest visit I succumbed despite the price to Galanthus plicatus 'Madeleine', Galanthus Phillipe Andre Meyer (which was on my shopping list) and Galanthus Elwesii 'sickle'. Seen together the subtle differences are obvious. I'm hooked but this is becoming very expensive.

So what next? Well I'm keen to grow these on in containers, to show them at their best,  alongside last year's purchases. The books will tell you snowdrop don't grow well in containers as they suffer if they dry out or are subject to heavy frost. Yet I experimented last year with 'Natalie Garton' in a pot. It is flowering exceptionally well, better than 'Marjorie Brown' planted in the cutting bed which is just emerging,  or G. gracilis which is in a border but not flowering, suggesting it isn't happy.

G. Natalie Garton 

G. gracilis

G. Marjorie Brown

I've been reading around container growing, it is possible, but the snowdrops need repotting every May and throughout the year, even when dormant,  the compost needs to be kept watered but not waterlogged. In addition if a period of heavy and prolonged frost is due the pot will need protecting. The leaves and flowers are tough, the bulbs however less so. I'm looking forward to cracking this over the coming year. Am I simply interested or truly becoming obsessed?

And I'm already thinking about next year. I mentioned earlier the National collection is in Cumbria. Last August 300 bulbs were sent from there to Thenford Arboretum near Banbury. This year more will arrive nudging the Arboretum's collection to 1500. This new southern collection is now under the curation of the owner, one Michael Heseltine, the politician, who has spent over four decades creating this stunning garden. Sadly their snowdrop days are sold out this year, but already bookings are possible for February 2025.

Am I becoming obsessed, or simply interested? Discuss.