Chris Skinner (00:19):

Good morning everybody. Rat, my terrible terrier has started this morning's podcast off for us and he's rather bemused because it is very, very early morning and we have hopped in the car and popped down just off the coast of Suffolk to Aldeburgh. It's just under an hour's drive from High Ash Farm. And I've had to telephone call from one of the members of the Suffolk Wildlife Trust, who likes to keep me informed as to the arrival of one of our migrant bird species, the Swift. And whilst I'm incredibly fascinated by Swifts and probably the most aerial bird in the world, I'm equally fascinated by the relationship between the town of Aldeburgh and the Swifts because it's quite an ancient town, lots of old buildings which are okay for Swifts to nest in, but there's also been quite a lot of new development and a certain interest in the Swifts as well. 

(01:32)
 And it's resulted in the erection of lots of special swift nest boxes including in the parish church, which is not far from me, it's been chilly and it's a little bit mild in the last few days. And that's resulted in the first wave of Swift's coming up to the Suffolk countryside. There's reports of them being right down south at Margate as well and along the southern coast. But Aldeburgh has a special relationship, as I mentioned with the Swifts in that the town provides a nest boxes. But if I just walk up the shingle bank here, walk away from the sea just a little bit, here we go…

(02:19)
 Quite a steep bank here with sea defences, just the other side of the top of the bank. And then several hundred acres of marshland with the river sort of skirting through the centre of the marshes. And that provides the ideal habitat for feeding the swift. You get lots of insects there, flowing about with the water habitat and the marshland and the grazing marshes and a little bit further inland, quite a large dairy herd there. And they're milked as well. So providing local cheeses as well. And there's that relationship between humans and the birds, which is what really fascinates me and intrigues me. That's why I've come down because I want to see my first swift. It's very early in the morning, I should be back at the farm in time for work, but it's always worth it. I've seen lots of swallows going up and down side of the little dykes that had been dug across the marshland, but suitable habitat for them, absolutely ideal. 

(03:26)
 And most people miss actually seeing them. And they've done this incredible flight up from South Africa, several thousand miles, not stopping or resting on the way, which makes everybody scratch their head when they hear probably it's the most aerial bird in the world, especially shaped it's dusky sort of black feathers, tiny little white patch under the chin where they can fill that with insects that they catch and take back to the females in their nest, either in the nest boxes or natural nest sites under the old pan tiles all around the town, which is just beside me here. So the little white eggs, the female incubates them, and that's about the only time they come to ground, so to speak. Long wings, if they land on the ground, they really have great problem in taking off again because of the shape of the wings, they're long and narrow kind of sickle shape and their eyes are kind sunk in their head like the old early sports cars. 

(04:34)
 And they have very weak legs which are held up in the feathers on the body. And the shape doesn't seem quite right for a bird that spends its entire life flying around because it's like a torpedo. It's quite blunt at the front and then the bird tapers away. But that's in perfect symmetry with its environment. Actually the drag as the bird goes through the air is hugely reduced. And so you can learn a lot from the shape of a swift as well. So fascinating birds and I say that they can collect insects on the wing, which is the only way they feed. They don't come to ground to feed. And this sort of group of insects that they collect in their beak doesn't get digested by the male. It's collected in what's called a bolus. And he can eject that if he goes back to the nest and feeds the female if and when she's incubating. 

(05:33)
 But with the cool weather you sometimes have in May, their average arrival time is about the 15th of May, but you always have a vanguard ahead of that, a few birds arriving and then different waves coming in until the sky and certain places are almost full of them. But there's not so many about as there used to be certain in my childhood, the farm area back High Ash Farm near Norwich, there would be absolutely filled with screaming Swifts. And since I've been growing environmental stewardship crops, things like mustard and fodder radish which come into flower and attract pollen beetles, the pollen beetles then swarm at certain times of the air in warm weather, which usually coincides the end of May, early June. And that enables the Swifts to feed on mass. And suddenly some of the fields at High Ash Farm are absolutely covered in swarming Swifts. 

(06:31)
 It's an amazing site. How they don't collide with each other, I don't know, but the Swifts are just amazing birds once you learn about them, it just makes me smile anyway because they sleep on the wing, they can shut one half of their brain down. People say, I do even better than that. And then they go to sleep and sort of have cat naps while they're flying at night high up. So they drink on the wing and sometimes come to the areas of water at High Ash Farm on very hot days in June and scoop down and get a beak full of water and they mate on the wing as well, which is quite amazing to see. And the male will fold his wings almost upright in a V shape and then land on the female's back whilst they're both flying and mate like that. And they're long lived birds as well. 

(07:30)
 Some Swifts are 10, 15 years old, quite normal. And during that time because they're flying 24/7 apart from when they're nesting and apart from when they're young in the nest. As I said, the most aerial bird in the world, but it's at such a lovely site this morning, it's just beginning to warm up a little bit. And my eyes are skyward now just looking for that sickle shape flying about close to the edge of Aldeburgh here. So I'll wait about and be patient and many people ask me why or how I got interested in wildlife. And occasionally I give talks about this explaining a kind of light bulb moment I suppose you could call it. And that's what really triggered my interest in wildlife, although I was always brought up on the farm and quite often Sunday dinner time, lunchtime in the middle of the day, that was nearly everything on the farmhouse table cooked by my mum would've been from the farm, that would be pheasants. 

(08:35)
 And obviously the milk, some cream, my mum would make butter and cheese as well. And then flour as well. So the whole vegetable patch was certainly in the farm garden, which was walled. There was fruit growing on the wall was espalier trees, I grew strawberries, berries, raspberries. And then there was an apple orchard as well with bramleys and cox's orange pip in there and several other older varieties of apples as well. So you got kind of used to food coming from where you lived and it wasn't transported at all. So got used to that. And it wasn't until much later on being a traditional farmer and having the sort of sporting element on the farm as well where lots of friends and guests would get together and have a shoot through the shooting season on Saturdays. And it was on one of those occasions where I'd organised quite a large shoot. 

(09:36)
 There was about 15, 18 guns on the shoot and then half a dozen beaters as well, which would go through the woodland, beating the bramble bushes to get the pheasants out or the woodcock. And it was at the end of a particular day, quite a long day Saturday, late Saturday morning, it started and finished about four o'clock in the afternoon. In early October we'd had quite a successful shoot, perhaps 20 brace of pheasants that would be 40 pheasants, a dozen brace of grey partridge and some red leg partridge as well. Woodcock, few snipe, they're all game birds as was then. And there was always plenty of them. There'd be hares, rabbits, and anything else as well that could be eaten. And at the end of the shoot, there would always be a vote of thanks given by somebody and braces of pheasants would be handed out to the beaters as a thank you. 

(10:35)
 That'd be two pheasants each for them. And they'd be quite happy with that because that would be quite a good meal later on in the week. And the rabbits always found a home and anything else would be sold and help to raise a little bit of money for upkeep the shoots on the farm. And it was right at the end of this particular shoot that really changed everything and explains perhaps why I'm here and come down to Suffolk. That would've been a mad thing to do 25 years ago or a bit longer than that when this huge change happened. And the vote of thanks went ahead as a normal and it was quite an eminent doctor on the shoot and he turned around and said, ‘I’d like to thank Chris for such a wonderful afternoons fun’. He'd just used a different word to what would be normal because we all knew it was sport and it's quite good sport and challenging as well to have a gun and to shoot pheasants on the wing or partridges in particular and even harder to shoot woodcock and particularly difficult, snipes. 

(11:43)
 So that challenge is there. It's called sort of sport and it's very, very traditional as well. You always did things in a way and it was regulated by when you can shoot things and when you can't shoot things. But that word thank you for wonderful afternoon's ‘fun’ made me sort of stop in my tracks. I knew something had happened, I couldn't explain it at the time. And it took a year or two years for the sudden change round from shooting for sport to not shooting at all because the realisation that relationship between man and the wildlife because of our behaviour in the 1970s and 80s when we did all the stubble burning with a box of matches, hedge grubbing and things like that. And you started to realise how difficult it was for some of the species to thrive. And that's why I've come down to Suffolk because I hugely appreciate the birds are migrating up here and how difficult it is for them because the climate's changing. 

(12:53)
 Our attitude to wildlife is changing, not always in a good way. I must say modern agriculture is quite a hostile environment for our wildlife to be in, particularly things like hares. Grey partridge is now a red list species, which wasn't then. Woodcock again, a common game bird or a game one you can shoot for sport is another red list species. Nobody's rearing, releasing and releasing woodcock or snipe. And so there's this conflict that's beginning to happen. So it's a really difficult relationship because some birds nest out on arable land sometimes things like just trying to think of all the species. Well yellow hammer is another red list species. Stone curlew will nest out particularly in sugar beet fields, which some of which are being sprayed with quite a lethal chemical called neonicotinoids. And that can kill all the insects in the field, which is what the sky lark feed on. 

(13:59)
 Of course, although you don't get many wild flowers and bees affected, you certainly have insects in sugarbeet fields. And so this huge relationship between modern farming that would need and wish to look after our wildlife and our modern way of existing roads which are getting faster and faster, wildlife find that very difficult with all the species of deer we have out in East Anglia at the moment. So it's a long and difficult story, but in the short, that's why I'm here today. I've learned to make that huge turn. Some people would call me a deserter. I'm certainly not that I'm as much as a farmer as anybody, any other farmer listening and more of a sportsman than perhaps he had realised. But that's a relationship between food on the table and existing rather than having that particular word ‘fun’ for doing something without thinking about it. And that's the difficult thing. Tradition is such a powerful thing, particularly out in the countryside. So there we are, little bit of explanation as to why I'm here, but nevertheless, I'll just walk backbone this shingle bank. Rat's waiting patiently at the top of the shingle. He thinks we're going for a walk. Well, we might squeeze a short walk in, but just before I finish, just listen to this. It's such a wonderful relaxing sound. Gentle waves, that one was quite a large one, lapping off the shingle shore here at Aldeburgh.

(15:38)
 . 

Matthew Gudgin (16:23):

Hello, I’ve come to the farm to see Chris Skinner for our weekly podcast in the countryside. We're at Caistor St. Edmund, High Ash Farm. And I can see Chris in the distance now. I was worried that he wouldn't be here. He's been on holiday for the last week and now he's back. So Chris, good to see you again. Do you have a nice holiday? 

Chris Skinner (16:43):

Well, you call it holiday, Matthew. Yes, I sort of work all the time, really. So I had a quick trip down to Aldeburgh to visit the Swifts just arriving. And I saw my first two Swifts of the year and I'll explain a bit about that on the podcast and very excited. But look, we're on one of the old horse pastures here at the farm, and you remember a few weeks ago I told you about some of the nettles that don't sting. Just look over there, a patch of nettles covered in white flowers, white dead nettle, just superb.

Matthew Gudgin (17:21):

Do they sting?  

Chris Skinner (17:23):

No they don't. If it's got dead in the name the same as the red dead nettle, neither of those species sting, but you make a mistake and get hold of a stinger thinking it's a white dead nettle, then you will get peppered. So well, I'm not going to risk it, but we've come here for another reason because skirting the whole edge of this old meadow are some magnificent trees that have been here since I as a child. It's a bit cool and cloudy, odd spits of drizzle in the wind, but I can still see some bees flying about because the tree, there's the bee just there. Look through there. Can you see? 

Matthew Gudgin:

Yes. Yep. 

Chris Skinner:

That's a honey bee gathering the nectar, because this tree kind of symbolises summer, I suppose, which we haven't had much of yet. But nevertheless, it's come into flower and you have these huge kind of candelabras hanging upwards rather than downwards. 

(18:19)
 And it's the horse chestnut and it's absolutely superb. We stand back a few steps. 

Matthew Gudgin:

These are fabulous, aren't they?

Chris Skinner:

It's Britain's in fact, Europe's largest leaf on any tree comes from sort of Bulgaria, Iran over in the sort of Mediterranean region. So it's not really a native, it was introduced in the 1600s into the UK and it's all over the farm. We have some fantastic specimens. There's one there, probably well over a thousand flowers on it. 

Matthew Gudgin:

And these little pyramids of white flowers sticking up from the ends of the branches. 

Chris Skinner:

Yes. And the leaves are quite incredible. They can be six or eight individual leaflets all on one leaf stalk, and it could be seven or eight inches across really large. And they've got a trick up their sleeves. They can angle themselves according to where the sun is, to get the most from the heat of the sun, which isn't here today. 

(19:18)
 Matthew Gudgin:

I was going to say!

Chris Skinner:

Nevertheless, it's a tree of all seasons really, because over the winter months it has sticky buds on it. And if you can reach up, you'd have a job here because the horses have grazed the lower branches and the low branches are kind of parallel with the ground. The horses love the leaves and the flowers if they can reach them. And so just a stunning tree to see. And later on in a year after those sticky buds have opened up, they're sticky to help protect the unfurled leaves from insect attack and they will open up if you pick them in a jar in January… Another bee just coming in. Oh, that's a wow. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Oh it's, it's very bright red bright. 

Chris Skinner:

I'm not sure what, it's a mason bee. It's red, rufus red. Osmia rufa, that one. But it has changed its name. 

(20:14)
 All these scientific names keep changing, but nevertheless, that was what, that one is really stunning. And so comes into flower now and then over the summer it's one of the first trees to come into leaf in the UK over the summer, late summer, the leaves turn golden, shrivel up and drop on the ground. But just before that conkers are formed. And I used to have sort of conker battles with my friend where you thread one of those lovely, glossy, dark, brown, shiny conkers on a piece of string and you challenge your mates and then you got into tricks like soaking in them in vinegar or baking them in the oven. 

Matthew Gudgin:

I bet you were up to all of those, weren't you? 

Chris Skinner:

I was up to everything and more besides, which we won't go into, I mean the thing about playing games, I had stone with a hole through it and I painted it. 

(21:05)
 Matthew Gudgin:

Oh yeah, that sounds like you. And the thing is though, playing games with conquers, it proves how poor eating they are. 

Chris Skinner:

Yes, absolutely. They're not really eating, although it's called a horse chestnut. People used to years ago used to grind the conkers up and make a kind of pulses for horses who had a cough and the horses wouldn't eat it because con is so bitter. In fact, conkers is an early constituent of gun powder, would you believe? But it's more likely it's got its name, if we did reach up and take one of the leaves off, it will leave a scar that looks very much like a horse's hoof print. So hence horse chestnut. Although it's not related to our other chestnut tree, which is another introduced, which is a sweet chestnut, completely different species. You can see the trunk, which would have to walk quite a way to get to it's grey and sort of deeply fisured as well. 

(22:06)
 And there's some ivy going up this one, but it's not used very much for timber. It will rot quickly. It's very white and creamy and very soft. Furniture makers don't really use it because of that, but sometimes toy makers will use it. But travelling up through High Ash Farm right beside Caistor Lane, some of the trees are hanging right over the road and there's those fabulous candelabras we can call them, right over the top. Now if I just reach up and pull a branch down, just pretending I'm a horse, here we are. We can get some close to some of the flowers here. Oh, there comes some there. That's exactly what I wanted to show you. 

Matthew Gudgin:

There's some colour on those white flowers. 

Chris Skinner:

There is the ones near the tip which had just emerged, have a yellow centre where the stamens are, and once they're pollinated, it's almost as though they're embarrassed and they've gone pink in the centre and those have been pollinated and they should ripen to form our conqkers much later in the autumn. 

(23:15)

Matthew Gudgin:
 It looks like raspberry ripple ice cream. 

Chris Skinner:

It does, yeah. That lovely creamy white of the petals followed by the pink in the centre to show that a bees be there. And it happens really quickly, certainly within 24 hours changes from the yellow of the unpollinated flower to that vivid pink. And I let that branch go back up and you can see there's this grazing line underneath because the horses absolutely love the foliage in preference to the grass on this field. So there we are, one of the signs of summer, which is just around the corner, and usually flowers last week of April, first two weeks of May, and then it's all over again and you have to wait another year to see a display like this. And it's one of those things out in the countryside at this time of the year that it's easy to miss. There's a special display, I think it's still there in Bushy Park, Bushy Park in Teddington in London. And it's planted a huge avenue of horse chestnut trees planted by the Victorians and thousands of people used to come and see it. It's one of those lovely pleasures in life that doesn't cost anything and almost it makes you tearful and you see oh, little touch of sun just coming out and just look here in this little alcove between the two trees. It's just illuminating it. And we're being serenaded in the background by a mistle thrush. 

Matthew Gudgin (24:47):

The horse chestnut. Look out for the white flowers or if you're in Norwich in particular, look out for the different coloured flowers because you get a reddish flower as well. 

Chris Skinner (24:55):

Yes you do. That's a species that's crossed with the English horse chestnut and the American buckeye and the two crossed together make fertile conkers still, but you get the pink flower one version instead. So very close relative. There are two others, a Japanese horse chestnut and the Indian one as well. They all flower much later, but they are all closely related and they will cross breed as well. But nothing like this. The white horse chestnut, I think it's unbeatable. 

Matthew Gudgin (25:41):

Another part of the farm, another horse pasture. And I've done my bit to wrangle some of these horses that they got out of the way. I hope you were impressed with that. 

Chris Skinner (25:49):

Is that's called wrangling, was it? 

Matthew Gudgin:

I shoo’d a horse. That's better. 

Chris Skinner:

You shoed. Oh, you're turned into a blacksmith. Have you?

Matthew Gudgin (25:56):

Actually he's over there. Did you see?

Chris Skinner (25:57):

I did actually watch. I was sort of semi impressed.  

Matthew Gudgin (26:02):

Anyway, just call me John Wayne for now. Another part of the farm and another flowering tree. 

Chris Skinner (26:08):

Yes, Matthew. We've been following the flowering series of trees all coming into flower at different times. And I think it was about two weeks ago we visited the blackthorn and blackthorn comes into flower before it comes into leaf. And we are now visiting quite a close relation to it in some way because Hawthorne does the opposite. First of all, it comes into leaf, then it comes into flower, and Hawthorne has another name which is known all over the UK is called May. And because it comes into flower in the month of May, early May, and it's May and the week ahead of us. So I thought it appropriate to come and visit some of the Hawthorne here at the farm. We've got 23 miles of hedge and it's cut every third year. And when you cut Hawthorne it stops, it flowering because it flowers on last year's growth. 

(27:11)
 So when you see a nice neatly clipped garden hedge of Hawthorne and there's no flowers on it at this time of the year, that's because we've snipped off all the last year's growth. Whereas if it's left, and so I've brought you onto Caistor Park. There's an old quarry in front of us and you don't often see this a Hawthorne tree. They're really long lived. They can outlive an oak tree. So a really old haw form can be up to a thousand years old. These are probably 200 to 300 years old in front of us. The bark on the tree is grey, gnarled, twisted, rather like me in fact, but it's venerable and it's really hard hardwood, it burns well. But because it doesn't grow to any great girth, it's not often used for much at all. So it's a brilliant hedging plant though, because like the blackthorn we visited a couple of weeks ago finished flowering. 

(28:13)
 Now Hawthorne still bears all those prickles, so it's a much better plant to use for hedging because it hasn't got the trick that blackthorn has. Blackthorn, if you plant a blackthorn sapling after about three or four years you'll see a dozen or so saplings or suckers coming up a yard or two away from the original plant. So it'll form huge clumps, Blackthorn. Hawthorne doesn't do that when it's planted, it usually stays where it's been put. So it's an ideal hedging plant still has all those prickles on it. So if we walk up a little bit, because this one in front of us, venerable old tree is coming into flower, we're halfway up it actually, because it's on a steep, steep bank, nearly vertical in places as the old quarry. And so we are getting a kind of aerial view of it and in the next day or two with a little bit more sunshine, it's in full flower, but nevertheless it's making an impressive display already. Two sorts of Hawthorne in the UK, Midland, Hawthorne, which is much more found in the south and west of the UK. 

(29:27)
 And Common Hawthorne, which this one is deep ribs on the leaves almost to the centre vein and a single pip later in the year as well. So after finished flowering, you have little haws developing on all the growth and they ripen over the summer, still green in July, August, and then they start to turn a lovely deep red in September and October and often stay on the tree right through the winter months, Matthew. So brilliant food for thrushes, blackbirds, starlings will raid it as well. And then once December's here and the winter visiting thrushes things like redwing fieldfare as well, they'll come and raid any remaining berries. So Midland Hawthorne has usually two or three seeds in each berry and English Hawthorn just has the single seed and they're special seeds. So the red berry, the coating and all the flesh around is very attractive to birds. 

(30:32)
 But the little seeds in the centre have a special coating on to stop them being digested by the birds. So they'll pass right through the bird's alimentary canal come out absolutely untouched by the digestive process in the bird, which has grit in the gizzard, so completely unharmed. And then the bird will fly off and roost up perhaps in a clearing or something like that. Seeds then drop onto the ground and you can have a new hawthorn tree getting there like that. Sometimes people feed them to chickens, gather the berries so they all pass through and then you dig up the chicken muck, you dig it just gently into the ground, just cover it up slightly and you have a whole row of baby Hawthorne and that's enough to start a new hedge off. So you can do it that way. So it works well like that. 

Matthew Gudgin (31:24):

The point is though, cut down a mature Hawthorne like this and it happens. I know then you're losing an ecosystem and a place for the birds to be protected and to feed. Really these have to be looked after, don't they? 

Chris Skinner (31:38):

Oh yes. Yeah. And the hedges on the farm, we cut them on every third year. So we go round a farm in a rotation, so at least there's some of the hedges that have really heavy crops of berries on and of course it just doesn't feed the birds in the winter that I mentioned. You've got all the pollinating insects on there now. It's a top species for many of our moths as well. Things like the lovely name burnished brass moth and winter moth as well. They all lay their eggs and the caterpillars devour the foliage and of course that then feeds the birds, all those caterpillars in sort of mid May onwards, right, and through to the end of June. There's a whole host of different caterpillars all hatching in succession and of course that feeds many of the small birds. Some of our migrants like white throat and black cap will eat the caterpillars as well as many of the other bird species, absolutely dependent. Then any berries that aren't eaten by all the thrushes in the autumn drop on the ground. 

(32:40)
 And then you have the small mammals on the ground actually sort of cacheing all those fruit on the ground into their burrows and that's another way that they can germinate. They're carried into the ground. And the mice, things like long tail field mice devour loads of them and leave that hardened pip in the middle, the little seed. In fact, as you say, you only get one with an English hawthorn and two or three with a midland hawthorn. So to see these is quite unusual. To see a hawthorn tree like this is a little bit unusual these days. Most of them are in hedgerows. You can see this is one right on the top edge of the quarry has been nibbled all the fresh growth by the horses. And can you see, it's not a single flower on it at all because horses could reach right round and they've grazed it because they're freshly emerged foliage, which happens at this time of the year. 

(33:37)
 If we walk up closely to this, you can have a little look. It's very, very tender and see there's no flowers on it whatsoever and it's very tender. You can snip one off like that and you can see the shape of those leaves, each leaf that heavily divided right up to the midriff. Look, it's like a little leaf with six leaflets on it, 

Matthew Gudgin:

But never gets a chance to have a flower because of the horses. 

Chris Skinner:

That's right. But it used to be fed to children in the 1800s and early 1900s and it was called bread and cheese and it was a very cheap way of feeding your children rather than going to the local takeaway. 

Matthew Gudgin:

And you kept the tradition going?

Chris Skinner:

That's why I've got these rosy cheeks, you see? Yes, yes. So it did keep the tradition going, but you can see some of the old venerable hawthorns further into the quarry there absolutely dense as anything. And in another day or two little bit further north, those ones completely sheltered from the northerly wind. But in a day or two that will be snow white as though the whole quarry side has dressed up ready to go off to a wedding. 

Matthew Gudgin:

The wonderful site of May, Hawthorne. 

Chris Skinner:

Yes, the other name for it may perfect and that describes the beginning of summer, which the 1st of May for me certainly is. 

(35:02)

Matthew Gudgin:

The rooks certainly enjoy it. 

Chris Skinner:

I can hear them in the background there. We're quite close to a new rookery in the top of those Scots pine trees just behind us. And we're being sworn at in rook language for being a little bit too close to their nest. Humans are not trusted by rooks

Matthew Gudgin:

I suppose we've got a clear off then. 

Chris Skinner:

I think that's what they were saying very politely. 

Matthew Gudgin (35:38):

Well we've repaired to Chris's farm truck to talk about your correspondence this week because, well just for the plain reason that I'm a softie and it's freezing out there, isn't it? 

Chris Skinner (35:50):

And I've had to shut the windows on the truck and Gudgin shoulders are up by his ears to give you an eye idea how cold it is. 

Matthew Gudgin (35:58):

We were talking about moths earlier on the May and Judith has sent a photograph of what looks to me like a moth clinging onto a plant of some sort. She says, would you be able to enlighten us as to what this interesting insect is? We spotted it whilst gardening. 

Chris Skinner (36:18):

Well, I'm on first name terms with perhaps a hundred species of moth, but I looked at this one and it looked very close to one that I know quite well, which is called the mullein moth. Then I looked a little bit more carefully and used a magnifying glass on it and I found out exactly what it is. It's a chamomile shark. What a name for a moth. 

Matthew Gudgin (36:40):

He’s not a looker is he 

Chris Skinner (36:41):

No, he's got a sort of furry pertrudent out at the front and the coloured wings and it kind of looks like a dried up plant petal. Really a very pale cream one. But when you think of the word chamomile, you think, oh, that's the sort of plant you put in your lawn and it's very aromatic if you tread on it. And yet there are close relations to the chamomile, which are plants like mayweed. Stinking mayweed is one that grows here on the farm and it's quite a common weed and it's also quite a common moth, which flies exactly at this time of the year, late April to mid May, even to the end of May. And that's what you've got. So a chamomile shark. There you are. What a name. 

Matthew Gudgin (37:28):

Another photograph comes from Lily. Lily in Lingham. Thank you for this. It's two lady birds doing well. It looks to me what comes naturally. And Lily says, well these obviously have spring fever. I wondered if you could tell me anything about lady birds and they're young, for instance, do they lay eggs? 

Chris Skinner (37:48):

Well, the quick answer to that one is yes, they do lay eggs and lots of them usually in little bunches of 30, 40, 50, quite often on the underside of stinging nettle leaves. And then the larvae hatch out and the larvae don't look anything at all like their parents. They're kind of long sort of caterpillar shape, little things in grey with some red dots on them. And basically they're aphid eaters. So if you've got roses in your garden and you see these strange grey creatures crawling about, they're devouring as many as a hundred aphids a day, they really are sort of look like chieftain tanks going around on the top of your roses or your broad beans, for instance, which usually have high infestations of aphids, so lovely creatures. Then these pupate and after about 10 days they will come out to their pupa and form the lady birds that we know. 

(38:54)
 But we've got, I dunno, probably 45 different species here in the UK. Two spot, four spot six spots, seven spot, 12 spot, 18 spot, 22 spot, and the largest 24 spot. That's the largest number of spots on it. But the last one I mentioned, the 24 spot is yellow in colour and it's a vegetarian so it doesn't eat the aphids. All the rest are pretty cannibalistic, carnivorous as well. They will eat each other to so lots and was originally called our ladies bird. And it comes from the Virgin Mary. And remember when Jesus was crucified there was blood. And so the red on the lady bird's wing cases are meant to represent Jesus's blood and the seven spots because we've got the seven spot lady bird in amongst that list that illustrates the seven trials and joys and sorrows of Our Lady. And I dunno if you remember right back in 1975 we had a dry warm summer followed by a dry warm winter Matthew. And that was the ideal sort of catalyst for one of the biggest insect explosions that the UK has seen. Because in the summer of 76, that hot summer, I dunno what you were up to back then.  

Matthew Gudgin (40:24):

Well I was in short trousers, but I remember pictures on the TV of people wading through huge drifts like snow drifts of ladybirds crunching through them. 

Chris Skinner (40:34):

They were, and people were getting nibbled and bitten because they were after the moisture on people's skin and they were bucket loads of our own bred ladybirds. And they were joined because there were some easterlies coming from Western Europe, from Denmark, even from Sweden as well, and from Belgium and Germany. And they came across the North Sea. And I could just remember the pictures on Yarmouth sea front and I went there and I saw it and you couldn't believe the numbers. People were having to go indoors to get out of the infestation. And if you've got them on your skin, they'd often leave a tiny little yellow drop. And it is in fact their blood. But it's a defence mechanism because if you have red out of the countryside, it's a warning. There's one or two moth species that use that coloration as well. 

(41:26)
 The cinnabar moth, for instance, bright red coloration. And if you bite into a cinnabar moth, then you quickly won't forget the experience because they're very acidic. And if you did taste this little blob of bright yellow that ladybirds leave on your skin, I've tried it. And it is so acidic that you would not want to eat a Ladybird. So a lot of creatures that would eat them, leave them well alone. So Our Lady’s bird is where it comes from because they've opened those wing cases up and they can fly. So that's where the name comes from. 

Matthew Gudgin (42:05):

Thanks for the question, Lily. Next we go to Peterborough or just outside a village near Peterborough where Susan Young lives. Susan says ‘hello Chris. Heard the cuckoo today from woods near the riverbank where I walk regarding skylarks. They sing over the cornfields where I live. When the farmers spray, which they do frequently, I worry the nests, the eggs and the babies get sprayed. Do you think they always nest around the edges? 

Chris Skinner (42:33):

No, they don't nest in the edges. Many of our bird species are specialists in the habitat that they occupy. Skylarks won't. They usually nest out in the middle of big open fields, particularly the north and south downs. That's a favourite area for them, we've got some large arable fields here of grassland here at the farm. We're sitting on one at the moment and that's favourite Skylark habitat. They nest on the ground. Some of my wildflower fields, I asked the horses in the middle of winter to ride round on the fields and make little hoof prints while the ground's still soft. And that's a little like false egg cup into the ground, a nest cup if you like. And then the female sky lark will line out with grass and lay the camouflaged eggs in there. And so that's one way. And we've got lots and lots of them here at the farm. 

(43:26)
 But as I've mentioned many times over the podcast, modern agriculture is a very hostile place for many of our native species, be they mammals or birds or insects as well. And so it's a really tough call for them. And that's perhaps why one of the many reasons that skylarks have become a red list species, a species sort of in serious decline, usually declined by 50% or more in the last 20 so years. And so I do worry about them because some of the chemicals could affect the actual incubation of the eggs and to whether they will stay fertile or not. 

Matthew Gudgin (44:07):

Steven Alger lives not many miles away from the farm in Acle. He says, we walked from Acle to great Yarmouth at dawn this morning. That's a good walk, isn't it? And we saw the first swallow of the year also muntjac, Chinese water, deer and a big herd of huge red deer. That's a good spot isn’t it? 

Chris Skinner (44:27):

Yes it is. And whilst I was at Aldeburgh on my brief visit quite close to the beach, there was some mud on the tracks, just the other side of the shingle bank. And there was Britain's largest land mammal, the Red deer footprints, the very distinctive slots, about four inches from front to back and a cloven hoof in the mud. Very clear to see, but becoming quite common in this part of look in front of you, there's another nice mammal for you, Matthew. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Oh, hare. 

Chris Skinner:

No, no, no. Remember it's near the edge of the field. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Oh rabbit

Chris Skinner:

That's much better that we'll go for rabbits. 1, 2, 3. Right in front of the truck. Look out in broad daylight. 

Matthew Gudgin (45:09):

I thought he was a hare, he was sitting up like the hares do. 

Chris Skinner (45:12):

Yes. Yeah, they do. That's easy to confuse them. Many people are confused by the two. Look at that. Just doing a bit of sun bathing. I 

Matthew Gudgin (45:18):

Can see several there. 

Chris Skinner (45:19):

Yes, that's it. And after a moment or two, lay down, the sun's just coming out and we look over at that Hawthorne we just saw, just look at that. It's just being lit up by this sun. Very welcome. 

Matthew Gudgin (45:32):

Now Tony Bridge wants to say thank you, Chris, for putting him on to trail cameras. He sent us a video of all the wonderful things he's spotted with his new toy, put it in a quiet place in his garden and what a result he says.

Chris Skinner (45:46):

 Exactly. And I've had a look at the video, a female muntjac deer. Very good indeed. Well spotted, well shot in the nicest possible way. 

Matthew Gudgin (45:57):

And here's Mark Perry with a photograph, and I think we've had some video as well of this fox. Mark says, ‘We've got a fox taking up residence in our neighbours and our garden. We live in an urban environment in Crawley.’ That's Sussex, isn't it? West Sussex. ‘And this fox, although aware of us when we go into the garden, seems not to have a care in the world. He slept on our shed roof from nine in the morning until 8:00 PM in full view and only moved when having a stretch.’ I suppose he's getting warmth there, isn't he?

Chris Skinner (46:29):

Absolutely. And it's a sort of fabric roof on the shed and it does get really warm. And foxes as well as many of our other mammals, love to sunbathe. And I just noticed one of the rabbits over there in front of us doing exactly the same thing. It's not sitting, it's laying down on its side just to the left of the one at the bottom of the tree. And believe it or not, it's sunbathing exactly like that fox,

Matthew Gudgin (46:56):

Thanks for all your lovely letters and emails and keep them coming in. The address to send is chris@countrysidepodcast.co.uk. And if we don't mention all of them on the podcast, Chris certainly reads all of them.

Chris Skinner (47:12):

I certainly do. And it's a joy each week to have such a lovely post bag of those questions. And I just love looking at them and being able to answer as many as I can. I'm sorry we can't do them all, but nevertheless, it always brings a smile and a very warm feeling to help some of our listeners. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Looks like Watership down over there. 

Chris Skinner:

It does now just start the little truck up and see how close we can get. That one's still laying down flat on its side. We are what, 20 yards away. But having said that, these rabbits are used to the horses and the ladies walking past them several times a day when they visit their horses. Look at that. 

Matthew Gudgin:

They look quite healthy. 

Chris Skinner:

They certainly are. Mixemitosis seems to abandon them at this time of the year. And it's not until they start going down to burrows again. That one skirted off and one very healthy one sitting right in front of the truck, less than 10 yards. And I think the further one's got a case of fleas. It's having an itch. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Makes me want to do the same. 

Chris Skinner:

Well you are a bit irritating. 

Matthew Gudgin:

That's the nicest thing you've ever said nearly. 

(48:30)

Chris Skinner
 See you next week. Bye.