30 DAYS WILD : DAY 16 - A TALE OF THREE LEVELS - LICHENS

It's very hard to stay on track with the 30 Days Wild Challenge. 

Although Loose and Leafy is predominantly about plants and insects I'm used to doing my own thing and over these last few days I've found I've been wandering around (in so far as I can wander!) photographing walls. One can stretch a theme so far but I don't think a wall can be counted in itself as 'wild'. So I scanned the info. to see where I could squeeze 'walls' into the project and found that one of the squares on the nature table is 'Moss and Mud'. I do have some photos of mud but I'm not in a 'mud' sort of mood today. All this sudden fresh air and exercise is making me a bit peevish and very tired. I keep telling myself it's good for me and that strength will properly return but it's a bit of a slog. 

As an aside - I was enlivened somewhat today by hearing a cuckoo. I haven't heard a cuckoo for years. I can give myself a tick for this; 'Listen out for birdsong and learn who it's coming from' is on one of the squares on the 30 days 'passport'. (Squares figure large in this challenge, there's even a 'bingo' card - more squares.

However, today I walked past this stone building which is gradually being overcome by moss; I'll put this building with its moss then on the virtual nature table. There are lots of stone buildings being destroyed by nature around here but this one looks as if its managing to hold its own despite the onslaught. Roots are the real demolition gang and mosses don't have any - just things called 'rhyzoids' which help them stick to whatever they are sitting on.

Looking at walls though will, also, almost inevitably, bring one face to face with lichen. Lichen is even weirder than moss, being not one organism but a conglomeration. I knew lichen is fungi and algae together but when I was looking it up I found there's another thing involved - cyanobacteria. Until today I'd not heard of cyanobacteria. Should I try to learn about them? understand them? interest you in them? explain them?

Wikipedia says this:

"Cyanobacteria /saɪˌænoʊbækˈtɪəriə/, also known as Cyanophyta, are a phylum consisting of free-living photosynthetic bacteria and the endosymbiotic plastids, a sister group to Gloeomargarita, that are present in some eukaryotes. They commonly obtain their energy through oxygenic photosynthesis."

I haven't the foggiest idea what any of this means so I'll leave it hanging. One of the basic tenets of Loose and Leafy is that it's possible to to appreciate things to a significant degree without necessarily knowing what they are. This is not to say that I would not benefit from knowing more. Rather it's a determination not to let lack of knowledge deter me from exploration. And in the presence of lichens, it's not only that I rarely know what kind of lichens I'm looking at, I find them so science-fictiony I'm almost frightened to think about them.  This, of course, is contradictory but I expect you can cope.

Stepping sideways . . . When I lived in Dorset, I lived by the sea. The natural history interest of the seashore is never ending and even when I went inland, the sea was never far away, not really. And when I was walking by the sea, the green hills of inland Dorset were never far from me either. I wouldn't expect to find a jellyfish on a hilltop, obviously, or honeysuckle rambling over a rock that's submerged at high tide but, broadly speaking, there was an interconnectedness between the various sceneries.

Here in West Yorkshire, I am finding it very different. The hills are steep, the valleys deep. Within a few minutes I am walking between different worlds.

A few days ago, up on Warley Moor, I found masses of tiny butterflies rushing about my feet. None would stay still long enough to photograph and in all their brief pauses they shut their wings. There were tiny, tiny bumblebees as well. Ordinary daisies were a fraction of the size of the daisies I'm used to. And there was an odd heathery plant that had just four pink bells on the top - very understated. The whiteness of the Hare's Tail Cottongrass seedheads had receded and was almost completely gone now. There had been acres of it only a few days before. I'd been told (on iSpot) that the difference between Common Cottongrass and Hare's Tail Cottongrass is that Hare's Tail Cottongrass has only one seedhead on a stem and Common Cottongrass more than one. Apparently the wind and the rain can fuse them so it might be easy to muddle which is which. Definitely these had only one head per stem.  I picked one stem to photograph when I got home. 

First, though, I wanted to photograph a lichen I'd first met a year ago on the little stone bridge I showed you on Day 8 so I gave the seedhead to my companion to look after. He put it in his hat. In his hat! Would you put delicate samples in your hat for safe-keeping? No. I didn't think so. They get squashed. Obviously. I'll need to wait almost a year for another chance. But that's good. Thinking ahead!

So . . . back to today, I began my walk lower down the hill. Not that it feels as if it's down a hill. It feels very high and windswept there. And, on a dry stone wall, were the fruiting bodies of another lichen. Very tiny. Very ethereal.

I think these are 'Pixie Cups' - (Cladonia pyxidata)

There was more than one patch of it.

A difference in the landscape. Less mud than higher on the moor! There are few dwellings on the tops of the moors but lots of people live at this middle height so there are houses and farms, even if they aren't in the picture; and more discernible divisions between the fields.

But still there's further to go. Further down and down into Luddenden valley towards the stream (brook?) at the bottom. The mossy building is half way down the hill. Further round on roughly the same contour is a little stand of trees and yet another kind of lichen on a rock that's part of a fallen wall.

And, eventually reaching the bottom, in a place where it's warm and still and sheltered and green, on a branch across the stream is yet another kind of lichen.

I don't know what any of them are!

What of the tiny butterflies? On the Butterfly Conservation Site where you can get help with IDs, I ticked boxes for 'England', 'Small' 'Orange' and 'Grey'. Up came 'Small Heath'. That was what they looked like. That it seemed, was it! Except . . . it can be found in southern England and I am in the north of England. But the text also says it is widespread so may be that was ok. I read on.

"Occurs on grassland where there are fine grasses, especially in dry, well-drained situations where the sward is short and sparse. Typical habitats include; heathland, downland and coastal dunes, but it is also found on road verges, moorland and in woodland rides."

It wasn't feeling quite 'right'. This was not a 'dry, well-drained situation'. (See the photo of the sky reflected in the puddle above!) There are big yellow notices all over the place warning us to take care not to sink.

Despite it being a very small butterfly, I clicked for 'Large Heath'. 

"The main foodplant is Hare's-tail Cottongrass (Eriophorum vaginatum)" 

Bingo! 

And . . .

"The butterflies breed in open, wet areas where the foodplant grows, this includes habitats such as; lowland raised bogs, upland blanket bogs and damp acidic moorland. Sites are usually below 500m (600m in the far north) and have a base of Sphagnum moss interspersed with the foodplant and abundant Cross-leaved Heath (the main adult nectar source)."

Another hurdle . . . what is 'Cross-leaved Heath'? I go to Google images and Wikepedia (as one does) and . . . it's the tough little plant with the meagre display of pink flowers. So . . . my little butterfly is a Large Heath even though it's a little butterfly.

Very exciting. I've got three layers of habitat, the high moor, the middle and the valley. I've identified a butterfly, a heather (a heath is a heather) a sedge (Hare's Tail Cottongrass is a sedge) heard a cuckoo, inspected several lichens and admired a mossy stone shed.

30 DAYS WILD

Today's Random Act of

Wildness is to

look at moss

and lichen,

listen to a bird,

identify a butterfly

and two plants.

Links:

Listen to a cuckoo on the RSPB site.

Cross-leaved Heath (Erica tetralix) on Wikipedia.

Large Heath Butterfly (Coenonympha tullia) on the Butterfly Conservation site.

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Linking with Nature Notes at Rambling Woods.
And to Our World Tuesday

AN OUTDATED STREET PLANT POST (Should have been posted at the end of April.)

I'm horribly disorganised. When I first wrote this post at the end of April, we were well launched into the first dandelion season of the year. It was freezing cold but there were dandelions everywhere. I need not have worried that I'd miss them when I left Dorset. Not only were they unmissable but in some places nature had arranged them so beautifully it was as if they had been flower-arranged.

There's a surprising amount of countryside in this very built-up Halifax. Even outside the wooded ravines which cut into the town there are reminders of what happens when a tree falls. This fungus is growing on a the remains of a lopped trunk in a car park.

And earlier in the day I'd came across violets on a small patch of earth outside an abandoned house.

Then there are walls. Non-stop walls. Dry stone walls around almost everything: gardens, fields, industrial premises. These are wonderful places for plants to dig their roots into - and I've been surprised how little the walls seem to crumble under such invasion. Of course, I should have put a photographic illustration of this here but I didn't. All a bit of a rush! And since then I've been busy doing the usual excuse type things like digging acres of mare's tail out of my allotment. But the point I was heading to at the time was that not even the flat fronts of buildings can deter a determined fern.

And drains. In Dorset I grew a habit of looking down drains to see what's growing there. Drains rarely disappoint. They are a bit like the shells hermit crabs grab. They look pretty similar on the outside but you never know who or what's lurking inside till you look.

And trees. No urban garden would be complete without trees. I think this is the most spectacular I've come across. Can it be a silver birch?

Sorry for the delay. Someone found my glasses for me. They are gold rimmed which makes them extra difficult to find unless I am already wearing them. But anyone else can lift them up and say 'These?' But other things have been getting between me and Loose and Leafy posts too. Like a plasterer putting up an acoustic wall, local elections in Halifax and civil unrest in Armenia.

We all have backstories!

P.S. I really do recommend that you read about Hermit Crabs.

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WALL PLANTS ON OCTOBER 16TH 2017

You know when the sun went red earlier this week? And the sky went orange? And it was because ex-hurricane Ophelia had brought dust from the Sahara and debris from Iberian wild fires in the swirl of her skirts? It was a very wonderful orange and the atmosphere almost pre-eclipsical and it cast a special and golden glow over what was already a golden autumn.

Naturally just about everyone who owns a camera went out and took pictures.

Yellow leaves looked fantastic but, initially, my camera was keen to over-do the look, to make it seem pretty much as if we were ourselves in the middle of a forest fire or that the end of the world was truly nigh. Indeed, while I was taking a photograph of the sun - with lens pointing straight at it (what a day!) a man walking by stopped to let me know that this strangeness was not caused by humans but it was God's way of telling us the world was about to end. This might be today, tomorrow, five years time, ten years or hundred . . . but end it would . . . and that people who had accepted Jesus into their hearts (hand on chest) would be ok but everyone else would not. He said this in a very cheerful way so perhaps he's hedging his bets on a hundred-year scenario.

I didn't quite subscribe to his end of the world theory but if it were to be the end of the world I was anxious to get my photographs in first. So I think I should be congratulated for patiently and politely waiting for the man to stop warning me of my possibly imminent demise while what I really wanted to do was to capture the red circle which was the sun while it was there.

Previous arrivals of Saharan dust have left gritty deposits of brick red on the roofs and bonnets of cars. And on Monday I assumed the red of the sun and the orange of the light were because sand in the Sahara is red. So I pottered around town thinking about camels and celebrated the light with an ice-cream . . . and fiddled with the settings on my camera . . . and found which colours 'worked' and which were distorted in the eerie atmosphere.

Later, a weather forecaster explained that the reds and oranges were nothing to do with the colours of sand but that debris in the atmosphere was deflecting greens and blues from the rainbow which makes light white. (All science is daft.) But that was later. By then I'd already found I could filter out Ophelia herself and that my camera could turn everything back to 'normal' if it wanted. Or if I wanted. (That's the challenge.) So . . . while photographs of wall plants in this post show what things really looked like on October 16th, the street picture (cars, van, buildings) shows what things look like on ordinary days even though I took it when the light was orange. It's a camera lie.

Clever things cameras. Strange thing light. Funny thing reality.

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To see the red sun, go to my other blog (Message in a Milk Bottle)
The Day the Sun Turned Red - 4 - The Sun
and the preceding posts
The Day the Sun Turned Red - 3 - Leaves
The Day the Sun Turned Red - 2 - Street Light
The Day the Sun Turned Red - 1 - Portrait

HILLS, HALIFAX AND PIECES OF CLOTH

With the trees and hills beyond, and a frilly wooden canopy over the platforms,
Halifax railway station has a delightful 'country' atmosphere to it
which is quite out of keeping with the rest of the town.

I realise I've not been listening. When you ask 'Why have you moved to Halifax?' I've been telling you why I left Dorset - which is quite different.

That we (me and my friends: Esther, Ming, Worthing and Didcott) have landed up in Halifax is nearly by chance. We were looking for a place with more 'culture' immediately on hand and with greater opportunities for employment. We wanted all sorts of new experiences on a modest budget, better transport links to other parts of the UK and to the rest of the world.

Small towns to the north of Manchester were an inspired first choice (we reckoned). Hills and countryside and open air yet with access to theatres, universities, museums, galleries and a fantastic library, a railway with frequent trains and a good bus service. The arrival of the BBC in Salford suggested an influx of interesting people and a property market in which one could hope the value of a house would rise. From there we worked outwards . . . all along the Calder Valley till we arrived at Halifax - which is closer to Leeds than to Manchester but that's what happens with journeys. You aim for one place and land up in another! . . . And all the while knowing nothing about Halifax except that it has a building society.

The steep hills and ravines of Halifax mean there are always hills which cannot be built on.
So for all that there are few gardens, there are masses and masses of trees.

Some friends, surprised at our choice of new home readily recited 'Hull, Hell and Halifax' - the insinuation being that Hull and Halifax and Hell are all pretty awful places to live; and that most people would prefer to live anywhere but in any of them - especially if one could live in Dorset instead. One friend who lived in Halifax for a while but moved away spoke of being overwhelmed by the decadence of the area - an odd word to use. He wasn't talking about immoral excess but physical decay. I'm glad he said - 'decadence'. It's starker; stronger than dilapidation. It suggests there's something wrong needing to be put right. An opportunity for change rather than a slide into nothingness.

During the morning of the opening of the restored Piece Hall in Halifax.
By late afternoon, more than seventeen thousand people had come to see it
and to visit some of the first of the 315 small shops and cafes.
(I think it's 315!)

Having listed what we were looking for, and having eliminated places nearer Manchester for being too expensive or with houses too small or for the countryside being too flat (or too hilly) we alighted on Halifax. And one of the reasons we thought it might be an exciting place to come is that it seems to have a very interesting town council - one brave enough and imaginative enough to be investing millions into restoring a massive 'Piece Hall' (a 'piece hall' is where hand weavers in the seventeenth century went to sell their 'pieces' of cloth) so they could open it to traders of the modern kind who need small shops rather than huge retail spaces. And they are building a large and brand new library next to it and have found the money to transform and refurbish its adjoining arts centre and theatre and to anticipate that huge outdoor events will take place in the parade ground sized courtyard in the middle.

A first-aider on duty outside the medical room, late in the day at the Piece Hall.
Note the lights set into the ground in the courtyard below and the hills beyond.

So when we set off on the morning of August 1st 2017 to hear the bell ring for the opening of trade I had almost as much resting on the event as the organisers themselves. I've been telling everyont this is the place you should come if you want to witness a cultural renaissance. Would fifty people turn up or five hundred? I don't know what the final tally was but by late afternoon there had been more than seventeen thousand visitors. The bustle and interest was tremendous. I asked a woman standing next to me, leaning over one of the stone balustrades in the lower gallery, whether she was surprised by the turnout. 'Not at all!' she said. "We want to see what we've got for our money.'

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