Only male blackbirds are actually black. The females are brown. The difference in appearance between males and females is known as sexual dimorphism and is an evolutionary strategy by the males to get noticed more by females at the cost of decreased chances of survival.
Bluebells are very vulnerable to trampling. The reason for this is that when their leaves emerge in the early part of the year, they are powered by the stored sugars in their bulbs. Sunlight is very limited at this time of the year and even more so in the shady places where they grow. In order to survive, they then need to photosynthesise flat-out to store enough starch in the bulb for next year's growth. If a bluebell’s leaves are crushed, it cannot photosynthesise and and doesn't have enough reserves left in its bulb to grow new ones. It's therefore important to stick to footpaths in bluebell woodland and best to take photos with a zoom lens from there as wandering around in the bluebells to take photos will inadvertently kill them.
Himalayan Balsam is a tall plant with very pretty pink flowers that can often be seen lining footpaths in the summer and early autumn. It was introduced as an ornamental species in 1839 and unfortunately the plant is now a major ecological problem. It can grow from a seed to 9ft high in a few months, forming dense thickets and wiping out other plant species. It is also extremely invasive as the seed pods open explosively, launching around 800 seeds per plant up to 7 metres and the seeds are also adapted to travel by water. It is a nuisance on riverbanks as its roots are shallow and allow the sediment to become easily eroded into the river. It can be identified by its bright pink flowers and it has a characteristic sweet smell.
The spore from a fern doesn't grow into a fern. Instead it grows into an organism resembling a liverwort (i.e. a small green blob). Instead of producing spores, these produce eggs and also sperm which they interchange with neighbouring blobs to get a new mix of genes. The fertilised egg grows into a new fern and so this alternating process of ferns and blobs repeats.
The first record of the settlement of Bury is from around 1280. The name is a reference to the nearby hillfort (Bury Castle) but is in the English rather than Cornish language so the name is likely to date from after the Norman conquest when the Cornish language was displaced by Mediaeval English amongst the landowning classes. Whether the settlement also dated from this time or whether it was a "rebrand" of a previously Cornish name is not known.
Damselfly eggs hatch not into damselflies but water-living nymphs which look a bit like a dull-coloured damselfly with a 3-forked tail instead of wings. The tail is actually a set of gills used to breath underwater. When the larva is fully developed, it climbs out of the water on a stem or rock. Its skin then splits open and a damselfly emerges with wings which need to be inflated and dry before it can fly.
Willow trees are usually found in wet places including riverbanks and waterlogged ground. Common species include grey willow and goat willow but these often hybridise so they are more often known by the more broad-brush collective term "pussy willows" (due to their catkins). In January the fluffy, grey male catkins appear and and turn bright yellow in March when they release their pollen. Then in April, the fertilised female catkins develop into woolly seeds. In early May, air can be filled with the downy seeds that look a bit like dandelion seeds.
If there are sheep in the field and you have a dog, make sure it's securely on its lead (sheep are prone to panic and injuring themselves even if a dog is just being inquisitive). If the sheep start bleating, this means they are scared and they are liable to panic.
If there are pregnant sheep in the field, be particularly sensitive as a scare can cause a miscarriage. If there are sheep in the field with lambs, avoid approaching them closely, making loud noises or walking between a lamb and its mother, as you may provoke the mother to defend her young.
Sheep may look cute but if provoked they can cause serious injury (hence the verb "to ram"). Generally, the best plan is to walk quietly along the hedges and they will move away or ignore you.
Moles are solitary except when breeding so a network of tunnels is occupied by a single mole. Moles typically live for around 3 years and when a mole dies, its tunnel network is often inherited by one of its offspring. Thus the expanding estate can be passed down through several generations. In wetland areas where there is no gradient available to retreat uphill from rising water, moles construct a large mound protruding around half a metre above the ground to act as an emergency flood shelter.
Greater stitchwort and lesser stitchwort both grow in similar places but they are fairly easy to tell apart. The flowers of greater stitchwort are larger (2-3cm across whereas lesser stitchwort flowers are often less than 1cm across) and the petals are rounded at the tips (lesser stitchwort petals have pointy ends). Greater stitchwort also flowers earlier in the year (from mid-March) although the flowering times of the two species do overlap in May.
The UK is one of the windiest places in Europe and considered as one of the best places in the world for wind power. Around a quarter of the UK's energy already comes from wind power (higher during windy months) and it is now one of the cheapest sources of electricity. Wind turbines last for about 20-25 years until the moving parts wear out and they need to be replaced.
Hoverflies are important pollinators and the larvae of some species eat crop-damaging aphids and leaf-hoppers, so they are doubly useful to farmers and gardeners. By planting species known to attract hoverflies (such as chamomile) near plants prone to aphid infestations, hoverflies can be used as a natural and free means of reducing aphids.
Snowdrops are one of the earliest plants to flower. They use energy stored in their bulbs to generate leaves and flowers during winter, whilst other plants without an energy reserve cannot compete. The downside to flowering so early is that pollinating insects are more scarce, so rather than relying exclusively on seeds, they also spread through bulb division.
Daffodils were originally called asphodels (lumped together with the other plants that are now called asphodels). A pronunciation variation was "affodell". No-one is quite sure how the initial "d" was added - perhaps "the asphodel" by someone with a cold ("d affodel").
Gardeners have known for a long time that acidic soils lead to blue hydrangea flowers whereas alkaline soils lead to pink flowers. Biochemists have found that aluminium is the thing that actually turns the pigment in hydrangeas blue. Acidic soils free-up aluminium already in the soil to be absorbed by the plant. Within the plant, aluminium combines with a normally-red pigment to turn it blue. Varieties of hydrangeas have been bred with a higher concentration of the pigment and these have more vivid colours (i.e. red rather than pink). Similarly varieties with lower concentrations of the pigment have been cultivated to create pastel colours.
Since Victorian times, it's been common practice for gardeners to use aluminium sulphate to turn their hydrangeas blue (without necessarily knowing why) but this has become less popular in recent years as aluminium sulphate is extremely harmful to aquatic life. Twenty tonnes was accidentally deposited into Camelford's drinking water supply in 1988 which was hastily flushed into the Camel river system, killing many fish.
Tea is made from the leaves of one species of camellia which has been bred for many years to hone qualities considered desirable for tea. However, the leaves of many other camellias can be used to produce a similar beverage and tea from another camellia species is popular in some parts of Japan.
The current house mostly dates from the 18th and 19th Century although one large chimney may be a relic of an earlier structure.
The first record of the settlement is in the Domesday survey of 1086. The landowner (with the Celtic name Aelmer) from before the Norman Conquest wasn't replaced and continued to be responsible for the land. Land included 50 acres of pasture and 40 acres of woodland. The population included 3 villagers, 7 smallholders and 3 slaves. 10 goats were also given their own mention.
Later in history, the manor belonged to the Roscarrock family (associated with Port Isaac) and then to the Robartes family of Lanhydrock.
Honey made with rhododendron pollen can be poisonous to humans, causing severe low blood pressure and low heart rate if enough is eaten. Rhododendron honey is used in Nepal as a hallucinogenic drug.
Garlic mustard is a member of the cabbage family. It is edible and the leaves tastes mildly of garlic but become more bitter as they mature.
It is also known as hedge garlic or Jack-by-the-hedge as it likes shady places. The "Jack" is a reference to the devil (probably by someone not a fan of garlic).
The young leaves look a bit like stinging nettles but are brighter green. As the leaves get larger, they get less toothed and are more heart-shaped. It has white flowers in April and early May with 4 small petals forming a cross.
There are over 30,000 miles (more than the distance around the earth) of hedges in Cornwall, many of which are based on distinctive local styles of stone walling. Consequently, often what a Cornish person calls a "hedge", most people from outside the county do not recognise as a hedge, resulting in some foreign translation needed for walk directions.
Around 50% of the hedgerows in the UK have been lost since the Second World War. Although intentional removal has dramatically reduced, lack of maintenance and damage from mechanical cutting techniques such as flailing are still causing deterioration of the remaining hedgerows.
Some Cornish hedges are thought to be more than 4,000 years old, making them some of the oldest human-built structures in the world that have been in continuous use for their original purpose. They act as vital miniature nature reserves and wildlife corridors that link together other green spaces. This supports hundreds of species of plants and tens of thousands of insect species, many of which are vital pollinators for arable crops.
Insects are the most diverse group of organisms with around 900,000 known living species. This makes up 80% of all the world's known species. However it is thought that even today there are still more unknown species than known ones with estimates of the total number of insect species in the range 2 - 30 million.
Celandine flowers close each night and open each morning. This is controlled by a circadian rhythm, so they really are "going to sleep" at night and "waking up in the morning". It is likely that this has arisen to protect the internals of the flowers from any frost during the night as they begin flowering in March when frosts are still common.
Grey squirrels were introduced to the UK from the USA in the late 19th Century and within decades they had replaced the native red squirrel in most parts of the country.
The Warleggan river is also known as the River Bedalder. It is a tributary of the River Fowey, which it joins downriver of Trago Mills in the Glynn Valley. The source is on Hawkstor Downs on Bodmin Moor on the north side of the A30 and it runs through Temple and beside the Glynn Valley China Clay works before reaching Warleggan.
Mosses reproduce with tiny spores rather than seeds. Many mosses use wind to carry their spores and produce tiny stalks with the spore-releasing equipment on the top in order to catch the wind - these can be seen as thread-like structures standing up from the moss. These spore-releasing devices often have a ring of teeth around the edge (visible with a magnifying glass) to control the release of the spores, allowing them to be released gradually over a period of time to catch gusts of wind of different speeds and in different directions.
The chimney that can be seen through the trees and possibly also the concrete base in the meadow are likely to have been associated with the later working period of Wheal Whisper.
A mine near the river at Treveddoe, known as Wheal Whisper, was known to have been worked since at least 1718, initially for tin and later for copper. The mine was relatively shallow and was excavated from the surface to create a cavern rather than via surface shafts. A system of tramways was used to remove the waste material and also the ore for crushing and then processing on a dressing floor in the valley. Waterwheels were used to provide power for raising the ore, crushing it and for pumping water from the deeper areas of the workings into a drainage adit.
Primrose seeds are quite large and therefore, due to their weight, don't travel far from the plant. This causes a clump of primroses to spread out very slowly over time and means it takes a long time for primroses to colonise new areas. This makes large carpets of primroses a very good indicator of ancient woodland where they would have had many hundreds of years to spread out.
There are several species of Woodrush in the UK that all look fairly similar. They are most noticeable in woodland where they often form dense mats - hence the name.
Woodrush has green pointed leaves which can be mistaken for bluebell leaves when there are no flowers to provide an obvious difference (woodrush flowers are unexciting small brown things that look a bit like grass seed). To tell the leaves apart, woodrush leaves taper steadily to a sharp point whereas bluebell leaves are relatively straight for most of their length and only taper near the end (like a broadsword). Bluebell leaves are also slightly blue-green whereas woodrush is a glossy vibrant green.
When an area of land is left alone by humans it undergoes a natural process of succession as taller plants out-compete the shorter ones for light. Bare land is first colonised by pioneer species including mosses and annual plants such as rosebay willowherb. Perennial plants including grasses can then grow thanks to the nutrients and moisture retention created by the pioneer species. Next, woody shrubs are able to grow higher than their herbaceous cousins and therefore steal the sunlight. Finally tall trees form a mature forest, sometimes known as "climax forest" as it's at the end of the chain of succession. Factors such as climate and minerals govern which species are involved in the succession chain for a particular area (e.g. it may end in conifer forests in alpine regions whereas lowland climax forests are usually hardwood).
Two butterflies commonly found in fields and on the coast are the Meadow Brown and Gatekeeper (also known as the "Hedge Brown"). These are both orange and brown and have a black-and-white spot on each wingtip. Gatekeepers normally have a double white dot on each black spot whereas meadow brown usually just have the one.
Another common brown butterfly found in both woodland and along hedgerows is the Speckled Wood. It also has a black-and-white spot on the wingtips but the wings are also patterned with lighter dots (as in the photo) and there are more spots on the rear of the wings.
The spots are there to confuse predators such as birds who at a quick glance might see them as a pair of eyes. The location of the rings at the wingtips give the impression that a creature with eyes that far apart must be quite big and may eat birds!
The Ramblers Association and National Farmers Union suggest some "dos and don'ts" for walkers which we've collated with some info from the local Countryside Access Team.
Do
Don't
There are over 4,000 farms in Cornwall covering over a quarter of a million hectares. Over 70% of Cornwall's land is farmed.
The first record of Treveddoe is from 1260 as Trevedou. The name is Cornish and means something along the lines of "farm with birch trees". Given the Cornish language name, the settlement is likely to date from the Early Mediaeval period.
An E-shaped mansion built around 1629 stood here until the early 20th Century. Part of it had been removed by 1909 and by 1916 the rest was demolished although a few bits of old wall may remain.
Cuckooflower is often found in meadows and produces very pale lilac, sometimes virtually white, flowers with 4 petals.
The name is based on the flowering time coinciding with the arrival of cuckoos.
The plant is also known as lady's smock. There are various theories about that name ranging from the shape of the flowers to springtime activities in meadows involving undergarments. "smock" was also once a slang word for a woman of loose morals and so it's possible it was first used this way and the "lady's" was added later when the original meaning of the word had been lost.
Dandelions are dispersed very effectively by the wind. The tiny parachute-like seeds can travel around five miles. Each plant can live for about 10 years and produces several thousand seeds each year.
There are several quite common plants (catsear, hawkbit and hawksbeard) which all have yellow flowers similar to dandelion. Their main flowering period is later in the summer (late June and through July) than dandelion which itself peaks in April-May. If you want to have a crack and figuring out exactly which you are looking at, the leaves offer a good clue.
Catsear is the most common, especially along the coast, and is the easiest one to tell apart as the leaves are hairy (hence the name).
Hawkbit and hawksbeard both have non-hairy, deeply toothed leaves like dandelion but the leaves are narrower than dandelion. Hawksbeard has very well-defined "shark teeth" along most of the stem leading to the solid patch of leaf on the tip that all three have - these teeth are as wide as the widest part of the leaf. In hawkbit, these teeth are so tiny that the stem is nearly bare for about half its length.
One other plant with flowers similar to the dandelion is the sow thistle but this is easily recognised by its spiky thistle-like leaves.
A DEFRA survey recorded over 300,000 cows in Cornwall (a lot of moo is needed for the cheese and clotted cream produced in Cornwall) so there's a good chance of encountering some in grassy fields, but also on open moorland and sometimes for conservation grazing on the coast path too. Around 70% of agricultural land in Cornwall is used for grazing and agricultural land occupies over 70% of Cornwall's land area.
Based on the almost circular shape of Warleggan churchyard, it is thought likely that it might be on the site of an Early Mediaeval Celtic religious settlement.
The oldest surviving parts of Warleggan church date from the 13th Century. Around the late 14th-15th Centuries, a smaller Norman church was enlarged which including adding a tower with a spire. In 1818, the spire was destroyed by lightning and the church underwent a fairly severe Victorian restoration later in the 19th Century.
The mediaeval cross in the churchyard was found at Carburrow where it was being used as a gatepost.
A 2009 film named "A Congregation of Ghosts" is about the eccentric last resident vicar of Warleggan who surrounded the vicarage with barbed wire and preached to an empty church with pews containing name cards for each of his parishioners!
Green alkanet is a member of the forget-me-not family and has small but striking blue 5 petal flowers with white centres. The plants are often around 2ft tall by the time they are flowering, making them one of the taller plants around in April and they also have hairy leaves that can cause skin irritation in some people.
Green alkanet is native to the western part of the Mediterranean region and prefers sunny spots. It was introduced to the UK around the start of the 18th Century and fairly quickly escaped into the wild where it has become naturalised. As a garden weed, its brittle tap roots make it tricky to eradicate.
The name "alkanet" derives from the old Arabic word for Henna. The "green" in the name is to distinguish it from dyer's alkanet (hence the Henna), to which it is related but minus the dye. The scientific name for green alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens) is based on the Greek for "five tongues" (a reference to the flowers) and Latin for "evergreen" (as the plant often over-winters as a rosette of leaves).
Goosegrass is also known as cleavers due to the ability of the seeds to attach to clothing or animals. The use of "to cleave" meaning "to adhere" has Saxon origins but has become less common in recent years perhaps due to the confusion of having a more well-known meaning which is virtually the opposite. A Cornish dialect name, recorded as cliders in Victorian times, is likely to be a corruption of this. Other common names include sticky willy.
A problem with rhododendrons is that they kill bees. Rhododendron nectar is highly toxic to honeybees, killing them within hours. Some other bee species such as mining bees are also adversely affected. Bumblebees seem to be unaffected though.
Where tracks met in a T-junction, this presented a challenge for horses and carts as these didn't have a tight turning circle. The triangular islands often visible on junctions of tracks and small lanes today were formed by the cartwheels cutting the corners of the junction. Eventually these cut corners were formalised as surfaced tracks with a grassy triangular island in the centre.
The Chronicles of Narnia was conceived by C.S. Lewis in 1939 but the first book - The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe - was not published until 1950, with 6 more books following in 6 consecutive years. The seven book series has been in continuous publication since it was written, selling over 100 million copies.
The name Narnia itself is derived from Narni - a little Italian town. C.S. Lewis was studying Classics and had an atlas of the ancient world. The map of ancient Italy, written in Latin, included Narnia (the Latinised version of Narni) which C.S Lewis had underlined in his copy.
Young beech leaves can be used as a salad vegetable, which are described as being similar to a mild cabbage, though much softer in texture. Older leaves are a bit chewy, as you'd expect.
A settlement of Yetta was recorded in 1434. The name is mediaeval English (rather than Cornish) and means "at the gate". It's thought that may be a reference to its location on the edge of Treslea Downs.
Like other members of the pea family, gorse produces its seeds in pods. The seeds are ejected with a popping sound when pods split open in hot weather. This can catapult the seeds up to five metres. The plants are able to live 30 years and survive sub-zero temperatures, the seeds can withstand fire and remain viable in the soil for 30 years.
Lousewort is found on heathland and is recognisable in spring by its small pink flowers which have a "hood" above 3 lower petals.
The plant is semi-parasitic, taking nutrients and water from the roots of other plants and this is one possible explanation for the origin of the name.
The name is also associated with a belief that livestock would acquire lice if they ate the plant. Many mediaeval flora/fauna beliefs were based on jumping to a (often bonkers) conclusion based on visual resemblance, so it's possible that the hood shape of the flower was likened to a louse.
The little yellow flowers with four petals all over the moor in July are tormentil (Potentilla erecta). Its common names include Bloodroot and Flesh and Blood because roots yield a red dye which is still used as an ingredient for artists' colours (tormentil red). The roots also have very a high tannin content and have even been used to tan leather. Extracts from the plant have been widely used in folk medicine and is it still used as a remedy for diarrhoea and as a lotion for skin sores.
The word "downs" may seem strange for hilly moorland areas which are, if anything, "up". The reason is that it's derived from the Old English word dun meaning hill or moor which itself stems from the Celtic word din for hillfort (e.g. Castle-an-dinas and London). The word "dune" applied to sand is from similar origins but may have come from the original Celtic via Dutch and French where the meaning is "sand hill" rather than "moorland".
Bilberries (known in Cornwall as 'erts) are closely related to blueberries. The fruits are much smaller but the flavour is more intense.
Like heather, bilberry is a member of the Ericaceae family and fungi in its roots help it extract nitrogen from acidic soils. Bilberries are therefore typically found on moorland where there is less competition from other plants.
Although Cornwall is home to the village of Bilberry (near Bugle), the name is not thought to be anything to do with the plant - more likely the "bury" relates to some form of ancient earthwork.
It is thought that rumours that the RAF used bilberries and carrots to improve night vision of bomber pilots were an elaborate decoy to conceal that Britain had radar which is what in reality made the pilots more effective.
The magpie is a member of the crow family and like other crows is omnivorous, feeding on pretty much anything it can find although it prefers high energy foods. Magpies spend most of their life in a 6 mile radius of where they were born and live in loose social groups. They will form gangs and use complex social strategies for hunting and tackling predators. Names for a group of magpies include a "tiding", "charm" and "chatter" (the latter reflecting their social communication).
The magpie is believed to be one of the most intelligent of all animals. The area of its brain used for higher cognitive function is approximately the same in its relative size as in chimpanzees and humans. Magpies can count, imitate human voices, recognise themselves in a mirror and have been observed regularly using tools to keep their cages clean. It has even been suggested that magpies may feel complex emotions, including grief.
Since members of the crow family will eat the eggs and chicks of other birds, there has been concern that magpies might have an effect on the songbird population. However, an extensive study by the British Trust for Ornithology using 35 years of data found that the presence of magpies appeared to have no measurable effect on songbird numbers. It is thought that availability of food and suitable nesting sites are probably the main factors limiting songbird populations. Hedgerows are a particularly important habitat.
The folklore about magpies collecting shiny objects has been shown to be an incorrect myth. A scientific study found that magpies are actually scared of shiny objects and actively avoid them.
Even up to the 16th Century, magpies were simply known as "pies" from the Old French word pie (related to the Latin word for magpie - pica). The term "pied" meaning "black-and-white" (as in pied wagtail) is from the magpie's colouration. It's also possible that the pastry thing we now know as a pie (which can be traced back to Mediaeval Latin) was named after the magpie. It has been speculated that the assortment of ingredients in the pastry crust was likened to objects collected in a magpie nest. The "mag" in the modern name is a (somewhat sexist) mediaeval slang word for someone who chatters, based on the name Margaret.
For such a widespread tree, the oak is surprisingly inefficient at reproducing naturally. It can take 50 years before the tree has its first crop of acorns and even then, the overwhelming majority of the acorns that it drops are eaten by animals or simply rot on the ground. Squirrels play an important part by burying acorns and occasionally forgetting a few which have a much better chance of growing than on the surface.
The older an oak tree becomes, the more acorns it produces. A 70-80 year old tree can produce thousands. Acorns are high in carbohydrates and as well as being a staple food for squirrels, they are also a really important food for deer and make up a quarter of their diet in the autumn.
Tannins are natural preservatives. The reason why red wine keeps much longer than white is that the grape skins that give the red colour also contain tannins. Oak leaves, wood and acorns all contain a high level of tannins. When wine is aged in oak, the wooden barrels release more preservative tannins into their contents.
The (leather) "tanning" process got its name as it involved extracting the tannins from acorns or oak bark and soaking these into animal hides over 1-2 years to preserve them. From the brown oak juice containing the tannins, the colour "tan" was named and from this the expression "sun tan" arose.
The high levels of tannins in oak make large amounts of oak leaves or acorns poisonous to cattle, horses, sheep, and even goats, but not to pigs as they were domesticated from wild boar which were adapted to foraging in the oak forests, like deer. Acorns were also eaten by people in times of famine. The acorns were soaked in water first to leech out the bitter tannins and could then be made into flour.
Wood from the oak has a lower density than water (so it floats) but has a great strength and hardness, and is very resistant to insect and fungal attack because of its high tannin content. This made it perfect for shipbuilding.
Oak was often associated with the gods of thunder as it was often split by lightning, probably because an oak is often the tallest tree in the area. Oak was also the sacred wood burnt by the druids for their mid-summer sacrifice.
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