Nature

All I Want for Christmas Is a Beetle

IF YOU ARE OLD ENOUGH TO REMEMBER DORA BRYAN SINGING THAT SONG IN 1963 (ALTHOUGH OF COURSE SHE WANTED A BEATLE), WELCOME TO THE TWILIGHT NATURALISTS’ CLUB!

By Mike George

and expertise you will need, and speaking from my own experience, your love of getting out into the country and down on your knees to examine a wayward bug is lessening as time passes. For the rest of you, though, field biology may well be a new and fascinating pursuit, but you may be bewildered by the array of expensive stuff you seem to need to enhance the experience. Here is my strongly biased list of what is hot and what is not. When you are starting off, you need easyaccess information. Wait until your interest and preferences develop – as they will; you cannot encompass all aspects of biology in depth. Then you can buy specialist books to tell you more. For now you just want to identify things and get a little knowledge about them. I am assuming that you cannot easily read technical French, so the books are in English. Where to my knowledge a French version or equivalent exists, I will say so. Mike George is our regular contributor on wildlife and the countryside in France. He is a geologist and naturalist, living in the Jurassic area of

You probably have all the equipment BOOKS the Charente

Wild Animals. Dorling Kindersley (DK) Pocket Nature series.

Excellent for identification and basic information. A French edition exists which is a direct translation.

Insects of Britain and Northern Europe. Collins Field Guide

series. An old reliable for the things you are likely to see. In French, Guide Photo des Insects (Guide Delachaux series) is perhaps more comprehensive, but less easy to use. Also in French, Les

Petites Bêtes (Le Guide Nature

series) is good. There are many books

Wild Animals. DK Pocket Nature series. Not detailed, but packed with useful information and ideal for identifying wild animals. An exact translation exists in French.

Good copies of the books featured can be obtained secondhand at between 10€-20€, with a bit of searching BOOKS My well-loved copy! Insects of Britain and Northern Europe, Collins Field Guide & Guide Photo des Insects & Les Petites Bêtes A selection of insect books in French and English. Even battered second-hand editions are useful!

The Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe. Collins. Two editions of the standard Collins wildflower guide - the botanist's standby for decades

Birds of Britain and Northern Europe. Collins Field Guide series. Possibly the best bird recognition book available.

Notebook Always carry your notebook with you - it need not be large - and use a soft pencil, which will not run in the rain (it will be raining)

specialising in particular orders of insects such as butterflies, dragonflies, beetles etc. in both languages.

The Wild Flowers of Britain and

Northern Europe. Collins. A good guide with a useful “finder” key. French books exist (eg “Quelle est donc cette fleur?”).

Birds of Britain and Northern

Europe. Collins Field Guide

series. The old stand-by, but easy to use. French books exist in profusion –

Guide Delachaux series has a selection. These are the books I find myself using regularly. You may also need one on trees. Of course, if you are computer savvy, you can get a load of information from the Internet. I have myself often used a website which harnesses a variant of image analysis and comparison software to identify wild flowers from photographs. It should be said that books in English tend to use exquisite paintings of insects plants etc., while French books use photographs. There are for and against on this. The paintings are easier to use, but show the specimen in a state you are never likely to see in the wild. Butterflies are beautifully displayed, top and underside views, without a nick or a patch of missing scales. This must be born in mind when comparing your specimen.

EQUIPMENT The next expensive thing is equipment. What do you really need and what can you do without? First and foremost you will need a notebook. In this you will note down what you see, and if you need to identify it, all the diagnostic details you need. You will learn that you cannot overlook any detail. Remember to note where you saw it, too, and the surroundings and conditions.

500€

3.5X - 90X binocular stereo boom microscope This is a very versatile model, with adjustable positioning for comfort and ease of use. Comes with its own attached lighting - very useful!

All prices shown are correct at the time of printing and are subject to change

190€ Swift S306 S-20-2L binocular microscope This is a much more comfortable microscope to use, with its angled eyepieces. A reliable manufacturer.

85€

BINOCULAR MICROSCOPES

WLL 20X Multi-Purpose Portable Binocular Stereo Microscope (£76.64). Slightly more up-market but still pretty basic.

AmScope-KIDS SE120 20X Cordless LED Portable Binocular Stereo Microscope This is a good starter model. 55€

Another indispensable item is a magnifying glass. I don’t expect you to crawl through the grass-stems with a huge Sherlock Holmes model. What you need is what the experts call a loupe. This is a small glass which folds into a protective cover, is a few centimetres long at most and slips into a pocket or hangs on a lanyard round your neck. The most convenient power is 10x. The only problem is that you will need to master the technique of holding the loupe up close to your eye to get a sufficient field of view. If you buy from an optician, get the seller to demonstrate how to use it properly. Many budding naturalists yearn for a microscope. I certainly did! However, when you get one, you will find that it is in fact not really suitable for the average nature-spotter. The standard monocular microscope uses transmitted light, that is, the light is directed through the specimen and up a tube to the eye. To use this properly, you need to mount the specimen permanently on a slide. The only time you can really use it without careful preparation is to look at a drop of pondwater or a drop of blood. The interest rapidly palls. If you want to study rocks or we are blessed with palm-size digital crystals, an ordinary microscope is not cameras with features we oldies could only suitable, and specimen preparation is very dream of. And you can instantly check if costly and time-consuming. Believe me, you got a good picture and re-take it if you I’ve done it! didn’t. Do get one that has a wide-ranging Far better is a binocular dissectingtype microscope. Now this doesn’t mean I am expecting you to dissect creatures – that’s the last thing I’d suggest. The advantage is that you view zoom, good close-focus and manual focussing if possible. This will save the fag of writing a full description of anything you don’t recognise. Besides, you always overlook one vital diagnostic feature. the specimens in reflected light, using I must say my cynical views on both eyes so you get depth and shape smartphones as cameras have recently information, and you don’t have to kill the been modified. I had assumed they were specimen to look at it. If it is fast-moving, only good enough to capture the newimprison it temporarily fangled “selfie”, but I in a Perspex container. Now we are blessed with have recently seen a It is even better for palm-size digital cameras couple of snapshots of things that do not move with features we oldies wildlife – a fly and a around, such as rocks and crystals. Such could only dream of salamander, both taken by nonmicroscopes can be specialists – which costly, heavy and unwieldy, and require allowed for close study and secure you to bring the specimen home to study, identification. So it is worth bearing in but you will learn infinitely more. mind, but I am still not going to rush out More useful than this is a good camera. and buy one. Even in the days of film, no self-respecting Binoculars are needed if you are doing a naturalist would have been seen without lot of field-work, especially bird-watching. his SLR or his Leica close-up camera. Now You have two choices – wide-objective or

Tinxi Jewellers Lens 10 X 21mm Loupe Eye Magnifier.

This is a good, basic jeweller's 10€ loupe. Don't go for anything stronger than 10x. You should be able to buy one at a good optician's shop. Ask them to show you MAGNIFIER how to use it.

280€

CAMERAS

600€

Samsung Galaxy Phone A51 Nikon Coolpix S3500 / Nikon DLSR It’s worth checking out the secondhand market for cheaper alternatives to paying full price for brand new.

Veins of precious white opal invading the local rockBINOCULARS

75€

Olympus 118755 8 x 40 DPSI Binocular

These two have identical and ideal magnification and light-gathering properties - choose which one suits you. But try before you buy!

55€

FAGavin 8 x 40 Binoculars HD Wide Angle 48mm Objective Lens

small size. A wide objective collects light – a binocular with a 50 diameter objective makes dusk look like full daylight, and the instrument can easily double as a starter-viewer for amateur astronomy. Go for 7x50 or 8x50 – any more than 8 times magnification and you will not be able to hold it steady enough by hand. The only problem is they tend to be heavy. Small-size binoculars used to be too dark to be really useful in anything but full sunlight, but new lens technology has vastly improved their light-usage. Always try out binoculars before you buy, to check for good focus, proper coincidence of images, colour correction and focussing range. The focus should run from just beyond infinity to quite close in. Strangely the small binoculars seem better at close-work. If you want to use it to study insects, you need a closefocus of about 1 – 1.5 metres. What else you buy really depends upon what interests you. Some people have had enormous fun connecting small low-light cameras to their computers to record what wildlife passes through their garden after dark. Others have invested in night-vision technology and keep watch themselves. If you are mad-keen to learn which bats frequent your garden, you will need a bat detector, which uses a clever form of sound-manipulation to render the ultrasonic squeaks of the bats into audible frequencies in real-time. This sounds like magic, and therefore costs money. I wondered how much, and discovered that a basic one cost about €200 and prices climbed well into the thousand euro band. Further reading revealed that the “basic” one was quite hard to use and even harder to interpret. If you want something that says, “That’s a Daubenton’s Bat; that’s a Brown Longeared Bat; ...”, it will cost you a large slice of your pension. I decided just to enjoy my bats in their anonymity.

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas. Mark the things you need and leave the your copy of etcetera magazine lying around where your family members can see them….

What’s happening in December

The weather this year has been seriously weird. Frost in April, drought in August and September, torrential rain in October. This has resulted in poor yields of fruit, nuts and fungi, although the warmth of summer did cheer us up during the Covid 19 depression. Now we have a lockdown or restricted Christmas to look forward to! Well, it will be something new to experience. Put up your decorations so everybody passing your home can see them – show the World we’re still here! The restrictions might cut down on the family gatherings, I guess, which will be a sadness to many but, I suspect, a relief to some. I shall be disappointed not to see the London fireworks on TV at New Year. Still, at least if all goes well I should see the New Year, which for a while was in some doubt! Good old French health service! Our hapless birds become even more visible now the leaves are off the trees. Sadly to cats and other predators as well as to us. Please don’t forget to feed them. Every little helps at this season.

Again, I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy, healthy, safe and Covid-free New Year. Mike

Mistletoe Hung in the Castle Hall

SO BEGINS A TRAGIC AND MOURNFUL SONG ABOUT A Mike George is our regularWEDDING DAY AND A LOST BRIDE, THE SORT OF DITTY contributor on THE VICTORIANS LOVED, ESPECIALLY AT CHRISTMAS wildlife and the countryside in France. He is a geologist and naturalist, living in But what is the significance of mistletoe, and where indeed does it fit Mistletoe has been regarded as something special for millennia. We know that the By Mike George the Jurassic area of the Charente into the scheme of things? Ancient Greeks regarded it as a fertility Mistletoe is a very odd plant indeed. It is halfway between a “proper” plant and a parasite. It is green, and can make its own nutrients by photosynthesis, the same as a normal, soil-rooted plant, but it draws additional sustenance from the tree on which it grows through a speciallyadapted root that finds its way into the phloem or water-carrying system of the tree and absorbs some of the nutrients that that is carrying. Only part of the nutrient is taken, but it can weaken the tree, especially if the tree is heavily infested. symbol, as did the Romans. The latter used it to decorate their houses at the festival of Saturnalia. The most famous adherents of mistletoe were the Celts and their Druidic priesthood. They regarded it as a magic plant, which could aid in all sorts of ceremonies and treatments. They found it on many types of trees, but only very rarely on Oak. Therefore any mistletoe on an Oak-tree was very soughtafter as being particularly efficacious. According to Roman historians, it was gathered with a gold-bladed knife or sickle, and caught on a fabric sheet before it could touch the ground. These Roman made a spear (or possibly an arrow) of mistletoe, with which he succeeded in arranging the killing of Baldur. This was, in Norse mythology, the beginning of the slide downhill to Ragnarok, the final battle that would destroy the gods. When Christianity came along, one way it tried to soften the trauma of conversion from paganism was to make up new myths to explain the parts plants played in the unfolding of the Christian message. They were on a pretty good wicket with The plant is spread mainly by birds, which eat the sticky seeds. Certain birds like the Mistle Thrush (which takes its name from the Mistletoe) are immune from the plant’s toxins. They cannot eat the hard seed, so either wipe it off on the bough where the tacky seed-pulp causes it to stay, or it passes though the bird’s digestive tract and emerges in the droppings. This is believed to explain the plant’s odd name. There is some disagreement, but the majority of etymologists derive “mistle” from the Anglo-Saxon for excrement, with “toe” deriving from the word for twig. At one time it was thought that the dung-route was the only way to produce a viable seed. This is now known not to be true, though a dung-carried seed will germinate more rapidly. Strangely, one of the only commercial uses for mistletoe (apart from charging exorbitant prices as a Christmas decoration) was that for centuries the seed-pulp was used to make bird-lime, a sticky substance that was spread on treetwigs to catch birds. There is even an old Latin proverb, which compares this with commentators were very much antiDruid, so they added sinister, telling little details, such as that the fabric sheet had to be held by a number of young virgin girls, and that the successful collection was celebrated by sacrificing a white oxen (or possibly a virgin). Lovable old Druids as found in Asterix were not on the Roman agenda! Quite what the Druids used their mistletoe for is not recorded. Mistletoe itself is somewhat toxic, though rarely fatal. Recent investigation has indicated a few alkaloids that may possibly be medically useful, but not much work has been done so far. It seems that mistletoe can absorb different extra alkaloids depending on the plant upon which it grows. Whether this had any significance for the Druids of course we do not know. It seems unlikely. Holly and even Ivy, but Mistletoe defeated them totally. They tried to suggest that the plant had originally been a tree, from which the Cross of Christ was made, and that it had been condemned to be smallwooded and insignificant ever since. Of course, Mistletoe had looked the same for millennia before the Crucifixion! In the end they gave up, and sort of shouldered it out of Christmas festivities. However, in York Minster, in that proud old Viking capital, a branch of mistletoe is said to be placed on the altar each Christmas. The Kissing Bunch, and kissing under the mistletoe, came much later, about the time of the Reformation, when Christmas and the involvement of saints was undergoing a lot of rethinking. This was when raffish Old Father Christmas re-entered the scene, and a few other dubious customs that had lain hidden for centuries were rediscovered. As we saw at the beginning, the ancient Greeks and Romans regarded mistletoe as a fertility symbol. This came back with a vengeance, The Kissing Bunch, and kissing under the mistletoe, came much later, about the time of the Reformation, when Christmas and the involvement of saints was undergoing a lot of rethinking the part the bird plays in spreading One thing that has been noted is that, in and now the white berries of mistletoe mistletoe, and states that Turdus ipse sibi the stomachs of some bog-bodies (corpses took on a new meaning. Any girl malum cacat, or “The thrush excretes its placed in peat-bogs during Druidic times, incautious (or brazen) enough to linger own downfall”. The Latin name Viscum many the objects of ritual killing, under a bunch of mistletoe had to submit album means “White sticky-stuff” and is surprisingly well-preserved) a few grains to a kiss or suffer misfortune. In some derived from the plant’s Latin name. So, of mistletoe pollen have been found. cultures, a berry was removed for each too, is the French name, Gui. The curious These may have been intended to produce kiss. This could have been a system for consonant change that converted William partial unconsciousness, or may have had keeping score, or a means of rendering into Guilliam changed the “vi” of Viscum a ritual significance. the threat harmless, and when all the into Gui. Incidentally, for the prurient-minded among you who think you have just learned a rude word in Latin, well, you The Norse religion also homed in on mistletoe. Baldur was the beloved and beautiful son of Odin and Frigga. All plants and creatures were asked to swear berries were gone, the kissing had to stop. As far as I can find, no literary mention of kissing under the mistletoe has been found earlier than the 19th century. have, but it is not the one you think. an oath never to harm him, but someone So Mistletoe has had a very chequered –Turdus is the Latin name for the forgot to include mistletoe in the oath- and very distant - past. Do decorate your Thrush family. giving. Loki the god of mischief therefore house with it, if you still feel you want to!