Red Kite

Not too many years ago people would have assumed that you were mistaken if you said that you had seen a red kite over the Botanic Gardens. Not so any more, as a re-introduction programme carried out between 2004 and 2006 in the Derwent Valley just to the north of Durham, released a total of 94 birds in the project known as Northern Kites. Breeding success (the first for 170 years in the NE region) has led to birds expanding out from the Derwent Valley base and therefore we can probably assume that sightings in the skies above the University estate will continue to increase. (A release scheme at the Harewood Estate in North Yorkshire has also produced birds seen in the North East)

Last weekend Steve Ansdell was the lucky chap who watched a red kite circling high in the skies above the Botanic Gardens on two successive evenings. They are truly majestic in flight and even at a distance the profile is unlike anything else that you are likely to see. The long wings and forked tail are distinctive.

If you do see a red kite it is worth trying to get onto them with binoculars as every released bird and most of the young birds have been given a unique combination of coloured and numbered wing tags to monitor progress. The details can be found here.

Finally, if this post has whetted your appetite, there are a number of places in the Derwent valley where you will have a really good chance of seeing a red kite. There is a guide to the best viewing points here.

(Thanks to Phil Gates for the use of his library photos)

Butterbur, Petasites hybridus

These conical pink flower heads, belonging to butterbur Petasites hybridus, appear in large numbers in April all along the riverbank at the Durham University Sports Centre at Maiden Castle. The plant  spreads via creeping underground rhizomes and is unusal in existing as separate-sexed plants. The flower above is male, while the one below is a female. Females are easiest to spot after they have been pollinated, when the flower stalk rapidly elongates and the plant carries tufts of downy, wind-dispersed seeds. After flowering has finished the plants produce very large leaves, that were once dried and used for wrapping butter - hence the common name.

False oxlip

Until the beginning of the 1970s the area on the Science Site around the Library and the Calman Learning Centre was the university botanic garden, adjacent to the Botany Department which was located in the Dawson Building. The primroses that you can find flowering in April alongside the hedge that flanks South Road are a legacy of the old botanic garden and of the research of the late Dr. Jack L. Crosby, Reader in Genetics, who was a notable authority on the genetics of Primula , an expert on plant population genetics and was one of the first to use computers in this branch of plant sciences.

Most of the plants along the hedge are either primroses (Primula vulgaris) or hybrids between those and cowslips (P. veris), which are known as false oxlips Primula veris x vulgaris. True oxlip (P.elatior) is a rare species confined to a diminishing number of woodland locations in the east midlands but false oxlips tend to occur wherever primroses and cowslips grow side-by-side. Where the species overlap plants with every combination of intermediate characters are produced, by a process known as introgression.

There are also some magenta primula species of unknown origin amongst the false oxlips and from time to time this species also hybridises with the false oxlips, producing pink-flowered plants. This exactly mimicks the way in which the garden polyanthus, with its wide range of flower colours, arose.

Chiffchaffs

One of the sure signs that the seasons have turned is hearing the song of the chiffchaff - the first of the incoming summer migrant warblers to arrive at the University. Walking through Great High Wood at lunchtime today I heard my first one this year, chiff-chaffing away in the shrub layer beneath the bursting horsechestnuts and the yet dormant beeches. Its about a week or two later than the first one I heard last year.


Not that long ago you could be sure that you were listening to a tiny brown bird that had just flapped its way to Durham from southern Europe or even Africa but these days you can't be too sure because the number of over-wintering chiffchaffs in the UK has been steadily increasing for some years now. There is a map here on the RSPB web site which shows the north/south divide for over-wintering and I am sure that its a fair bet that the line is moving northwards. In fact I heard one singing in the hedgerow on the east side of the Science site as late as September 29th last year.


By contrast, the willow warbler, which to look at is a dead ringer for the chiffchaff, seems to be a total migrant with no over-wintering recorded at all (map here). It will be a week or two before the first of these little birds arrives in our grounds.

Although the chiffchaff and the willow warbler look so alike, their songs are totally different. You can compare recordings of each on the two web site links.

Greater celandine

This plant, greater celandine, grows in the hedgerow near the Stockton Road entrance to the Science Site, just across the road from the site of the new gateway Building. Unlike the familiar lesser celandine which is a member of the buttercup family, greater celandine is a member of the poppy family and like opium poppies bleeds latex if it's damaged ..... but in this case the latex is bright orange.

Greater celandine is an uncommon plant in County Durham and is usually found close to human habitation. It has a long history of use in herbal medicine, when its caustic latex was used to treat warts, and the plants growing on the Science Site are probably garden escapes.