Steve Jones

Steve Jones writes for the Herald on behalf of the Sid Valley Biodiversity Group.

Steve Jones writes for the Herald on behalf of the Sid Valley Biodiversity Group.

HG Wells wrote a horror story set in Sidmouth called “The Sea Raiders”. It tells of Mr Fison, a retired tea dealer, staying at a boarding house in Sidmouth. Whilst walking to Ladram Bay along the cliffs he noticed a flurry of seagulls over something pink in the rocks below. Making his way down Jacob’s Ladder, he scrambled over the Chit Rocks and to his dismay found several giant squids eating a human corpse. He threw a rock at them but they chased him and with tentacles lashing his legs he only just made it to Jacob’s Ladder and with the help of some workmen warded off the creatures and escaped. There were more attacks with a fisherman and a boating party of tourists pulled overboard and eaten. How times have changed! A horror story, written in 1896, worries about unknown sea creatures harming humans. Today the horror story is about humans bringing an end to sea creatures. The Cornish artist Kurt Jackson’s exhibition “Mermaids Tears” (see it on kurtjackson.com) is about the nurdles of plastic that are mixed in with sand and shingle on every beach in the world. Plastic dust fills the air and the rivers and ends up in the sea. There is plastic pollution all the way up Mount Snowden. There is plastic in the ice of Antarctica. Washing machine manufacturers advertise that their machines have extra filters to keep plastic fibres from rivers and seas. Tumble driers are said to be the most polluting for spreading plastic dust. Microplastics are inside plankton and poison every creature in the ocean’s food chain. Today if a giant squid or octopus, forced out of the deep by plastic in its food, should swim along the coast of Sidmouth it would shy away from any swimmer in a wet suit or swimwear made of petrochemical fabric. But spying a picnic on the beach, with its amazing powers of camouflage, it would silently and invisibly make its way behind the picnickers and with four arms grab a pasty, chips, ice-cream and a coffee and scuttle back to the ocean leaving shocked and hungry tourists watching nothing but a paper cup bobbing in the waves.

The Story of Ivy...

There are so many beautiful trees from all over the world planted in gardens and parks. Some writers dismiss these exotic trees as peripheral to biodiversity. It is true these exotic trees have a marginal role in the complex web of life of our native plants and animals. But these are the trees that so many of us see every day and that we love and grieve for when wrecked by storms. They make us aware of the worldwide life of the planet. We should plant a wide variety of exotic trees in our cultivated spaces. But planting the wrong tree in the wrong place is bad. The Flow Country in Scotland is a blanket bog formed over 10,000 years with peat 10m deep. In the 1970s commercial conifers were planted draining the bog and destroying the peat. But now it is realised that the surviving bog contains three times more carbon than all the trees in Britain. We must be careful that trees are planted in suitable land and do not destroy the life of special places like bog and meadow. If you would be perfect, go out and plant a woodland. Woodlands are trees but much more than trees. To put a complicated story into a few words, trees use carbon dioxide and sunshine to make leaves. Insects eat the leaves, birds and animals eat the insects, dead leaves and creatures fall to the ground and are consumed by fungi and bacteria to make living soil that feeds the trees and helps seeds grow that become new trees using carbon dioxide and sunshine to make leaves and so on and on. It will take 30 years for new trees to develop into a working woodland but 400 years before the full richness of life has developed. This is ancient woodland, about 7% of Britain is covered by native woodland, only 3% is covered by ancient woodland. Carbon is stored in the wood of the trees, in the soil and in the bodies of all the creatures living in the woodland. We need more woodland in Britain. Plant woodland, store carbon, restore nature. We can save the world IF, if, if... Look out in two weeks’ time for Ed Dolphin’s Herald article on the hidden ancient woodland in the Sid Valley.

I was attacked in the Byes by wasps. The bramble bank near the scout hut is made of builder’s rubble and the cavities in it make perfect spaces for wasps’ nests. Whilst clearing around baby trees I disturbed a nest and then ran around the Byes with a swarm of wasps following. Luckily, I managed to beat them off without having to jump in the river. Since then I have been wary and curious about any creature with yellow and black stripes. The wasp family is very extensive, but what we normally think of as wasps are the social wasps. They make papery nests and the queen lays the eggs so the rest of the group don’t need the ovipositor for egg laying; in its place they have evolved a sting. Because of their stinging ability, a great number of other creatures try to look like wasps. The most convincing are the hornet clearwing moths. On its first flight the usual moth scales fall off the wings, revealing yellow and black stripes and it even buzzes, but is completely harmless. The Conopid fly is very wasplike. Though harmless to humans, it loiters near knapweed and lays its eggs in red tailed bumble bees, either when the bee is on a flower or in flight. The grubs grow inside the bee eating it up. At this point I am grateful wasps only sting! I have been told that in the Avon Gorge in Bristol the wasp spider is common. It is quite large, about 2cms, the female has black and yellow stripes, the male is just brown. It is a recent arrival, some say it came from Europe in consignments of fruit, but spiders are also blown around on silken parachutes. David Attenborough says that swifts eat mostly airborne spiders. The wasp spider is harmless to humans; remember, if ever you see one in Sidmouth, know it is not a threat, if ever there was a conjunction of animals to provoke an instinctive feeling of fear, a wasp and a spider might be the worst.

STOP. Do not read this if you scare easily. This is a horror story. Once upon a time in a town called Neatville all the people went out with their strimmers to all the roadsides, parks and river banks and cut down all the “weeds”. Only short neat grass was left. But they had cut down all the figwort plants and all the little wasps that loved to drink its nectar flew away. Now these little wasps laid their eggs inside the caterpillars of the browntail moth and as a result most of the moths died. But now all the caterpillars grew big and they were covered in thousands of poisonous hairs. All the caterpillars became moths and all the moths laid eggs and all the eggs became caterpillars and so it went on until the night sky was filled with a blizzard of white moths. All the hedges and orchards and gardens were covered in drifts of white moths laying eggs. There were billions of caterpillars and trillions of poisonous hairs blanketing Neatville in a poisonous fog. The hairs got onto people’s skin and caused huge blisters and people breathed in the hairs and coughed and choked. People tried to burn the caterpillars but also set trees and houses on fire. Soon people began to move away until everybody had gone. And the last person to leave Neatville looked back at the abandoned smoking ruins of the town and said: “This is what you get when you mess with nature.” The end. But this could never happen in Sidmouth. Yes, the poisonous hairy caterpillars of the browntail moth are here. They are kept in check by tiny wasps laying eggs inside the caterpillars. Yes the wasps are very fond of the nectar of the figwort that grows in Sidmouth near the river. Figwort is a tall plant with reddish leaves and tiny dark red flowers. It is called figwort as it was used to cure haemorrhoids which were called figs! In Devon there may be a few who are blind to any beauty beyond closely cut grass but most Devon people are wise and want a balance where we can live in harmony with nature. Devon will give life a chance.

How many flowers grow in an English summer meadow? Dr Dines of Plantlife calculates that there are 2.3 million flowers in an acre of wildflower meadow and that provides enough nectar to keep 83,000 bees alive. This is important for The Friends of the Byes in looking after the Community Orchard for we are friends of the wild flowers that grow in the orchard, friends of the bees and butterflies that get life from the flowers and friends of the children and grownups who come to enjoy, play or rest with nature. And we are friends of the National Trust who own the land and have entrusted us to put their dreams into practice. The National Trust says that nature has been squeezed to the margins for too long, and they are setting up 25,000 hectares of new wildlife habitats. You will notice that we are leaving a strip of meadow at the top of the orchard to be a wild home and corridor for small creatures. Elsewhere we are mowing paths and picnic areas to make it easy for humans to enjoy the orchard but doing it in a way that still allows flowers to bloom. The remaining parts of the orchard were not mowed until May was over so that the spring flowers could bloom and set seed. We are now smart mowing to keep the area accessible but also full of flowers. We started surveying the areas of the orchard at the end of May and are continuing for each month after. If we find a place where no flowers grow then we will have got it wrong and will change what we do to put it right. The Friends of the Byes welcome wildlife and humans to the Community Orchard to be together as friends. We will do what we can to make it a good place for all living creatures to be happy together. The one thing we cannot manage is the weather, so rain and snow may be a problem. The motto of the orchard could be the inscription in the garden at Earlshall in Scotland: ‘Here you find no enemies but summer storm and winter freeze’.

Steve Jones writing on behalf of Sid Valley Biodiversity Group

I have recently noticed Canadian fleabane growing in The Byes. It must be a good year for it, as now I recognise the flower. I see it growing everywhere, in cracks in the pavements, at the edges of carparks. In Sidmouth, Mill Lane and Manor Road have plenty.