Glow worms

We stand in the dark and listen to the rolling of the waves below. Before us is a steep drop, leading down to a foam speckled sea, its waves whipped up into a frenzy by the wind. The rain soaks slowly into my waterproof, dripping in a steady stream down my face. Removing my now useless glasses I peer out into the landscape around. To our left the lights of Llandudno shine invitingly, seeming dangerously close to the turmoil of the shore. I lick my lips, tasting the salt of the sea spray.

I can’t deny many would find us strange for venturing out into this dark place on such a night. Huddled together in the gloom we looked rather like a group of under prepared tourists awaiting the mountain rescue team, but in fact there was a very good reason for our actions. There, low in the grass, we crouched gazing at that reason. A small bright beacon of light shone in the dark. Yellow green in colour, it was the same size and strength of an LED on a radio or alarm clock. Except this wasn’t some feat of human engineering, this was a miracle of evolution. It was something I’d never expected to come face to face with on British soil; a glowworm.

Across the world glowworm can mean different things. In the UK, and generally across Europe, we use it to refer to a particular species of firefly, where the female is flightless and glows and the male can fly but doesn’t glow. In America glowworm is simply used for any firefly larvae that glows, whilst its winged and glowing parents are fireflies. In Australia and New Zealand glowworms are the larvae stage of a type of fungus gnat, famed for lighting up caves with their wonderful blue displays, looking to all the world like a starry sky in the depths of the earth.

But back in the UK we can make life simple. Here there are only two species of glowworm. Both are types of beetles (as are the fireflies of America and mainland Europe) and curiously enough the rare and elusive lesser glowworm doesn’t even glow. So glowworms in the UK aren’t worms and not all of them glow. Perhaps it isn’t so simple.

The tiny luminescent creature which had dragged me out into the wind and rain was the common glowworm, which thankfully does glow. As their name suggests they are surprisingly common, spread across the UK from Cornwall to up beyond the Scottish highlands. They are found throughout Europe and even into Asia, and can live nearly as far North as the arctic circle. To explain away the rest of their seemingly confusing name the word ‘worm’ was historically given to anything long and wriggly, with even snakes included in this category. Strangely enough the cliffs on which I found myself whilst in pursuit of this little worm were those of the Great Orme which itself is named after the viking for sea snake, with Orme being the word which later evolved into our ‘worm’.

The common glowworm is a fascinating creature, perfectly evolved to fulfill the task it has been set out to do. Their life cycle begins as an egg, one in a batch of over a hundred laid by their mother. These eggs already glow slightly even before the larvae have emerged. Within a few weeks the young hatch and begin their lives as voracious predators. Sharp pincers and a toxic venom make them a terrifying opponent for anything living amongst the grassland they call home. So who should be quaking in their boots as these many-legged creatures crawl forward through the night? Snails. Amazingly our glowworm’s favorite prey are the gardener’s pest. The glowworm larvae use their venom to paralyze their much larger victims and then simply suck out the liquified flesh. Who would have thought these beautiful creatures could be such cold-blooded killers. In the true style of a psychopathic murderer they even clean up the evidence, using a specially adapted brush-like implement on the end of their tail to remove any traces of the killing. So great is the feast that the glowworm can survive for up to a month before it needs to feed again.

The larvae will spend one or two summers feeding in this way, hibernating under logs in the winter, before pupating and emerging as an adult. Adult females are larger than the males, around 15-25mm, and have several clear segments on the ends of their tails where the process of bioluminescence can take place. Both the males and the larvae can also glow, though in males this is only very dimly and intermittently in the larvae, perhaps as a warning to predators. The wingless females look much like larvae, though entirely black, unlike the spotted larvae. The males have wings so they can fly to the females and large eyes to hunt out their glow in the dark. Amazingly the males have even evolved a charming cap which shields them from skyward distractions, presumably meaning thousands of their ancestors died childless trying to make love to the moon.

Whilst the common glowworm is found across the UK in a variety of habitats they do have their preferences. One of course is the presence of their prey species snails. Although snails are common there have long been issues with poisons being used on these sometimes troublesome molluscs. Metaldehyde, found in many slug pellets, is not only used in gardens but in large quantities across our farming landscape to keep crops, especially Brassicas such as oilseed rape, safe from these feisty pests. However as slugs and snails disappear from our landscape so do their predators such as the hedgehog and even the glowworm. An additional cause for concern is that metadehyde doesn’t break down easily so they can leach into waterways, and can even been found in our drinking water.

As well as a good supply of their favorite snack, glowworms require a mixture of different habitats, which once would have been common across the UK. Glowworms like areas of open grassland and scrub, with swathes of longer and shorter grass. Traditional agricultural practices would have given the glowworms plenty of places to live, with there being reports of their wonderful lights being found on grazing pastures and even in crop fields. Today intensive agriculture has resulted in high stocking densities meaning grass is grazed too low for the glowworm and overuse of pesticides means many crop fields are now a death trap. Today they are mostly found in areas which are still traditionally managed, be they reserves or privately owned land. Graveyards can also be excellent places for glowworms, as can the edge of railways. They are even found in open woodlands, though denser woods are generally unsuitable.

With snail deaths high and habitat decreasing the glowworm numbers are thought to be declining. Anecdotal evidence speaks of hillsides alive with these amazing creatures, while today only scattered handfuls remain. Even more to their detriment is their inability to travel far enough to colonise new areas, with the larval stage only moving tens of meters from its base. Indeed females barely travel at all, with their brief weeks as adults being numbered, their lack of mouthparts means they can only rely on the stores they built up as a larva. Males too are unable to feed, meaning that while they could fly to new spots they are unlikely to stray far from the local females. Habitat fragmentation has compounded this problem, meaning roads and unsuitable habitat divide populations.

As we stood on that wet and blustery hillside I must say the rain wasn’t enough to drive me away from our charming company. Hanging onto her little perch our glowworm pointed her tail up to the sky and swung it from side to side, making sure her light wasn’t being obscured by a blade of grass. She’ll do this for two or three hours every night for several weeks, until her energy reserves have run out. If mated before then she’ll turn off her light, climb down to the ground and lay her luminous eggs, dying soon after.

Glowworms are a fascinating species, and a truly magical sight to behold. On the night we visited the Great Orme, with our knowledgeable guide from the Conwy Valley branch of the North Wales Wildlife Trust, we saw eight glowing females, a fantastic sight. But a few days later, combing the whole hillside in better conditions than we had, a surveyor spotted over 800. It’s an amazing spectacle to imagine the enormous mound of the Great Orme sat in the darkness of the sea, its surface twinkling with hundreds of lights. It is a beacon of hope showing that, not only for the glowworm but for so many of our declining species, we can reverse the trend. We just have to be a little more careful with our countryside. After all, this is not just our home but also theirs.

Many thanks to Mark Sheridan from the Conwy Valley branch of the North Wales Wildlife Trust for letting me use his wonderful pictures. For anyone interested in getting out and spotting glowworms www.glowworms.org.uk/ is an excellent resource.

Camino de Santiago

Crickets sing from their perches in the tall dry grass. Below our feet the gravel grinds against the ground, my boots already white with dust. Above, the sky holds nothing but a bright yellow sun, causing the landscape to shimmer with the rising heat. Flanking us on either side fields of golden wheat stretch into the distance, their edges laced with bright red poppies, pale blue cornflowers and purple scabious. Amongst the blooms large white butterflies flit from flower to flower, occasionally changing their course to flutter busily across our path, their wings almost brushing our sweat drenched skin. In scattered bushes the yellowhammer trills, goldfinches chatter and the corn buntings calls out their challenges. This is our camino.

The Camino de Santiago, also know as St James’ Way, is a Christian pilgrimage route which dates all the way back to the medieval period. At the height of its popularity it was one of the three most common Christian pilgrimages undertaken, the others being to Rome and Jerusalem. Traditionally these long-distance journeys began from the pilgrim’s doorstep, meaning that today there are many different routes which can be taken, all leading to the final destination of the grand cathedral at Santiago. Today the most commonly walked trails are through Spain or France, though some still start their journey even further afield in countries such as Italy, Germany or Denmark. The most popular route, and that which we found ourselves on, is the Camino Frances, which starts in St Jean Pied de Porte in the French Pyrenees but which quickly crosses the border into Spain, continuing for 769km west, roughly parallel with the north coast. For myself and my boyfriend Chris our weary feet carried us for 7 days and 100 miles to Logroño before work and life demanded we returned home. For my father Andrew the journey took him the full 769km right to the steps of the cathedral, just as the pilgrims hundreds of years before.

The first pilgrims to walk the trail were recorded in the 9th century. Their purpose, as with the many which came after, was to visit the burial site of the body of St James, one of Jesus’s first disciples. James was the brother of John the evangelist, who was the only disciple to escape a grisly death and is thought to be the author of parts of the Bible. James witnessed many of the miracles preformed by Jesus and, known for having a fiery temper, is believed to have been the first disciple to become a martyr, beheaded in Jerusalem. His connection with Spain is argued by many scholars to be somewhat tenuous, with the story going that St James visited the country to preach Christianity before returning to Jerusalem and meeting his fate. Even more tenuous is the link between St James and the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. Rumor has it that the body of St James, presumably without its head as that is said to be buried in Jerusalem, was transported by boat to Spain and a tomb erected for him there. Hundreds of years elapsed leaving no one alive to identify the site of the burial, until one evening a hermit was guided by a star to the tomb. It is from this starting point that a church, and later a cathedral, were built and one of the greatest pilgrim routes in Europe was established. So popular was this route that the stone on a pillar by the entrance to the cathedral is visibly worn away the touch of millions of pilgrim hands.

Cathedral at Logroño

Whilst it is possible that the bones of the Saint do reside within the cathedral walls it wouldn’t have been the first time that the holiest of brethren invented a reason for Christians to travel to their place of worship. During, and well beyond, the medieval period it was common practice for churches and monasteries to claim to possess relics to attract visitors, and of course acquire their donations. Awkward clashes at times occurred when more than one holy community claimed to possess the same bone of a particular saint. Some were even so bold as to use mechanical engineering to create their own miracles, such as statues which cried blood. Today even the Catholic church itself is uncertain as to which relics to believe.

 

However, present or not, St James today holds a very important place for the Christian community in Spain as their patron saint. For those now taking to the Camino however, the reason is rarely the bones which may or may not lay at the end of it. Many of the pilgrims still undertake this vast journey for religious or spiritual reasons, however this is often more in the form of a chance at contemplation and appreciation away from the stresses of life. For many the call of a traditional pilgrimage, in the sense of a tiring and challenging long-distance walk, with all its blisters, aching bones and deprivation of the finer things in life, still helps them feel closer to their God. For other, non religious walkers, the Camino gives the opportunity to enjoy an exciting adventure, a chance to explore the culture and ecology of Northern Spain (or the other countries through which they pass) and of course all the same deprivations of our religious walkers. For those of us born into wealth and comfort it seems we feel a need to remind ourselves of the trials of hunger and pain, perhaps only so we can enjoy being full and at ease all the more.

Indeed for the pilgrims of old the way would have been much harder and more dangerous than it is today. Robbers were plenty and death through accident or illness was a real risk. However the pain and discomfort of the route were considered penance for crimes they had committed in earlier life. Indeed walking the Camino allowed the pilgrims to earn an ‘indulgence’. These indulgences wiped clean some of the sins which the walker had accumulated, reducing the time the later spent in purgatory. Purgatory of course was a place of great pain and torment, where the souls of the dead were purified before being allowed to ascend to heaven. The idea that torture and mutilation could offer benefits to a person’s internal worth was one of the most damaging philosophies to make its way out of the church at this time.

An unfortunate sinner being pulled limb from limb.

Since the first visitors made their way to the steps of the Cathedral de Santiago, its popularity has grown and grown. It was only through the black death, wars and reformations that numbers began to drop. In the 1980’s only a handful of pilgrims were still making the journey, however in recent years there has been a resurrection of enthusiasm with numbers topping 200,000 every year since 2013. As we took to the walk in early June the way was already bustling with other walkers, scallop shells dangling from their packs to identify them as pilgrims on St James’ way. The reason for the shell becoming a symbol of the route, and the saint in who’s honour it was made, is as tenuous as the rest of the story, being variously linked to the coast on which the Saint landed or even to claims of having been found upon his (decapitated) body, after it safely recovered, having been lost at sea. Today it does however create a running theme throughout the walk, with markers, signposts and even graffiti carrying the symbol of the scallop shell.

Having completed five long distance walks over the years I am quite used to the kind of person who you might find walking ahead or behind you. Mostly they are middle aged men or older, fairly fit and kitted out with every walking gadget that the catalogue had to offer. Of course there are exceptions (such as myself who is neither middle aged nor a man and has owned the same walking trousers for over a decade) but the trend is fairly easy to follow. On the Camino, if anything, there was no trend. All ages, body shapes and nationalities seemed to make it onto the route. One day we would pass a group of young Germans chanting their morning prays out loud, the next we would overhear a conversation between a Spanish woman and man from Denmark (who incidentally began his walk from his home country) about volcanology, and my favorite was the American mother with her two young girls in tow, each with tiny backpacks of their own who, despite promising a 5 min break every mile, informed me they intended to walk the entirety of the route, a truly impressive endevour.

As the days passed we became familiar with our own group of strangers, giving a companionable grimace to one another as the heat became too tough or the climb too steep. For the many travelling the route solo communities began to form and, even if they outpaced each other in the day, they would find themselves thrown together once more at the evening restaurant or in the hostel kitchen. Together we wound our way over misty mountains and through dry river valleys. We posed for the same pictures on roman bridges, in front of medieval churches and beautiful vistas. We drank from the same fountains (including one which gave free, and frankly terrible, wine) ate the same stale ham sandwiches and probably even sent home the same postcards. It was a strange kind of travelling community, with a joint purpose and experience, but certainly not a dull one.

The wine fountain.

For myself the wildlife was the highlight of the trip. On day one we were treated to a troop of griffon vultures, flying at eye-level, as we were rather high at this point, across the valley. In a sunny woodland we startled mice, which cowered within striking distance of our boots before dashing into the undergrowth. At the side of the path striped bee orchids and neatly arranged pyramidal orchids added dashes of colour between the grass. Meadows of yellow rattle, ox-eye daisies and marsh thistles called in stunning butterflies from all around. Brightly patterned swallowtail butterflies, the startling adonis blue and the demur safflower skipper visited us on our routes. In Puente la Reine we stood on the high stone bridge and watched swifts streak across our path, so low you could hear their wings as they rose into the sky and raced away between the houses. Up high in Logroño storks lined the roofs, their chicks seeming precariously close to the edge of the drop on their untidy nests. Out in the scrublands a warbler dive bombed a woodchat shrike, perhaps knowing its habit for impaling smaller animals on thorns and barbed wire ready to eat later. Black and red kites twisted through the ether in the heat whilst booted eagles rest on the tops of telegraph poles. And always the birds sang from the bushes, fields and sky, from the purr of the turtledove to the ramblings of the skylark to the melody of the blackcap. A constant soundtrack to our walk.

Three famillies of storks sharing a rooftop.

As an atheist, for me the Camino de Santiago is just a walk, the same as many I have taken before. However every walk gives the walker an opportunity to take time to appreciate the world around them, to enjoy a chance for reflection and to gain a better understanding of the world in which we live. I’d never visited Northern Spain before, and to be honest I previously had little interest in ever doing so. On the Camino I got a chance to see what is so special about this place, with its beautiful ancient buildings, its fortresses, churches and tightly packed high apartments, with its agricultural lands lined with rows of olive and almond trees, grape vines and fields of wheat, and most importantly, with the areas which have been left wild with their colourful flowers, twisted shrubs and beautiful wildlife. It is these places which I think have been erased from much of the English countryside. We too need gaps of unmanaged land between our fields, hills left ungrazed and woodlands left untouched. With such spaces between the land we use, it seems the countryside has a chance to breathe and the creatures within it a place to live. Certainly for me, without its wildflowers, birds and butterflies, the Camino would just be another cross-country highway, a route from A to B, without a soul to call its own.

The camino as it runs alongside a much quicker way of getting across the country.

Afterword;

As I write this my dad, Andrew Piercy, is still walking his way to the end of the camino. Part of his reason for this epic walk is to raise money for a fantastic charity that helps the Ugandan poor get the medical treatment they require by offering them free transportation to hospital. If you’d like to support the charity and encourage my dad to keep on walking, you can visit his page https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/juliepiercy1

 

Farne farne away

Puffins. Comical, colourful and as close to a penguin as the British Isles has to offer, who could dislike this wonderful little seabird? Yet getting a chance to view them in their natural habitat isn’t always as simple as it first appears. Puffins spend much, if not most of their life at sea. After fledging our young pufflings, as they are known, won’t return to land for five years. The adults too spend their winter months feeding amongst the temperamental waves of the Atlantic, having shed their colourful beaks for something smaller and more practical. Superb swimmers, they dive down below the surface to fish, using their wings to flap with surprising speed into the deep blue. Even taking to the air they are astoundingly swift, though having all the grace and agility of a bumblebee.

Indeed the best time to spot yourself a puffin is during the summer breeding season, when they head for their ancestoral mating grounds to father the next generation. Like many seabirds puffins prefer uninhabited islands for their most vulnerable period. With no natural predators present these ground-nesting birds can carry on regardless,  and often fill every nook and cranny with their noisy selves. Puffins are burrowing birds, digging out deep tunnels in which to lay their eggs. On islands where rabbits have been introduced the colourful characters have made a habit of evicting the fluffy tailed owners to take up residence in these pre-fab houses. It’s this behaviour in the puffins, and other burrow nesting seabirds, which is sometimes believed to be the root cause of the pagan belief that rabbits laid eggs, leading eventually to the wonder of the Easter bunny.

Dotted about the UK coastline we find many so-called ‘puffin islands’. I myself have visited three, with two unlucky attempts (too late in the season) before finally reaching success with the magical Skomer Island. Just off the coast of south Wales, Skomer is a puffin metropolis where dozens of these tiny creatures literally wandered across the path before me. Several years have elapsed since then and I thought it was about time to attempt another puffin foray, this time to the world famous Farne Islands.

The Farne islands lie off the coast of Northumberland and are a collection of 20 rocky outcrops of various sizes. Though always disconnected from the mainland, unlike Holy Island further up the coast which re-connects for part of the day, many of these islands join together at low tides or are completely lost during high tides. Looking small and insignificant in the vastness of the sea they offer a home to a staggering number of seabirds. Over 200 avian species have been seen on the islands whilst around 23 species currently breed on them. Counting puffins alone nearly 40,000 pairs use these tiny areas of jagged rock, whilst over 1,000 grey seal pups are born on the islands each year. Yet strangely enough all this life owes itself to something which happened almost 300 million years ago during the late carboniferous period.

For a long time much of Britain was composed of warm shallow seas. These laid down layers of soft, pale limestone, created through the accumulation of billions upon billions of skeletons and shells of tiny dead sea creatures. At some point after its deposition, magma forced up from the earth’s mantle by the shifting of the tectonic plates, intruded into fissures in this limestone bedrock creating the Whin sill. The Whin sill stretches throughout much of Northumberland and is responsible, in its various incarnations, for some of the regions most dramatic landscapes, from the magestic cliffs at Hadrians wall, to the tumbling heights of the Pennines, to the outcrops on which Bamburgh and Lindisfarne castles sit on. Indeed it is even responsible for the Farne Islands. Hard wearing and with a tendency to form high cliffs and pillars, the dark igneous dolerite formation kept these tiny islands just above the rising sea levels after the last Ice Age, which disconnected them from the land. This made them a perfect spot for secluded seabird colonies. Indeed as the surrounding limestone bedrock has been washed away by the force of the waves the Farne Islands have stood strong.

As I stepped on to the boat, family and friends in tow, I hoped not to be disappointed by the day ahead. The islands had in many ways interested me for a number of years, and their reputation as one of the best spots to watch and photograph seabirds had filled my head with puffins galore. But it wouldn’t have been the first time I’d come to an island to see puffins only to be left studying the local flora instead.

As the boat bucked and rocked below us, the occassional errant wave soaking a few unlucky passengers (my mother included), I watched the coast slowly shrink and the sea grow wider, filling the horizon and enveloping our tiny craft. In the distance the imposing form of Bamburgh castle could just be seen.

I scanned the air around us, waiting for the first signs of the island’s inhabitants. Gulls bobbed in the sea beside us, not exciting enough to force me to raise my binoculars. In the harbour I’d stood enraptured against the thick concrete wall as several pairs of eider ducks paddled below. These beautiful birds are still today the source of our eiderdown, which was once collected by hand from their nests, where they use it to keep their eggs warmly insulated. Both sexes have a sloping forehead, with no real change of angle as you reach the beak, given them a slightly flattened look. Females are a mallardy brown but males are beautifully patterned, their feather’s largely white with streaks of black and yellow. There was nothing so exciting here.

Then they came. A troop of gannets, their torpido-shaped bodies extremely distinctive, even when their yellow caps were out of view. Next came the puffins, bobbing lazily between the waves, their round little bodies looking out of place even in the habitat they are most at home in. A few more scuttled through the air above us, some close by our sides, barely seeming concerned at out presence. And finally, as if a great wooden box had been opened, the sky became alive with hundreds of thousands of squarking bodies.

The boat tour took us from island to island taking in lazy seals, laid out on jagged beaches as though they were resting on sun-loungers, cliffs packed with black and white bodies, the rocks stained with years of deficating avian inhabitants, and the scattered signs of human settlements, from lighthouses to a few abandoned homes. Finally we landed on Inner Farne, the largest of the islands and one of only three where human visitors are allowed.

Concrete steps led us up and away from the landing point, but it was hard to move more than an inch before something new caught the eye. Out on the gently sloping rocks at the edge of the waves dozens of Arctic terns stood  dozily watching the sea. Their form is beautifully elegant, wing and tail feathers ending in delicately pointed tips were not so obvious as they folded themselves away into their terrestrial bodies. Small dark caps and bright red beaks completed their tidy appearance. On a small sandy beach next to the landing point a ringing plover paced back and forth, its nest barely a few feet from the footpath. Yet some birds had dared to get even closer.

As we headed up the steps more Arctic terns appeared, this time snuggled down upon their eggs, one in particular had situated itself upon the wooden slats of the boardwalk itself. These terns gave a noisy swark to any photographer who took too many liberties but mostly they remained astoundingly calm, considering their eggs were within a few inches of scores of absentminded feet. These tiny birds did get their revenge however, with the occassional expectant parent taking to the wing to hover above the head of their intruder, landing repeated pecks on the tops of their heads. I myself was subject to such an attack.

The eider ducks by contrast kept themselves well tucked away. With their smooth forms and their camouflaged feathers they stayed low and silent beneath the foliage , often right next to the path, not moving a muscle despite all the commotion.

Birds were everywhere, the black headed gulls even lining the tops of the dry stone walls with their homemade baskets. Common and sandwich terns sat in a cluster in the centre of the island. Personally I can only differentiate common from Arctic terns by the black tip to their beaks, though more professional birders may have other means.

 

The sandwhich terns were my favorites, with their black caps raising up in a crest giving them the appearance of a mad professor and their black beaks dipped in yellow at the very end making it appear as though they’ve been snaffling the other bird’s eggs.

At one end of the island a rope barrier allowed you shockingly close to the edge of the steepest cliffs. Here the sea boiled below whilst a nesting shag eyeballed me with all the menace she could muster. I can’t blame her, I could have reached across and tickled her belly. Behind her the cliffs were thronged with black and white guillemots (they says its a chocolate brown but I don’t believe them) and a handful of confusingly similar razorbills (the chunkier bill is the give away here). Fulmar, a slightly daintier version of the herring gull, their wingtips black as though they’ve been dipped in ink, made their nests on even the most precarious of shelves. Watching these birds unfurl their wings and drop into the abyss, only to rise again, left my heart in my mouth and made me once again wish for the power of flight.

 

 

And finally of course there were the puffins, standing proudly near their burrows as if they knew that everyone had come to see them. Flat, duck-like feet, their multi-coloured bills and their dinner jacket best makes them one of the smartest looking seabirds I’ve ever seen. And, although no doubt unintentional, they are certainly commical to watch as they wander lost through scores of angry terns, pop their heads up over rocks and come in flapping with both feet splade for an ungraceful landing.

 

The Farne Islands have had a long and interesting history, from the religious hermets who eeked out their days upon their windswept shores, to the lighthouse keeper’s daughter whose heroic efforts helped save nine shipwrecked victims from certain death, to the National Trust wardens who today protect the island’s residents. But for one reason or another these tiny islands have never truely been the property of any human hands. After the gangly troop of the day’s tourists, including myself, stepped off the island and headed back to the mainland, the righteful owners of these dark rocks no doubt settled their ruffled feathers and got back to daily life raising their chicks, on what is most definately their island.