Only when the French botanist Joseph Decaisne intervened and proposed Sequoia gigantea did the storm begin to abate. Much later, in 1939, when it was discovered that there were significant cone and seed differences between gigantea and its cousin the coastal redwood, Sequoia sempervirens, it was again changed into a genus of its own, Sequoiadendron. At last everyone agreed, although to this day many people in Britain still refer to the trees as ‘Wellingtonia’.
Meanwhile Veitch & Co had reproduced the tree en masse from the rest of Lobb’s seed and turned the international botanical controversy to their commercial advantage. It became the tree everyone wanted. They made sure the seedlings were readily available; the well-to-do of every class rushed to own one or two or three . . . or six, or in the case of the Duke of Wellington’s country home, Stratfield Saye, a whole avenue. They had become the botanical ‘must have’ of the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s, a fashion that would endure well into the twentieth century.
The legacy we enjoy at Aigas is those six fine specimen trees among many other exotic species, now well over a hundred years old. Some have succumbed to fungal infections to which they have no resistance; others, such as the Oriental spruces and Caucasian pines, have outgrown themselves because our rainfall is greater than the much drier Continental habitats where each species evolved. The giant sequoias have also grown faster than they would have done in their much drier native California, but thankfully seem to be thriving.
* * *
It is dark. We arrive at the great tree. Arthur is on my shoulders, hanging on tight. I shine my torch up at the towering trunk of spongy bark in a tight pencil beam. The bark may be soft, but it’s far from smooth. It’s deeply creased with vertical ridges and thongs of ginger fibre running up for many feet, creating dark crevices, perfect for hiding in. Arthur has no real idea what we are searching for, although I have told him that the treecreeper (Certhia familiaris) is a small sparrow-sized bird that spends its days running up trees like a mouse, flying down and running up all over again, often in a spiral, round and round the tree. ‘It’s searching for insects,’ I tell him. ‘Tiny little insects, like spiders and flies, sometimes caterpillars.’ Arthur nods knowingly, although I spot a quizzical gleam in his eye as if he is thinking, Is Grandpa having me on? I continue earnestly, ‘It has a sharp little bill, curved downwards for prying and probing into cracks and crannies.’
We find several little hen’s-egg-shaped indentations, all empty. Then we’re in luck. There, eight feet up, now at Arthur’s eye level, is a slightly ruffled bunch of brown feathers the size of a robin, apparently stuffed into a shallow cave in the bark. I have to explain to him that’s it – that’s a roosting treecreeper. I think he’s disappointed, although he doesn’t say so. It’s nothing much. We can’t really see that it’s a bird, just the arch of its back, the feathers fluffed up against the descending cold of the autumn night.
In the morning I take him to the tree again. The bird has gone, but in the light of day we can see that the tree is dotted with little oval pits where something has carved a niche for itself out of the soft, fibrous bark. He gets the game, running round the trunk pointing up and shouting, ‘Here’s one . . . and another . . . Grandpa, look!’
The tree is pitted. From a few feet back I can count at least twenty of these little carvings around the huge twenty-six-foot circumference of the tree. They are all between three and twelve feet above the ground. Some, just a few, have little deposits of fresh-looking droppings at their lowest lip, a sure sign that they have recently been occupied. Off we go to explore the other five trees.
The treecreeper carves his own roosts in Sequoia bark. He does it quickly with sharp little jerks of his needle bill, occasionally scrubbling the debris out with his clawed feet. He rotates, almost as though he is building a nest, testing it for his precise size and shape. But it isn’t a nest: it’s a roost, a perfectly sized hollow he can tuck himself into, facing upwards so that he’s warm and snug and virtually invisible. He makes several in different places on the circumference, better to avoid the shifting wind and rain. We notice that most are on the north and east, away from the prevailing wind, but crucially, others, slightly deeper, are on the west and south for when the desiccating east wind slices in from Russia and Scandinavia during the long winter months.
* * *
I am grateful to Mr J. M. D. Mackenzie, who submitted an article to the journal Bird Study, on 28 June 1958, entitled ‘Roosting of Treecreepers’. His summary sets out his stall:
1. The roosting of treecreepers is found in Wellingtonias wherever the trees are found, although not all trees are used.
2. The roosting of treecreepers in Wellingtonia bark was first noticed in Scotland in 1905 by John Paterson.
3. The deliberate making of a roost by a special technique is thought to be unique.
The paper goes on to reveal that early in the history of the Wellingtonia presence in Britain, reports of these egg-shaped pits were emerging. To begin with, even quite celebrated naturalists were fooled. In 1907 C. H. Alston, a Highland natural history author of some repute, firmly believed that these were the work of the great spotted woodpecker:
Last year a proprietor on the shores of Loch Awe noticed that a woodpecker (Dendrocopus major) had most evidently been at work boring in a Wellingtonia in his grounds. The bird was never observed, but this year they have begun again on the same tree. My informant, who was lately there, saw the tree with several circular holes about 1½ in. or 2 in. diameter, not quite through the bark, some apparently freshly chipped and with white splashes of excrement round them . . . I presume that there can be little doubt but that it is the work of the Great Spotted Woodpecker.
Most evidently not. Had his informant taken the trouble to sit and watch they would quickly have seen that it was nothing to do with the woodpecker. I can’t help being a little surprised that Alston, who gives the impression in his books of being very thorough, was so readily duped. But it is unkind to judge others operating in different times by the standards of our own. Two significant things were happening here in Scotland at the turn of the twentieth century.
First, the Wellingtonia trees that had been planted in the closing decades of the nineteenth were growing well and beginning to mature. I have a photograph of one of the Aigas trees taken in about 1900. A gardener, with a long white beard matching his long white apron, is leaning on a hoe, and a gardener’s boy, dressed in tweed livery and wearing a tweed cap, is standing at his side. The tree is clearly visible only a few yards away. It looks to be about twenty-five feet high – growth of around twelve to fifteen inches a year. With maturity comes the depth of spongy bark, which previously had not existed as a micro-habitat in Scotland. No British tree or any other exotic species present at that time or since possesses such a soft and fibrous protective outer layer. When the tree is young the bark is thin. Later it thickens to several inches, eventually achieving up to three feet in the real Californian giants of the Sierras. Yesterday I measured one of ours at over seven inches, a brilliant protection, insulation from mountain frosts and fire-proofing too.
Second, the great spotted woodpecker was also a relatively new species in Scotland. It was a successful bird, rapidly expanding north and exciting much interest from ornithologists and naturalists. Perhaps it isn’t so surprising that Alston and his informant were not so familiar with its habits. Nowadays it is our commonest woodpecker, present in just about every wood throughout the Highlands.
Third, it was unheard of that the treecreeper might dig a pit in anything, so the notion was dismissed. As one detractor pointed out, ‘The treecreeper’s bill is a probe, not a pick.’
Mackenzie’s paper is the more fascinating for telling us as much about birdwatchers as about the bird itself. In 1939 naturalists seemed wary of attributing new behaviour to a bird, suggesting a reluctance to accept the endlessly spinning wheel of adaptation available to every organism. It now seems obvious what the bird was up to, but clearly not so ob
vious to those at the time.
The Treecreeper, Mr John Simon pointed out to me, has found the dry, spongy bark of the Wellingtonia useful, presumably for nest building, and I found many – say 9-to-10 – places in the trunks where the birds had hollowed out spaces, some as neatly rounded as if a hen’s egg had been half pressed into the soft bark.
Wrong again. It was nothing to do with nest-building. Treecreepers nest inside concealed crevices, not in open declivities such as the ‘hen’s egg’ ones Mr Simon was seeing.
Slowly – remarkably slowly – the world of ornithology began to work it all out. The bird had discovered a new tree and developed a new behaviour.
There is no doubt that Mr Paterson was right and that the earliest known records of roosts in Wellingtonia bark were in 1905 and 1906 in Scotland. He even uses the same simile as I did, a hen’s egg. But the holes were not recognised as roosts till 1923 (N. H. Foster). The 1905–6 holes are said to be ‘not quite through the bark’ showing that the trees were only just big enough. In older trees to-day there is often a considerable depth of bark behind the hole. About 1907 the spread northwards of the Great Spotted Woodpecker was being watched with interest and the work of an old resident in a new medium was taken for that of a new-comer.
Quite so. But then the penny drops properly. Mackenzie sees the whole picture:
But the Treecreeper is the only bird known to me which deliberately makes a roosting niche used for no other purpose and using a technique different from that employed in any other activity such as nest building. The operation is taken a step further: numbers of roosts in a given area considerably exceed those of birds, so one can be used to suit the wind and weather.
* * *
It is our second night and we are out again. The moon is bright, so bright that we barely need the torch. It’s just past full and lopsided on the top right as if someone has sliced a bit off. The stars are out too and it is colder, much colder, a proper autumn night. By now Arthur has seen many pictures. He knows the treecreeper intimately. He knows it lays five or six eggs in a nest of bits of bark and tiny twigs stuffed into a crevice, lined with hair and grasses. He knows it’s double-brooded too, but most importantly, he understands that it carves its own niche in Sequoias. Back to the same tree; on my shoulders again. It’s there again, certainly the same bird, but this time we can see it all. It’s not in the same niche, but has moved north by a foot to another, deeper, pit between two thick thongs.
This time we can see it properly. I shine the torch and Arthur leans in. His face is only two feet from the bird. It turns its head to look and the needle bill is clearly visible, as is the creamy eye stripe. And it hasn’t fluffed up its back feathers like last night: they’re still sleek and streaky mottled like – well, like the bark it’s roosting in. ‘Don’t move,’ I whisper. I can’t see Arthur’s face but he is silent and still. The bird stays. I can see its glassy eye, as bright as a star in the Milky Way, reflecting my torch beam, the cream stripe running through and its long spiky tail feathers pressed against the bark.
Is five too young to see a treecreeper? Can he possibly digest what I’m showing him? Am I swamping his imagination with too much detail? Or am I imparting a tiny snippet of the joy I have known for so many years from these simple moments? We move away gently. I lower him to the ground and take his small cold hand in mine. ‘Let’s go and tell Mummy,’ I suggest. He breaks free and runs ahead, bursting with news.
Acknowledgements
So many to thank, so many to admire, so many loyal friends.
For general help and for just being there when I needed them: the Aigas rangers of recent years to whom I have turned over and over again for information, for details, for back-up and for support in my peculiar investigations into the natural world that governs all our lives. Phil Knot, Jenny Grant, Morag Sargent, Donald Sheilds, Brenna Boyle, Elspeth Ingleby, Ed McHugh, Jenny Campbell, Phil Taylor, Marcia Rae, Imogen German, Scott O’Hara, Duncan McNeill, Sarah Hutcheon, Hannah Thomas, Sue Hodgson, Harry Martin, Robin Noble, Amelia Williamson and Jonathan Willett.
For willing help with research and information: Sheila Kerr, Laurie Campbell, Roy Dennis, Ian Dawson, Mike Toms, Martin Davies, Melanie Evans, Miriam Darlington, Paul Ramsay, Peter Wortham, Chris Smout, Peter Tilbrook, Martha Crewe, Lesley Cranna, Polly Pullar, Ian Sargent, Vicki Saint, Ieuan Evans, Alicia Leow-Dyke, Dave Bavin, Kate Thomson, Hugh Bethune, Maciej Adamzuk, Finlay Macrae, Dave Sexton, George Swan, John Aitchison, Lennart Ardvisson, Duncan Halley, Lindsey Macrae, Nigel Bean, Jo Charlesworth, Stephen Moss, Nick Baker, Liz Holden, David Dixon and Laurie Campbell.
For inspiration: Gavin Maxwell, Sir Frank Fraser Darling, Kai Curry-Lindahl, Richard Mabey, Mark Cocker, Jim Crumley, Gary Snyder, Ted Hughes, J. A. Baker, Annie Dillard, Jane Goodall, Chris Packham, Jay Griffiths, Kathleen Jamie, Julian Clough, and a host of other naturalists, poets and nature writers, friends and mentors past and present whose works constantly swill round inside my head.
For loyalty: my generous readers, too many to name, who so kindly and thoughtfully write to me about my work; and the hundreds of field centre guests who come back year after year.
For love, tolerance and understanding: my wife Lucy, who calls herself a literary widow when I’m writing; my son Warwick, who now runs our field centre and without whose support I wouldn’t have the time to write; and my daughter Hermione, who generously overlooks my perpetual distraction and absent-mindedness.
For company: the rumbustious Jack Russells, Nip and Tuck.
For joy: the blackcaps, the rooks, the red squirrels, the robins, the ravens, the pine martens and all the uplifting wildlife that frames our Aigas world and shapes our days.
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