How To | Keep a Nature Diary

As signs of spring begin to appear, keeping a nature diary is a great way to log the changes in the air at this time of year

Unlike a standard diary, a nature diary needn’t be personal so it can feel much easier to get started, by simply observing what you see. There are many ways you can do it. If you’re feeling ambitious you can make a few notes each day but once a week is a good aim. Or you could make it something you sit down at once a month but really give it some time, and then end the year with a beautiful record in 12 parts. 

Similarly, consider where you want to observe nature. It makes sense to take the same walk each time you journal so that you can see the subtle changes at work, but if that might drive you mad, you could vary your nature walks and maybe even include maps to document what you saw and where. Certainly it makes sense to pick areas where you know there will be things of interest to note. A location near water or with a very ‘active’ hedge will always yield plenty of wildlife to spot, but you’ll be surprised at what forces its way up even through cracks in city paving slabs. Somehow, nature always finds a way. 

Now you’ve made the mental commitment, it’s time to think about what form your nature diary will take. Here are a few ideas.

1. A physical sketchbook in which you can draw and maybe shade with coloured pencils or paint with watercolours is a lovely keepsake. You can label the plants and wildlife you see or write a bit more by each illustration of your experience that day. 

2. If you like the idea of a notebook in your hand but aren’t an arty type, you could simply log your nature sightings in pencil or pen with a time and date. Maybe look your sightings up when you get home and add Latin names or interesting facts as you learn them.

3. Should you fancy getting really down and dirty with nature, your book could include natural dyes and pigments made from the plants and earth you happen upon. You can find out how to make natural dyes from nature with a quick internet search. 

4. Another visual sort of nature diary, but a little easier for those of us not blessed with a single artistic bone in our bodies, is a scrapbook. You can press and dry leaves and flowers, stick in seeds under sellotape and add pieces cut from maps. Then add labels in your very best handwriting.

5. Go digital and record your nature walks using photos. You could print out your favourites or simply upload them to a blog or Instagram account. 

Our blog today was inspired by a feature in our February issue in which we met Jenny Coats, whose nature diaries can be followed on her account @jenny.coats.created.

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Nature studies | How spiral shells are made

We’ve all picked up a spiralled shell on the beach and marvelled at how nature can produce something so intricate and mathematically beautiful, but how are they actually formed?

The shape of spiral shells, such as nautilus shells, are known by mathematicians as ‘logarithmic spirals’. These are shapes that follow the Fibonacci sequence and there are many examples in nature, from sunflower hearts to entire galaxies: for any rotation angle in these shapes, the distance from the origin of the spiral increases by a fixed amount. 

In nautilus shells like the Necklace Shell, above, there are many chambers, which the mollusc inside inhabits. As the creature grows, it needs bigger and bigger chambers to live in, so it creates these via a process called biomineralisation. 

During biomineralisation, the mollusc’s mantle (a soft organ that secretes a substance high in calcium carbonate) gets to work, making a deposit at the opening of the shell, following the ‘expand, rotate, twist’ rule to create the spiral. Here’s how that works:

1. Expand: it must deposit more material than it did when creating the previous part of the spiral.

2. Rotate: by depositing more material on one side of the opening, it creates a full rotation of the aperture, making a doughnut shape.

3. Twist: It rotates the point of deposition each time. The twist part is what gives a helicospiral shell, rather than a planospiral shell like that of the nautilus. So it’s not always necessary but it’s rather cool and clever, so we’ve included it here. 

Nearly all shells rotate to the right and are known as dextral shells. It’s very rare to see a sinistral shell, where the spirals rotate to the left. But what’s fascinating is that the fossil record shows this was not always the case and the direction of spiral shells changes over the centuries. Why? Nobody really knows. Perhaps, as a species, they got giddy…

The shell images used here are taken from The Shell Spotter’s Guide by Helen Scales with illustrations by Ella Sienna (National Trust Books). We have an extract and a short guide to shell spotting in our August issue, which is on sale now.
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Augur shell by Ella Sienna

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Nature Studies | Butterflies vs Moths

Butterflies are poster children among insects. In contrast, moths are routinely vilified. Yet moths and butterflies are essentially the same

• All are scale-winged creatures in the order Lepidoptera, more closely related to one another than falcons are to hawks. Evolutionarily, the six butterfly families nestle within 120-ish moth families.

• In the 18th century, they were generally all known as ‘flies’. The word ‘butterfly’ supposedly came about because one springflying species (the Brimstone) was referred to as the “buttercoloured fly.”

• The six families that became known as the butterflies all have a couple of major characteristics in common: they fly exclusively (or nearly so) by day, and have bulbous tips to their antennae (which only a few moths do).

• However, supposedly consistent differences disintegrate under cross-examination. In fact, we have four times more day-flying moth species than butterflies, for example.

• Linguistically, English is an outlier in differentiating between moths and butterflies. French, German and Dutch refer to butterflies and night-butterflies.

If you’d like to learn more about butterflies, in our July issue, our regular feature, ‘Know A Thing Or Two’ looks at butterflies. Buy this month's The Simple Things - buy, download or subscribe

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Nature studies | Fly Agaric Toadstools

Get to know this familiar fungi a little better…

These pretty red toadstools with white spots have graced the pages of many a fairytale and greetings card, but spotting a real one in the wild is pretty special. Here are a few facts you might not know about these magical mushrooms…

1. They are mycorrhizal, meaning they form a mutually beneficial relationship with the tree that hosts them. 

2. They’re most commonly found in forests that are home to birch or pine trees. 

3. Fly Agaric take their name from the fact that they attract and kill flies. They used to be mixed with milk and left out in dishes to kill flies. 

4. The toadstools are also hallucinogenic. One of the effects of eating them is a distortion in one’s perception of size. Lewis Carrol made a nod to this in his depiction of the toadstool in Alice in Wonderland, in which the caterpillar tells Alice that eating from one side of the mushroom will make her grow bigger and the other side will make her grow smaller. 

5. The Fly Agaric often featured on Victorian Christmas cards as a symbol of good luck. 

6. Reports of human deaths from eating Fly Agaric are very rare, but all the same, we would advise against trying it. 

You can find out more about Fly Agaric at The Woodland Trust’s website.

And if you’ve been inspired, why not learn to draw one of these beautiful shrooms yourself, like the ones above? In our October issue we have a drawing workshop by Jennie Maizels, founder of Sketchbook Club. You can find a tutorial on how to draw toadstools and other autumnal things by Jennie on page 22. Jennie has run Sketchbook Club from her home and online for five years. For all the kit you need to get started, including paints, pencils and paper, visit: jenniemaizels.com and head to Jennie Maizels’ Sketchbook Club YouTube Channel for supporting ‘How to’ videos for these projects. You can also follow Jennie on Twitter and Instagram at @jenniemaizels.

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