Where to find bumblebees in late July

In Gardens

My neighbour's Lavendar is buzzing with B terrestris, lapidarius, pascuorum and pratorum, the early bumblebees are still plentiful here. Also a cuckoo bumblebee, R rupestris

In Grassland

The bramble flowers still attract B terrestris 
but the main bumblebee interest is around scabious: B lucorum, 

B terrestris, 

B pratorum

 And these oddities: a cuckoo bumblebee B rupestris?

And a faded B terrestris?

B pascuorum on thistle

October Bumblbee Quest

Where might you find bumblebees now that October is here?

Well on warm sunny days you could try any flowering plants. 

This rosemary bush is still well in flower and was still producing nectar on the 19th October for honey bees and the odd carder bee so there are still active colonies of carder bees.

Also Lavendar where it's still in flower

The other place you might try looking is fruiting ivy which is popular with wasps and bees:

However I saw lots of wasps, the odd hornet and quite a few honey bees but not a single bumblebee. There was a red admiral butterfly that returned several times while I was watching, though.

The ivy has been buzzing with insects today, 20th October.

Best time for bees

The best time to watch bumblebees

When's the best time to watch bumblebees in September? Is it on sunny mornings? I've noticed that white-tailed bumblebees and common carder bees seem active at 8am when the sun's shining.

  In my garden, it's the self sown weeds that are attracting the bumblebees at the moment:

Evening primrose

Sweet Pea

Teasel

Do Bees behave differently in September?

This morning I watched a white-tailed bumblebee racing from one evening primrose flower to another without collecting nectar or pollen, almost bumping into a carder bee that was leaving a flower, revisiting flowers it had just rejected, flying towards other plants with flowers but rapidly flying onwards. She gave the impression of being desparate for a fix of sugar-containing nectar.

  I wondered if the combination of warm sun, cool shade and less nectar was affecting her behaviour; the available nectar-containing flowers seem to have been well visited by bees and hoverflies.

  On the other hand I watched a white-tailed worker get caught up in a strand of spider's web and after being held for a few seconds she flew strongly enough to free herself.

A carder bee drinking from a blue sow-thistle

Carder bees will chase off common blue butterflies and small coppers who were feeding on white clover:

Clover is about the only nectar-producing flower in grass meadows around here.

Natural Mindfulness

Natural Mindfulness is 'letting Nature in' 

but what does this mean exactly?

  To me, it means look, listen and feel. It's March so we're used to looking out for the first flowers that appear in spring: lesser celandines:

and Coltsfoot

I can't switch off my thinking but I can direct it to the spontaneous events that are happening all around me while walking in nature. Like the emergence of a Comma butterfly from hibernation.

I find listening especially helpful. So I walk slowly, I pause but not in a self-conscious way; I listen for ten seconds and I'm constantly asking myself: 
    "What's special and different today?"
I can't see them but I can hear nuthatches and jackdaws, a buzzard flies overhead. These are the kind of things that make me glad to be alive.
Seasons change imperceptibly but every day reveals more preparations for the season ahead.
Today I heard fieldfares and song thrushes together. These two members of the thrush family overlap but soon the fieldfares will be migrating back to Norway and Sweden to nest.

  So today I heard woodpeckers drumming, a typical sound that belongs to British springtime:

https://vimeo.com/208677486

That greater spotted woodpecker has found a particularly resonant tree which he's using to announce his presence to females and other males.

Look, listen and feel and it's different every day.

SaveSave

O, to be in England... Robert Browning

Robert Browning, like Charles Dickens, was in Italy in the spring of 1845 when he wrote this poem

Home-thoughts, from Abroad

In 1845 Robert met the love of his life: Elizabeth Barrett Browning [EBB] 

But he had admired EBB from afar after reading her newly-published poems and had written his first letter to her on 10th January 1845 which began: 

'I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett' 

So he must surely have been thinking of Elizabeth, immobilised as she was by an unexplained illness when he wrote these lines. But he didn't meet EBB until May 1845. You can see how he imagines a person being in England and seeing and hearing the spring developing and growing. His verse in May is loaded with sensual imagery:

O, to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the Elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossom'd pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops - at the bent spray's edge-
That's the wise thrush; he sings his song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children's dower
-Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!

Granny's in a muddle: Living well with Dementia

"Granny's in a muddle: Granny needs a cuddle"
A six year old grandson's response to Joy losing the thread due to young onset Alzheimer's dementia. Alzheimer's is a common form of dementia associated with amyloid plaques and nerve fibre tangles. It begins with short term memory difficulties and is associated with wasting of the hippocampus which plays a part in immediate memory. The other common form of dementia is a mixed picture associated with multiple small strokes.
I heard Joy Watson speak recently and thoroughly recommend her approach to living well with dementia. Dementia-friendly design is important and would benefit us all, with fewer accidents and better demarcation of boundaries. 

Details here.
Glass tables and visual illusions on the wall disorientate people with difficulties estimating distance due to poor vision, people who've had a stroke and those of us who walk about with a mobile in our hand.
Wendy Mitchell talks here about her diagnosis with Alzheimer's despite living a healthy life 'nothing can protect you," she says. She's keen to encourage people to contribute to dementia research. You can follow Wendy's twitter feed here:
@WendyPMitchell

The greatest challenge is to create whole communities that are sympathetic to people with dementia. People who 'get in the way' by walking slowly along the pavement may be doing the best they can to stay active.
Regular physical exercise is reported to preserve the hippocampus, a region of the brain which thins in association with Alzheimer's dementia. The Cochrane review is guarded in its summary of the value of exercise in dementia: 

There is promising evidence that exercise programs may improve the ability to perform ADLs [activities of daily living] in people with dementia, although some caution is advised in interpreting these findings. The review revealed no evidence of benefit from exercise on cognition, [thinking] neuropsychiatric symptoms [delusions, hallucinations], or depression. There was little or no evidence regarding the remaining outcomes of interest (i.e., mortality, caregiver burden, caregiver quality of life, caregiver mortality, and use of healthcare services).

Social contact seems the most important factor in helping people with dementia to function at their best. Particularly as people with dementia commonly withdraw and become isolated.  Dementia Action Alliances are springing up all over the country. You can find out your nearest initiative here. 

Mindfulness and remembering to forget

Remembering to forget is an important part of recovery from chronic illness or traumatic experience. 

Any parent knows about the need to remind a young child to use the toilet before going out to avoid 'I need the toilet' interruptions to car journeys. There comes a time, though, when the child responds with 'I already have' or 'I don't need to'. The caring parent has to remember to forget, to trust the growing child's own judgement.
The same is true for people with a chronic illness. Say, for someone who experiences urgency to pass urine. They train themselves to visit the toilet before going out or visiting new places. The fear of 'having an accident' prompts them to make this habit a routine and in the short term the habit works. 
As time passes, things can change. The habit of frequent toileting stops working and the person seeks advice. Maybe their underlying condition improves but the default habit is so deeply ingrained that they cannot see the benefit.
A similar sequence can happen in eczema or psoriasis when the urge to scratch becomes the default position. If the skin condition improves, the scratch-itch cycle stirs it up to increase the discomfort.
It is possible that ruminating on a traumatic experience causes the same unhelpful re-running of the pain and upset.
What's needed here is the ability to 'remember to forget'. But how?
Mindfulness involves a focus on the present moment with acceptance. Some methods require a habit of regular meditation and diary-keeping. 

Natural mindfulness seeks to achieve this through contact with nature, such as while walking in the countryside. The calm, spontaneity and beauty of wild nature can train us to truly accept the present moment, driving away ruminations about the past or dreads about the future. Its role in recovering from trauma and easing skin conditions remains to be discovered.

Mindfulness included in NICE recommended treatment for depression

NICE: the UK National Institue for Health and Care excellence publishes evidence based recommendations for doctors and paramedics to follow

NICE reports are thorough and specialised but largely understandable to the general public. If you visit NICE you can enter any condition in the search box and read the advice which doctors are advised to follow in treating any condition.

The recommendations are hammered out by groups of specialists of all backgrounds and are continually updated to take account of new research findings. The full guidelines are quite overwhelming in scale, so I've provided an excerpt below.

It's interesting to note that mindfulness-based treatments are now included in the section dealing with preventing recurrence of episodes of depression and also for social anxiety disorder. Here is an excerpt from the October 2009 updated guidance about non-drug treatment of depression:

Psychological interventions for relapse prevention

1.9.1.8 People with depression who are considered to be at significant risk of relapse (including those who have relapsed despite antidepressant treatment or who are unable or choose not to continue antidepressant treatment) or who have residual symptoms, should be offered one of the following psychological interventions: 

• individual CBT for people who have relapsed despite antidepressant medication and for people with a significant history of depression and residual symptoms despite treatment
• mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for people who are currently well but have experienced three or more previous episodes of depression.

The advice is specific about the duration and frequency of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy.

Delivering psychological interventions for relapse prevention

1.9.1.9 For all people with depression who are having individual CBT for relapse prevention, the duration of treatment should typically be in the range of 16 to 20 sessions over 3 to 4 months. If the duration of treatment needs to be extended to achieve remission it should:

• consist of two sessions per week for the first 2 to 3 weeks of treatment
• include additional follow-up sessions, typically consisting of four to six sessions over the following 6 months. 

1.9.1.10 Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy should normally be delivered in groups of 8 to 15 participants and consist of weekly 2-hour meetings over 8 weeks and four follow-up sessions in the 12 months after the end of treatment.

It's a small, welcome recognition that a range of approaches are needed to prevent people spiralling into depression if they can't tolerate tablets or if the tablets don't help.

• 
  
  
  

Natural Mindful exercises

'See, hear and feel': the three main ways to   let Nature in 

In a mindful walk next week, we'll be exploring how our senses bring home the enduring freshness of the natural world. We'll visit some of my favourite places to test out a series of exercises in looking, listening and experiencing the natural flow and rhythm of the countryside at the very beginning of spring. 

I'll be interested to hear your ways of sensing the inspiration and spontaneity of Nature and any feedback you can give me on the exercises we try out while walking. Daily walks calm me and inspire me and I'd like to hear about ways that calmness and mindfulness can deepen for you and last throughout the day.

Exercises I'm developing include: 'Colours of the rainbow' and '3D listening'. 

Colours of the rainbow can be used alone or in pairs. The world looks real because it's composed of all the colours of the rainbow. If I search out the seven colours in order while walking: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet in turn, I surprise myself with the astonishing variety of colours in nature. As I continue to walk, that sensitivity to unexpected colours stays with me.

3D listening involves stopping at a convenient point on a hillside such as a green corridor with a view of a valley. I stand and listen with eyes closed for one minute and concentrate on the pitch and loudness of sounds I'm hearing. I try to pinpoint the direction of all the sounds I can hear. The sounds may include machines, planes overhead as well as birdsong and the wind in the trees. I aim to cultivate a non-judgmental acceptance of all I can  hear and I hope that in this way I can become a better listener.

More interesting still is the area of feeling, so I'd welcome your support not exactly in tree-hugging but in experiencing the textures and smells of the plants around us. I find this intriguing because in my experience, sensations quickly bring emotions to the surface.

So I trust we'll share our reactions to practising natural mindfulness while enjoying a convivial walk in beautiful countryside with like-minded people.

Popular science: Five clues to common overstatements

Lazy interpretation creeps in when science is popularised.

Here are some clues to help to detect overstatements:

1. "Because" 

any article that uses this word is veering from the truth. We are living through a Crisis of Attribution; that is, we have no secular theory to explain why a follows b, only that they are associated more often that expected by chance. Our theories are not built to answer the question: "Why?" or "How?" only to make predictions and test for associations.
Suggested alternative: avoid altogether

2. "Scientific" 

Scientists are aware of what we don't know which enables them to ask a discriminant question: ie one that can be tested in our present state of knowledge. The adjective 'scientific' conveys nothing more than: 'I want you to believe this.'
Suggested alternative: "doubtful"

3. "Facts"

In the Words of Friedrich Nietsche: "Es gibt keine Tatsachen, nur Interpretationen" 
'There are no facts, only interpretations.' 
Human perception is notoriously susceptible to error, blue sky is grey to some people and my 'blue' is almost certainly completely different to yours.

Suggested alternative: avoid altogether

4. "Proved" and "Validated" when combined with the 'S' word.

Suggested alternative: "suggested"

5. "Brain chemicals" and "Neuroscientists" and "raises the level of"

In science, theories are contested, try finding two 'neuroscientists' from varying fields who agree with each other; the neuro-anatomists barely talk to the neuro-chemists and as for the neuro-electrophysiologists and the brain scanners, they rarely even see each other.

It's a tough life being a populiser of science, though I can't fault Brian Cox, particularly as I don't understand astrophysics.

Natural Mindfulness

What is natural mindfulness? 

I like the phrase: 'Letting nature in'. For me, there is always something which the natural world can show us that is immediately valuable in our lives. Our unconscious is able to present that to us through our mind, body or feelings. But we need somehow to practise stepping back from everyday concerns: regrets about the past or anxiety over the future, in order to be open to this message.

How can a guide facilitate natural mindfulness? 

  [my personal view]

• By slowing down. there's no hurry in mindfulness. There is something about moving slowly through the countryside that renews our connection to the natural world. Way back in time, moving through the landscape was vital to our survival. If we spend too long indoors we miss out on this experience.
• By being in a calm, timely state of mind, body and feelings. Mental, physical and emotional pains can seem overwhelming but on a wintry day in the Cotswold countryside you have to pay attention to where you're putting your feet. But it's more than distraction: it is listening for the underlying message.
• By being curious. Curiosity, asking questions takes us to new learning. It's been said: 'Beginner's mind, Zen mind'. 
• So is a guide an expert? No. The most naive questions that a beginner could ask, such as: 'Why is the sky blue?' experts struggle to answer. A guide is not an expert, he or she is a facilitator, encouraging the conditions for natural insights to come for every person on a walk.
• Do I need to study nature in order to benefit? No. Use your favourite way of 'being in the present' going beyond overthinking, customary body sensations and well-worn emotional paths: meditation, centring, relaxation or creative visualisation and [I believe] you will find that you are more than your mind, body and feelings. Some people call this disidentifying
• Does mindfulness take a lot of effort? If you discover that this state of mind is useful, your unconscious will practise it often and enable you to use it when you need it most.
• Is it like a nature walk? It's what you make it. Maybe a wilderness experience is part of it, maybe noticing the particular season, time of day and seeing, hearing or feeling something special to that particular time and place.

Mindful Walks in Winter 2: Seeing a hawk

Sparrow hawks are common in Britain but likely to be overlooked 

because they hunt by silently gliding low over hedgerows looking to flush out small birds. They're not as prominent as kestrels that hover, Kites that hunt together and buzzards that circle and call noisily. So here are some ways to maximise your chances of seeing a sparrow hawk. 

Mindful walking for me is about being observant, listening, seeing and feeling alive. It doesn't matter whether I see the bird I'm looking out for but if I do I feel elated. 
I feel alive.

Walk outside

Walking anywhere is likely to disturb hawks from their observation posts on the roof of a house, the top of a telegraph pole or tall tree. Sparrowhawks can be seen around suburban gardens, taking advantage of the birds that feed at bird tables. In winter trees provide little cover so their look out posts are much more visible.

Listen for mobbing. 

Jackdaws, crows, magpies and rooks have a range of mobbing calls including a charcteristic rattling call to chase off a predator that will alert you to their presence. 

Memorise the Sparrowhawk's call

Listen for the sparrowhawk's call which you sometimes hear in woods, rartely when it's out hunting.

Try to identify every bird flying alone. 

Most will be woodpigeons but if you keep doing it during a two hour walk you're quite likely to recognise a sparrow hawk in the few moments it takes to fly overhead. Jackdaws, rooks and crows usually fly in flocks or in pairs. Predators hunt on their own.

How to make the most of a winter mindful walk

Tricks to seeing and hearing birds in December

Part one woodland birds

In December the woods become transparent because only a few beech trees keep their leaves.That means we can see the woodland birds [and they can see us]. 

In winter weather birds go into survival mode but they still need forage for food which may be in the higher branches or undergrowth. Here are some tricks to use to see the less common woodland birds: spotted woodpeckers, nuthatches, treecreepers and jays.

1. Pause where you can see a gap between two woods. Woodland birds often fly across the gap. You can observe their flight pattern and sometimes hear their calls. Woodpeckers go into freefall by closing their wings in a very charactreristic way. Jays also close their wings so their flight path is a series of u-shaped dives.
   
2. Walk at a steady pace on a path directly through a wood. This is called making a line transect. Birds fly from you and you can hear their alarm calls and see a blur of colour in their wings. Stopping walking often alerts the birds to your presence. 
3. Follow paths on the side of a wooded valley because they are especially good for observing the crowns of the trees without having to strain your eyes and neck.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Familiarise yourself with the typical calls of the birds you'd like to see, for instance here's a Great Spotted Woodpeckerand you'll double the number of birds you can identify.
5. Stand and listen for a minute in the middle of a wood. Sound carries well in winter and you may hear four or five different bird calls.

I'll write again soon about how to observe woodland edge birds.

Dealing with hold-ups during editing

In writers' workshops, I've always found it confusing when writers offer alternative readings for a paragraph or announce that sections in their manuscript are 'to be arranged'. 

How can you comment on two versions at once? 

Now I find myself doing something similar when coming across a problematic chapter. By which I mean a section that diverts from the main plot, is intended as humour but is a bit too knowing or even irrelevant. 

I can't simply cut it out because I need a pause, a change of scene, a change of pace or I want to create tension and delay a reveal. Scenes like this arise because I have two alternating voices in two locations, one first person and the other third person, it's not a simple thing that I can fix in one session.

I'm at risk of losing steam in the three-pages-a-day edit that will see me reach the end by the end of the month. I worry that if I slow down and fix small rpoblems I'll 'loose the plot' ie miss out on the narrative trajectory.

Why don't I just fix that chapter? I need to see the manuscript as a whole. I need to get back to the narrative voice that I recognise. I'll decide later how the problem can be fixed. 
If I linger too long I run the risk of losing momentum and compounding the problem which is relatively small in comparison with the task of creative continuity witrh a consisten voice.
So what's the solution?
I've decided to change the font colour so I know that that section needs to be revised when I read through it next time. Anyone got any other suggestions?

Researching a novel setting, using maps, editing and keeping going

Prompts that help me edit

I've always been fascinated to see writers' scrapbooks and research notes. Because I'm writing about a remote historical time, research is vital to imagine how people lived

 Maps help me track the route characters need to take to get around the village. I have an outline of the key buildings, the river, the valley and the forest. I can see where the sun will be shining in the morning. 

I'm doing a line edit at the moment but it still helps to remember the context and to remember the feelings I had when I envisaged the landscape.

My book is set in the Neolithic period, or new stone age so I check through the images I have of stone age artefacts which play a big part in the story. 

Cave sculptures like this amazingly life-like creation remind me of the artistic creativity of the people and their relationship to animals. 

Totem animals may have had a spiritual significance, animals played a huge part in people's lives.

This photo reminds me of visits to neolithic sites. This stone circle in County Cork is close to a stone house that still has stone beds and and a stone sink. 

A lot of my research was from illustrated books and archaeological digs. I copied the drawings that might be significant to the story. Whenever I spent time in a library or a museum I always did some free writing about what I had seen that day. I feel this helped me internalise my learning and imagine how people felt when they wore these clothes and lived in these houses.

These are the things that help me keep going.

I have more suggestions on novel editing to come...

Truly creative writing, attribution and mindfulness

There are many books for writers that are designed to inspire you to write and to write well. 

For me, the best books are the ones that you have to put down because you feel: "I have to write now; it can't wait"

Writers often offer insights into their inspirations at literary festivals but the best advice I ever received was from Julia Green , children's writer and tutor at Bath Spa University. 

It has stayed with me and I often return to those five words:

"Get close to your character"

Whenever my writing diverts off into my own thoughts and favourite places or when I feel it's not resonating it's because I've lost that inkling of my character's feelings and thoughts. 

This is particularly likely to happen when I write in the third person. "She" feels a long way away and I need to remind myself that a novel perpetuates an untruth that we all act for a reason.

In real life I believe our actions and mediated by all kinds of random events to do with brain and body chemistry, day of the week and unplanned accidents.  Perhaps that's what a post-modern novel is designed to convey but it makes for heavy reading.

We live at the the Age of the 'Crisis of Attribution'; for most of us, natural disasters are not 'Acts of God' as they were in medieval times but random events which challenge a belief in a plan or an organising consciousness. 
In my best moments I believe in a spiritual realm but mostly I bumble along like everyone else, beset by regrets and ruminations.
In novels, A follows B which causes C in a believable and inevitable consequence of a character's actions. 
The challenge for the writer is to simulate free choice; to persuade readers that decisions and actions have consequences. It is conventional for puzzles to be solved, for evil doers to suffer consequences except in the case of lovable rogues and antiheroes. 
There's a great hunger for uplifting stories to be true and it's so strong that Governments employ storytellers to explain away setbacks and ugly inconveniences.
So my conclusion is to 'be in the zone' I need to become mindful and to imagine each of my characters is meeting the consequences of his or her actions.

Happy Endings in Children's Books

Happy Endings used to be vital in children's books. 

Not so with the recent trend for 'terminal teens' as seen in titles such as Jenny Downham's Before I die, John Green's The Fault in Our Stars and most recently in Sarah Benwell's The Last Leaves Falling. 

Perhaps these books reflect a post-modern rejection of moral tales and a willingness to tackle subjects specifically excluded in earlier guides for writers. They certainly tap into strong emotional events and enquiries about what lies beyond. Mainly, I think, the writers encourage us to live honest lives knowing that injury or disease can strike people of all ages without warning.

As a doctor, I'm glad that chronic disease in childhood, learning needs [Sarah Hammond's The Night Sky in my Head] are represented implying a more inclusive society. Since it's my blog, I can mention my own title: Speak to Me: Mute, witty and dangerous, which seeks to explore the teenage experience of advanced cerebral palsy.

All these titles challenge the overriding perception of a fit society in which 'fitness' is equated to both 'sexually attractive' and 'deserving'. The experience of people outside the presumed majority urgently needs to be explored in an age of hate crime of outsiders: those with disability, different gender, orientation or race. 

Despite advances in treatment, living with chronic illness is an experience of a minority of young people, their friends and their families. Arthritis, Down's Syndrome, autism, hemiplegia, cystic fibrosis, diabetes, heart disease all deserve to be represented here. 

What young people seek is not pity or charity but a recognition that their lives are as eventful and precious as any of the celebrities of whom we hear so much.