Katie's first nature walk

Katie the cuddly toy puppy lives with her owner Yssy (pronounced ‘Izzy’ but short for Ysella, so spelt a little differently from normal) in a little granite cottage in a pretty, little granite village, near the sparkly sea, at the far end of beautiful Cornwall.

Katie is mainly white and tan in colour, with brown ears and tail, a black nose and the greenest eyes you ever did see.  She likes to wear a green collar (to match her eyes), and sleeps in a little green bag (to match her collar, which matches her eyes).  Katie is a very friendly puppy – and also a very curious puppy.

One day Katie was going to go for a walk.  Katie was very excited because Yssy and Yssy’s mummy were going on a special nature walk around the village, and she was going to go with them. 

Katie had been living with Yssy for only a short while.  Before she’d come to live with Yssy, she’d lived in a shop in the nearby town, surrounded by books, games and other similar-looking puppies.  Whilst the other toys were mostly pleasant and generally polite, Katie had been continually poked, prodded and picked up by sticky-fingered children, and this made her unhappy.  The day that Yssy came into the shop was one of the best days of Katie’s life.  Yssy didn’t poke or prod Katie, and she definitely didn’t have sticky fingers.  Instead, Yssy had headed straight for Katie without looking at anything else in the shop.  ‘This is the one I want, Mummy!’, she’d said, picking up Katie and holding her close.  Katie had felt a warm glow of happiness spreading from the tip of her tail to the tips of her ears – she was going home.

Because Katie had only being living with Yssy for a short while, she hadn’t been on many walks.  She most certainly hadn’t been on a nature walk!  Yssy described to Katie what they hoped to see on the walk.  She spoke of delicate insects that flew, hopped and scuttled, of squawking birds that soared overhead and perched in trees, of pretty flowers that adorned the wayside and provided food for the delicate insects, and of oddly-shaped fungi that sprouted in damp places.  Katie felt overwhelmed – she hadn’t really ever experienced ‘nature’, and it all sounded rather scary.  However, she knew she’d be safe with Yssy, and so she put on a brave face.

Yssy gathered Katie in her arms, opened the front door to vivid blue skies and hot sunshine, and the walk began. 

After only a few steps, Yssy’s mummy stopped to point out what looked at first like a black twig.  ‘Wow!’, exclaimed Yssy, ‘How many aphids are there?!’.   Katie bent down to see what all the fuss was about, and to her surprise, the black twig wasn’t a black twig after all – it was a plant stem covered in funny, tiny black insects, all huddled together and all gently wiggling.  Katie then jumped back.  Another sort of insect had appeared. This one had longer legs than the little black insects, which it used to move about very quickly. It also had a way of looking at small puppies that Katie found a little worrying.  ‘It’s OK, Katie’, reassured Yssy, sensing her toy’s alarm.  ‘It’s only an ant.  It’s keeping an eye on the aphids, as the aphids produce something called honeydew, which the ants like to eat.  In return for the honeydew, the ants help to protect the aphids from harm.  It was just making sure that you weren’t going to eat them.’  The thought of eating the little black insects hadn’t even crossed her mind but Katie wasn’t going to take any chances.  She nestled closer to Yssy, and eyed the ant, somewhat suspiciously, from a safe distance.

The walk continued along the road.  Katie found herself transfixed by the array of beautiful colours on either side of her.  Against the high walls grew lovely pink blooms that Yssy’s mum called Greater Willowherb, yellow, fluffy flowers belonging to Smooth Sow-thistle, and big round, mauve creations, called Beach Aster.  Katie’s favourite was a plant called Mexican Fleabane – she liked it so much that she jumped right into it and had a good old sniff around.  And it wasn’t only flowers.  Katie spotted what looked like daubs of coloured paint, smattered all over the walls in all different shapes and sizes.  Yssy said they were called ‘lichens’ and that they grew on trees and soil as well as walls.  Yssy’s mummy seemed to like them very much!

These pretty flowers grow all over the walls in the village – they look like daisies but the plant is actually Mexican Fleabane Erigeron karvinskianus.  Like its name suggests, it is native to Mexico and parts of South America.

After a short walk along the colourful road, Yssy and Yssy’s mummy stopped and turned to face a big field full of huge stones, giant plants called trees and more pretty flowers.  Katie looked around and then barked in alarm.  Her reading wasn’t that great but she had a pretty good idea what a picture of a dog with a line through it meant, and she didn’t like it.  ‘It’s OK, Katie’, comforted Yssy. ‘You’re a special type of dog.  The sign doesn’t apply to you’.  Katie felt better.  If Yssy had said that the sign didn’t apply to her, then it must be true. 

This sign alarmed me somewhat but Yssy assured me that it didn’t apply to me, as I’m such a well-behaved, special dog.

Katie looked around.  She realised that Yssy was muttering something about wishing she’d brought her scooter, whilst Yssy’s mummy was peering very closely at a winged creature on a wall.  

This fly was very small and very black.  Although Yssy’s mummy thinks she managed to identify it (or something similar) last year, at the moment, she doesn’t know what it is.  I called it Simon.

But Katie was more interested in the big green tree to her right, which looked like a giant climbing frame.  The urge to climb it was overwhelming, and she leapt out of Yssy’s arms.  ‘Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof!’, she yelped, as the spikes of the sharp Holly leaves dug into her fur.  She certainly hadn’t been expecting that!  Fortunately, it wasn’t long before she felt Yssy’s gentle hands around her, and she was soon back in the safety of her owner’s arms.  She wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

I soon discovered that Holly Ilex aquifolium isn’t the most comfortable of trees to climb but it was rather nice and shiny.

After the shock of the Holly, Katie wasn’t sure that nature was really her cup of tea but she didn’t want Yssy to know that she was worried, so did her best to forget about the spikes and endeavoured to enjoy herself.  Katie liked the big stones.  It wasn’t long before she noticed that like the wall along the road, they too were covered in colourful splodges, some of which reminded her of the fur on her own ears.  She asked Yssy if it might be possible to get a bit closer to it.  Yssy placed her right at the top of one stone, from where Katie could see far, far into the distance – she felt very brave to be up so high.  Rather disappointingly, the fruticose lichen (that’s how Yssy’s mummy described it) didn’t feel anything like puppy fur, it being rather rough in texture.  Katie quite liked it though.

Apparently this funny stuff growing all over the gravestones is something called lichen.  It’s rather peculiar but I quite like it.  It’s definitely strange though – a mix between a fungus and an alga – and is useful as an indicator of atmospheric pollution.  The tufty stuff below my paws is Sea Ivory Ramalina siliquosa, and the big white splodgy patches are Parelle Ochrolechia parella.  Both like to be beside the seaside.  So do I.  Yssy’s mummy says she’d need to do a bit of book checking before being certain of the other ones.  She also said something about ‘testing them’ with chemicals but I’m not really sure what she was on about, so I simply nodded a lot.

After a gentle saunter, involving looking up at really tall trees, watching noisy Rooks chattering in the branches, trying to keep an eye on very bouncy flies which Yssy’s mummy insisted on calling Daddy-long-legs but which Yssy said were crane-flies, and coming face-to-face with enormous Garden Spiders in their intricate webs, Katie found herself being placed on a tree stump.  Yssy’s mummy explained that when she’d first come to the village, there were a lot more Monterey Pines (the really tall trees) than there are now, and that the many tree stumps were all that remained of their existence.  Katie was rather sad about this but Yssy suggested that Katie take a closer look at the tree stumps.  Yssy pointed out some colourful fungi and numerous plants growing on the stump itself.  Katie then spotted some ants running around but despite getting as close as she could to the stump, she couldn’t see any aphids.  Yssy explained that ants didn’t only engage in aphid-farming but led very interesting lives as part of a larger ant community. 

It was then that Katie noticed the holes.  She looked around her – there were holes all over the stump.  She tried to imagine what might have caused the holes but all she could come up with was a very tiny dog attempting to bury lots of equally tiny bones, and she wasn’t entirely certain that such a thing existed.  ‘Katie, watch the holes’, instructed Yssy.  Yssy was carefully tickling some of the holes with a piece of long grass. Very soon, Katie was able to make out tiny little heads, getting nearer and nearer to the hole entrances.  She kept very still – even her whiskers were still – and watched as one after another, small, grey creatures emerged from the holes.  Yssy explained that they were woodlice, small terrestrial crustaceans which made their homes in dark, damp places.  Yssy’s mummy was particularly fascinated by the woodlice, saying that the holes would have been made by a different creature, probably a wood-boring beetle, and that the woodlice must have thought they’d make a good home and moved in sometime afterwards.

The jury’s out on who made these holes in this tree stump but Yssy and her mummy did some tickling with a piece of grass, and lots of little creatures with more legs than I’ve ever seen on anything before came scuttling out.  Yssy said they were woodlice of the Rough variety Porcellio scaber.  They were a bit fast for me but seemed harmless enough.

The neighbouring field featured fewer lichen-covered big stones than the previous one, and there were far more plants for the intrepid explorers to investigate.  Katie saw prickly Gorse, from which she kept her distance, having learned her lesson with the Holly, Yarrow, Common Knapweed, Soft Rush (very odd stuff), Common Ragwort, Hogweed and all manner of interesting things. 

I especially liked what Yssy says is called clover – when I ran over it, my paws felt cool and soft, and it smelled very yummy too.  This is Red Clover Trifolium pratense and on the other side of the path was White Clover Trifolium repens.

Yssy told Katie that the swathes of enticing fluff floating around were the seeds of the beautifully-scented Creeping Thistle.  Before Yssy was able to specify that it were the flowers that had such a lovely scent, Katie was off, diving head first into the fluff.  Fortunately, Yssy grabbed Katie before she reached the thistle’s prickles but not quickly enough to prevent a whole load of seeds from becoming attached to Katie’s nose!

Yssy says that before all these fluffy seeds appear, the pretty purple flowers of Creeping Thistle Cirsium arvensis smell like honey.  The fluff tickled my nose and made me sneeze – perhaps I shouldn’t have sniffed quite so hard.

Having removed the thistle seeds from Katie’s nose, the walk was once more underway.  As well as many more pretty flowers, Katie was introduced to some really bizarre creatures – one of which even tried to take a bite out of Yssy!  These creatures weren’t very big but they had giant back legs and funny, conical heads, with funny little eyes that Katie felt were continually watching her.  And what most surprised Katie was the creatures’ ability to jump.  She watched in amazement, as without warning, one sprung up from a blade of grass, only to land right in front of her nose.  After a short staring competition, Katie decided that grasshoppers were a little too unpredictable for her liking, and in future, she’d be approaching them with care. 

The grasshoppers had been mostly green in colour, so Katie was pretty surprised when she saw something blue bounce and land by her right paw.  It didn’t look quite right for a grasshopper, and its legs definitely weren’t as enormous but it had jumped like a grasshopper.  Whatever it was, Yssy’s mummy seemed very excited by it!  She said it was some sort of leafhopper, a type of bug more closely related to the aphids we’d seen than to the grasshoppers.

Katie was very glad when Yssy suggested they all stop for a while to have a rest.  All this nature whizzing around her was playing havoc with her senses, and she was feeling a little sleepy.  Yssy placed Katie on a rather nice wooden gate, where the little puppy dozed dreamily about monstrous grasshoppers and cushions made of holly leaves.  She woke with a start, and was very glad to find Yssy admiring pretty flowers rather than pursuing yet more creatures with a silly amount of legs.

This gate seemed like as good a place as any to take a bit of time-out.

The walk continued along a shaded footpath.  Yssy pointed out pretty butterflies, and funny, furry, buzzing bees.  Katie liked butterflies and bees – she wasn’t quite so sure about the very odd-looking flying creature shown to her by Yssy’s mummy though.  Yssy’s mummy described it as an Ick-something-or-other, and said that it was related to the ants and bees that they’d seen.  Katie ended up having to ask Yssy’s mummy to spell the word – I-c-h-n-e-u-m-n-o-n – which helped a little bit but still seemed like a very strange word to her.

Both Yssy and Katie were beginning to get a bit tired, so Yssy’s mummy agreed to draw the walk to a close.  But not before she’d been to see ‘her’ aphids, which lived just around the corner on some trees by the village stream.  Katie thought she knew all about aphids but Yssy’s mummy seemed strangely attached to these particular ones.  Yssy ran ahead.  ‘I’ll look!’, she cried.  Yssy began turning over leaf after leaf of an Italian Alder tree.  ‘There don’t seem to be many today’, she commented before exclaiming loudly, ‘Ooh, what’s this?’.  Katie and Yssy’s mummy quickly joined Yssy to have a look at what she’d found.  ‘I think that’s a sawfly larva’, said Yssy’s mummy.  ‘Let’s have a look to see if there are any others’.  Sure enough, tell-tale holes in the leaves led to the discovery of several more of the white Woolly Alder Sawfly larvae.  Thankfully, Yssy’s mummy spotted some of her special aphids too, so all was well.

A very funny caterpillar-like creature - the larva of the Woolly Alder Sawfly Eriocampa ovata

The band of nature-investigators headed home.  Katie’s head was full of all the sights and sounds from her walk, and no sooner had she settled down in her green bag, then she was fast asleep, dreaming of sweet-smelling flowers, friendly bumblebees and brightly-coloured bugs.  She couldn’t wait for her next walk.

Some more photos from Katie's very first nature walk: 

Now, when I first spotted these strange little balls, they really scared the woofs out of me.  Some were green, some were red and some a purple-black.  Likewise, some were hard, some were a little soft, and others were downright squishy.  Thankfully, Yssy wouldn’t let me get too near to them anyway, in case I ended up turning purple (not sure how that might happen, mind you).  

These little fellas were rather fascinating.  It took me a while to work out what it was that Yssy and her mummy were finding so amusing but once I looked properly, I soon saw lots of little brown creatures wandering over these dock flowers.  Yssy informed me that they were Dock Bugs Coreus marginatus, which makes sense.

Ah, now this tree was far less prickly than that Holly, and it was growing green and red balls.  What more could a puppy ask for?

This tree – a Rowan Sorbus acuparia – was also growing balls but Yssy told me not to try eating them, as they’d probably give me tummy ache.  

Yssy’s mummy insisted on my looking at these leaves.  She said that if I looked closely I’d see little squiggly patterns made by a fly larva Phytomyza minuscula living inside the leaf.   I’d seen flies before but not inside a leaf.  Still, that’s what Yssy’s mummy says they are…

I think these little flowers growing along the side of the road were my favourite.  They certainly lived up to their name of Pineappleweed Matricaria discoidea – I could’ve stayed there all day, inhaling their delicious scent.

Seeing as I was down there already, I checked out this Shepherd’s-purse Capsella bursa-pastoris   too.  Yssy likes their little heart-shaped pods.  She also likes them because when you brush past them in a certain manner, the seeds ping all over the place.

It was very nice to come across this bowl of water.  I couldn’t resist having a quick drink.