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earthstar

~ a celebration of nature

earthstar

Monthly Archives: March 2016

Hoverflies: handsome and harmless

31 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by sconzani in insects, nature, nature photography

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Eristalis pertinax, Helophilus pendulus, hoverfly, Platycheirus albimanus, Tapered Drone Fly, The Footballer, The Sunfly, White-footed Hoverfly, Wood anemone

How is it that I am only just discovering hoverflies? Of course, I’ve seen them before, hovering silently over the garden bed and feeding on flower nectar, like the humming birds of the insect world, but I wasn’t aware of all their good qualities. For one thing, they’re clever – they mimic wasps and bees to deter predators, but they don’t sting. For another, because they feed on nectar and pollen, they’re excellent pollinators. And, for a third, many types of hoverfly larvae eat aphids and other plant-suckers so they’re every gardener’s friend and can potentially be used for biological control of those hugely damaging pests.

What I also discovered last weekend was that hoverflies love wood anemones and I found three species feasting on the beautiful drifts of plants currently flowering in my local cemetery. These are they – and I’m sure this is just the start of a beautiful new fascination!

Eristalis pertinax

Meet Eristalis pertinax, otherwise know as the Tapered Drone Fly. It’s a common sight throughout Britain, from March right through to November, and loves hedgerows and woodland trails.

Helophilus pendulus

As it’s a lover of fine sunny days, Helophilus pendulus is commonly known as The Sunfly, though some call it The Footballer because its stripy thorax resembles a team strip. Personally, I prefer its scientific name, which means ‘dangling marsh-lover’, a reference to its liking for watery places.

Platycheirus albimanus

And last and smallest for today is Platycheirus albimanus, the White-footed Hoverfly (though only the swelling on the front foot of the male is, in fact, pale). It’s another to be found throughout Britain, in gardens and hedgerows, from March to November.

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‘The king of the jungle’

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by sconzani in animals, nature, nature photography

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

king of the jungle, lion, Ngorongoro Crater, Serengeti National Park, Serengeti Plains, Tanzania

Did you know …

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The ‘king of the jungle’ is just an expression as lions actually live in grasslands and plains.

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The roar of a lion can be heard up to 8kms (5 miles) away.

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A lion can run at 50 mph but only for short distances and can leap as far as 36 feet.

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When it walks, a lion’s heels don’t touch the ground.

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Lions are the only big cats to live in family groups, known as prides.

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The reason lions spend up to 20 hours a day resting and sleeping is because their bodies have very few sweat glands so it is easier for them to be active in the cool of the night.

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Lions’ eyes are six times more sensitive to light than human eyes, which means they have excellent night vision.

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The darker the mane, the older the lion, and lionesses seem to prefer males with darker manes.

My photographs of lions were taken on the Serengeti Plains and in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania in 2014, at the end of a week-long trip with The Giving Lens, an organisation that combines photography workshops with mentoring, media and financial support for local NGOs.

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The stars that fell to earth

29 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, spring, wildflowers

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Anemone nemorosa, Cathays Cemetery, spring flowers, Wood anemone

I saw my first wood anemones for this spring last weekend, dotted about the Nant Fawr woodland here in Cardiff, but it wasn’t until yesterday that I saw these wonderful lush displays in Cathays Cemetery. The wood anemone (Anemone nemorosa) is often to be found in the older graveyards throughout the British Isles, as well as in parks, gardens and ancient woodland. Its gorgeous white flowers, usually blooming from March through to May, have been likened by some to a late fall of snow blanketing the ground but, to my somewhat vivid imagination, it seems rather that the stars of the Milky Way have fallen to earth.

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The wonderfully informative Plantlife website gives some interesting nuggets of information about this springtime favourite: it symbolises expectation, brevity and forlornness, and, in China, the flower’s pale, somewhat ghostly appearance has earned it the name ‘Flower of Death’. It is also the county flower of Middlesex.

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I also discovered yesterday that the flowers of the wood anemone, though poisonous to humans, are favourites of hoverflies – in my ignorance I thought they were bees – and I got photos of 3 different species feasting on their pollen (but I’m saving those for a future blog.)

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A tale of two goosanders

28 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

birding, birdwatching, British birds, Goosander, Mergus merganser

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I watched a pair of goosanders (Mergus merganser) slowly making their way up one side of the River Taff today, frequently ducking their heads underwater in search of the fish, molluscs, crustaceans and amphibians that make up their diet. When they reached Blackweir, I expected them to drift back down the river but it seems they were determined to go further up steam.

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That’s when it became apparent that the female can’t fly. Half of her right wing is missing. I doubt this is a birth defect and suspect a narrow escape from the mink that I have seen in recent weeks on the riverbanks in this vicinity.

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The only way to cross the weir then was to walk as the flow of water, even though currently quite weak, was much too strong for swimming. The female had trouble getting out of the water up onto the rocks and then the concrete of the weir, but managed after a couple of tries. Her mate was very patient, and seemed very tender with her, touching her head with his beak, watching to see she was alright while also keeping a look out for danger. He would toddle a little way ahead, then turn and wait for her to catch up. Once he returned to her side as if to encourage her. It took perhaps 20 minutes but they made it and swam on up the river.

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Trouble is, she is now very vulnerable to attack, especially from creatures like the mink but also from unleashed dogs (of which there are many in Cardiff). And the chances of these goosanders successfully breeding are also probably quite slim. My heart went out to these two little creatures, touched by the male’s gentleness with his disabled mate but saddened by their somewhat bleak future prospects.

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Easter bunnies

27 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by sconzani in animals, nature

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Tags

bunny, Easter, Easter bunny, rabbit

Although Easter is a time when Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, its origins can be traced back to much earlier, pagan times. Some sources say the name Easter comes from Ishtar (pronounced ‘Easter’), the Babylonian and Assyrian goddess of sex and fertility. Given the similarity of the names, as well as the bunny’s propensity for frequent reproduction, the association of bunnies with Ishtar-Easter would seem to make perfect sense.

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However, other sources say there is no actual evidence that Ishtar is associated with the present-day Easter celebrations and cite the Venerable Bede as their source when explaining that the name comes from Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess of Spring. Springtime festivities traditionally celebrate rebirth and fertility, so the Easter bunnies fit right in with that explanation.

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It seems the modern day Easter bunny started life amongst German Lutherans (the earliest known written record is dated 1682), where his role was a little like that of Santa Claus – if a child had been good, they would receive gifts from an Easter bunny carrying a basketful of coloured eggs, and sometimes sweets and toys. If you’ve been good boys and girls, perhaps the bunny will bring you a gift as well.

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Frogs in flagrante

26 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by sconzani in amphibian, nature, nature photography

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Common frog, frog spawn, frogs mating, Rana temporaria

My social media feeds have been full of the frog spawn people have been finding in ponds all over these isles but it wasn’t till last Thursday, while up the Welsh valleys on a wildlife recorders course, that I was in frog-full countryside. And as we meandered along a track in the Cwn Saerbren SSSI at Treherbert, searching for biology to record, what should we find but two Common frogs (Rana temporaria) enjoying a tender moment together. I hadn’t seen a Common frog before so, though it seemed a tad voyeuristic, I took rather a lot of photos.

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At this time of year, the males celebrate the joys of spring with a croaking fiesta to attract the females. The male with the loudest croak wins the contest, and gets to climb on the female’s back, grasping her under her forelegs with the special nuptial pads on his front legs. The pair stay attached like this until the female lays her 1000 – 2000 eggs, over which the male sprays his sperm to fertilise them. We left our couple to continue the process but did collect a small sample of frog spawn elsewhere, for scientific examination. The rest, as they say, is tadpoles!

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Merry marsh marigolds

25 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, wildflowers

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Caltha palustris, marsh marigold, spring, spring flowers

Yellow is the colour of happiness, optimism, enlightenment, creativity, hope, cheerfulness, and sunshine. Yellow is also the most luminous in the colour spectrum – the colour that most easily catches our eye and the eyes of bees so it’s no surprise that yellow is the most common flower colour, and the quintessential colour of Spring.

marsh marigold

One of the wonderfully vibrant plants whose flowers have been catching my eye over the past couple of weeks is the Marsh marigold (Caltha palustris). As its name implies, this wildflower likes the dampness of marshes, fens, ditches and the wetter areas of my local woodlands. According to Wikipedia, it ‘is probably one of the most ancient native plants, surviving the glaciations and flourishing after the last retreat of the ice in a landscape inundated with glacial meltwaters.’

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The Marsh marigold is commonly known as Kingcup – its Latin name Caltha comes from the Greek word for goblet and its large golden cup-shaped flowers certainly look glorious enough to adorn the table of a king.

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Juffits & fuffits & long-tailed chitterings

24 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, nature photography

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

birding, birds, birdwatching, British birds, long-tailed tit

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It’s taken me many months of following these little birds to get any half decent photographs. The Long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus) rarely keeps still, spending most of its day with its extended family of 10 to 20 birds, flitting and fluttering through trees, shrubs and hedgerows, chattering all the way. In fact, that’s often how you first realise they’re about, by their very characteristic call, which the BTO website describes as ‘a sharp tsurp, repeated several times’.

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most of my photos are like these, of tits behind twigs in trees

They are probably the cutest of Britain’s small birds, like little bundles of fluff with tails too long for their bodies, and, judging by the long list of charming common names they have attracted, I’m not the only one who thinks they’re cute. These are just a selection from the list in Buczacki’s Flora Britannica: in Yorkshire, they’re known as ‘Bottle jugs’; in the Midlands, it’s the ‘bottle tom’, the ‘bottle tit’ and the ‘bum barrel’; in Warwickshire, the ‘buttermilk can’; in East Lothian, the ‘feather poke’ and the ‘fuffit’; in Warwickshire, the ‘hedge mumruffin’; in Nottinghamshire the ‘jack-in-a-bottle’ and the ‘juffit’; and in Shropshire and Worcestershire the ‘miller’s thumb’ and the ‘long-tailed chittering’.

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Hello, Paddington Bear!

23 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by sconzani in animals, nature, nature photography

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

Chaparri Nature Reserve, Paddington Bear, Peru, Spectacled bear, Tremarctos ornatus

I must’ve had a deprived childhood – I never read the Paddington Bear books and I didn’t even know Paddington came from ‘deepest, darkest Peru’ until a few years ago. However, when I finally met Paddington in real life, at the Chaparri Nature Reserve in northern Peru, he wasn’t wearing a red hat or a blue duffel coat or spectacles. He was, though, the cutest creature, perhaps even more cute than Paddington.

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These particular Spectacled Bears (Tremarctos ornatus) are wildlife rescues. Twenty-five-year-old Papa Bear came from a circus where he had been so badly mistreated that he cannot be rehabilitated into the wilds of the reserve. He lives with Mama Bear and Baby Bear, who will be released into the reserve to fend for himself as soon as he’s able. Wild bears live in the hills behind the area where the tourist trails and accommodation are located, so visitors rarely see them, except in September, when one particular tree flowers and fruits, drawing the bears down from the hills to enjoy these treats.

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Spectacled Bears are so-named because many have lighter-coloured circular markings around their eyes, and every face marking is different so individuals are easily identifiable. The bears live to about 30 years or age and are mostly vegetarian – they really liked the sweet potatoes our guide was feeding them.

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The mighty Taff

22 Tuesday Mar 2016

Posted by sconzani in nature

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

#WorldWaterDay, Cardiff, River Taff, water

Today is World Water Day. I have lived in countries where water is a daily issue for the local people. In the rural villages of Cambodia and Peru, piped water and sewage disposal were just a dream and the threat of disease from contaminated well water and poor hygiene practices was all too real.

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I feel privileged then to live in a country where I can take such things for granted and where I seem almost to be surrounded by water. Here in Cardiff, Roath Park Lake is just a 10-minute walk from where I’m currently living, the seaside at Penarth is only 20 minutes by train from my nearest station, and the city itself has grown up around the beautiful River Taff. The river rises in the Brecon Beacons, the mountains north of Cardiff, and winds its way down the valleys through several towns, across weirs and under bridges, into Cardiff Bay and, eventually, into the Bristol Channel.

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where the Taff flows in to Cardiff Bay

Having recovered from a century of coal mining pollution, the Taff is now home to impressive quantities of trout and salmon, sightings of otter are on the increase, and a splendid variety of birds can be seen on, in and around the river.

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A series of television programmes has recently been made about the Taff. Here’s a link to the first of these, which is currently available on iplayer. 

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About me

sconzani

sconzani

I'm a writer and photographer; researcher and blogger; birder and nature lover; countryside rambler and city strider; volunteer and biodiversity recorder.

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