Bryophytes and lichens

11 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by sconzani in lichen, nature, parks, trees, winter

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bryophytes, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, lichen on trees, lichens, mosses, mosses on trees

Over the summer months my eye has been distracted by all the little creatures that move – butterflies and moths, dragonflies and beetles, and all manner of other insects – but now that it’s winter and those creatures have mostly disappeared (you’ll notice one crept in to one of my photos!), my eye is again drawn to the more static beauty that surrounds me. Take, for example, this small grove of trees at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park.

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I spent perhaps an hour here the other day, looking in wonder at the incredible variety of tiny lichens and bryophytes to be found on the tree trunks. I haven’t tried to identify these but I’m determined to return to them over the coming months to see which I can put names to and find out more about. For now, I just want to share their beauty.

Cotoneaster

10 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by sconzani in nature, plants

≈ 17 Comments

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Cotoneaster, invasive non-native, invasive plant

Am I the only person who used to pronounce this word wrongly: coton-easter instead of cot-own-e-aster?

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Now that I’ve got the pronunciation right, I want to have a moan about the plant itself. Don’t get me wrong – with those charming, heart-shaped leaves and luscious red berries, it’s very attractive … when it’s in a garden. The problem is that birds find its berries luscious and attractive too, and they eat them, and they fly away, and they poop. And a few months later, up pops another Cotoneaster plant but not always where it’s wanted. (There are Cotoneaster plants by the score at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, where I regularly go walking.)

So, now, because it has a habit of spreading easily, damaging native vegetation, and is difficult to get rid of, the Cotoneaster has been classified as a ‘non-native invasive’ on Schedule 9 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act in England and Wales making it an offence to plant or otherwise cause to grow these species in the wild. And it’s going to take a lot of back-breaking effort by someone to get rid of all the plants growing where they’re not wanted.

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Mr and Mrs Sprawk

09 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature

≈ 2 Comments

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Accipiter nissus, bird of prey, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Forest Farm, Forest Farm Nature Reserve, Sparrowhawk

On Thursday I showed you many of the lovely birds I had seen at Forest Farm Nature Reserve the previous week but I left out two of them, the male and female Sparrowhawk I saw several times during my meanderings.

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The Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nissus) is a bird of prey and it was easy to tell when this pair was near by as all the other birds froze, no movement, no sound. A hawker of sparrows it may be but, as Buczacki points out in Fauna Britannica, they could just as easily be called finchhawk, larkhawk or tithawk ‘because this bird really is a scourge of small feathered things’. That sounds like bad news for the smaller birds but, interestingly, the RSPB reports that ‘long term scientific studies have shown that sparrowhawks generally have no or little impact on songbird populations’. (Read more here.)

I only managed to get distant fuzzy photos (above) of the male bird, with his distinctive blue-grey back and wings, but my shots of the female are a little better. I’ve seen Sparrowhawks many times before but have not had views as close as these, and they were magnificent to watch as they flew at high speed through the thick spreading branches in the woodland by the canal.

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Blast from the past

08 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by sconzani in flowers, nature, parks

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

a walk in the park, Auckland, Auckland Domain, cultivated flowers, flowers, hothouse flowers, New Zealand, polyanthus, tulips, Wintergardens

I was sorting through / clearing out files on my laptop earlier this week when, amongst my New Zealand images, I came across a temp folder of flowers. The shots were taken on 20 September 2014, when I was back in New Zealand for a couple of months, and the setting is the glasshouses of the Wintergardens in Auckland Domain, the photos taken, no doubt, on one of my many long strolls in that magnificent park. So, on this, the coldest day of winter so far here in Wales, here are some bright and cheerful hothouse flowers to offset any chill you might be feeling. Enjoy!

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Birds of Forest Farm

07 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, walks

≈ 7 Comments

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birding, birdwatching, British birds, bullfinch, dunnock, Forest Farm, Forest Farm Nature Reserve, Great spotted woodpecker, Great tit, Kingfisher, long-tailed tit, Moorhen, robin, treecreeper

I had a meeting at Forest Farm last Friday so, of course, I took the opportunity while I was there to have a wander around the trails and along the Glamorganshire Canal. And it was wonderful, though I did come away feeling a little guilty. We’d had a week of low temperatures, with overnight frosts, and there was a bitterly cold wind blowing. It was obvious the wee birds were cold and hungry but I hadn’t taken any seed with me. Here are a Long-tailed tit, a male Bullfinch, a Dunnock, a Robin and a Great tit.

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The water of the canal was sheltered from the breeze and very still, making for some stunning reflections (thank you little Moorhen). And I was treated to excellent views of a female Kingfisher, who sat for at least 15 minutes on her branch. From the way her feathers were fluffed up and she was hunched over her ‘toes’, I figure she was feeling the cold as well.

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The Great spotted woodpecker was a treat, as were the Treecreepers – at least four of them, perhaps a family group, were actively scuttling up the branches in one small area by the canal. It was a grand day – my meeting went well and the birding was even better than expected!

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Wild words: Psithurism

06 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by sconzani in autumn, leaves, nature, trees, winter

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#WildWords, autumn leaves, Psithurism, rustling leaves, sound of rustling leaves, words about Nature

Here’s a word that’s not in the Oxford Dictionary because it’s now considered obsolete but, as Oxford University Press has a habit of somewhat arbitrarily removing words from its dictionaries (since 2007 it was deleted words like ‘buttercup’ and acorn’ from its Junior Dictionary) and replacing them with modern lingo (like ‘cut-and-paste’ and ‘analogue’), I’m doing my bit to revive words before they’re forgotten.

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Psithurism, then, is a noun used to describe the sound of rustling leaves. It is, apparently, an adaptation of the Ancient Greek ψιθύρισµα (psithurisma) or ψιθυρισµός (psithurismos), which are derived from ψιθυρίζω (psithurizō, meaning ‘I whisper’) and from ψίθυρος (psithuros, meaning ‘whispering’ or ‘slanderous’). Can you hear them rustling? And, here’s a little test: what’s the word for leaves like these that wither but stay attached to the stem?

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Birding at Rhaslas Pond

05 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by sconzani in autumn, birds, nature

≈ 4 Comments

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birding, birdwatching, Fieldfare, Glamorgan Bird Club, Mute swan, Rhaslas Pond, Stonechat, Tufted duck, Wigeon

Following on from yesterday’s blog about our Glamorgan Bird Club outing to Parc Cwm Darran, we also ventured a little further north to Rhaslas Pond. I presume the pond is artificial as it has a grassed-over dam running along the north side and concrete to the south. And, as it has a large black drainage tube running into it, I further presume that is, or was, a reservoir or drainage pond for the huge ugly blight on the nearby landscape that is the Dowlais opencast coal mine.

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Despite its industrial connections, the pond is very well frequented by both local and passage-migrating birds, and it provides a crucial breeding site for endangered birds like Lapwing and Curlew, amongst many others. As soon as we arrived, we saw birds – a friendly little Stonechat was dotting around in the long grass, a Pied wagtail was ‘chissicking’ merrily along the old roadway, and I saw my first-ever Fieldfares grazing on the grass nearby.

On the pond itself, there were lots of Wigeon, Tufted ducks, Mallards, Great crested grebes, my first-ever Goldeneyes, Lesser Black-backed and Herring Gulls, Goosander and a single Mute swan. We also saw Red kites flying overhead.

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Though this was another stunning location and the birds were sublime, there was a bitterly cold wind blowing so we didn’t linger too long. There are plans afoot to destroy this pond and the surrounding landscape to excavate another huge opencast mine. Let’s hope local authorities realise the madness of allowing such a mine and, rather than destroy the pond and surrounding land, recognise its environmental value and turn it into a local nature reserve for all to enjoy.

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Birding at Parc Cwm Darran

04 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by sconzani in birds, nature, parks, trees

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birding, birdwatching, Crossbill, Glamorgan Bird Club, Indian runner, Parc Cwm Darran, Siskin, Welsh valleys

With temperatures hovering around zero and a brisk wind making it feel even colder, our eleven intrepid Glamorgan Bird Club members were well wrapped up for last Wednesday’s birding at Parc Cwm Darran (and Rhaslas Pond, but more on that tomorrow).

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The park sits on the site of the old Ogilvie Colliery, which was active from the early 1900s through to 1975, and various buildings and pieces of mining equipment can still be seen around the park. The scenery was stunning, with glorious old trees dotting the landscape, as well as areas of more modern plantings. One of our party was a local and showed us one particularly beautiful hidden gem, a waterfall cascading over the edge of an old quarry into a pool below.

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The birds were also stunning. We had good ’scope views of a male Crossbill, who sat very obligingly atop a tree for at least 15 minutes; we enjoyed sightings of several birds of prey, including four Buzzards, one of which came flying low straight towards us out of the quarry; and I saw my first Siskins of the year. The prize for the most entertaining birds, however, must go to the seven Indian runners, who looked to have Mallard in their genes and who were convinced we had food for them, running out of the water towards us and following us as we walked along the lake edge.

You’ll have to take my word about the dot in the tree being a Crossbill!

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The full list of the 44 species seen (these include those seen at Rhaslas Pond) is: Mute Swan, Canada Goose, Wigeon, Mallard, Tufted Duck, Goldeneye, Goosander, Great Crested Grebe, Red Kite, Sparrowhawk, Buzzard, Kestrel, Coot, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Herring Gull, Green Woodpecker, Magpie, Jay, Rook, Carrion Crow, Raven, Blue Tit, Great Tit, Coal Tit, Long-tailed Tit, Goldcrest, Wren, Nuthatch, Treecreeper, Starling, Blackbird, Fieldfare, Song Thrush, Mistle Thrush, Robin, Stonechat, Dunnock, House Sparrow, Pied Wagtail, Chaffinch, Goldfinch, Siskin, Common Crossbill and Bullfinch, though somehow I missed the Green woodpecker and Mistle thrushes.

The bending reed

03 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by sconzani in nature, plants

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Aesop's fable, British flora, common reed, quotes about reeds, reed, sayings about reeds, The reed and the oak

‘The little reed, bending to the force of the wind, soon stood upright again when the storm had passed over.’ ~ Aesop, from ‘The Oak and the Reed’, Fable 127 of Aesop’s Fables

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A quick google and a read of the article on Wikipedia about Aesop’s fable revealed that the comparison between the flexible reed and the strong but inflexible oak is a very old one. Confucius is credited with the saying, ‘The green reed that bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak that breaks in a storm’, and Geoffrey Chaucer wrote ‘A reed before the wind lives on, while mighty oaks do fall’ in Troilus and Criseyde. It’s a thought-provoking idea but, personally, what appealed to me most about these reeds was the beauty of their form, whether standing tall and upright or swaying in the breeze.

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November at Cosmeston

02 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by sconzani in autumn, insects, nature, parks

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British dragonflies, Common Darter, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, flies, fly, hoverfly, Mary Gillham Archive Project

I’ve only had a couple of visits to Cosmeston Lakes Country Park this month because my volunteer work on the Mary Gillham Archive Project has been taking up a bit more time as we try to get as much as possible done before the project effectively finishes at Christmas – though, having said that, I did spend four hours at Cosmeston last Friday trying to replicate, for the project website, photos Mary had taken in the early days of the park. These are a couple of those: Mary’s photo of the west lake in September 1987 on the left, and my photo from the same spot thirty years later on the right.

But I digress … apart from the berry-eating visitors, the Redwings and the Mistle thrushes, and finally managing to grab a couple of half-decent photographs of a Green woodpecker, I haven’t found anything particularly noteworthy bird-wise at Cosmeston during November. I have, however, been impressed by the numbers of insects still around, despite the fact that it has been noticeably colder, with daytime highs in the low teens and several overnight frosts.

On 5 November, the ‘fireworks’ at Cosmeston were these lovely little Common darters. In an area shaded from the cool westerly wind but warmed by the bright sun, each had claimed itself a fencepost to bask on. And, nearby, a lone bumblebee looked like it wanted to snuggle for warmth into this seed-head ‘duvet’ of Old man’s beard (Clematis vitalba).

On 24 November, though my focus was on finding the exact spots where Mary had taken her photos, I did still have one eye on the wildlife and noticed quite a lot of flies about. Like the dragonflies of two weeks earlier, these two flies and one hoverfly were favouring sheltered spots on wood to make the most of the sunshine.