01 Wednesday Mar 2023
Posted in birds
I enjoyed a fabulous walk along Sully beach on Monday, seeing 2 Curlew, a Grey plover, 4 Dunlin and at least 6 Ringed plover, which is a good number and variety for a beach that is, these days, often empty of birds due to disturbance by walkers and dogs off their leads. Sadly, those birds were all quite distant for photographs but this gorgeous little Pied wagtail was much more obliging, walking jauntily along the top of a nearby stone wall, chissicking all the while.
28 Tuesday Feb 2023
Posted in wildflowers, winter
Tags
British wildflowers, Coltsfoot, end of winter wildflowers, Tussilago farfara, yellow wildflowers
I’d already finished last Sunday’s video showcasing the end of winter wild plant and tree flowers I’d photographed during the previous week’s walks when I found, during Sunday afternoon’s local meander, my first Coltsfoot flowers of the year. And here they are …
27 Monday Feb 2023
Posted in insects
Comes the sun, come the flies! A sheltered south-facing ivy-covered wall with assorted small shrubs, wild plants and dense leaf litter below is their little bit of paradise. The first of these images shows my second hoverfly for the year, a Marmalade hoverfly (Episyrphus balteatus), the rest I don’t know, nor am I bothered to discover their identities – I was simply enjoying seeing little critters flitting about the vegetation again, and knowing that more, including my beloved butterflies, will soon follow.
26 Sunday Feb 2023
Posted in flowers, trees, wildflowers, winter
As another winter draws to a close, I thought I would document the plant and tree flowers currently in bloom in my little bit of south Wales.
25 Saturday Feb 2023
Posted in birds
This has been a very good winter for Snipe sightings. As well as the Jack snipes I blogged about back in December (Not one but two, 8 December), I enjoyed a more recent sighting, on 18 February, both of those thanks to local birder Graham’s use of a thermal imager. Then, yesterday, I spotted a Common snipe (Gallinago gallinago) in the same area. There was no need for an imaging device with this bird as it was sitting in plain sight, along the edge of an area of reeds. Snipe often take to the air immediately they notice movement nearby so I was extremely lucky that, even though it had obviously noticed me, this bird stayed put and let me take several photographs.
24 Friday Feb 2023
Posted in fungi
Wet weather does have some compensations, especially when it comes to fungi. This marvellous display of fungal brackets had been looking rather dry and shrivelled but a good blast of recent rain has rehydrated and refreshed the whole stump full. They’re Turkey tails, I think, Trametes versicolor.
23 Thursday Feb 2023
Posted in birds
It’s been three years since I saw a Siberian chiffchaff, though one or two seem to appear in the county almost annually these days, blown off course as they move from their Siberian breeding territories to their usual over-wintering grounds south of the Himalayas. I first spotted this one in early February and thought it a Common chiffchaff but a more expert local birder did tell me then that he thought it had the look of a Sibe about it (the Siberian birds look rather grey and have darker legs). Almost a fortnight passed until that same birder saw the bird again and, more importantly, heard it call, because that is the clincher when it comes to these birds. Though it has been very elusive, I’ve managed two further sightings but have yet to hear that distinguishing call.
22 Wednesday Feb 2023
Posted in insects
Last Sunday was very Spring-like, the sunshine warm on your back if you were out of the wind. Nature thought so too and I was delighted to see some insects out and about. Though my first butterfly of the year, a Brimstone, didn’t linger long enough for a photo, the abundance of Gorse weevils on the flowering Gorse bushes were much more obliging.
And, on a rather large splatter of dog poo, which the dog’s owner hadn’t bothered to pick up, Dung flies were out in good numbers. Which is probably one of the very few reasons I would ever want to look closely at dog poo.
21 Tuesday Feb 2023
Posted in birds
‘The shape and voice of wildness’ – that is one of David Gray’s many evocative descriptions of the Curlew in his piece for the BTO’s publication Into the Red. ‘Mottled mud spirit’, ‘dressed understatedly in streaked browns and greys’ are two more but, as you would expect from a well-known singer-songwriter, Gray’s most basic response is to this mystical bird’s voice: ‘To hear a Curlew’s song as it carries across the land, is to hear, quite literally, a place being sung into being’. I sincerely hope you and your children and grandchildren get to experience that singing.
20 Monday Feb 2023
Tags
British galls, bud galls, gall mites, gall-causing mites, galls on Hazel, Hazel, mite galls, mites, Phytoptus avellanae
These are my latest gall finds, caused by the mite species Phytoptus avellanae, shown here on Hazel (Corylus avellana) though they can also affect the buds of Filbert (Corylus maxima). The feeding of the mites on the plant cells within the buds causes those buds to swell and multiply. You can see a comparison in my photo below, the mite-infected gall bud on the left, the normal bud on the right.
The mites that cause these galls are tiny, so rarely seen, but the Dutch Bladmineerders website has some excellent photos showing them in minute detail. As with so many galls, they are thought to be widespread in Britain but are not well recorded. So, if you’re out and about enjoying a spring walk and spot some Hazel, do please cast an eye over the buds, and record any galls you see. Citizen scientists really do make a difference to our knowledge of the natural world around us.
earthstar 
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