Author Archives: sconzani

Elfcups, at last

19 Sunday Jan 2025

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I have no wildflowers for you this Sunday – there are still flowers to be found but I’ve found nothing new or particularly interesting, so today’s colour comes in the form of fungi instead.

I’ve been searching for elfcups since early December, the time of year I’ve begun to see them in the past. I used to see them in abundance at Cwm George in Dinas Powys but I suspect it’s been too wet for them there this winter, with the little stream having flooded the area where the fungi grow.

I had also looked for them in Cardiff’s Bute Park in December but seen no sign. So, I was exceedingly happy, when I visited there last week, to find good numbers had popped up on mossy logs throughout the little area of woodland.

I know from having checked samples under a microscope several years ago that these are Scarlet rather than Ruby elfcups (Sarcoscypha coccinea), and they are gorgeous.

Fog droplets

17 Friday Jan 2025

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Our weather is currently see-sawing between days of bright blue skies and days of heavy grey gloom. Today, we have the former and it’s a delight to be out, soak up the vitamin D, and feel the warmth of the winter sun but, yesterday, the fog was so thick all day that the fog horn was blaring in the Bristol Channel and you could barely see more than 20 feet in front of you. Still, even fog brings with it small scenes of exquisite beauty …

The structures of cobwebs were highlighted by their covering of water droplets.

This was purely accidental: I love how the large water droplet in the centre is reflecting an Ivy leaf.

Ivy berries dripped with beads of water

Mosses growing in a gap in a wall looked like miniature sculptures with the sparkling coatings of water

And then there were four

16 Thursday Jan 2025

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First, there were two Goldeneyes in Cardiff Bay, probably females (though juvenile birds also resemble females, and I’m not sure when they get their adult plumage).

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Then, a male turned up.

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And they all fairly quickly found each other and mostly hung out together.

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Then, in the blink of an eye, another one appeared, and so there were four little Goldeneyes cruising around Cardiff Bay.

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They are very entertaining birds to watch, very active, so let’s hope they remain for a while yet (though, sadly, there is a great deal of human disturbance in the Bay, with power boats, kayakers and paddle-boarders all disturbing the local water birds).

First moth of 2025

15 Wednesday Jan 2025

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Yesterday I spotted my first moth of the year, perched on my favourite park railings, this lovely Angle shades.

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If you’ve been following along here for a while, you might remember the saga of Colin, the Angle shades moth I reared from a caterpillar. If you’re new and interested – it’s a lovely little series – these are the posts: Colin the caterpillar, 2 February 2022, followed the next day by Colin’s story; then, on 21 February, Colin the chrysalis; and, an update on his progress, Colin’s coloured up, on 23 February. Then, the final instalment, the joyful announcement, on 26 March 2022, He’s arrived!.

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Early bloomers

15 Wednesday Jan 2025

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I was struggling to find a subject for today’s blog until I went out for my daily walk and found three plants in bloom that I hadn’t expected to see, especially after our recent very cold weather.

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Alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum) thrives in my coastal location and, though it does die back in the colder weather, it comes away again very quickly. Still, I hadn’t expected to find flowers quite as early as January.

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The same is true of Three-cornered leek (Allium triquetrum). The leaves begin growing in early winter but flowers don’t normally appear until spring, in early April.

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And this third plant is Hazel. The male catkins often open early, sometimes as early as December, but, in my experience, the female flowers don’t poke their vibrant pink ‘feelers’ until a bit later … yet here they are, in mid January.

Cold weather snaps

14 Tuesday Jan 2025

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Here in coastal south Wales, our winter weather is rarely as dramatically cold as locations further north: in my almost ten years of living here, we’ve had just one big dump of snow (the ‘Beast from the East’ in 2018) and, even during the recent cold snap, we only had the occasional sleet shower, where the sleet melted as soon as it hit the ground.

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We do, however, get hard frosts and thick ice, making the pavements treacherous but the countryside beautiful. My photograph above really doesn’t do justice to how lovely the lake looked this particular morning, with the waterfowl gliding through the rising mist.

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Here, my eye was drawn to the way the hoar frost followed the curves of the rings on the top of this wooden fence post. I’m not sure why that is, so, if you know, please do enlighten me in the comments below.

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This ice was also eye-catching. The water below had drained away, leaving the layer of ice suspended in thin air. Again I’m not sure what caused the patterns but there did seem to be a rainbow-coloured oily sheen within the ice so perhaps that was the cause.

Mediterranean gull

13 Monday Jan 2025

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This is another of my sightings from December, certainly the best view I had all year of a Mediterranean gull (Larus melanocephalus).

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As is usually the case, it was with a large flock of Black-headed gulls, searching the grassy playing fields of a Cardiff park for worms and other invertebrates. These gull flocks can be quite skittish but, as there were no dogs being walked off lead on my side of the park, this lot were content to continue their search while I sat on a park bench watching and taking lots of photographs.

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Bank vole

11 Saturday Jan 2025

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A red flag appeared on my screen when I recorded Thursday’s sighting of this small mouse-like creature and, later, I got an email notification through the iRecord system that these mammals are ‘Difficult to identify in most conditions. Close inspection is necessary, for example in a trap. Records from beginners will need verification but records will be accepted from experienced recorders‘. So, I may well be wrong in calling this a Bank vole (if/when my record is checked, I’ll edit this post to correct or confirm it.)

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The little one had climbed about half a metre up a scraggy Spindle tree and appeared to be harvesting seeds. My sighting was a very brief one: I happened to be standing on a viewpoint at the edge of a lake, looking at birds and chatting to another birder, when I turned and spotted it. We initially thought it might be a Wood/Field mouse but the ears aren’t prominent enough. If you have any experience at identifying small mammals in the UK, I’d welcome your comments.

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A Buzzard searches for worms

10 Friday Jan 2025

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It’s always a surprise to me to see a bird of prey the size of a Buzzard on the ground searching for worms – I expect them to be soaring the skies hunting for much larger prey. But, when that larger prey is in short supply, worms will quell the hunger pangs.

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This Buzzard was searching through the grass in a local horse field, a favourite place for many species of bird to look for food, presumably because the horse manure helps ensure a plentiful supply of worms and small invertebrates.