21 Sunday Jan 2024
Posted in wildflowers, winter
A detour through the local cemetery produced my first Snowdrops of the year today, just a few and looking a little blurry in my image as Storm Isha was already beginning to blow and shake the landscape, but a delicious sign of botanical treats to come.
20 Saturday Jan 2024
Posted in birds
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Forest Farm Country Park, Forest Farm Nature Reserve, Kingfisher
My most frequent views of Kingfishers are as passing piping flashes of teal, streaking around the edges of Cardiff Bay. So, it was a delight, on Thursday, to walk along the Glamorgan canal at Forest Farm Country Park and find one sitting on a branch, staring at the water, intensely focused on finding its next meal.
19 Friday Jan 2024
Posted in birds
The owner of these feet approached me yesterday, looking for food. A bigger clue to its identity I could not give! So, whose feet are these?
The big reveal …
Have you worked it out now? It’s a Herring gull.
18 Thursday Jan 2024
This handsome bird, a Red-necked grebe (Podiceps grisegena), was first sighted on north Cardiff’s reservoirs last Thursday 11 January by our county bird recorder, who lives very near this location. He says this bird is only his ninth ever at the site and the first since September 2001 – by anyone’s definition, a local rarity.
The reservoirs are just a train ride and a half mile walk from where I live so I headed up on Thursday to see if I could spot it. I did, firstly on the much larger Llanishen Reservoir from where it flew across to neighbouring Lisvane Reservoir but, at least while I was there, it remained very distant. As is the way with birding, later that day the grebe moved very close to the reservoir edge nearest the café, so afternoon visitors got very good views of the bird.
As I needed to go to north Cardiff again this past Monday on another matter, I thought I’d visit the reservoirs for a second look. And this time my luck was in, both with the sunny, less windy weather and with the grebe, which had returned to Llanishen Reservoir but, fortunately, was cruising around much closer to the western edge.
According to the RSPB website, ‘Less than 20 individuals spend the summer in the UK each year, with numbers increasing slightly in the winter when birds move here from colder Europe’, so I feel particularly privileged to have spent time observing and photographing this Red-necked grebe. Oh, and if you think its neck doesn’t look very red, it’s because the bird is in its winter plumage. Take a look at the RSPB website for photos of how stunning this bird is in breeding plumage.
17 Wednesday Jan 2024
Have you ever wondered where ladybirds go in winter? Some of them hide away in crevices in tree bark, or under unused flower pots in garden sheds; some even invade our houses, where they can often be found huddled together along the edges of windows.
Others can be spotted outside, hiding in plain sight, as you see here, tucked in holes in fences or clinging on beneath seed heads. They’re such wonderful, though tiny pops of colour in an otherwise fairly drab landscape.
16 Tuesday Jan 2024
Tags
Birch, bundle of sticks on Birch, gall on Birch tree, Taphrina betulina, Witch's broom, Witches' broom
When I went to north Cardiff last week to see the Waxwings, I also had a walk around nearby Heath Park and found one of the best examples I’ve ever seen locally of Witch’s (or Witches’) broom. One tall Birch tree had a particularly large ‘broom’, a dense twisted mass of twigs and small branches, and several smaller ones just beginning to form.
Witch’s brooms can be found on several different tree species and, according to an entry on the Woodland Trust website, they are likely caused ‘by fungal, viral or bacterial activity, and occasionally insect activity’. However, it is generally agreed that brooms on Birch trees are caused by the fungus, Taphrina betulina.
15 Monday Jan 2024
I mentioned yesterday that any remaining berries are fast disappearing as hungry birds search for sustenance in the cold winter weather. Well, here’s one of those berry eaters, the one that I find a bit more cooperative when it comes to photographs than many of the other berry-eating birds, the beautiful Blackbird. (I find Redwing and Fieldfare, Song and Mistle thrushes all tend to be a little more elusive.)
14 Sunday Jan 2024
Tags
Going, going, soon be gone! Given the voracious appetites of birds in the colder weather, those berries than still remain will soon be gone. So, I thought we’d have a change from wildflowers this week and, instead, enjoy some bright berry colours (and hips and haws and other berry-type fruit) before they all disappear into hungry mouths and beaks.
13 Saturday Jan 2024
I’ve been waiting, and waiting, and waiting, trying to be patient, not always succeeding. Then, finally, this week, Waxwings arrived at a park in north Cardiff, just a train ride away from home. I’m sure the four Scandinavian stunners felt right at home in the freezing temperatures today – not so the 20 or so birders waiting for the birds to come down from the treetops to eat the berries on the row of Rowan trees edging the park’s central path. Unfortunately, the Waxwings only came down to feed for a very short time while I was there but these were my first ever Waxwings so I was more than happy! Have you seen any this year?
12 Friday Jan 2024
Tags
Ash key fungi, British fungi, Diaporthe samaricola, Flagelloscypha minutissima, fungi on Ash keys, Neosetophoma samarorum
When I’ve searched Ash keys (seed pods) previously for fungi, I’ve found the two most common, which are Diaporthe samaricola (the small black dots on the upper, seed portion of the ash key, in the image on the right below) and Neosetophoma samarorum (the much smaller, black speckles on the lower, wing part of the key, in the same image) (see Ash key fungi, January 2021).
During recent checks, however, I found a third fungus, the three all flourishing quite happily side by side on one set of keys. The third fungus is white, slightly woolly and minute, and it might be something like Flagelloscypha minutissima, but without examining it and its spores under a microscope (which I don’t have) I can’t be sure.
earthstar 
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