No fishing? Ha!
If they hadn’t been resting, snoozing and preening, I think we can safely assume than these Goosanders, and the Cormorant, would definitely be ignoring that sign.
No fishing
05 Tuesday Sep 2023
Posted in birds
Author Archives: sconzani
Spider survivors
04 Monday Sep 2023
I was entranced, and relieved, to spot these two Wasp spiders during a recent meander around Cardiff’s Grangemoor Park. The park, which was once a landfill site, was closed for a long time while repairs were done to its infrastructure, to stop contaminated water seeping from its interior rubbish. The repair process was conducted without any regard for the local flora and fauna and, during previous recent visits, I’d not managed to find any of these stunning spiders, first discovered at the park in August 2021. It’s good to know they’ve survived the upheaval.
Stinking Roger
03 Sunday Sep 2023
Posted in plants, wildflowers
This new wildflower comes courtesy of a local birding pal who also likes to botanise. This is Black horehound (Ballota nigra), which my Flora Britannica says is also known as Stinking Roger. It doesn’t explain where the name Roger comes from but I can understand the ‘stinking’ – I rubbed the leaves and was left with a nasty pong on my fingers.
Interestingly, when I googled ‘Stinking Roger’, I found that name applied to several different plants all around the world. Roger obviously has a reputation! Also, an entry in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary gave three other vernacular names: Black archangel, Fetid horehound, and Stinking horehound.
Despite its smell, Black horehound is a pretty enough perennial, a frequenter of path edges and waste ground, with lovely pinkish flowers arranged in whorls around the stem.
Great crested grebe, great parent
02 Saturday Sep 2023
Posted in birds
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cardiff Bay birding, Great Crested Grebe, Great crested grebe chicks, Humbugs
These two Great crested grebe humbugs (chicks – the humbug name comes from their markings resembling a popular boiled sweet) looked too big still to be hitching a ride on their parent’s back and I think the parent thought so too, unceremoniously dumping them in the water to scratch an itch. But they soon climbed back on again. Great crested grebe parents are very tolerant!
Flea beetle
01 Friday Sep 2023
Posted in insects
This ruddy creature is my first ever Flea beetle but, just as with my recent new leafhopper, I haven’t been able to put a specific name to it. There are two very similar species, Sphaeroderma rubidum and Sphaeroderma testaceum, and, though the UK Beetles website maintains that ‘they are easily distinguished, with a little experience, by sight; the colour and shape being unique’, I don’t have the necessary experience.
The website explains:
Body strongly rounded, often almost circular, pronotum very strongly narrowed from the base and very finely punctured. 2.3-3.5 mm. – S. rubidum
Body less strongly rounded, slightly but distinctly elongate, the pronotum less strongly narrowed from the base and more strongly punctured, especially towards the basal margin. 2.5-4.2 mm. – S. testaceum
Without seeing the two beetles side by side or, perhaps, knowing in advance specifically what to look for, I find myself unable to identify the beetle I found.
Tufted ducklings and their heroic mama
31 Thursday Aug 2023
Posted in birds
Every time I walk a circuit of Cardiff Bay I take a moment to check on these Tufted ducklings. Despite being confined in the now-flooded former Channel Dry Dock and living amongst human detritus, they have thrived, thanks to the parental care and constant vigilance of their mama. They should soon be able to fly and will then be able to escape their watery prison.
~ 7 August
~ 20 August
~ 24 August
Fossilised ripples
30 Wednesday Aug 2023
Posted in geology
Geology fascinates me, and I am privileged to live in a geologically rich area, but it’s not a subject I know anything about so my geological blog posts on here are very few and far between. However, when a local birder posted on social media about a slab of rock he’d found on a local beach, and a local geologist later confirmed the find and shared a link explaining the rock’s origins, I just had to investigate.
The slab of rock was lying beneath the cliff at Penarth Head on the beach shown in the photo above. And, in fact, when I went and looked, I found several similar slabs. They had fallen from the top section of the cliff, which is known as the Lilstock Formation. Rather than attempt to explain the geology of these cliffs, it seems easiest if I refer you to the blog my geologist friend showed me: ‘Geological Walk at Penarth Head‘, published on the Geologists’ Association – South Wales Group website on 27 June 2021.
It wasn’t easy to capture in photographs but I hope you can see the ripple effect on the surface of these slabs. This is basically an ancient fossilised beach, the ripples caused by the action of water and tides on a muddy surface millions of years ago. The fact that I could touch a surface formed so long ago is something I find quite mind-boggling.
Late brood
29 Tuesday Aug 2023
Posted in birds
The House martins that nest under the eaves of some of the houses and apartments around Penarth Marina are still busy feeding their young. These could be second broods, or possibly even third broods if the adults arrived back early enough. The RSPB website notes that the ‘fledged young from first broods often help their parents feed a second brood’. Good practice for their future breeding, I’m sure.
Leafhopper: Populicerus sp.
28 Monday Aug 2023
Posted in insects
Tags
British cicadellidae, British leafhoppers, leafhopper, leafhopper on Poplar, Poplar, Populicerus sp.
I found a new leafhopper species last week but, despite it having quite distinctive markings, I have not been able to identify it exactly. This is because there are several that look very similar and, even knowing the tree or plant they are on (in this case, Poplar), doesn’t help. One needs to examine their genitals to figure these little leafhoppers out.
There are five species of Populicerus showing in the Welsh database (Populicerus confusus, P. populi, P. albicans, P. nitidissimus, and P. laminatus), only four of which have been recorded in Wales (the first four in my list) and, of those, the numbers, except for P. confusus (64) are in single digits. That is likely to be a reflection of the difficulty of identifying the species rather than the populations of these leafhoppers.
All five species have similar markings but three have different colouring. However, Populicerus populi and P. laminatus are so similar that they require more intimate examination – the creature I found, the leafhopper shown here, is one of these two.
Common calamint
27 Sunday Aug 2023
Posted in wildflowers
This is a new plant for me, and I freely admit to having walked past it several times before finally noticing it, perhaps because it only flowers from July to September. It’s Common calamint (Clinopodium ascendens), a member of the mint family, the Lamiaceae, and, not surprisingly, its leaves when crushed smell deliciously of mint.
The plant in question, in the photo above, is the one with small greyish-looking leaves (though they’re actually green with white speckles) and even smaller pink flowers. My wildflower book says it can be found in a variety of habitats, from hedge banks and bushy areas to dry grassy scrubland and roadside verges. The plants I found were growing alongside an under-cliff path that leads to a local beach, so it seems this mint is very adaptable. Despite that, there are only 199 records in the Welsh biodiversity database, so perhaps I’m not the only person to walk past these plants without noticing them.
earthstar 
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