04 Friday Sep 2026
Not just ‘more’ Spotted flycatchers – the most Spotted flycatchers I’ve seen in one day. Ten, in fact.
A pair at the first location, along a hedgerow at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park.
Then four together at the second site, along the woodland edge at Lavernock Nature Reserve.
And another four together at my final location, a hedgerow in the coastal fields.
What an absolutely brilliant day I had watching these stunning little birds feeding up before their long migration flights!
02 Wednesday Sep 2026
Tags
autumn bird migration, autumn migration, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Spotted flycatcher
It happened in August 2025, and again in May this year so, whenever I’ve been home lately, I’ve been keeping a keen eye on the garden. And last Sunday, 30 August, it happened again, not one but two hungry Spotted flycatchers feeding very actively along the woodland edge. They were entrancing to watch.
I took these photos from my living room and bedroom windows as there’s no real cover in the garden and I didn’t want to disturb their fly-catching – they needed the food for their migration journey more than I needed closer photos. And, after grabbing a few images, I put the camera down and just enjoyed their aerial prowess until the growing dusk made viewing difficult and the birds disappeared to roost a while in the vegetation, before they flew onwards during the dark of the night.
31 Monday Aug 2026
After my visit to Lavernock Nature Reserve last Wednesday, I walked the coastal path that runs along the cliff tops to the seaside town of Penarth. I was mostly looking down and around at eye level but noisy gulls and corvids encouraged me to look skywards, where five buzzards were gliding northwards along the coast. There followed a brief heart-thumping couple of minutes when I spotted this very pale buzzard among them, until I realised it was just a very pale Common buzzard. In case, that last sentence doesn’t make much sense to you, let me explain; this is the time of year when Honey buzzards, rare birds of prey that I’ve not yet seen, are migrating, so it’s always worth taking a thorough look at pale buzzards, just in case.
29 Saturday Aug 2026
I’d just spent a wonderful 30 minutes wandering slowly around one of the fields at Lavernock Nature Reserve, enjoying the beautiful butterflies and other insects feasting on the lush Devil’s-bit scabious and other wildflowers, and had moved through to the neighbouring field when, out of the corner of my eye, I became aware of a movement. A small bird was flying up from its perch on a tall bare branch, catching flies or tiny insects too small for me to see.
At first, based on its behaviour, I thought it was a Spotted flycatcher but the sun was behind the bird so I couldn’t get a proper look at it and looking at the couple of photos I took didn’t help. So, I walked slowly up the sloping path at the edge of the field, trying not to spook the bird but wanting to get a better view of it. A Whinchat! My first Whinchat of the year. The first Whinchat seen locally as this autumn migration season really gets underway.
30 Sunday Nov 2025
Tags
autumn colour, autumn leaves, British trees, Sorbus aria, Whitebeam, Whitebeam bark, whitebeam berries, Whitebeam leaves
Whitebeam (Sorbus aria) is a tree I’ve overlooked until now, though I did take a few photos earlier in the year, of its smooth grey bark and its berries, before they ripened. (According to the Woodland Trust website, the berries ‘are known as chess apples in north-west England and are edible when nearly rotten’, which doesn’t make them sound very appetizing to me.)
Whitebeam’s leaves are quite distinctive: elliptical in shape with serrated edges, the upper sides a shiny dark green, the under sides light grey and hairy. In the autumn, they aren’t particularly spectacular, simply changing to yellow, orange, and brown as they lose their chlorophyll.
The Woodland Trust site has some interesting facts about this handsome tree:
Whitebeam timber is fine-grained, hard and white. Traditional uses included wood turning and fine joinery, including chairs, beams, cogs and wheels in machinery.
And
Whitebeam is native to southern England, though widely planted in the north of the UK. It is common in parks and gardens, but is quite rare in the wild.
And
The leaves are eaten by caterpillars of a number of moths, including Parornix scoticella, Phyllonorycter corylifoliella and Phyllonorycter sorbi.
All three of those moths have leaf-mining larvae, none of which I’ve yet seen, so I must keep an eye out next year.
26 Wednesday Nov 2025
Tags
climate change affecting flora, Crataegus monogyna, Hawthorn, Hawthorn blossom in November, Hawthorn in bloom in November, May-tree
The Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) is also known as the May-tree, the only British tree to be named for the month in which it usually blooms. And, though its blossom does frequently appear a month or so earlier in the year, it does not normally flower in late autumn. Yet, this is what I saw on Sunday’s walk around the edge of my town, a Hawthorn in bloom and bearing berries. Mine is not the only sighting of this unusual phenomenon; when I posted a photo on social media, I was alerted to reports of at least three similar sightings across the UK, and I’m sure there must be more. If anyone ever doubts how much our climate is changing and how this will affect our natural environment, our flora and fauna, occurrences like this should be enough to banish those doubts.
23 Sunday Nov 2025
My Flora Britannica contains a myriad of fascinating information about the Ash tree (Fraxinus excelsior) but nothing that specifically relates to the tree in autumn. So, I googled “Ash keys”, thinking that might turn up some interesting facts. The AI overview produced this rather bizarre result:
“Ash keys” can refer to the winged seeds of an ash tree, which are used in poetry collections, or a caravan park in Yorkshire, UK. The ash tree seeds are a common sight in autumn and are also used to make pickles.
Yes, I was expecting the ‘winged seeds of an ash tree’ but ‘used in poetry collections’? (Turns out, there’s a book of poetry called Ash keys.) And, yes, ‘ash tree seeds are a common sight in autumn’ but are they really used to make pickles? (Turns out, this can be done but is an incredibly long-winded process, using a lot of electricity for multiple cooking stages and spices to create flavour, and is surely neither environmentally friendly nor worth the effort.) You may have guessed I’m no fan of AI!
So, here’s one of the much more interesting pieces from Flora Britannica instead:
In Britain, up until the end of the eighteenth century, it was regarded as a healing tree, and Gilbert White knew Hampshire villagers who, as children, had been through an Ash ritual as a ritual as a treatment for rupture or weak limbs. It was an extraordinary ceremony, a relic of pre-Christian sympathetic magic. A young Ash was split and held open by wedges, while the afflicted child was passed, stark naked, through the gap. The split was then ‘plastered with loam, and carefully swathed up. If the parts coalesced and soldered together … the party was cured; but, where the cleft continued to gape, the operation, it was supposed, would prove ineffectual.
22 Saturday Nov 2025
I wrote that title in an optimistic frame of mind a week ago, when planning forthcoming blog posts and after seeing my first Black redstart of the autumn/winter season in a nearby seaside town. This female / immature bird – it’s impossible to tell whether they’re male or female at this time of year when they haven’t yet acquired their adult plumage – was moving between the rooftops of local houses and an adjacent newly planted park.
This was apparently one of two birds, and, a few days later, two males were also seen. I had intended to go for another look but the park also held a children’s playground very close to where the birds were feeding and it’s not really a good idea to linger near a playground with binoculars and a camera. Then, yesterday I heard that no Black redstarts have been seen at all this week so it looks like they’ve moved on. Fingers crossed we’ll get some local over-wintering birds, in a more suitable location.
21 Friday Nov 2025
Tags
bracket fungi, British fungi, Daedalea quercina, fungi on Oak, mazegill fungi, mazegills, Oak mazegill
I’m sure I must have seen these stunning bracket fungi, Oak mazegill (Daedalea quercina), before this week but I have no images of them on my laptop. Growing on a huge old fallen Oak – they always grow on Oak (i.e. Quercus species), hence the quercina epithet, consuming dead fallen and still standing trees and large branches, these brackets grow annually, eventually reaching a thickness of 10cm and a diameter of 20cm. And, as you can see from my photos, the fertile surface (i.e. the underside of the bracket, from which the spores are released) has maze-like channels, which explains the mazegill name.
Pat O’Reilly, in his book Fascinated by Fungi, explains that its generic name (Daedalea) refers to Daedalus, the legendary figure who supposedly designed the maze on ancient Crete, in which Pasiphaë, wife of King Minos, hid her offspring the Minotaur, half man and half bull.
O’Reilly’s book also includes a couple of other fascinating facts about Oak mazegill:
This fungus was valued by beekeepers who used the smoke from smouldering fruitbodies to anaesthetise bees. Once the bees had been calmed by the dense smoke, the beekeeper could open a hive and work on it without triggering painful panic reactions by the occupants.
The deep, hard-wearing channels make these tough and durable brackets very handy as combs for grooming horses – one of their traditional uses.
20 Thursday Nov 2025
Tags
autumn bird migration, autumn migration, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Woodpigeon, Woodpigeon migration
This time is 7.35am Monday morning, and the sun has just risen above the Mendip Hills, on the north Somerset coast.
And the Woodpigeons have begun moving northwards again, along the south Wales coast, reversing the journey they made a week or so ago. Their flocks – at least, the ones I can see – are smaller, in the tens and hundreds, not the massive flocks of several thousand birds I saw moving south.
Did they get to Land’s End and think ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me?’ Do the young birds tag along for the British section of the flight as a learning exercise? Are Woodpigeons like sheep that just mindlessly follow a leader? Do they get caught up in the fun, the exhilaration, the sense of adventure but then realise their limitations when they meet the challenge of a sea crossing? Do they somehow realise the grass, and the berries, are not greener on the other side?
Just as with their migration south, so with the move of smaller numbers back north, no one knows why they do it; why some carry on with their migration while others return back the way they came, and whether they return to where their journey originated or whether they stop off to overwinter somewhere different along the way. Woodpigeons are much more mysterious than you might think!