23 Wednesday Jan 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature, plants
Tags
birding, birdwatching, blackbird, blackbird eating berries, British birds, Penarth marina, Pyracantha berries
Four Blackbirds, three males and a female, are currently sharing the colourful and obviously delicious (to Blackbirds) bounty of these Pyracantha bushes in Penarth Marina. Nom, nom, nom!
04 Friday Jan 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature, plants, winter
Tags
#365DaysWild, birding, birds in reed beds, birdwatching, British birds, common reed, Phragmites australis, Reed bunting
Today I was entertained for about two hours watching these little cuties, Reed buntings, swaying back and forth on bendy reeds, stuffing their beaks full of seeds and spitting out the fluff. When the sun finally peeked through the cloud layer, both the handsomely streaked buntings (this is a female) and the tall feather-plumed reeds shone golden, a feast for the eyes and welcome compensation for the hoped-for Bearded tits that failed to show today.
30 Sunday Dec 2018
Posted in flowers, nature, plants, wildflowers, winter
Tags
#7DaysofWildChristmas, #NewYearPlantHunt, British flora, New Year Plant Hunt, wildflowers in bloom, winter-blooming wildflowers
From 29 December to 1 January don’t be surprised if you see people taking photos of blooming wildflowers, puzzling over pictures in ID books, scratching their heads over the differences between one plant species and another. We are the New Year Plant Hunters, doing our best to find and identify as many wildflowers in bloom as possible throughout Britain to help the BSBI (Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland) keep track of what’s happening in the botanical world around us. And you can join in. Go for a walk, list what you find and submit your list on the BSBI website. So, for day 6 of my #7DaysofWildChristmas, I took myself on a walk around Penarth and was delighted to find these 27 species in bloom.
26 Wednesday Dec 2018
Tags
bramble, Grooved bonnet, leafhopper, leafmine on bramble, Mycena fungi, Penarth to Lavernock coastal path, south Wales coastal path, Stigmella aurella, Wales Coastal Path
I took myself on a meander along the south Wales coastal path from Penarth to Lavernock and back again today. The weather was still quite gloomy, as it’s been for several days now, but at least there was no rain. I often have this trail to myself but not today – every man, woman, child and their dog had obviously decided this was a good way to walk off their festive feasting. As I had made it today’s mission to look for the little, I got a lot of strange looks, and I heard one or two ‘What was that lady doing?’ comments after people had passed. To their credit a couple of folk were brave enough to ask me directly but their eyes glazed over when I began to extol the beauty of the many leafhoppers I was seeing.
I saw lots of lovely things but thought, for the purposes of this blog, I’d focus on the Bramble (Rubus fruticosus agg.), which grows in abundance along the coastal path and, with this year’s mild weather, is still very green, and even flowering in places.
I haven’t yet had a chance to identify my finds but I think I have photos of three different species of leafhoppers (though it’s possible number 3 is just a yellower version of number 1). I was amazed to see so many of these little critters still flying and hopping around the bushes, though the winter has been very mild here so far and I think some species over-winter as adults.
I also spotted a couple of other tiny mini-beasties lurking amongst the leaves. I’m not sure what these are.
Lots of the leaves had leaf mines, though their makers have now left the leaves. I think most of the mines I saw would have been made by the larvae of Stigmella aurella, a moth.
And my last find was on an old, decaying Bramble branch, where these beautiful little bonnet fungi were growing. Though you can’t see the details in this photo, the caps were striated and the stems grooved so I think these might be Grooved bonnets (Mycena polygramma).
24 Monday Dec 2018
Here are more of the beautiful ‘Christmas decorations’ currently adorning the otherwise-dreary December countryside, courtesy of Ma Nature, and some of these are even edible, by birds and animals if not necessarily by humans.
23 Sunday Dec 2018
Posted in flowers, nature, plants, wildflowers
Tags
#WildflowerHour, #winter10, blooming wildflowers, British flora, wildflowers, winter flowers, winter-blooming wildflowers
Well, I have to say I’m really rather pleased, and surprised, with this week’s blooming wildflower finds. I certainly didn’t expect to find Dove’s-foot crane’s-bill (Geranium molle) still flowering at Christmastime, and the Mallow and Red dead nettle were also nice surprises. So, this week I don’t just have Winter 10 for Wildflowerhour, I have Winter 21.
08 Saturday Dec 2018
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, house sparrow, pampas grass, Penarth marina, sparrow, toetoe
At one end of my regular walk along the embankment of the Ely River where it flows in to Cardiff Bay, near the entrance to Penarth Marina, is a huge stand of what I presume is a type of pampas grass. I always look at it, partly because it reminds me of my New Zealand home (where we would call this by the Maori name Toetoe) and partly because it is often covered in House sparrows.
The birds seem to adore this grass. The sturdy stems provide convenient perches on which to sit and cheep their continuous sparrow conversations, and they pluck away at the fluffy plumes, presumably extracting edible seeds to munch on. And, when threatened by the local ginger-and-white cat, which is frequently to be seen staring hungrily in their direction, the sparrows can easily flit into the dense vegetation of the grass clump to escape the cat’s clutches.
06 Thursday Dec 2018
Tags
cyclamen, flowering cyclamen, green fingers, growing cyclamen from seed, growing houseplants, growing seeds, pink flowers
It seems constantly to be raining here at the moment, which is limiting my opportunities to get outdoors with the camera. Luckily, lovely little things are happening indoors and so I’m taking this opportunity to show off my green fingers … though, in truth, I didn’t actually get this process right and it’s all happening in spite of my efforts rather than because of them.
I bought these beautiful cyclamen plants almost two years ago, to add some colour to my new flat and, except for a short rest period each year during the heat of summer, they’ve flowered almost constantly ever since. (I really must re-pot them next time they rest.)
When I noticed a couple of the expired flowers had developed into seed heads, I thought I’d have a go at growing more plants. I googled for instructions, extracted the seeds, popped them in some potting mix and waited.
Initially, nothing happened and I had actually given up on them but, it seems they need the cold to trigger their growth as, since the cooler weather has arrived, they have begun popping up.
The earliest sprouters are now about thumb height, with tiny second and third leaves just coming through. On yet another grey day, I sit here imagining a whole windowsill of pink lusciousness!
25 Sunday Nov 2018
Posted in autumn, flowers, nature, plants, wildflowers
If you’ve been following for a while, you’ll know I’ve been trying on and off to learn the names of, and a bit more about, the British wildflowers I find on my meanderings. And, to that end, I follow a weekly happening on Twitter called #wildflowerhour. You can read more about that in my previous blog here. During winter they run a challenge to find and name at least 10 wildflowers each week and share them on social media using the hashtag #winter10.
Earlier this week, I decided to see what I could find as I walked firstly through Lavernock Nature Reserve and then homeward through Cosmeston Lakes Country Park. And, er, actually, for this week my hashtag needs to be #winter11. These are they: Blue fleabane, Bramble species, maybe a Hawkbit species, some kind of Buttercup, a Dandelion species, a Daisy and Devil’s-bit scabious, Yellow-wort, a thistley thing and Red clover, and Common ragwort. You can see I’ve still got some learning to do!
20 Saturday Oct 2018
Tags
British bugs, Bute Park, Graphocephala fennahi, leafhopper, rhododendron bug, rhododendron leafhopper
I enjoyed a delightful long meander in Cardiff’s magnificent Bute Park yesterday (there will be a blog, probably tomorrow, once I finish going through my photos) and, in the course of that, I made sure to visit one particular small patch of rhododendron. The reason is these little critters, Rhododendron leafhoppers (Graphocephala fennahi).
If you’ve been here a while, you may remember I blogged about them back in August 2016, when I was first introduced to them. I wasn’t sure they’d still be around this late in the year, and there certainly weren’t very many of them, but two or three were hopping from leaf to leaf whenever I tried to get near enough for photos. I’ve since read, on the British Bugs website, that they can be seen as late as November, feeding on rhododendron sap and laying their eggs in the leaf buds.
Leafhoppers come in a splendid variety of colours hence this 2019 diary note: *Note to self: make more of an effort to look for leafhoppers next spring/summer*.
