13 Monday Apr 2020
Tags
British birds, house sparrow, nest building, pampas grass, Penarth marina, sparrows nest building
I’ve written before about the House sparrow colony at Penarth Marina. During yesterday’s exercise walk, I noticed they’re now well in to their nest-building chores.
I’m sure the fluffy plumes of the pampas grass seed heads will make a wonderfully soft lining for their nests, and I have visions of tiny naked sparrow chicks snoozing snugly in their cosy warmth.
12 Sunday Apr 2020
Posted in nature, spring, wildflowers
Tags
British wildflowers, Cleavers, Cowslip, False oxlip, Garlic mustard, Ground ivy, Lords-and-ladies, spring wildflowers, Yellow archangel
Spring is really starting to ramp up a notch now – shame we can’t get out and enjoy more time in the wild world. Still, if I choose the right route for my daily exercise walk, I can still hear the birds and see the flowers, and I appreciate them now even more than I usually do. Here’s a catch up with the latest plants I’ve found in flower this week.
Cleavers (Galium aparine) : I’m sure everyone has their own favourite among the wide variety of common names for this plant: Sticky Bob, Kisses, Goosegrass are just a few – take your pick, or tell me what you call it.
I’m lumping these two together as a comparison: on the left is Cowslip (Primula veris) and on the right is False oxlip (Primula veris x vulgaris), the hybrid of Cowslip and Primrose. I’ve previously had trouble identifying these correctly but one clue I’ve read recently is that Cowslip flowers all nod in a single direction, whereas False oxlips flop around in all directions.
Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) : these lovely plants seem almost to have sprung up overnight under every local hedgerow. You may know them by one of their vernacular names, Jack-by-the-hedge.
Lords-and -ladies (Arum maculatum), another plant with a ‘Jack’ vernacular name, in this case Jack-in-the-pulpit. I’ve seen so many leaves of these plants and quite a few sheathed flowers but, this week, I finally saw some open flowers.
Yellow archangel (Lamium galeobdolon) : these may well have been a garden escape as they were growing along a lane near a large area of allotments but I’m still counting them. From their appearance, it’s easy to tell that these are part of the Dead-nettle family (my favourite kinds of nettles!).
Ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea) : I found these decorating the edges of the same lane as the Yellow archangel, down low beneath the brambles and assorted shrubs and bushes. And, also like the Yellow archangel, Ground ivy is a member of the Dead-nettle family.
11 Saturday Apr 2020
Another new butterfly species for the year, the Holly blue!
This individual is actually the second one I’ve seen – the first was up and over the bushes and trees too quickly for me to grab a photo but this little lovely was flying slowly from spot to spot along a grassy slope so I was able to enjoy its beauty and get a couple of images. There’s just something very special about blue butterflies and the Holly blue is usually the first of the year to emerge.
10 Friday Apr 2020
I took my exercise walk early this morning, hoping to avoid any Easter crowds along the coastal path and my strategy worked a treat. Well, mostly – I’d just spotted a locally rare bird and was taking some photos when a jogger came along and scared it off. That was the bad news (though I did still get the photos – and see the bird – for the curious, a Crossbill). The good news is that during my second encounter, with some dog walkers, when I snuggled off the path between some bushes, I spotted these little wrigglers.
They’re Lackey moth larvae, quite recently hatched judging by their small size, and now safely cocooned in their self-woven web. They were warming up under the sun’s rays before crawling off for their daily munching of the surrounding leaves of Blackthorn and Hawthorn. At night they return to snuggle together in silken comfort. I’ve seen these larvae several times before but today was the first time I’d noticed their egg cases.
08 Wednesday Apr 2020
Tags
British butterflies, butterfly, Pararge aegeria, Pieris rapae, Small white butterfly, Speckled wood, spring butterflies
Actually, that title should really be three Small whites and a single Speckled wood but it’s a bit long-winded for a blog title. Suffice to say, my butterfly list for the year has grown by these two new species in the past two days.
I think this Speckled wood (Pararge aegeria) is a female – their markings are, apparently, larger and more distinct – but I’m not entirely sure. Working out details like this is something I’m aiming to improve this year.
The Small whites (Pieris rapae) here are two females and a male (below, right). The males only have one spot on their wings and, in this first brood of the year, the wing markings of both sexes are lighter than they will be in the later, summer broods.
I am dizzyingly delighted to be seeing more butterflies flying now. They bring me comfort and joy, something I’m sure we could all do with at the moment. I hope you are all managing to find small moments of comfort and joy in your daily lives as well.
07 Tuesday Apr 2020
Posted in insects, nature, spring, wildflowers
Two’s company.
Three’s a crowd.
Uh oh!
Four’s … an orgy? The Gorse weevils I observed during yesterday’s exercise walk in a local park were blatantly ignoring the social distancing rules. Please don’t act like Gorse weevils!
05 Sunday Apr 2020
Posted in flowers, nature, spring, wildflowers
Tags
#wallplants, #WildflowerHour, British wildflowers, spring wildflowers, wildflowers growing on walls
This week’s WildflowerHour challenge was to find wildflowers, in bloom, growing on walls. You might think walls would be inhospitable places for plants to grow but it turns out that rather a lot of our British wildflowers relish life on a wall. It’s certainly a good place for a plant to find shelter, and a wall might also supply reflected or stored heat so, for those plants that are able to push their roots into tiny cracks and crevices and don’t mind a life of hanging around, a wall can be an ideal habitat.
Here are the wall-bound wildflowers I found during this week’s exercise walks: Daisy, Dandelion species, Forget-me-not, Groundsel, Herb Robert. Ivy-leaved toadflax (this seems to be growing in abundance on every local wall!), Red valerian, and, my favourite, Yellow corydalis.
04 Saturday Apr 2020
Tags
It only takes a few sunny days and warming temperatures to bring out the mini-beasties. These are some of the bees and bumbles, flies and hoverflies I’ve spotted over the past week or so. Oh, and I mustn’t forget, my first 7-spot ladybird of the season.
02 Thursday Apr 2020
By sheer coincidence, author Robert Macfarlane’s ‘word of the day’ today on Twitter is cat’s-paw.
He writes about them: ‘nickname for catkins of the smaller willows/sallows (Goat willow, pussy willow, grey willow); among the earliest signs of spring; first grey & silky, then growing a glowing aura of tiny flowers. Often brought into houses at Easter/on Palm Sunday.’
I had already decided that today’s post would be on this same topic so here are the photos I’ve been collecting over the past week or so. These are of different trees so it’s quite likely they are not all the same species of willow (and I’m useless at working out which is which), but I love the way the catkins develop from soft furriness to beautiful bursts of yellow, and the insects love them too.
01 Wednesday Apr 2020
Tags
British butterflies, butterfly, Grangemoor Park, Nettle tortoiseshell, Small tortoiseshell, spring butterflies
Today’s fascinating information on the once common, now less so Small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) is taken from Peter Eeles’s magnificent publication Life Cycles of British and Irish Butterflies (Pisces Publications, 2019). If you like butterflies and don’t have this book, you really should get it, as it’s jam-packed with amazing detail and fabulous photos.
In the section on the Small tortoiseshell, Eeles reports on the variety of names it has had over the centuries: the Lesser Tortoise-shell Butterfly (James Petiver, Musei Petiveriani, 1699); Small Tortoiseshell (Benjamin Wilkes, Twelve New Designs of English Butterflies, 1742); and Nettle tortoiseshell (William Lewin, Twelve Papilios of Great Britain, 1795).
Eeles also notes that, in Scotland, in the past, this lovely creature was called the Devil’s butterfly and the Witch’s butterfly, though he doesn’t explain how it got those unfortunate names.
This particular Small tortoiseshell was the highlight of yesterday’s exercise walk around Grangemoor Park (luckily, Cardiff’s parks are still open, though this is the only one in walking distance for me). It was a joy to see, as we don’t get a lot of these butterflies in my local area, and I was delighted when it settled in a couple of places so I could get some photos.
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