24 Saturday Mar 2018
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Mute swan, swans flying, swans in flight, swans taking off
It takes a bit of effort, powerful flapping of their wide wings and jogging along on top of the water, but once they’re airborne, what a truly majestic sight these Mute swans make!
23 Friday Mar 2018
Posted in flowers, nature, spring, wildflowers
Tags
#FloralFriday, British flora, British wildflowers, Colt's-foot, Daisy, dandelion, gorse, Groundsel, Lesser Celandine, Red dead-nettle, Speedwell, Three-cornered garlic, wildflowers
What a week it’s been weather wise! We’ve gone from a generous dumping of snow and temperatures hovering around -5°C last Sunday through occasional rain, sunny periods, UV factors up and down, zephyr winds and mustang gales. Is it spring or isn’t it? Well, I’m seeing increasingly more wildflowers so I guess it must be. Here’s a selection from this week’s wanders.
Colt’s-foot (Tussilago farfara)
Daisy (Bellis perennis)
a type of Dandelion (Taraxacum sp.)
a type of Gorse (Ulex sp.)
Groundsel (Senecio vulgaris)
Lesser celandine (Ficaria verna)
Red dead-nettle (Lamium purpureum)
a species of Speedwell (probably Germander) (Veronica sp.)
Three-cornered leek (Allium triquetrum)
22 Thursday Mar 2018
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cardiff Bay, Cardiff Bay wetlands, Great Crested Grebe, sleeping bird, sleepy bird
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz …
What? What? What’s happening?
Bah! Just another crazy photographer!
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz …
21 Wednesday Mar 2018
Forest: noun; a large area covered chiefly with trees and undergrowth. The Oxford Dictionary says the word morphed from the Latin foris, meaning ‘outside’, to the late Latin forestis (silva), meaning ‘(wood) outside’, to Old French and thence to Middle English.
Today just happens to be a day to celebrate the importance of all types of forests and woodlands and trees all around the globe, so here’s wishing you a very happy International Forests Day!
20 Tuesday Mar 2018
Tags
British reptiles, Common frog, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, frog, Rana temporaria, signs of spring
Here’s a sign of spring, if ever there was one – well, hundreds of signs of spring, in fact – as the frogs are out and croaking at Cosmeston’s dipping pond.
Though they come in a variety of colours, ranging from light green and yellow through to olive and light brown, these are all Common frogs (Rana temporaria). They’ve long hind legs for hopping and swimming, big eyes for spotting females, and strong front fingers for gripping on to those females once they find them. At dinnertime, they have a preference for small invertebrates like slugs and snails, and they, in turn, are much enjoyed by herons, crows, hedgehogs, otters, and rats.
Frogs have a special place in human culture: they have been used to predict the weather – bright healthy skin foretells fine weather, dull skin rain; they are the subject of numerous superstitions – a frog in the house is a portent of death or something similarly awful, yet frog bones might be worn around the neck as a cure-all; they feature in idioms – if your voice is a bit croaky, you are said to ‘have a frog in your throat’ – and in fairytales – a frog is transformed into a handsome price after being kissed by a beautiful princess. And I haven’t even mentioned one of the most well-known frogs of all, Kermit.
19 Monday Mar 2018
Tags
biodiversity, Blue tit, Blushing bracket, Brittle cinder, coal tit, Elfcups, Forest Farm, Forest Farm Nature Reserve, Great tit, Grey heron, Hairy curtain crust, Moorhen, nuthatch, Song thrush, wren
I’ve blogged about the charms of the Forest Farm Nature Reserve many times before but I thought I’d share some of the highlights from last week’s wander …
Oh, and I will just add that the combination of feathers – me mostly looking upwards – and fungi – eyes down – can be quite difficult. By the end of the day, I felt like one of those nodding dog ornaments you used to see in the rear windows of cars. Still, ’twas a lovely long meandering walk!
18 Sunday Mar 2018
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Chiffchaff, migrating birds, Phylloscopus collybita, spring migration
You know it’s really springtime when the migrating birds start to appear and this week has seen those birds arriving, albeit in fairly small numbers yet here in south Wales. Friends have been reporting sightings of Sand martins and Wheatear – I’ve yet to see either, but I am one of the many who have now either heard and/or seen their first Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus collybita) of 2018.
Though a few Chiffchaffs overwinter in Britain, the vast majority migrate south during autumn and overwinter in the sunshine and warmer temperatures of the Mediterranean and west Africa.
I heard my first of these lovely little birds last Monday, 12 March, at Forest Farm Nature Reserve, and I saw my first, shown here in my photographs, in trees alongside the River Taff in Cardiff on Thursday, the 15th. Welcome back, little Chiffchaffs!
17 Saturday Mar 2018
Posted in insects, nature, plants, wildflowers
Tags
Ficaria verna, flies, fly, leaf mines, leaf mining fly, leafminer, Lesser Celandine, Phytomyza ranunculi
I was handing out the cigars last Monday!
Now, you might well think me more than a little mad to be excited about the birth of a fly but this was the first time I had tried rearing one … and it was actually successful, which bodes well for the fact that I’m intending to take part in a fly-rearing investigation this summer (more on that closer to the time).
The fly is Phytomyza ranunculi, a creature whose larvae often make their home in the leaves of Lesser celandine (Ficaria verna). I blogged about this leafminer, its larvae and the pupa here, and it is that pupa which finally hatched earlier this week. I had been told it would take about 3 weeks to hatch but it was, in fact, longer than that – it was 6 February when I found the pupa and 12 March when it hatched, so 34 days in total.
Now, here I must admit to a rookie error. As it was well over the 3 weeks, I had almost given up on its hatching so, on Monday night, when I had a sudden notion to open the container, I didn’t look inside first. The fly popped straight out, perched on the edge for a very brief time – and I managed to get just one photo, and then it flew off. I’ve searched for it in my flat, and it did a quick fly by when I was washing the dishes yesterday, but I haven’t been able to find it, neither to take more photos nor to let it outside.
16 Friday Mar 2018
The ornamental cherry outside my living room window is a little behind last year in its blossoming, probably because of that really cold snap we had a couple of weeks back, but the blossom started to open this week. Spring!
15 Thursday Mar 2018
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, European magpie, Magpie, nest building, nesting, nesting birds, Spring is in the air
Spring is definitely in the air here in south Wales. Wildflowers are wakening and blossom is bursting, migrating creatures are on the move and those that don’t migrate are thinking about procreation. For birds, that means nest building, and this Magpie obviously had some rather grandiose ideas about the size of nest it was going to construct. But had it bitten off more than it could chew?
Success!
earthstar 
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