16 Monday Dec 2019
One of the Cosmeston water voles was out and about today, munching on vegetation and also hauling in supplies, taking them under the dipping pond’s boardwalk and presumably stashing them somewhere.
Luckily, I was the only person around and, by staying quiet and still, I was able to watch it coming and going for quite some time. It was a delight!
07 Saturday Dec 2019
Tags
birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cogan Wood, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Marsh tit
Having stocked up on bird seed yesterday (the littlies are rather partial to sunflower hearts, I’ve found), I was delighted today to tempt out one of the resident Marsh tits in Cosmeston’s Cogan Wood.
Actually, it wasn’t all that difficult. I was mobbed by Great and Blue tits as soon as I began sprinkling the seeds on an old tree stump, with one particularly cheeky Great tit grabbing a seed from my container before I’d even started tipping them out.
I wasn’t sure the Marsh tit would come but it soon appeared and, although initially a little hesitant to compete with the other birds, it didn’t take long to summon its courage and was picking up 2 or 3 seeds at a time before flying off to find somewhere quiet to eat them.
We’re lucky to have this bird at Cosmeston as it’s now an ‘uncommon and thinly distributed resident breeder’, according to the Glamorgan Bird Club’s Eastern Glamorgan Bird Report No.56, and these tits were only recorded in 8 locations in our county in 2017.
01 Sunday Sep 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, autumn, flowers, nature, seasons, wildflowers
Tags
#365DaysWild, Autumn Lady’s-tresses, British orchids, British wildflowers, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, orchids, Spiranthes spiralis
Happy (calendar) Autumn!
Today’s plant couldn’t be more appropriate – these are Autumn lady’s-tresses (Spiranthes spiralis). True to their name, they usually appear when the weather turns more autumnal, and their twirling spiral form apparently reminded their original namer of the ringlets once popular in women’s hairstyles.
Though they like to grow in very short turf, Autumn lady’s-tresses are themselves quite small and, surrounded as these were by other wildflowers, especially the superficially similar Eyebright, they weren’t easy to spot.
Luckily for me, when I was having an early wander around Cosmeston this morning, I bumped into a friend of a friend, who is extremely knowledgeable about the local flora, and he very kindly showed me where these gorgeous little orchids were growing.
11 Sunday Aug 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature
Tags
British butterflies, butterfly, butterfly migration, Clouded yellow, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park
For those who don’t live in Britain, we’ve had some wild weather over the past few days, with torrential rain at times and some very high wind gusts. I was starting to go stir crazy so, as soon as it began to clear around midday today, I headed out for a walk.
I was wondering if I would spot anything unusual the wind had blown in … and I did! This blast of sunshine, a Clouded yellow, an occasional migrant to our shores, was flying around in the east paddock at Cosmeston.
01 Thursday Aug 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature
Tags
2019 Painted Lady influx, British butterflies, butterfly, butterfly migration, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Painted Lady, Painted Lady migration
I’ve been pondering what the most descriptive collective noun might be for a group of Painted Ladies? Apparently, for butterflies, there are several possibilities including swarm, flutter, flight and kaleidoscope. The latter appeals because it conjures well the vision of a mass of beautiful, ever revolving colours. I thought of a ‘pleasure’ of Painted Ladies but the double entendre is a little tacky.
Then, one of my Twitter acquaintances came up with ‘privilege’, which is just perfect, thank you, Martin. Because it certainly was a privilege to see 27 of these gorgeous creatures as I walked the fields at Cosmeston yesterday (and I’m sure there were a lot more than that). We’re not getting the thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) that have been arriving along England’s east coast in recent days, but it’s still a lot for this area and it was an absolute delight to see so many.
22 Monday Jul 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature
Tags
#365DaysWild, birding, birdwatching, British birds, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Green woodpecker, juvenile Green woodpecker
Two visits in a row I’ve seen this juvenile Green woodpecker and its parent in the same area at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park. (You can tell it’s a juvenile by the dark streaking on its face and underparts.)
it was checking out a Nuthatch further up the tree
It’s a small fenced off area where not too many people venture but that makes it all the more attractive to me. The lack of frequent foot traffic means it’s a good place to observe birds and butterflies, and I guess the adult woodpecker has also realised it’s a safer place for its offspring as the juvenile begins to make its own way in the world.
the adult Green woodpecker
This is not the only juvenile Green woodpecker in the park at the moment. After seeing these two the other day, I also heard a lot of yaffling in another location and, as I approached, saw four Green woodpeckers fly up from the ground into the neighbouring trees. Whether that was two adults and two juveniles, or one adult and three juveniles, I’ve yet to discover.
19 Friday Jul 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, birds, nature
Tags
#365DaysWild, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, juvenile Long-tailed tit, long-tailed tit
A pack of juveniles they may be but I saw no delinquents here.
These are the cute little bundles of fluff known officially as Long-tailed tits, and yesterday, at Cosmeston, I followed a flock of perhaps 40 of these, with an assortment of Great and Blue tits and Chiffchaffs, all young birds, as they were feeding.
Following a shrubby fence line, they pecked about amongst the low trees and bushes, and also ventured out into the field of wildflowers, perching precariously on the stems of tall umbellifers while surveying the surrounding plants for small insects and caterpillars.
It was a great delight to watch them and, being young, they were not as wary of my presence as adults might be, so I managed to get some reasonable photos.
18 Thursday Jul 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, nature, plants, wildflowers
Tags
#365DaysWild, British flora, Cirsium acaule, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Dwarf thistle, thistle, wildflowers
During today’s walk around Cosmeston I spotted a plant I’ve not seen before – or, at least, I’ve not consciously noticed before. It’s so easy to just walk over the things growing under your feet – although, in this case, if you were walking barefoot you couldn’t help but notice it!
It’s the Dwarf thistle (Cirsium acaule), and it’s easily identifiable as its single flower almost completely lacks a stem – the gorgeous purple flower sits right on top of a rosette of wavy and spiny edged leaves.
This thistle prefers to grow in low grasslands, particularly on calcareous soils, so it does tend to be quite localised but can be found in England as far north as Yorkshire and in south Wales.
10 Wednesday Jul 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature
Tags
British moths, clearwing moth, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, day-flying moth, moths, Six-belted clearwing
Believe it or not, this amazing creature is a moth, an aptly named clearwing moth – you can see parts of her wings are not covered by scales so are transparent. She is a Six-belted clearwing (Bembecia ichneumoniformis) and I know it’s a female because she only has five belts, i.e. five yellow stripes on her abdomen – the males have six.
I discovered her completely by chance – I was scanning the ground at Cosmeston Lakes Country Park for butterflies and happened to notice her stripes. Cosmeston actually has the perfect habitat for these moths as they like chalk and coastal grasslands and quarries, and their caterpillars like to munch on Common Bird’s-foot trefoil, which grows locally in abundance. I’m amazed, then, that there have been very few locally recorded sightings – maybe everyone who spots them thinks they’re wasps or bees.
These are day-flying moths and the adults are on the wing between June and August, so I’ll be on the look out for more of them over the coming weeks.
30 Sunday Jun 2019
Posted in 365DaysWildin2019, insects, nature
Tags
#365DaysWild, aberrant butterfly, aberrant Meadow brown, British butterflies, butterflies, butterfly, Cosmeston, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Meadow Brown, pathological aberration
I feel like I should be apologising for featuring butterflies three days in a row but this little butterfly is so interesting that I just had to share it. There are a ton of Meadow browns flitting around the wildflower fields at Cosmeston right now and they mostly look like this – or, at least, the females do.
So, I think you can see why the butterfly in this next photo caught my eye. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a really clear shot of it, as it kept flying further into the flowers and I didn’t want to trample them, but you get the idea. Thanks to a tweet from UK Butterflies, I now know “This aberration is referred to as ‘pathological’, where wing scales fail to pigment – thought to be caused by some type of damage (physical or chemical) to the pupa. Asymmetrical examples are known too where only 1 wing is affected.” Isn’t it fascinating?
