Redirect

The Tramp is gone. I am ending this blog and starting a new one. There are a whole bunch of reasons that I will explain but probably the most important one is that last Thursday I signed the papers that will provide me with a small but adequate pension for the rest of my life. I am not a Tramp any more.

The last two and a half years, since I separated from my wife, have been quite difficult.

A little over two years ago I was homeless, broke and quite cold so I met a girl. She was a singer in a seven piece country rock band and she had a house, with a roof on it. So I moved in and lived with her for about six months. She was a very good person but these kind of things don’t really last.

She gave me back my confidence. I was the fellow with the girl on stage. I was everybody’s best friend. We had a lot of fun with band rehearsals and gigging. She also taught me that at this time in my life I want to live alone. That is the way that I want it. I know that I could do other things but maybe later, maybe I have already done them.

The band played a style of music called “Outlaw Country” and some of it was quite raunchy. They wrote a lot of their own stuff but they did a lot of covers too. This is a song that they covered and a nice way to say goodbye.

Well that was Willow, she told me that she loved nature but all she really loved was rock and roll and I need grass and trees, that is just how it is. I hope that she is happy and well.

Tramp has run out of free storage space.

I always intended just to start paying for storage when my free space ran out but Tramp isn’t giving me what I want. In the year that it has been running I have written about five hundred posts and they have all become lost in the mist of time.

When I write something I want it to stay writ and I want to be able to easily find it again. The new blog has a series of pages running along the top that will provide links to everything written. I have only just started work on it so it is not a finished product yet but I will polish it.

Anyway you can just ignore the pages and read the posts. Pages that I create will not appear in your reader, just the posts, so I won’t be constantly bothering you with my trivia.

There will be a lot of this.

There will also be enough of this to keep me happy.

I am using the same template and I have tried to keep the new design as close to Tramp as possible because I know that some people don’t like change. You shouldn’t notice a lot of difference.

Easy Wildflowers is going too but it is just becoming a part of the new blog. It will all take time but Fizz and I have got the rest of our lives now.

For a long time I have been living with the knowledge that I am in trouble and that I don’t know what is coming in the future but whatever it is I am a tough guy and I will cope with it. I have had enough of that, I am bored with it now. Time for something new.

The new title reflects my new status.

A Farm, A Forest and Fizz

No worries 🙂

Come over and see me if you like. Your friendship has kept me going and I owe you.

Tramp is finished 🙂 Bye

“Despair Dogs Me” or “A Tale of Two Hats”

Lesser men would have broken by now.

I don’t want this to be a sad post, I will just tell you what happened.

Yesterday I shrunk my hat. I had been out three times that day and when I finally got home I thought that my very old and much loved hat was a bit sweaty and dirty, so I threw it in the washing machine.

I should have read the washing instructions, “Wipe clean.”

This might not seem very important because I have two hats but only one of them has character.

These two hats are identical, they are both the same make and style and they were once the same colour. One of them is my hat and it has lived a life of adventure and has become a bit bleached by the sun.

Two years ago I was out shopping with a friend when I saw a copy of my hat in an end of line sale. “You must buy it,” she said, “One day you may lose your hat and I can’t imagine you without it.” So I did.

I kept it in my wardrobe and planned to wear it to weddings and funerals and maybe for the occasional court appearance but since then, well, I haven’t been arrested for ages and nobody has died, I have never worn it. I don’t really want to.

The good news is that today I defiantly wore my shrunken hat out. It was very windy and I found that it was quite an advantage to have a tight fitting hat.

I don’t know where this will end. Perhaps I am letting go of an old friend, gently.

My shoes are looking a bit shabby too.

I expect that you would prefer to hear what Fizz and I have been up to for the last few days. We have been hunting Boars mostly.

Wild Boar have arrived on the farm. I knew that they were getting closer but a few day ago I stepped outside and came face to face with three of them at about two o’clock in the afternoon. They had just walked through my neighbours front garden and were standing in front of our house.

My landlord tells me that it is ten years since he saw a Boar on the farm but they are here now.

They always have been all around us but I have suspected that they were closing in for several weeks now. About three weeks ago I noticed fresh rooting just across the road from the house.

I didn’t really make anything of that at the time, we see a lot of that around here.

Then there was the extraordinary business of an animal eating all of the Arum Lilies.

Just when I was thinking, “What sort of an animal would do that,” I stepped out of my front door and bumped right into them.

They have been here for a few weeks and I am pretty sure that they are here to stay now.

This is a superb opportunity for the naturalist in me, I can actually lie in bed and watch for them in the fields across from me. The trail camera is out.

It is not so good for everybody else. The Boar are not dangerous and they will always try and escape us unless..

A: You corner an animal and leave it no escape.

B: You or your dog attack their babies. They will defend their young and they are powerful animals.

In the wood that I owned in East Sussex a Rottweiller was killed by Boar just before I bought the land. It was an aggressive dog and the owner had taken to walking it in the wood at night to avoid other dog walkers. A Rottie is no match for a female boar with young. I don’t know what a Rottweiller normally weighs but my GSD was forty kilos and a mature female Boar would be about a hundred and twenty kilos and they are not pussy cats.

I have never considered them to be dangerous but then I have never tried to eat their babies. I am just not that stupid.

What it does mean is that there are places now where I cannot walk Fizz off lead (she is that stupid). The farm fields are still good as I can see everything around, tight and overgrown country lanes are out of bounds for a bit.

Fizz does a really good job of protecting me from Bears and Wolves, the very least that I can do in return is to protect her from herself.

Is it still safe in the garden?

It’s safe.

Good girl.

I can walk her amongst the Boar on a lead. They will not attack me and if they come too close I will just pick her up. So we went up to the Bluebell woods to hunt for them.

At this point some sort of trained tracker dog would have been useful but I just had to go with what was available. In the video that I am about to show you (when You Tube has uploaded it) Fizz is really trying to find a Boar for me but she has never seen one and doesn’t realise how big they are. She keeps looking under leaves for them.

I am looking at how Boar relate to the Bluebells. One of the arguments put forward by their detractors is that Boar uproot and destroy bluebell woods and that they eat Bluebell bulbs. My old wood was a Bluebell wood with Wild Boar in it and I have been watching them for fifteen years. They have no interest in Bluebells.

They root up the tracks that run through the Bluebells but they stay on the tracks and avoid the flowers. If they wanted to eat them these woods would be a feast for them. (This is where we filmed the young Boar recently, there are plenty of animals in this wood)

Bluebells are actually poisonous to most animals but then so are Arum Lilies.

We didn’t find any Boars but we did see some nice flowers.

This characteristic one sided droop is often given as an identifying feature of our native Bluebells and it is but…

It is important to note that the flowers grow from all sides of the stem and this elegance is only a stage in their lives.

When the flowers first emerge the stem is completely upright and later as the flowers go to seed it straightens out again.

This next flower is a genuine native Hyacinthoides non-scripta but just at a slightly inelegant stage of it’s development and that happens.

On the edge of this wood the Arum Lilies are giving a fine display.

Either the Boar here have no taste for this poisonous root or they just haven’t found them yet. I like this flower, I think that it is very beautiful and it is a shame to see it singled out for destruction but animals have to eat.

One of the nicest things about this wood is that the walk up here takes us through the farm fields. There is no danger of me being surprised by wild animals here and Fizz gets plenty of opportunity to run and play.

I will leave you with a few images of Fizz preventing me from photographing a beautiful little Speedwell and otherwise doing what she does best 🙂

Get off me you stupid animal!

There is nothing in my pocket!

Trails of Destruction

This isn’t going to be a sad post. It is going to be quite an interesting post, I just need to tell you about what happened yesterday.

You remember the little black lamb that I showed you a few days ago? Well sadly I found him dead on the roadside, hit by a car. It happens and I guess he was always going to be the last one that they saw.

If you walk in the countryside you get used to seeing  Badgers, Foxes and Rabbits lying by the roadside and this is not really any different but I did feel sorry for him.

What really spoilt my day was what happened next. His Mum was not going to leave her dead lamb and she was wandering up and down a busy road with her other lamb trotting along behind her, it was pretty obvious that there was going to be another accident if we didn’t get her off the road and I got met with a bit of a  negative response.

Eventually Jeremy (for that was his name) came out and picked up his dead lamb and moved the others to safety. So that was that.

I hear a lot of, “Oh you townies just don’t understand our country ways,” but I do.

Sorry little lamb, I should have stolen you.

Then my day picked up, when I went to see the little dog downstairs.

Fizz is a philosopher and she ought to be studied in universities. She is a bit like that Frenchman, Jean Paul Sartre but brighter and she doesn’t use so many words, in fact her whole philosophical argument could be summed up in a single sentence.

“The world is full of stuff that is not Fizz but that is not important.”

It is perhaps not as complex as existentialism but it is true and it helps me to exist.

So off we went to La La Land…..

Fizz knows some nice places to walk and she can make even an angry heart forget.

Help me little animal for I have been hurt.

Are you magic? How come you are there when I need you? Why do you even exist?

Thank you and here, have a nice flower.

Hello!

Was that butterfly called Fizz?

I don’t think so.

I am going to crawl under the gate now.

If you follow me you can tickle my tummy.

I want to look at flowers.

Bush Vetch, It’s a pea and so it has those grab onto anything tendrils and I think that it is wonderful. It is one of those plants that helps to make the jungle an absolute mess.

I can’t wait forever.

Okay I am just going to take a few moments out to check that they did her hair cut properly. Sometimes people are slackers and they miss the little important bits, you know what I mean?

Everything seems to be in order and they have done a good job.

Get down little Monkey! I am fixed.

I am ready to begin my tale.

We are walking along the track, observing nature and playing games with the flowers….

Dog’s Mercury,

This is the female of the species.

This is a Dog in Mercury.

All right! I am fixed all ready.

As we are walking along I have been noticing signs of animal activity. Little holes everywhere.

In my mind I am seeing “snuffle holes.” These are little holes that Badger’s make as they dig for worms. They sometimes look like little animal burrows but they don’t go anywhere, they are only about six to eight inches deep.

There is not much that is unusual about this. We are very close to a Badger main sett and there is a lot of activity further along the track but there is a lot here and I am a bit surprised because we are still a way from the sett. Very active Badgers, I think.

Then I noticed something beside this hole.

This isn’t actually a “snuffle hole,” this one is where an animal has dug up and eaten the root of Wild Arum.

Badgers do eat the roots of Wild Arum. I have read of this described as a winter activity when food is short and we are in Badger country.

This is Wild Arum (Arum maculatum)

To us this is a deadly poisonous plant. Every part of it contains toxins that can kill a Human. The reason that it doesn’t kill people is that those toxins cause immediate and painful burns and blisters and if we accidentally put it in our mouths then we quickly spit it out again.

However we can eat it. The roots are edible but they need preparation (I think it is roasting but that is only from memory). This is not a good one to eat unless you are starving  but remember that most animals are starving.

This next one is very edible and in fact if you don’t eat this then you are an American Donkey (an Ass).

This is Wild Garlic.

(In fact the Americans do not use the word Ass to describe a Donkey but this is only because they have not mastered the English language and particularly spelling, to me “American Donkey” is just a euphemism, what I meant was that you would be a fool not to eat this wonderful herb 🙂 I said it crudely because I like crude it is very different from rude but I don’t like crudities, I prefer to dunk soft white bread into my soup. Consider this to be my soup. There are some very beautiful and expressive words in the English language and you would have to be an American Donkey to diminish them, you don’t always have to use them.)

Then…

Here is another one.

and another…

and another….

and another….

This is getting weird. Something has walked along this track and systematically and selectively dug up and ate every Arum Lily that it could find. I saw more than thirty of these holes and photographed them.

What on earth does this?

If you know me then you might think, “Colin would know the answer,” but Colin does not know the answer.

Stop it. I can see your beauty.

I choose my stuff carefully, I am not a fool and I love you.

I am trying to concentrate.

Something is eating our flowers.

We need to put our tracker hats on, Badgers are obviously in the frame but something doesn’t ring true. The other animal that would do this is Wild Boar and I know that they are also here.

These prints are partial, the ground has been quite hard. A Boar has dew claws that leave an impression behind the hooves and I can’t see them, but they could be Boar (or Sheep or Deer) I don’t know.

It is all a bit weird.

So I don’t know what to say about all of this, except…

Let me take you by the hand and lead you through a place that doesn’t have any streets, I will show you something that will make you change your mind.

I wrote this through the night and it is now Friday. Yesterday we had a General Election in the UK. I have no idea who won.

Good people never win. Niceness isn’t a winning trait and I already know that the worst man in the country is now our President. That is the failing of democracy. Let them come into the Jungle and we will see who wins.

I haven’t told you about this but I once lived for a year with a Member of Parliament. It’s okay, my wife knew about it. He was a decent man and a friend who helped me out of a jam but I could tell you some stories (and they would include naked MPs, another day perhaps 🙂  but probably not)

One more deep breath and then I will go and see who is now my Glorious Leader.

Get out of the mud.

The Leader is coming 🙂

An Unexpected Change Of Plan

At two thirty this afternoon Haircut was outside of my kitchen window.

She was trying to express in doggie language that contrary to my expectations, three hours at the beauty parlour  had not made her day complete.

This is what she said.

What are you gonna do?

I will take you out but you must promise to stay well away from the mud,

It takes three hours at the parlour because the first hour is spent telling Margaret what a terrible owner she is for getting her dog in such a state and then giving her training in the proper way to care for her pet.

It is not Margaret’s fault. It is not even my fault  but obviously I don’t want to upset Margaret later in the day.

No muddy  puddles. Okay?

This dog smells really sweet. It must be the shampoo that they use and she has got the cleanest feet that I have ever seen.

How can it be my fault? It is not like I invented mud, it is just there.

Anyway I thought that you might like to see the new Fizz.

She isn’t very much different from the old Fizz.

I kept her as clean as I could. She has been through a tough ordeal today and I guess that when it was over she just needed to get back to nature. Nature can fix anything.

Nature and a little bit of love 🙂

 

There’s No Sun Up In The Sky

We are being battered this morning. The wind is bashing things about. The old farm sheds have a lot of loose corrugated iron and the wind can always find it and bang it about. Rain is crashing noisily against the glass in my windows.

Margaret has just rung me (She is Fizz’s owner) and she said, “I want to keep Fizz in this morning, she is going to the beauty parlour today.”and she went on, “I left it as long as I could because I thought it was still a bit cold but I can’t leave it any longer.”

Why? What’s wrong with Fizz?

Well in my experience women have a finer eye for this sort of detail than men do and anyway it is not very nice out.

I may not even walk her today and if I do I won’t take my camera. It is not because of the bad weather but I always feel guilty waiting for her to come back from the beauty parlour.

It must cost a few bob and they go to all this trouble to get a lovely clean, tidy dog and the moment she gets home we go out and roll in mud. I might let them enjoy their clean dog for one day.

I walk Fizz more to give her the stimulation and interest than to exercise her, she could run around on her hamster wheel if she needed exercise. I expect that she will find three hours at the BP stimulating enough for today.

So what to do?

I am going to talk about Bluebells (we will be going to see them soon)

When I was out finding new Speedwells I noticed a few other flowers about. There was a lot of Bugle.

But this is really such a nice flower that it deserves a post of it’s own (when the weather is better)

The other thing that I saw a lot of was The Enemy.

This is not a Bluebell. Well it is not a Hyacinthoides non-scripta, a native British Bluebell.

It doesn’t really look anything like a Bluebell, it is not the same shape. This is a hybrid of the Spanish Bluebell and a sweet and innocent English Bluebell that was seduced because of her innocence.

The key to telling the species apart is normally given as the pollen colour.

Come here you! Show them!

This is what The Natural History Museum has to say,

“The easiest way to tell the difference between native and non-native bluebells is to look at the colour of the pollen.

If it is creamy-white then the bluebell is a native.  If it is any other colour, such as pale green or blue, then it is definitely not native.”

These are native.

So what is this?

“If it is creamy-white then the bluebell is a native.”

No Sir. You are wrong.

Growing in amongst these obvious hybrids there were a lot of white hybrids.

I searched every flower and there was not a trace of blue or green pollen to be seen, every single one was creamy white.

Once upon a  time these flowers would have been shot as spies, they are out of uniform but they most definitely are not Hyacinthoides non-scripta.

This is what a white native Bluebell looks like.

The enemy is at our door and it seems that in many cases they are becoming smarter than us. More vigilance is called for.

Photos of a newly shorn Fizz will be coming up soon 🙂

Educated Fleas

I thought that I would take Fizz up in the fields and take her picture in amongst the Dandelions…

But I became distracted.

This is St Mark’s Fly (Bibio marci)

We call it that because they all emerge around about the same time, April the twenty fifth and that is St Mark’s Day. They are a little bit late this year.

These first picture are of the male. He has large eyes and clear wings, also very long back legs that hang below him in flight. Last year I searched in vain for a female of the species. They look quite different.

The problem is that the adults only live for about a week and as they all emerge at the same time there is very little opportunity to see them.

And there she was, distracting me… I forgot all about Fizz.

She has small eyes , she is a little bit longer than the male and has dark wings.

But even though she looks so different I am quite confident that this is the female of the species.

I have heard it said that the male has such big eyes so that he can find the female and that is quite believable. I had a lot of trouble finding her.

The Dandelions are beginning to fade now.

The Buttercups are just starting to appear.

As soon as the Dandelions go these fields will fill with Buttercups.

It looks like these fields are going to be grown for silage again this year, the grass is already too long for Sheep. That is good because for a few months we will get long grass and lots of wildflowers and all of the associated insects.

I will leave you with the firework display called Ribwort Plantain.

 

My New Speedo’s

Oh No !

I am going to write a post about a Speedwell flower.

I discovered one today that I hadn’t seen before, there are quite a lot of them. Anyway, you are not even in my post tonight.

Oh Please.

Did you wash your face this morning?

Veronica filiformis. This is Slender speedwell.

Worldwide there are about 500 species in the Veronica genus and in the UK we have about two dozen different Speedwell flowers. Half of those are quite rare and the rest… Well, it is just a case of finding them and photographing them. This is number seven for me.

With so many little blue flowers around the problem is usually recognising that I am looking at a species that I haven’t seen before. It is very easy to see a little blue flower and just think, “Speedwell.”

In this case I saw a fairly dense matt of pale flowers and thought, “Wow, speedwells without any leaves.”

They do have leaves , they are just quite small.

So here is my list to date.

(Germander Speedwell, Veronica chamaedrys)

(Heath Speedwell, Veronica officinalis)

(Ivy-leaved Speedwell, Veronica hederifolia)

(Persian  or Common Field Speedwell, Veronica persica)

(Thyme-leaved Speedwell, Veronica serpyllifolia)

(Wood Speedwell, Veronica montana)

And now of course…

(Slender Speedwell, Veronica filiformis)

So many Veronicas 🙂

I love finding new flowers and I love my Speedwell collection. I would like to add a few more this summer.

I am sorry that this daily post is late. We have been having power cuts all day. It goes on and it goes off and it has been going on for ages, very strange. I am probably the only person being bothered by it because it is now the middle of the night and everybody else is asleep but it is still annoying me.

Fortunately I have got my “light in a bag.”

It is called a Luminaid and it is a solar charged lantern. It throws out enough light to fill the room that I am in and I can read by it and for sleeping in the woods and stuff like that it is perfect. It charges itself in the day and runs all night.

I am not being sponsored to say this but I will see if I can find a video about it because I am loving my Luminaid tonight. (Fizz hasn’t got one but she is asleep)

THIS IS NOT AN ADVERT (I think it is a kind of charity thing)

I am not sure that I am allowed to put adverts on here but nobody is getting paid for anything here and if you want one then  you have to go and find one for yourself and all sorts of places sell them.

I did get approached by a company recently who asked if I would like to write about their product on  my blog but I didn’t really know what it was and so that is on hold for the moment. This little light really works and deserves a free mention tonight because it is dark here. (on and off)

I might like to do some kit reviews one day. It would be things like Buffalo Pile clothing (I bought my first Buffalo sleeping bag thirty years ago), Frosts, knife makers of Sweden (they are called Mora now but I still have my “Frosty”) My little Vango wood burning stove (that has been on here once). There  is kit that I have used for ages and I know that it is good but it wouldn’t be “paid for” advertising.

On that controversial note I will say Goodnight (Good morning)

Forget-me-do’s

There is very little point in holding on to the past. What is gone is gone.

Today I am in the best place that I have ever been in my life. It is completely peaceful here, full of birdsong and the scent and colour of wildflowers. I am letting go of all that used to be, that was hard work 🙂

So my overly sweet and pretty little friend, you are a Wood Forget-me-do.

It is not always easy to get Forget-me-do’s to species, the Wood Forget-me-do is very similar to the field variety.

A British pound coin has a diameter of 22.5 mm (about the size of a wedding ring, I guess)These flowers look about 7-8 mm across. (Three to the pound) Field Forget-me-do’s are about half that size 3-4 mm. These flowers are also quite flat.

The shape of the calyx pushes the petals of the Field flower up making more of a cup shape out of it.

The calyx of the field variety is almost bell shape with the tips of the sepals closing to a point. The wood variety is more linear with an open end.

In both cases the individual flower stalks are about twice the length of the calyx. That pedicle length is key to separating some of the smaller species and so it should be noted.

Locally it is in flower now and you can see it in all the more open hedgerows as you walk into the village (dodging the devilish little lambs).

The large flower of the Wood Forget-me-do is the source of most of the garden varieties.

Goodbye whatever your name was, I am afraid that it has gone again. I do remember that you were a very pretty little flower.

Hanky Panky

Ha! I have heard it said that “the Devil makes work for idle hands,” maybe he does, I don’t know about that. Today we are going to talk about Monkey Business, of the botanical kind.

I just want to mention the star of today’s show.

Pretending to be Old Nick himself, this beautiful little innocent is one of our ASBO lambs. Born into the wild, this one has survived. I just met him about an hour ago and I was struck by his inner beauty.

I wish he was mine 🙂

Let’s talk about flowers (and hanky panky)

Primroses are lovely.

No question about that.

The Cowslip is so tall and strong.

Handsome even, that is just another word for beautiful.

But…

Should we leave them alone together?

I don’t know how much that you know about the birds and the bees but if you leave Primroses and Cowslips alone together then there is a very fair chance that they will get up to Hanky Panky.

This is a flower called the False Oxlip, real Oxlips are very rare and a species in their own right. A False Oxlip is the result of a liaison between a Primrose and a Cowslip. We are not here to judge.

It seems to me to be a very beautiful offspring.

His mum was not what I would call a looker.

But I noticed his sister.

Beautiful animals.

Playing with Butterflies

It is a miserable one today. A cold wind has blown in from somewhere and brought lots of cloud with it.

It is a good day to demonstrate my Butterfly handling technique. They will be at my mercy.

The poor little things can’t do anything about it, they need sunshine, they need to be warm to fly and they will be very lethargic today.

The first butterfly that we found was a female Orange Tip.

The first trick is the weather. I have been out at two o’clock on a sunny afternoon and can not get anywhere near them. I am already very close to this one and she would have flown away if she could, she is too cold and I can do what I want with her.

Now. You must not touch her in any way,  only she may touch you. She is very easy to break and we are big and clumsy.

Just put your finger right in front of her, minding her antennae and legs and just depress the flower a little bit.

You can talk about politics or the economy but not war, it has to be gentle depression.

As the flower gives way under her feet she will step forward onto your finger and once her front feet are on you can just roll your finger under her and you have her. I don’t exactly have this one where I wanted. I wanted her on my finger tip for display purposes but she has crawled onto my knuckle and I can’t move her. This will do.

It is a butterfly Fizz.

I have picked this one up because she was in deep shade, I am going to move her into the sunshine. As soon as she feels the sun she will open her wings and bask and she will fly away. It will only take about two seconds for her to warm up enough to fly so I have to get lucky with my photographs.

And she has gone.

The pictures aren’t great but never mind we will try again later.

You can only do this with the white ones (any of the whites). This little Speckled Wood was flitting all over the place, a little bit of cloud doesn’t bother him.

It is simply because white reflects light and heat and dark colours like brown absorb it and the Speckled Wood warms up much easier than the Orange Tip and flies on much cooler days.

I have never been able to approach or pick up a Speckled Wood, or any of the other dark ones. Sometimes they will land on me by chance and of course if you raise them as your own you can release them but that is as good as it gets.

Now I am just going to leave the butterflies for a moment because I have noticed the seed pods of that flower she was sitting on and I want those photographs. It is Garlic Mustard.

Thank you for indulging me, I needed those photographs for my files.

I have just noticed another flower.

Have you ever wondered where Primroses go when they die?

Hmmm… a small lack of floral compassion perhaps?

Anyway I have and I care. I want to know. So I am choosing a nice female plant with pin flowers…

I am going to perform a couple of autopsies on her dead sisters.

Very interesting, this is how we find things out.

Perhaps if I sewed them back together and passed electricity through them, then I could reanimate them. Now which bit went with which?

Back to the butterflies and we have found another Orange Tip, this one is a male.

Just in case there is anyone in the world who wonders how I can tell the male from the female. Well, it is only the male who actually has orange tips to his wings (On the inside). With a few years of practice and an element of expertise in this field absolutely anyone can tell the difference.

I am not going to try and pick this one up. He is as docile as the female was and I could do what I wanted but….

Okay he is in the shade but the whole world is in the shade, the sun is behind a cloud and we are in the open this time. Plus I would much prefer to photograph him on a plant than in my hand. This time he is on Cow Parsley.

Cow Parsley is absolutely brilliant and provides a mass spectacle to rival the Bluebells. It really is beautiful but we will do that in a bit.

What I am going to do is stand beside him and wait for the sun to come out again, it will take twenty five minutes and then I will fail 🙂

There is a reason why I like to do this sort of stuff alone. Sometimes if I am waiting for a bird or animal I might wait for hours, I sustain myself by imagining the shot that I might get if everything works.

I like to walk with other people and talk about flowers and nature and stuff but I don’t try and take photographs. I have tried and they always say, “Go on, get what you need, I am happy,” but I can only get guilt, maybe I will do it once for twenty minutes or so but then when I want to do it again, I just can’t.

Nobody just wants to stand and look at me for hours on end… almost nobody.

This is the reason that I work with an Air Head. (I couldn’t have a better companion/assistant)

She understands the importance of botanical research, she understands my interest in  entomology, she understands that big game hunters have to make a living just as butterfly collectors do and she will make any sacrifice. She is priceless.

Oh dear, he is staring at a bush again. I think that he is looking for his marbles and we just have to wait.

(He never finds them)

Best Dog in the world, that one.

Here we go.

That’s a fail. I have taken much better pictures than that. Never mind, the Dog got walked.

I will have to wind this up now or my daily post will take two days to write. Take care.

Animal Magic

“Just like that”

It’s your destiny

The Swallows have fledged, or at least they are fledging. They are still in the nest today but they have been out and they can fly.

It has taken me a few days watching and all that you get are a couple of short video’s but for me, my understanding and the pleasure that I got from watching them makes a few days just a drop in the ocean. It was time well spent.

Anyway you should be glad that you don’t have to watch the whole twenty hours of video, that I now have to sort and delete from my machine to free up space.

Here are the best bits.

Yesterday morning there were five birds on the nest, there were five birds on the nest and then there were four birds on the nest. I had missed the very first flight and only realised when number five returned to the nest.

This first video starts with the mother calling for them to leave the nest, there is a little comic interlude of the way that they follow flies, their little heads bobbing in unison and in the last bit the second bird to approach the nest is the returning chick. Does he bring food back or do the others just think that he has?

This next video shows them leaving the nest and returning. They spent most of the day fluttering around inside the little alley way that has become their home and by the end of the day they were all settled back on the nest but this is fledging. Today I think that they have ventured outside and seen the blue sky but they still return to the nest.

These birds have made me think a lot about nature as a whole thing and about life and death in the wild. The caterpillars that I am trying to raise are falling to the parasitoid flies that these Swallows depend on for food and survival. The parents have done a really good job of raising them given the wet weather we have been having. I have often looked out in the pouring rain and wondered how they are managing to raise a brood and now this, flight.

I am so in in love and in awe of them and so damned jealous.

I am jealous because they get to eat those delicious crunchy flies, or perhaps because they can raise offspring in a matter of weeks and not the 26 years it usually takes us. Maybe I am jealous of something else altogether…..