Oops! I think we shot Bambi.

I am not sure how well this post is going to work. Visibility was poor today. It is day two of our Wild Boar hunt and we can’t just stay indoors. If you want to be a Big Game Hunter then you have to be brave.

On the way I want to go and take a photograph of the Elm Trees that we looked at yesterday but we can’t remember where we left them.

Eventually we do find them. I knew that they were in the corner of the field, I just wasn’t sure where the corner was.

Now to find the woods and the camera.

(Foggy Doggy)

We found a hedge and followed that.

In the end we found the wood and I did get lost in the wood  but then we found the camera.

I was in two minds about leaving the camera out there for another night. I thought we could just go up there and have a look.

What we found was thirty seven videos on the card. Some of the bait had been taken but not all of it. I had baited with raisins and bread. Raisins are invisible and smelly and I had hidden the bread under leaf litter, I could see that some bread had been exposed but not eaten so I didn’t expect to find Boar videos. (We can’t view them until we get home) I suspected Squirrels but decided to leave the camera out for one more night.

We got thirty five videos of Foxes, poor quality and not worth looking at and then this…

I can see what it isn’t. It isn’t a Fox or a Boar. I thought maybe an Alsation Dog or a Big Cat.

It could be anything really but it’s not. It is a Fallow Deer in it’s grey winter coat. Can you tell that it’s grey?

Well I am just going to say that the weather was against us today. The camera is still out there and maybe we will have a clearer night tonight.

Now cast the fog from your mind.

Lamium purpureum, The Red Dead-nettle

Known as Red Dead-nettle in the UK, the flowers range from pink to purple. Other names include Purple Dead-nettle and Purple Archangel and are perhaps a little more descriptive.

The Dead-nettles are so called because although they look a bit like Stinging Nettles they have no sting.

The flower is best described as a corollla, this is the name that we give a flower when it’s petals are fused together to form a tube.

The opening of the flower has a top “hood” petal and two lower “lip” petals.

Under the hood there are four stamens, two long and two short and a style with a two lobed stigma (not shown)

The stem is square.

Leaves are heart shaped with small, regular toothed edges and hairy. Towards the top of the plant they can appear quite purple.

        In the UK the flowering season can start as early as February and last until November. In fact this year I took my first pictures of the flowers on the second of February. This makes them very important to wildlife.

Another name for this Dead-nettle is the Bumblebee Flower they are rich in nectar and pollen and much loved by insects.

Taxonomy

Kingdom: Plantae

Order: Lamiales

Family: Lamiaceae

Genus: Lamium

Species: Lamium purpureum

Wildflowers in winter.

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…..