A Proper Winter’s Day

It was one of those bright blue, freezing cold, but still warm in the sun, days today.

Step out of the sunshine and there is frost on the ground in the afternoon, perfect! (For December)

We still needed to find something to photograph and that entailed climbing over barbed wire fences… (Very cool)

And what is good about barbed wire is that nobody is going to find my berries.

I don’t want to photograph Holly in the sunshine, I want a nice festive setting, a bit of snow. So this is a good tree, we have just got to wait for some bad weather.

That is all that you are going to get today, most of the time we just played ball. There is not much life around at this time of year.

I have spent a lot of time writing for my Wildflower guide, which just means that I have added three more flowers and if you want more nature they are here….

       Lesser Celandine

       Town Hall Clock

       Arum Lily

But don’t worry about what I am doing over there because that is not a blog it is a work of reference.

We will try and have a good adventure tomorrow 🙂

 

 

 

Good Mud

I have been seeing some amazing posts from the US of the snowfall there. Here in the UK we will be lucky to get any snow this winter but we do get good mud.

This was going to be my “The Hunt For Red November” post and it was going to be an account of our search for Buddy and what we found whilst we were searching. However I now suspect that I have been duped and that the whole thing was a set up.

I have been leading the investigation into the abduction of the puppy and the first thing that I had to look at was who had the most to gain?

There was no ransom demand and for a while it seemed to me to be a motiveless crime.

In fact the only one who benefited from his imprisonment was Buddy’s best friend and companion Fizz. She got to spend most of Sunday and many hours of Monday helping me to search for him.

She also had the opportunity, if anybody was going to be with Buddy on that fateful Sunday morning it would have been his constant companion. She could easily have nudged the door shut after Buddy was inside.

She doesn’t have an alibi. It was Sunday morning, people were working in the yard and all of the gates were open, the dogs all had free run of the place.

Forensics didn’t turn up anything. Her paw prints were all over the scene but she always has access so you would expect that.

Unfortunately my investigation has to end here. Buddy is not going to say anything. He spent the night in a warm barn and then got treble fussed over when he emerged and Fizz is just giving me Angel Face (How could I think such a thing?)

Could these two be conspirators? We will never know.

One thing that we do know is that Fizz had a lot of fun searching for Buddy and many extra hours of walks and Buddy is now out of intensive care and playing in the yard with his new toys. Plus the Humans have learned a valuable lesson that we must spend more time playing with the dogs and give them much more love and attention.

Here is Red November.

We targeted our search around the Beast’s lair at the end of Badger Alley. For the puppy to disappear without trace like that he would have to have been eaten by something quite big, that was my reasoning.

I took this opportunity to revisit the Guelder Rose because following my recent post I had received a tip off to go and look at the seeds.

Who would know that inside the berries were these beautiful little heart shaped jewels?

I am told that when washed and allowed to dry they fade to a delightful pink. Many thanks to Mar’yana Svarnyk for that information.

Our next red was the Bramble.

This sign was just like a red rag to a puppy.

Who made Sign the boss?

Well, you know about Fizz and timber stacks.

In “other reds” there were some lovely Roses….

and in the depths of the Beast’s lair Ivy was doing  it’s bit for Red November.

It was too dark and wet to do the Ivy justice but I know where there is some very colourful Ivy growing on Aspens and we will look at that soon.

Oh and I forgot to tell you… Fizz got muddy 🙂

A Guelder Rose but no Gorillas.

We had to revise our plan for today. It was a bit misty.

It just seemed too dangerous to take Fizz out on the road, we could get knocked over and traumatise a motorist.

There was a little dog sitting underneath my window who wanted me to come out and play..

Plan B then. The fog was coming down heavy. We would go and look for Gorillas in the mist (that’s where they live. Right?)

I put Fizz in charge of watching the trees, we don’t want anything jumping down on us and I was in charge of the little things.

The first little thing that I found was rose hips, from a proper rose a Dog Rose.

But not all of those berries are tasty rose hips, some of them are Black Bryony.

We are going to see a lot of berries today.

Hawthorn berries are everywhere.

This next little mushroom is one of the Mycena. That is a genus of fungi with several hundred species. Many of which can only be separated with a microscope. I can’t get it to species from these pictures but it is a pretty one. These are often collectively referred to as Bonnets.

Keep watching the trees please!

I am bent over examining the ground and at any moment something big might jump down and land on my back with a thump. What’s my lookout doing?

Messing about! Although, I am not sure how much she can see out of her haircut anyway.

There are many more berries to come. These are Black Bryony again. The profusion of these poisonous berries delights me.

All around I am seeing signs of winter. These Ivy berries will be a feature of January when they have ripened.

Lambs Tails are forming on the Hazel ready for January too.

Behind these catkins is the plant that we have come to see.

I first photographed these berries in January, there were far fewer berries then and there were no leaves on the tree. I didn’t know what it was and so I told myself that I would come and look at it in the summer and then I forgot.

This time we have leaves.

These are the fruits of the Guelder Rose, Viburnum opulus.

It is a member of the Adoxaceae family. That means that it is related more closely to the Elder tree and the lovely little Town Hall Clock than to the roses.

Well, I have missed the green leaves of summer and the white flowers that would have bloomed in June but at least we have got the berries and we know what it is.

These actually look like they must be related to Elderberries, don’t you think?

This post just goes on and on, I just want to show you one more thing and then we will head back.

We are right at the end of Badger Alley now and this is where I think that the Beast of Badger Alley lives. On one side of the track there is woodland.

On the other side of the track there is impenetrable scrub. This is a tangle of Brambles, Hawthorn, Blackthorn anything with thorns on it.

Last winter I tried to press into this scrub, just a little bit to photograph some bright rose hips and as I went in an animal was startled and went crashing deeper into the bush. It was making more noise than me, it was big. Not a Fox, it was the Beast of Badger Alley but I didn’t see it, I only heard it moving.

Okay we had better hurry back now.

Just ignore the pretty little bird. It is just guarding it’s territory.

I took loads of pictures of this Common Hogweed but we will rush past this one as well.

And the last thing that we won’t look at will be little Herb Robert.

That’s it. We were out for ages and we still didn’t see a Gorilla. Maybe Fizz scared them all off.

I was going to show you how muddy she was when I dropped her off but you can probably guess.

 

17/11 Update: We received a tip off from the very kind Mar’yana Svarnyk in the comments section, advising us to take a look at the beautiful red seeds of the Guelder Rose. Thank you so much. (These pictures will be in my upcoming post, “The hunt for Red November” but also here for anyone searching for Guelder Rose)

Take care when extracting the seeds, I recommend wearing eye protection. The fruits are very juicy.

Winter is coming

Heh heh 🙂 But it is not here yet.

I would love to have a cold winter. Hard frosts and clear blue skies, blizzards and deep snow. Fizz and I have never played snow balls or made snow angels or built a snow dog. That would all make for some memorable photographs.

I think that we are going to get mud. That’s what we had last year. Grey skies, rain and floods and mud on mud. It’s not so good.

It’s sunshine Fizz. You remember sunshine don’t you?

It’s warm and it makes you feel sleepy.

She can have a little cat-nap while I photograph some berries.

These are Sloe Berries, the fruit of the Blackthorn. They are traditionally used to flavour Sloe Gin but I like to eat them straight of the tree.

They do have a large pip but also a lot of flesh and they are very juicy. The have an astringent quality, they leave your mouth feeling dry and puckered, the only cure for this is to eat another one.

A lot of people find them too tart and they are just a nibble for me, I have never sat down and ate a bowlful. The flavour is supposed to sweeten after the first frosts but I can never wait and I have been eating them since the end of August.

This has been a very good year for Sloe berries.

Wakey wakey 🙂

Come on we have got sunshine to see.

It is nice out but recent rains have left the tracks a bit muddy. I suppose that it is time to get the old Wellies out of storage.

We shall look back and laugh at this soon.

Looking back at old photo’s I think that perhaps this year I should invest in waders or a full body wet suit. In this next picture she thinks that I am drowning and is trying to administer the kiss of life.

Come on it is not that wet yet. Well, not for me anyway 🙂

Our next berry is Black Bryony. This one is deadly poisonous of the painful blistering variety, you wouldn’t eat one. Now that leaves are falling from the trees this is becoming more evident as it scrambles about in the hedgerow.

You might want to clean yourself up a bit, I can’t really take you home like that.

Good Girl.

It’s a long time till Christmas

Nevertheless Holly berries are ripening in the hedgerow and if they want to ripen now then now is when we have to photograph them.

So what can I say about Holly that everyone doesn’t already know?

This is Ilex aquifolium commonly called English Holly or European Holly. It is dioecious, which means that there are different male and female trees and you can not tell them apart until they start to flower at four years or later. Sometimes they don’t flower until they are about ten years old.

Obviously you don’t get berries on the male tree. You will only get berries on a female tree if there are some male trees nearby so if you have a Holly tree that doesn’t fruit it may just be lonely.

The fruit is a valuable source of winter food for birds and small mammals but they don’t normally start to eat the berries until there have been a few frosts to soften them. The berries are mildly poisonous to Humans causing rum tum and bum stuff at both ends.

It is a popular Christmas decoration. Did you know that? It keeps Goblins and Devils out of your house too.

Well those berries will have to last a long time because it doesn’t feel like winter here yet. We have had a few days of very nice late summer weather.

We had to make two trips to the Holly to get all of those berry pictures. We couldn’t carry them all on the first trip and then as a special treat I took Fizz up Badger Alley to see how our camera was doing.

No Joy I’m afraid. No unusual monsters. There were Rats and Squirrels. A Sparrowhawk sat in the nest and plucked it’s prey. That should have been an excellent video but it was daytime and the infra red lights came on causing it to be almost a white out. There were plenty of Badgers as you might expect in Badger Alley and prowling around at night in amongst the Badgers was a little ginger Cat.

I know that it is ginger because it made a brief appearance in the daytime. I have left the camera out there because we still haven’t seen what made that nest. I am sure that it is not a Cat nest. 🙂

Wild Ivy

I noticed this one flowering in a garden the other day. Fizz and I don’t really do gardens but we guessed that if it was flowering in the garden it would be doing so in the wild too and so yesterday we set out to capture some wild Ivy.

This is Common Ivy, Hedera helix also known as English Ivy or just Ivy. Well at least that is what it used to be.

I have had a word with the experts and there are now apparently about fifteen different species in the Hedera genus. They can not agree between themselves exactly how many sub species there are and they all at one time or another were called Hedera helix but now you can’t actually recognise Ivy when you see it.

Baloney is a type of sausage originating from Italy and very popular in the United States but that is a subject for another post.

They look like little snow flakes just before they open.

I know that this is not the most spectacular of flowers, being a very unspectacular green one but there is a very good reason for noticing the Ivy flowers.

I shouldn’t really show you these next pictures. They were taken last January and there is precious little to photograph in January but this is the reason for noticing the flowers.

The beautiful berries are poisonous but this is one for the annoyers rather than the murderers, they are not highly toxic. All the same you should not eat them. Birds eat them.

Wikiwotsit says when speaking of the damage that Ivy does to buildings, and I quote, ” it also houses Mice and other unwelcome creatures.”

Yes it does. It harbours Bats as well and is a wonderful wild life plant for giving homes to many. Ivy draws it’s nutrients from it’s roots and doesn’t take anything from the trees that it scrambles over.

I know that people believe that Ivy chokes trees. I am not sure how it does this as trees do not have the same sort of respiratory system as Humans and are hard to strangle but I am not arguing. Dead wood is the single most important wild life habitat and a dead tree is much more useful than a live one but fortunately we can have both. I am not going to set myself against Mother Nature. If Ivy does kill trees then it takes a very long time to do so and ultimately it has done a good thing. That is natures way and many insects and birds will benefit.

When I was taking these photographs the Ivy was buzzing very loudly. At first I thought that I had found a Bee’s nest but it wasn’t a nest, just hundreds of insects taking the nectar. Mostly Honey Bees but the animal in this next picture is a Dead Head Hover Fly.

Beautiful little flowers from a lovely leaf that go on to be wonderful fruit. What more could we ask?

 

 

Poison Pie (Black Bryony)

Um… What should we write about today?

I am a firm believer that those who would destroy nature should in turn be destroyed by nature. With this in mind I have made numerous planning applications to my local council for a pit full of dangerous animals. Regardless of the animal that I choose the application is always turned down on the grounds that there are not enough politicians and scientists in the area to make my plans sustainable. A male Lion eats a councillor every four days and Crocodiles are about the same, Gorillas don’t even eat people and snakes would get squashed by the falling politicians.  Whilst I appreciate their concern for the animals I still find the whole process frustrating.

So I applied to join The Toxic Jam Makers Society only to learn that there is no such thing and that really annoyed me because I had spent a lot of time designing a “Dodgy Jammers” logo that I had hoped would be adopted by the society once I was a full member.

Poison Pie it is then…

For this recipe you will need to find some Black Bryony, Dioscorea communis. Other berries would work but Black Bryony has an abundance of fruit and it is highly toxic.

Black Bryony is a vine that scrambles though the hedgerow. It grows happily through Hawthorn, Rowan and Rose hips  and so, if you were not a murderer, if you were a forager for instance then you would be well advised to get to know this one, so that you don’t pick it by mistake. Not all of the red berries are good berries.

Those tell tale leaves will soon wither and fall off, leaving just the berries, nestling amongst your Hawthorn. This one was nestling amongst Bramble and the berries don’t look much like Blackberries so no danger there then.

Black Bryony is a member of the Dioscoreaceae family, known as the Yam Family this is the only native “Yam” that we have in the UK.

Two things that I don’t want to talk about…

Firstly the flowers (I haven’t got the pictures yet). Back Bryony is a dioecious plant, meaning that there are separate male and female plants, with different flowers. Both flowers are small and green, it is just the way that they cluster that is really different. I missed the flowers but I will get them next year.

The other thing is that there is another unrelated vine with red berries that looks superficially similar called White Bryony and again I don’t have pictures yet. The biggest difference is that White Bryony has tendrils to help it to climb and Black Bryony doesn’t.

Every part of the plant is poisonous. Leaves, stem and root. It contains the same poisons (Saponins)  as you find in  Wild Arum (Lords and Ladies, Cuckoo-pint) and has a similar painful blistering effect so beware and take care.

So on to the recipe bit. This is from my book, “Cooking tips for solitary Gentlemen.”

“Making pies is very hard so what I suggest is go to the shop and buy a pie, then scoop out the bits that you don’t want and put your things in it.”

It is a good idea to buy some ready made pastry and cut out the shape of a little Badger. Put that on top of your new pie and cut the words, “Hugs and Kisses” into the surrounding pastry.

That ought to do it. Check your local paper to see when the Inhumane Society are holding their next Summer Fayre and take your pie along and Bob’s your Uncle.

Disclaimer: You can get in trouble for doing this.

This is Black (Hearted) Bryony.

Learn it, know it.

 

Escapism

Buddy escaped from the farm.

By the time he caught up with us I had come too far to want to take him home.

I was here to set a Badger camera up.

I think that they have moved into fields East of the farm but they should still forage here. I have found a nice tree on the East side and tied a camera to it and hope to have some results soon.

My Badgers have escaped the cull. It is not happening here. They started killing animals last Tuesday. They killed 921 Badgers last year and they have gone back to kill some more this year. The people who live there will probably never see another Badger. If I lived there then I think that I would just move. Nature has been destroyed.

The Dogs messed about while I did all the hard work setting the camera  up.

This is another escapee. This one has escaped from a garden.

It is a Cotoneaster but I have no idea what species. It isn’t native to the UK but several moths use Cotoneaster as a larval food plant and birds eat the berries. It is also a good source of nectar when it flowers.

There is only one Cotoneaster species native to the UK and this isn’t it. Called Cotoneaster cambricus, Wild Cotoneaster is restricted to a very small area of Wales and there are only six plants left. There is a species action plan and people are keeping a close eye on these last few plants which don’t seem able to naturally regenerate.

More red berries and these are Rose Hips.

Rosa, Rosa, Rosa.

She has gone and taken her family. She left on Wednesday only days after Chicklet took his first flight. She has escaped our winter for African sun. Other bird song is filling the evening air now.

They will be back to do their courting all over again. I will look forward to their return. They are great characters.

Someone else who  escaped this week, the House Martins have also gone.

I was reading about House Martin migration just recently and amazingly nobody knows where they go in the winter. We know that they go to Africa but not where in Africa, they just get lost. The BTO are fitting birds with little devices that measure the amount of daylight, they can determine where they have been from this and hope to solve the mystery.

Anyway Roses.

That smooth beardless hip above is from a Dog Rose, this next one is something different.

Roses are very difficult if not impossible to identify in the field. There are twenty different species of Wild Rose in the UK and they hybridise easily, so you can’t tell what sort of a Rose it is any more.

Well that is what I am told. It all depends on how accurate you want to be. Ten of those twenty Roses are sub species of the Dog Rose and you can’t easily tell them apart.

Okay but as far as I am concerned this is a Dog Rose and that is  good enough.

This is a Field Rose.

Most of the others are rare and I am not going to worry about them unless I am lucky enough to find one.

There is a common white rose called the Burnet Rose but that grows by the coast and I am not expecting to find it here, it has black hips.

There is one other very common Rose that I should find here and  that is the Sweet Briar Rose. It has a pink flower with a pale white centre and it  has bristly hips. I am hoping this is it.

It is in the same field as the other two species but on the opposite side. I didn’t notice any Roses over there in the summer or maybe just didn’t look closely enough but this is one to have a proper look at next year.

I am going to finish up now with some more red berries. Just before we got back home I found this Hawthorn festooned with Old Man’s Beard and I had to photograph it.

That’s enough escaping for one night.

Out to lunch

Yesterday I took Fizz out to dinner. Well, it was just a walk really with a bit of foraging but she called it a date and I didn’t mind that.

We got a nice table (hay bale) by the hedgerow and had Sloe berries for starters.

I know that some people say that you have got to wait for the frosts but I like them as they are. Juicy and refreshing but anyway you can always try one and see if you like it, they won’t kill you.

There were lots of berries on the hawthorn too and you can eat them if you want…

But why would you? They are just pip and skin, there is no flesh on them and they are not juicy.

Here’s me and Fizz playing games with our shadows.

Rose hips are nice.

You have to break them open and scatter the seeds. The inside is hairy and I just scrape that off with a finger nail…

What’s left is a delicious crunchy little nibble for when you are walking around the field, full of vitamin C.

But all this is just nonsense. The berries are sweets, lovely to nibble on as you wander but not proper food.

I was absolutely delighted to find a pond full of proper food.

This is Water-cress, Nasturtium officinale and it something that I would go to the super-market and buy, so that makes it proper food. It is a delicious peppery salad leaf a bit like wild rocket but better and if you have got two slices of bread and a pond full of Water-cress then you have got a really good sandwich and your lunch.

There is so much of it here that I could fill carrier bags up with it but I like my salad fresh so I just take what I will eat today.

(There are lots of pictures of Water-cress for identification purposes, just in case you decide to eat Dog’s Mercury after reading this, which could kill you. These pictures have been checked by experts from the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland and are a true and accurate depiction of Nasturtium officinale, it grows in water) 😀

Black

Maybe not the black that you were expecting. We have a few nice black berries around this month and some people might be wondering what these ones are.

Scrambling around amidst the Elderberries and the Blackberries these are Dogberries, the fruits of the Common Dogwood, Cornus sanguinea.

Another valuable wildlife plant, the birds are said to prefer these berries to the ones that we like and it is sometimes planted by organic gardeners to deflect unwanted attention, whilst still attracting the birds that will feed caterpillars to their young.

The name Dogwood comes from an old word, “Dag” meaning skewer. The straight twigs were traditionally used by butchers to make skewers. The name Dog is usually used to imply some inferiority, for instance Dog Violet has no scent as opposed to Sweet Violet which does but this time it is just a “Dag.”

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…..