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.

 

Buttercup

Well our Buttercups have gone and so now is a good time to write about them.

Mown down by the cruel farmers.

The Buttercups haven’t really gone they will flower all summer in the hedgerows and along country tracks.

But despite my landlord’s retired status this is a working farm and the pastures have to be made use of.

These fields were allowed to grow so that they could be harvested for animal feed. Our fields are being turned into silage and on a neighbour’s farm the very same grass is being cut for hay.

The difference is just that our grass is being collected when wet and stored in a silo where it will be allowed to ferment before being fed to the animals. It’s “pickled” as my farmer friends explained to me. The grass for hay will be spread out in the field and allowed to dry in the sun before being collected.

Buttercups are extremely poisonous to livestock (and us) but both processes break down the toxins and render the meadow safe.

Watching the process of turning our wild flower meadow into silage I was surprised at how much work was involved. When it came to collecting the grass they had one machine picking it up and that was followed by five tractors towing trailers that were being filled and taking the grass away.

There were a lot of people and machines involved and I remarked to my friend, “I am surprised that there is so much money in grass,” I was told that it was not really being grown for profit but just to provide food for the farmer’s own animals, I suppose it is cheaper than buying it.

Well short grass means that I can see what is going on in the fields and it also means that Fizz doesn’t lose her ball so often which saves me a bit of money.

Buttercups:

We had two species growing in the field. The golden mass was Meadow Buttercup, Ranunculus acris.

More concentrated around the outside of the field, the hedgerows and shady areas we had, still have, Creeping Buttercup, Ranunculus repens.

They are quite different looking plants and I will show you the differences but they can get confusing especially because as in this next picture they often grow in the same spot and get all mixed up with each other.

When they are mixed up like this you can separate the two species by looking at the flower stem.

Creeping Buttercup has a ridged stem.

Meadow Buttercup has a smooth stem.

Generally you don’t have to look that close.

Meadow Buttercup is a tall gangly plant with little foliage.

The sparse leaves are narrow and deeply divided.

It grows on a single stem with a scattering of basal leaves.

Creeping Buttercup is much more of a bushy little plant.

It has broad palmate leaves and a lot of them.

It is multi stemmed.

The flowers of the two species look very much the same and both can be used to find out if somebody likes butter.

Buttercups are no good to eat but wonderful to drink. Poisonous to livestock, they nourish insects and in their own way the insects return the love.

These are two of our most common native buttercups, there are others but perhaps in another post. For now these are my buttercups. I hope that you like them.

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…..