Where’s my presents!

Hi,

“Happy Birthday to me, Happy birthday to me.”

It is not your fault, I didn’t say but she knew.

You can’t give somebody “yourself” as a Birthday present. That’s not a proper present!

I got up early today to get my chores done. Wash the kitchen floor, quick hoover round, get the place nice and “don’t forget to get the dog dirty.”

I’ll get my own presents.

This is one of my favourite spring flowers. Greater Stitchwort,  Stellaria holostea. Pay attention to that Latin name and I will show you some other Stellaria in a minute.

This beautiful flower has just five petals but each one is split to about halfway.

Obviously if there is a Greater Stitchwort then there must be a Lesser one.

Some people get confused between the species. This is the lesser one. Stellaria graminea.

It still only has five petals but now they are much more deeply divided and spaced apart. The flower is smaller than the Greater one.

If there is a greater one and a lesser one then there is probably an inconsequential one too. We call it Common Chickweed.

Stellaria media.

People call this one a weed (Bless) all of my flowers are weeds and this one is quite tiny. It still has the family resemblance and it is beautiful.

Well thank you so much Fizz. That was just what I wanted, a bunch of flowers.

A bit cheap though. I know you don’t got money but you could have stole some.

That is not the whole story of my Birthday.

Fizz and I went out to look at mushrooms and I found a good example of Trametes versicolour.

That’s a Turkeytail Fungus.

I couldn’t get a decent photograph because I just couldn’t keep it still. I turned around and somebody was eating the other end of the branch!

Who is raggin’ on my tree?

It wasn’t me 🙂I can’t believe that you would do that to me on my Birthday.

Who? What?

Thank you for the days.

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…..