Feeling The Heat

The purpose of our “Selfies” is to try and capture the feel of the day. These are from December… Great long shadows and it is cold and windy.

Now this is April…

Her mud is drying up.

These are my holiday snaps and I have been on holiday for a long time.

There may be trouble ahead….

I wouldn’t like to be that Rat when Fizz the Great War Dog gets a’hold of him.

She just needs to practice a bit, she is warming up.

Oh yes, I have bought the Goldfinches a nyger seed feeder.

They are loving it and empty it very quickly. I will do more about that in another post.

On the subject of birds. The Bullfinches have stopped using the feeders but they are still around. We have an Apple orchard at the bottom of the garden and I think that they are drawn to the buds there.

Disappointingly the Long -tailed Tits have gone. Like the finches I think that their comings and goings are related to the natural food supply but I don’t know what has drawn them away.

The little Robin never came back. There are still lots of Robins about and sometimes I look out of my door and shout, “Come on! One of you must be Christopher.” No, he has gone.

But all of that fades into absolute insignificance because when I opened my door yesterday I heard a song that filled my heart.

Now I know what they say, that “One Swallow does not a summer make,”  but that is rubbish, it is summertime now 🙂

There is something that I have got to do this year. Swallows pair up for life, each autumn when they leave they separate and then in the early summer when they return they reunite. It is something to witness and I have got to video it this year. They are so excited to be reunited, like little puppies and it doesn’t last for that long but for a little while there is a great video waiting to be made.

I am going to love hearing their song again.

The little Mud Eaters beat the Swallows back by several days.

I didn’t really do the House Martins justice last year, they don’t nest outside of my front door like the Swallows but I will try harder this time around. I love their little feathered feet.

I like a little heat.

Wildflowers then, there is so much going on that I don’t know where to start.

Walking along the country paths it just looks like a mess of green…

Unless you know it.

This little leaf is the Cow Parsley and in a few weeks it will be painting the most beautiful pictures.

That reminds me of another April challenge. The St. Mark’s Fly.

So called because the adult flies emerge around April the twenty fifth (St. Mark’s Day), these are the ones with long dangly legs that trail behind them when they fly.

The challenge is to photograph the female, I just could not find one last year. They only live for a couple of weeks and the window of opportunity is a small one.

But back to the present, this leaf is the Hogweed.

Forget any misconceptions that the name might suggest, this one is a very beautiful flower.

Also the large, saucer like, flower heads are an absolute magnet for insects. I am finding my first flowers now and it will be here until the very end of Autumn.

I have got to leave the wildflowers for a bit because I have got to take Fizz for a walk, I will come back to them. While we are out I am going to upload some wild animal videos for you to watch.

These are female Fallow Deer (Dama dama) They are just losing their winter coats and so they look a little bit tatty but they are healthy animals.

This week the trail camera returned 180 videos over two days and nights. 136 of those were of my little friend the Fox but I also got 44 clips of the deer in the daytime, a nice return.

This is the same spot that I videoed the Boar in last week and it is proving to be a good place to set the camera. As well as the Deer, Fox and Boar I have been getting clips of Badgers, nothing exceptional but it is good to know that they are there. I feel happier if I can say that I am putting the camera out to film Deer, they are hunted just the same as the Boar but there isn’t the same hysteria and people are much more likely to go into the forest to look for Deer.

This location is not in the Forest of Dean, it is woodland some way outside of the forest boundaries and the Boar here are the animals that the Forestry Commission have been kind enough to drive out of the forest as they attempt to disperse them across the whole county, or country even.

A few other things that are good about this location, apart from the fact that it is rich in wild life, It is an unmanaged Sweet Chestnut coppice, I wouldn’t normally like that because there is very little else that grows in such a coppice but it does give me quite good views of the animals. This is also a Bluebell wood and that will make a nice backdrop and nobody comes here. I have filmed a lot here and have never picked up Dog walkers or anybody at all, that makes me feel quite safe about leaving the camera out. I will continue to film here for a few more weeks.

Okay I am back and Poochy has been walked. It is quite blustery out there today.

Back to the wildflowers. I like them because they are beautiful…

(Ivy-leaved Speedwell)

Fizz likes them because they make a nice soft bed.

Get off the bed!

I am very pleased that I got pictures of the Town Hall Clock buds last week because this week there were no buds to be found.

Another flower that has just appeared…..

Remember the diminutive Harry Bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta)?

This is the girl of his dreams, Lady Smock and if you think, like Harry that she looks good enough to eat, well, she is.

Cuckoo Flower or Lady’s Smock (Cardamine pratensis). The leaves and flowers are the best bits to eat, they  have a peppery flavour that adds a lot to a herb salad.

Both she and Harry are Cardamines and they can cross pollinate but  will she, wont she? That is what Harry would like to know.

A couple more “firsts” for the week, this little splash of pink is Herb Robert.

Last year I was able to find this one in flower throughout the winter but this year, this is my first.

I have also seen my first signs of the spathe of the Arum Lily.

There will be much more of these flowers in the weeks to come.

Well it has been a long post and you must be feeling pretty tired.

I have just got one more wildflower to do today and then we can play ball.

This is Hen-bit Dead-nettle. I found it growing on my steps when I got home.

I will try and find it in more picturesque surroundings.

Goodnight Fizz.

 

The Deer Hunter

Well, it took six nights but in the end we did get results from the trail camera.

I have lots of beautiful animals to show you tonight.
(Deer Hunter Fizz)

But it is a beautiful day and we are not in a hurry to get to the woods.

The Winner!

Dog worn out, now we can get on 🙂

Here is some of the stuff that we found in the wood.

As soon as we found the camera I could see that we had a result. I can tell what animal has been at the bait. The ground was very disrupted and all of the bait had been taken (Peanuts, Raisins and Sheep Feed) except the bread. So no Boar but I guessed Deer. I was gutted that I couldn’t leave the camera out there but I had run out of batteries. The camera had died, it told me there were 189 videos but the last 50 of those were dud due to low battery power. No matter we got some good stuff.

Don’t despise the little Fox. I would be pretty fed up if I had found 189 videos of him but I didn’t. This is a beautiful wild animal that we rarely get a chance to watch.

There is actually a stack of food there that the Fox can eat, he is just being fussy. This video was from the night before the Deer turned up and there was plenty left for them. That is bread that he is playing with in the video, I put out quite a bit but I hid it under leaves.

The Bluebells are coming up. They are not early, they won’t flower until they are supposed to in April but they always make an appearance around about now. I love the way that they pierce the leaf litter.

We found a bulb that had been rooted up (we replanted it) I was surprised by how big it was.

I have heard it said that Boar uproot and eat Bluebells. I spent a long time looking for evidence of this in my Bluebell wood in East  Sussex and I never saw any evidence of Boar eating Bluebells. They had ample opportunity and so I conclude it is an untrue slur on the Boar.

This next leaf is Variegated Yellow Archangel. It is one that I want to write about for Easy Wildflowers (probably next) so I won’t say too much about it. The leaves are about now and are easy to recognise, they actually remain all winter.

This is another one that will not flower until April, when it does it will look like this.

Now for something that will flower in January (I hope). This is Lesser Celandine. My first pictures last year were February 24th.

Look, flower buds. These could easily open this month.

Okay, beautiful wild animals now. Plenty of video, just watch what you like. I could watch them all night.

Come on then Fizz, it is a long way home.

Me and my shadow.

That’s enough of that 🙂

Smell Fox and The Sky in his Pyjamas

Smell Fox is another name for the Wood Anemone and we will have more of them later, also a smelly Fox. First let me show you Fizz’s latest masterpiece.

She called this, “The Sky in his Pyjamas” and it was taken at dawn yesterday.

This is a video of a smelly Fox.

We have finished our Wild Boar hunt having got what we went after.

We picked up the camera yesterday with seventy five videos on the card and I really expected seventy five videos of a Fox eating until it popped but no…

We had about fifteen videos of the Fallow Deer.

Then we got this.

Let me just tell you what you are going to see, it is not very clear. If you are very quick you may see two Deer running in front of the Boar and triggering the camera, they are only in shot for about a second, then three female Boar walk through the wood in front of the camera. They don’t come into the light unfortunately but it is clear to me that they are Boar.

Why stop there? Well we haven’t exactly stopped, there is good reason to go back and I will tell you about that in a minute, we are just taking a break.

These animals are not safe!

I won’t endanger an animal for the sake of a photograph. There are not a lot of Wild Boar around here, they are being shot and that shooting is causing them to disperse and try and find safe places to live but it is a precarious existence.

Boar meat fetches about £6.50 a kilo (unbutchered) and about 70% of a Boar is meat. The average weight of a female is between 80 -120 kilos. To a shooter a little one (50 kg) is worth about £200. Some people are very, very keen to learn the locations of these animals.

There are no laws to protect these animals. With the landowners permission and the relevant gun licence anyone can shoot any boar at any time with anything they can lay their hands on. They are not safe.

We will go back because these animals will give birth in the spring, between them they could have twenty hoglets. They will live in a group called a sounder and the mothers can suckle each others young. If anything happens to one mother the others will take care of her hoglets. Infant mortality is about 50% in the first month so many of the little ones won’t make it but those that do will stay with the group for at least four months maybe the whole year. Despite any garbage that you may read to the contrary, Wild Boar have just one litter a year.

It would be nice to see some of this, don’t you think?

Enough Boar hunting for now, what about the pesky Sheep.

The Sheep are back in the fields but I don’t know for how long. We found two stuck in the hedge this morning.

Fizz found herself stuck in the hedge while I went to free the sheep…

and the sheep took off carrying half of the hedge with them.

We are going to have to go and catch this Sheep and clean it up a bit, it looks camouflaged.

After a couple of hours of chasing Sheep around the field, I remembered that I had stuck Fizz in the hedge and I went back and got her. She was none the worse for it.

So, Smell Fox, the Wood Anemone flower doesn’t have any noticeable scent but the leaves smell musty, like a Fox.

Anemone nemorosa, The Wood Anemone

Greek legend has it that Anemos (The God of Wind) sent Anemones in the springtime to tell of his coming. An old name for this flower is Windflower, Pliny the Elder (Roman author of Naturalis Historia) wrote that “The flowers do not open unless the wind blows.” He was wrong. The flowers do not open unless the sun shines.

        The Wood Anemone is an early spring flower. It usually flowers in March and lasts until the Bluebells are ready to flower in April.

The little wood that I used to own was both a Bluebell wood and an Anemone wood. The flowers grew through each other and in March the forest floor was white with little to show of the Bluebell display that was soon to follow.

The Wood Anemone is an animated flower, it closes at night.

It opens in the morning when it feels the warmth and then it twists and turns throughout the day to follow the sun. It is a wonderful thing to spend a day in such a wood watching the movement of the flowers.

The flower has no petals, it generally has six or seven, white sepals but sometimes as many as ten. It has multiple stamens.

The leaves are divided into three deeply lobed and toothed leaflets.

Nectar: You will read on a lot of web sites that the Wood Anemone does not produce nectar when in fact it does. The reason for this confusion is simply because it was only proven in 2013 when scientists published a paper in the Journal, “Organisms Diversity and Evolution” (September 2013) They observed the Large Bee Fly (Bombylius major) nectaring on Anemone nemorosa and discovered that the flower does indeed have nectaries deep within the corolla. The large Bee Fly has a very long tongue.

Many websites will not have updated that information and so confusion reigns on the internet, as always. Anyway nothing has changed if you have a short tongue.

Pollination and seed production are not essential to the Wood Anemone, in fact, I read that most of the seed produced is sterile. The plant spreads from it’s roots (rhizomes). Unlike the Bluebell it can spread very rapidly to colonise a wood.

        Taxonomy:

Kingdom: Plantae

Order: Ranunculales

Family: Ranunculaceae

Genus: Anemone

Species: Anemone nemorosa

Wildflowers in winter.

Bambi’s Not Dead!

Well I don’t think that she is.

We are just back from another day of Boar hunting We had seventy three videos on the card. Seventy two of them were of the same Fox.

It is not that I don’t like foxes, especially the shy and secretive country fox. You can’t get away from them if you live in town but eighty per cent of the UK foxes live in the countryside and nobody ever sees them.

It is just that I was hoping to see a Unicorn 😦

It was a nice bright day today but very blowy and we played “The Hat Game” all the way up to the wood.

The wood was nice but then….

I spotted these leaves.

They are the first leaves of the Lesser Celandine.

Last year I spotted leaves like this in the middle of February and then within a week they were in flower.

When I came to write about Lesser Celandine for EW I read that there is a very short time between the first leaves appearing and the first flowers and as I thought that I had witnessed and photographed that I put it in my post.

Now I will have to rewrite that bit because what I think really happened was the leaves appeared in early January (and I didn’t notice them) and six weeks later the flowers came.

I could be wrong, maybe these will be in flower next week and I will eat my hat 🙂

On the way back from the woods we stopped to photograph the Aspen trees.

You know Aspen trees don’t you? If not then watch this video that I made last summer. The Oak that I turn to look at half way through was just behind me, I put it in to show that it wasn’t a windy day. Aspen live in a world of their own and they are beautiful.

Well, that’s about it except for the flowers….

But wait I have one more thing to show you. The seventy third video. It was actually the very first video on the card but the only one not to feature a Fox.

Wait for the second animal, it’s the next best thing to a Unicorn.

Cardamine species, The Bittercress (Hairy and Wavy)

There are two closely related species of Bittercress. They look superficially very similar and share the same properties. There is not a great deal of difference between the two species and many people will be content to know them simply as Bittercress.

They are both members of the Mustard family, they are both edible and generally they are both regarded as a weed by gardeners.

Hairy Bittercress, (Cardamine hirsuta) is a small winter annual, the leaves are green during the winter months and it flowers in early spring.

The flowers are small (2-4 mm across) with four white petals.

The plant is characterised by the seed capsules that emerge from the centre of the flowers.

Reddish at first they turn green as they ripen. The seeds are arranged inside like peas in a pod and the pods burst explosively throwing the seeds far from the plant. The seeds germinate in the autumn and winter as green leaves.

It is characteristic of the Hairy Bittercress that the seed pods often rise well above the flowers.

The stem of Hairy Bittercress is smooth and not hairy.

Stem leaves are long and thin. There are not many of them.

Most of the leaves are around the base of the plant and these are rounder than the stem leaves.

The definitive difference between Hairy and Wavy Bittercress is the stamen count.

Hairy Bittercress has four stamens.

Wavy Bittercress, (Cardamine flexuosa) has six stamens, a small difference but it is indicative of species.

Wavy Bittercress is a biennial or perennial. It has the same characteristic seed capsules as it’s relative but they tend to be less conspicuous and seldom grow above the topmost flowers.

It has fewer basal leaves.

Unlike it’s “Hairy” relative the stem of Wavy Bittercress is hairy.

These differences can be quite subtle, the only real way to be sure of the species is to count the stamens.

       These two species of Bittercress are both native to the UK and they can hybridize, making any distinction very difficult. They can also hybridize with another close relative, the beautiful Cardamine pratensis. (I would call that “getting lucky”)

Taxonomy:

Kingdom: Plantae

Order: Brassicales

Family: Brassicaceae

Genus: Cardamine

Species: Cardamine hirsuta
Species: Cardamine flexuosa

Wildflowers in winter.

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.

Forest Shieldbug

Pentatoma rufipes. I am just continuing with my Shieldbug theme for a moment while I wait for my hair to dry (as if) 🙂 I used a picture of a forest as the header because I haven’t got many pictures of this one. All sorts of things live in the forest, there is something watching me in that picture and I will show you at the end.

Forest Shieldbug imago:

This is the nymph of the Forest Shieldbug and I think this is fifth instar.

That is just another of my collections that I am still working on.

So what was in the forest. Sorry about the quality it was a long way away and dark in there.

I see you seeing me. Don’t worry I am just looking for bugs. 🙂

The Crepuscular Hunter

Bluebells, Fallow Deer and Ancient Beech Woodland.

Crepuscular: Animals most active during twilight. (Dawn and dusk)

I wasn’t going to show you these pictures, just because they are not very good. Taken at 5:30 in the morning they are not good pictures of a Bluebell wood and they are not good pictures of a Fallow Deer.

These pictures are a small part of the reason that we get up before dawn and make our way into the forest but it is very hard to photograph because the light is so poor.

But I want you to know what it is like so…

The best thing to do when you look at these pictures is to close your eyes and let your imagination go to work.

Open your eyes for a minute, I just want to set the scene and give your imagination something to work with.

Fizz is on the lead, she is quite happy to be on a lead and she has to be because there are Wild Boar about. Fizz chases the sheep on the farm if she gets a chance, she doesn’t hurt them just chases them round but if she did the same with a sow boar with piglets she would get hurt. The Boar would not hesitate to protect her young.

We have been walking for an hour and about twenty minutes earlier I had been thinking that perhaps I was being over cautious and should let her have a run. Just then I saw an animal in the woods, I think it was probably a deer but all I saw was an animal on the edge of the wood jump back and disappear into the shadows.

Don’t get the wrong idea, I have no fear, this is a magical wonderland for me. I used to own woodland in East Sussex and there were boar on the land. I often slept in my wood. I spent ten years watching them and have had many encounters. I have never ever seen any aggression in the animals and my experience is that they have the disposition of deer and are very difficult to approach. We don’t get to see boar today just a deer.

Close them.

And open.

You need to be able to smell the forest. The air is very still and only slightly cool. We left home in shirt sleeves, it is going to be very warm in another six hours and you wouldn’t want to be carrying a coat.

Bluebells have a sweet scent and when you are surrounded by thousands of them, well… you can smell other plants in the forest as well as the trees and the soil but the Bluebells fill the air, the only thing that I can think of that I like better is Honeysuckle. This is the forest.

Then there are the birds, they are singing their little hearts out and every so often the song is punctuated by the hollow, echoing, rap of a Woodpecker.

There he is, a young male Fallow Deer browsing amongst the Bluebells, what a perfect thing to see.

(Male? I have seen his penis sheath, picture three. You can click on my pictures to enlarge them. With experience you will learn to look for these things)

He is stepping out onto the forest track.

And that is our lot. He has seen us.

I like wild animals.

Goodbye beautiful animal and thanks. I hope that I remember this moment forever.

And that is why we get up so early in the morning. I wanted you to know, even if I can’t photograph it.

What a lucky animal and what a beautiful place to live.

Come on Fizz, we have got adventuring to do.

The Nagshead

This is just a brief introduction to one of my favourite places The Nagshead,

It is not a pub although it sounds like it might be. It is an RSPB nature reserve that is within easy walking distance of my home. It is also a very good reason to visit The Forest of Dean for your holidays.

It is part of my playground and one of the loveliest places that I know.

These are Fallow Deer seen on my last visit about two weeks ago. That black and white rump is unmistakeable. These pictures were taken quite early in the morning when the light was very poor, so please excuse the quality.

Now I have a confession to make, although I have visited this reserve several times since I arrived in the forest I still haven’t photographed any birds here.

There is no absence of birds though, I am often mobbed by the small mixed flocks of tits and the sound of woodpeckers drumming and Tawny Owls hooting mixes in with the bird song to create an atmosphere that my pictures cannot relate. It is great.

It is a good place to look for fungi.

 This is Hairy Curtain Crust a small bracket fungus.

This next one is Blushing Bracket, so called because if you bruise the underside it flushes red.

Wild Boar roam the forest freely but they are becoming very shy because the Forestry Commission shoot them.

I will have to crop that picture to show you what I have just seen.

There has been an issue here with people feeding the Boar. It is a problem because the animals loose their fear of humans, the FC are doing all that they can to set that issue right.

I should come clean here and tell you that I am strongly opposed to the Wild Boar cull. I do believe that they need to be managed but shooting guns at them isn’t the way to do it. They are just dispersing them, they are driving them out of the forest. The FC are the only people with the resources and organisation to be able to manage these animals and once out of the forest they are beyond control. The end result is many more Boar in places where they shouldn’t be. They are a forest animal.

The FC like their guns. They don’t shoot them in the reserve and obviously they don’t shoot them once they are out of the forest. They don’t really shoot very many of them because they can’t find them, the Boar are very evasive and they just run away.

I like to see wild animals in the forest.

So that is my brief introduction to the Nagshead. It is a smashing place and I will be spending a lot of time here this summer, I hope that you will come with me.

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…..