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.

Outnumbered

This little Badger obviously isn’t happy when a second Fox shows up.

The Badger in question isn’t Timid, that is Brave and Brave doesn’t like Foxes…

 
The Badger won the day.

A couple of nights earlier Laser actually turned up with two other Foxes, so I am guessing that he has a mate and cubs somewhere quite nearby.

Not like that, like this.

There’s Lovely.

Patch the Boss?

Okay one last Badger video for now but I should warn you that the camera is still out there and I will have to take “Poochy” out in the rain to collect it soon.

This video is interesting because…. The animal collecting the hay bumps into Patch, he has a little snap at her and she quickly scent marks him, maybe to remind him that they are on the same side.

His attitude and her quick response make me think that in this case he is the dominant animal. (Well obviously, she is the one making the bed). That doesn’t make him the alpha male though. Patch has two companions, I can’t tell them apart but I call them Timid and Brave. When a car passes Timid runs for cover but Brave doesn’t even look up from his foraging. That could have been Timid making the bed.

The scent marking is an important aspect of Badger life. Badgers have a scent gland at the base of their tail which they use to mark each other. Each Badger in a social group will mark every other Badger in that group, this creates a unique clan scent and if you don’t have that scent you will be chased off and even attacked. When animal rescuers have to take a Badger from the field to treat it they know that they must get it back before that clan scent wears off or the Badger will not be accepted back.

(I don’t know the sex of any of these animals, I just called them him and her to make the story easier to tell)

 

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…..