Coming Soon: A Flock of Badgers

This is just a little trailer for a  project that Fizz and I are working on.

I hope that you like Badgers.

Being Liked

It is really nice to be liked.

Butterflies like me. This one is a male Orange Tip.

Just put him back…

Here is the female of the species.

Please excuse the dirty fingers. I used to cover myself with insect repellent to avoid the Mosquitoes. One day I realised that this may not be the best approach to insects. When I found this little butterfly I had just been handling Wild Arum, a deadly poisonous plant that uses scent to attract insects and then I had washed my hands in a muddy puddle.

 

Now there isn’t really very much to me. I don’t get out much and I only have one interest. I am just Nature Boy. I eat and sleep and live and dream about the wild.

People visit my blog and sometimes they press the “Like” button and when they do that they leave a little trace of themselves that I can follow, like I follow Badgers.

I am really enjoying visiting other peoples blogs and seeing the world through their eyes. I am enjoying artists and scientists and poets and photographers. I especially enjoy blogs that take me somewhere that I would never think to go. Plus it is raining outside. Thank you for liking my blog and for showing me yours.

This is Marmalade.

She spent the winter with me. I found her sheltering in my flat in November and she spent most of the winter behind my washing machine. Being indoors she woke up too soon, in February,

I put her in my bedroom and kept the curtains shut and the heating off, she went back to sleep. I released her early in March when there was plenty of sunshine and nectar for her.

Marmalade was a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly. It was nice looking after her.

Now I could be wrong about this but I think that this next one was probably a butterfly princess and that this was the one that told the other butterflies that I was nice and wouldn’t hurt them. Whatever.

I rescued her from the long wet grass and held her in the sun until she was warm enough to fly.

It was dangerous there might have been a snake in the grass.

Take care.

It is nice to be liked.

 

 

 

A Phalacrocorax carbo

Sounds prehistoric doesn’t it? Well it looks prehistoric too.

This is a post about the Cormorant.

It is also going to be a post about Cannop Ponds. Well I told you that I would show you around, just a little bit today though.

The Ponds are part of my playground. They are a bit of a walk and the last time we went out there we were gone for nine hours. I had to get Fizz’s feet re-soled. It is actually about an hour and a half walk from my house, through beautiful forest but I dawdle.

There are Cormorants here.

I think that they come here to laugh at the fishermen who seem to find it so hard to catch a fish. All that you have to do is dive in after it.

That is a very strange looking bird.

The Ponds are a very popular part of the forest, I haven’t really seen them in the height of the tourist season. I expect it must get quite busy but when Fizz and I come out on these walks we set out before dawn (we see wild animals) and we get here while it is still quite early, we have only seen it quiet.

This is a really nice place, completely different from the farmland and forest that surround us. We come here to look at birds and we will be back soon.

 

Coots at Cannop Ponds

 

A little bird in it’s natural habitat.

Cannop Ponds are two man made ponds just north of the Nagshead nature reserve. It is a great place to visit if you ever find yourself in The Forest of Dean.

I will do a post on Cannop Ponds soon and I will show you around.

Lamb’s Tails (Part two) and Lady Bits

Well, that last post was a lot of kerfuffle just to get us round to the important subject of lamb’s tails. Or more correctly the flowers of the Hazel tree. The male catkins are very nice and appear before any other sign that spring might be on it’s way.

It is good to see them dangling in the hedgerow when there really isn’t much else to look at and it is still cold out.

But when I see the Hazel catkins I am really waiting for something else. For me the absolute exquisite beauty of the Hazel lies in the female flowers. Every year I photograph them and then when they are gone I wish that I had spent more time with them and taken more pictures.

It is a long wait. The female flowers don’t appear until the male catkins are almost spent. I have read that there is a good reason for that. The Hazel tree has both male and female flowers and to avoid self pollination the female flowers wait until the tree’s own male catkins have spent their pollen.

I have tested this theory on a tree with plenty of female flowers and a little flick of the finger tells me that the catkins are still full of pollen.

Here are some of my best picture from this year and next year I will do better. The flowers are very small and many people don’t even know that they are there, they are so busy admiring the catkins that they miss the real beauty.

That is one of my favourite wild flowers. It is very difficult for me to photograph it on the tree though. Next year I will do better.

Coming soon… Nuts!

 

 

 

Easy Wildflowers

So I think that “tramp” is going to be my blog. I have messed about with a few ideas but I like this one. I am enjoying writing it and I don’t feel oppressed by it, it doesn’t feel like an obligation. It is fun. That’s all good but I need more than that.

I need somewhere to store my stuff, where I can get at it quickly when I want to, that sort of thing. So yesterday I started to create a new blog that I have called “Easy Wildflowers” it is just a place for me to keep pictures and a little bit of info so that I don’t forget things.

The common Dog Violet has a pale spur…

and the Early Dog Violet has a dark spur, that sort of thing.

It is very useful to me when I find a new flower to be able to look at other flowers and say, “Well, it’s not one of them.”

(It is not a Thyme-leaved Speedwell)And it is not one of these.

(it is not a Germander Speedwell either)and so it goes.

I spent ages on it yesterday and I only managed to create ten posts, (there are a lot of wildflowers) so it will take me a little while to populate this new blog  but I do need it.

It is created for me but  you are of course welcome to visit, it won’t fulfil any proper function until I get a few hundred posts done and I am trying to keep posts very simple so that I can work quickly. It is here.

Easy Wildflowers

So these are Wood Anemones…

and these are Bluebells.

I know that you know that but what if I forget?

The white ones are called…

Hmm… Nature can be very confusing. I need to take notes.

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…..