Pardon My Ignorance

Does anyone know what this is?

I will be honest, I haven’t really tried to find out yet. I just saw it yesterday. By the end of today I will know all about it and it will be a part of my life but this morning I don’t know what it is.

I can’t tell you very much about it. It is yellow, it is pretty and it wants to be my friend. That’s all I know.

I am going to take Fizz up to the sett and pick up the Badger Cam and then I will go and get some more pictures and find out all about it, if you don’t tell me first.

Thanks for looking 🙂

The best photograph that I ever took.

Are you ready for this?

I took this photograph about ten years ago. I am no longer sure of the exact date. I have long since lost the original. This was my first camera (you always remember your first time). It was a Panasonic FZ50 bridge camera. It was considered a good little camera in it’s day.

I know that since then I may have taken more technical pictures and certainly cameras have come a long way but there is something special to me about this one.

Everybody needs a little bit of success, something to make them believe in themselves and keep on going. I believe that I am loved by nature and that I love it back.

This was my first time.

But wait!…. Okay you can look but then wait.

There is a story behind the picture.

I wasn’t trying to photograph a Common Lizard, I was chasing a butterfly, a White Admiral.

It was leading me a merry dance all around the bramble and then it did something beautiful….

It settled.

There beside it, basking on a bramble leaf with an incredible lightness of being was a perfectly formed reptile.

I have always thought of this as a gift, meaning a present that I was given and not meaning a talent. Now I get given a lot of gifts but you always remember your first time and I still think it is a pretty good picture.

Everyone should have a little encouragement.

Wanna see it again?

I really like this picture, it helped start my interest in life and it has led me to much joy.

 

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…..