Butterflies and Flowers (November)

There is only so much fun that you can have with a dog and a puddle.

I think that we all need to grow up a bit and be more serious.

You first 🙂

Yesterday the rain was torrential. All of the lower fields are flooded. I was really surprised to wake up this morning to this sky.

I can live with that. Today Fizz and I are going after Butterflies but we also want to look at what is still in flower.

The Butterfly idea was doomed to success. Even before I stepped out of my front door I saw one.

A rubbish photo but I took it in case this was the only animal that I saw today. It is enough to prove that they are still about.

So flowers first. Fizz is always in flower. Unfortunately all that water avoidance that she was doing resulted in her getting a thorn in her foot.

Let the doctor have a look.

Get out of the way and I’ll kiss it better for you.

There. I have saved your life again.

Other flowers.

Most of them we were expecting.

Silene dioica obviously. I put that on EW earlier, I haven’t created all the links yet but it is here Red Campion

Bramble…

Hogweed is still going strong.

There were plenty of flowers still to open… This is an important nectar source at this time of year.

There were plenty of seed heads too.

Herb Robert, it doesn’t seem to have a season.

There are still a few Ivy flowers about but not many.

There is a lot of this next one, White Dead Nettle. The last of the dead nettles it won’t be very long before it’s little red cousin will be popping up to welcome  the spring.

We pretty much expected to see those and that is a fair summary of all that I could find in flower in this location…. Except for this next one.

A lovely Field Rose. This one is out of season but the bush didn’t know that and it had buds just about to burst into flower.

So I didn’t chase butterflies up and down the track because I have only just done the Red Admiral. I just wanted to record their presence. These are the only butterflies that I am still regularly finding.

I saw one Dragonfly but I only saw it as a silhouette against the sky as it moved down the track in front of me. It would have been a Migrant Hawker, I am pretty sure that is the only big one still on the wing in November but I couldn’t get close enough to properly confirm that, which was disappointing.

Back to being childish…

Oh dear Fizz. How did you get so wet?

What a Mistake-a to Make-a

It was a lovely sunny day today and Fizz and I went out for a walk. I can’t tell you where, that might compromise my Badger’s safety, we just went somewhere nice but a bit narrow.

Somewhere we could be close to nature.

Hello little Weevil.

Good morning little Shieldbug.

Hello Misumena vatia.
Oh it was nice out.

I had bought Fizz a new toy. It is to help her to concentrate and keep out of my way when I  am taking pictures. She likes it.

Look Sticky Willy is in flower.

I love Sticky Willy. (Cleavers, Goosegrass or Galium aparine)

Ha Ha! That’s so funny!

Sorry.

Red Campion was borrowing the nettles foliage to set itself off, a lovely colour.Creeping Buttercup was forming flower beds in the hedgerow.

The Cow Parsley is just magnificent, it has a presence like the Bluebells in the wood or the Dandelions in the meadow. Cow Parsley definitely deserves a post of it’s own.So there we were having a lovely day out when I heard a cyclist coming up behind us, nothing especially odd about that. There is not much room so I just took hold of Fizz while he passed.

Just behind him was another cyclist.

Then another and another.

Someone had routed the Tour de Bloomin’ France up our back passage.

I kid you not. One of the fellas had number 892 on his chest and I believed him. We couldn’t move for an hour.

We just had to stand by the side and say “Hi, Hello, Lovely Day” Over and over again to an increasingly tired looking peloton.

They had made their way up a very long and narrow and very muddy track. It was hard going and the sun was blazing.

Even when the main body had passed there was a constant stream of stragglers and we couldn’t get back the way we had come.

I had a good idea.

“Come on Fizz let’s go through that field of friendly looking cows.”

“FIZZ! THESE COWS HAVE GOT NO UDDERS!”

 

Red Campion, Boys and Girls.

Red Campion, to a lot of people it is a persistent weed. All of my flowers are weeds, I don’t really do gardens.

Silene dioica is a beautiful wildflower, it is probably at it’s best right now but you can find it in flower pretty much all year round. There isn’t very much else in flower in January.

Picture taken on January 9th.

In fact I could find this one at any time throughout the winter, that alone is good enough reason to love it but it also has mysteries. and plants with mysteries always catch my eye.

Silene dioica, the first part of the name is derived from Silenus a figure from Greek mythology whom I find variously described as the god of woodland or the god of drunkenness. I have never seen this flower drunk. The second part dioica is derived from the term dioecious, which this plant is. It means that the plant has male and female forms. That is the bit that interests me.

Dioecious- Pistillate and staminate flowers on different plants.

Boys first. (Because they are the less interesting)

This is the staminate form of the flower, the male. It has stamens and produces pollen.

Next we have the female flowers.

These flowers don’t have stamens, they have five stigmas that collect pollen and a single ovary.

Those stigmas go right down to the base of the flower and now the sepals wrap around them in a structure called a calyx, this is where the fruit will develop.

As the fruit develops the petals fall off and the seed pod swells.

Last night Fizz and I also went out to get pictures of the calyx of Silene dioica.

So that is all that I have got to say about Red Campion. If you are out and about today you will almost certainly see it in flower. Do enjoy it.

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…..