Educated Fleas

I thought that I would take Fizz up in the fields and take her picture in amongst the Dandelions…

But I became distracted.

This is St Mark’s Fly (Bibio marci)

We call it that because they all emerge around about the same time, April the twenty fifth and that is St Mark’s Day. They are a little bit late this year.

These first picture are of the male. He has large eyes and clear wings, also very long back legs that hang below him in flight. Last year I searched in vain for a female of the species. They look quite different.

The problem is that the adults only live for about a week and as they all emerge at the same time there is very little opportunity to see them.

And there she was, distracting me… I forgot all about Fizz.

She has small eyes , she is a little bit longer than the male and has dark wings.

But even though she looks so different I am quite confident that this is the female of the species.

I have heard it said that the male has such big eyes so that he can find the female and that is quite believable. I had a lot of trouble finding her.

The Dandelions are beginning to fade now.

The Buttercups are just starting to appear.

As soon as the Dandelions go these fields will fill with Buttercups.

It looks like these fields are going to be grown for silage again this year, the grass is already too long for Sheep. That is good because for a few months we will get long grass and lots of wildflowers and all of the associated insects.

I will leave you with the firework display called Ribwort Plantain.

 

Sunday, the Second Half.

Brrr…… Woke up to freezing rain and a cold wind. It was so different from Saturday. The rain carried on for most of the morning and at times it was falling as snow but it was too wet to lay.

This was not a day for straying out of doors but Fizz didn’t agree.

With zero chance of getting any nature shots I eventually gave in to the whining and decided to try my hand at a bit of “glamour” photography.

Well, you know that Fizz has got her own Facebook page now, I thought we could go out and get some cute and sweet photographs that she could use….

Things didn’t go exactly to plan… (The weather was against me)

There were the odd patches of blue sky but the wind didn’t let up..

Then we hit a bit of rough.

Her ball got stuck in the mud.

I suppose that at this point I could have used my opposable thumbs to help her out a bit but the journalist inside of me kicked in and I thought that I should record this moment.

Anyway she seemed to be doing quite well at retrieving the ball from the mud with her face.

She didn’t really need any help.

And that was the end of my career in “Glamour photography.”

It was good while it lasted.

Plantago lanceolata, The Ribwort Plantain.

A common plant of meadows and grass land, Ribwort Plantain is also a common lawn weed.

Short creamy, brown flower heads are carried on long ribbed stems and they can grow quite tall when competing with grasses. The flower stems are leafless, the leaves all stem from the base of the plant.

When the flower head first appears the closed bracts present a very dark, almost black face to the world.

       

The familiar ring of creamy, white stamens appears as the flowers start to open. They open from the bottom of the flower head first and the ring moves slowly upwards.

The small flowers are composed of four cream coloured petals with a brown central rib (technically the four petals should be called a corolla because they are not actually individual petals but fused together) The overall effect is of a light brown flower head surrounded by a ring of white stamens.

The stem is deeply ridged as are the lance-shaped leaves and depending on who you read, one of these ribbed features gives the plant the name Ribwort.

Taxonomy:

Kingdom: Plantae

Order: Lamiales

Family: Plantaginaceae

Genus: Plantago

Species: Plantago lanceolata

Wildflowers in winter.

 

Black Wildflowers?

 

Ribwort Plantain:

Well they look black to me. It is really the bracts that are black, When the flowers open they will be brown with cream edges.Ribwort Plantain is one of the most common components of natural grassland and it is a valuable and nutritious food for grazing stock, this has led it to be considered an honorary grass by farmers and earned it the name Ribgrass but it is not a grass.

Ribwort Plantain is a wild flower from the family Plantaginaceae. The same family as the very pretty little speedwells.

(Common Field Speedwell)The flower head is made up of numerous little flowers, each covered by a single bract. Each flower has four petals, Cream coloured with a brown centre. It has a single pistil and four stamens which end in creamy white anthers and give the open flower it’s characteristic appearance.

Ribwort Plantain in flower.

The flower head is borne on a leafless, ribbed stalk

The long, thin, basal leaves are also ribbed. Young leaves are considered edible but they get quite bitter with age and I don’t really bother with this one when foraging but they won’t kill you.

(Having said that I have just been reading that “Young leaves have a wonderful mushroom flavour” maybe I will give it another go)

The flowers are spent, the stamens have gone and only the stigmas remain. Stigmas are the pollen collecting part of the pistil.

So that is Ribwort Plantain. I like it because it is a bit different and interesting and like most things it turns out to be quite beautiful if you look closely. Plus it is raining again today.

 

May is May

Today was beautiful and so Fizz and I went on a flower hunt.

I had promised to take her to see the Bluebells and there is an old Sweet Chestnut coppice not far from here that should do the trick. So that is where we are heading. On the way we are going to look for flowers.

We don’t just want any old flower, we want new ones that we don’t recognise. We want to learn something. So off we go.

This is the track up to the Badger sett. I left a camera out there last night and I want to pick it up on the way.

The first wild flower that catches my eye is Herb Bennet. I know this one and I have photographed it before but these are nice fresh flowers and I can’t resist taking a few shots.

Next it is pick up the camera and it is disappointment again. This main sett has so many entrances and I am just trying to find one that is being used. There seems to be a lot more badger activity in the fields behind the farm but if there are going to be cubs they would be here.

This time we got nothing. A Tramp in the Woods, that’s all.

There is more disappointment to follow as we make our way along the track.

One of the things that I particularly wanted to do today was photograph the female of the species St. Mark’s Fly. It is called that because it usually appears around St. Mark’s day, April 25th and the adult flies only live for about a week so the window of opportunity is quite narrow. They have gone and I have missed that one, never mind, I’ll get it next year.

The white flowers that line the track are Cow Parsley, flies seem to love it.

Okay this is more like it. This is a flower that I don’t recognise. Just what we were looking for.

I think that I know it is a Crane’s-bill because the flower looks exactly like one that I do know well, Dove’s-foot Crane’s-bill but this one doesn’t have dove’s feet.

Now I have to take lots of fairly boring pictures of the leaves, the stem, the form of the plant. I have to get as much information as I can and I will find out what it is when I get home.

That is cool and now I know that this is Cut-leaved Crane’s-bill, Geranium dissectum. I am happy now, I have learned something.

The next flower that we see falls into the same category as the first herb. We know what it is but it looks too good to pass it by.

Herb Robert.

We are nearly at the woods now but first we have one more flower.

It is a Comfrey but I am not sure which one.

Now I just have to spend a little bit of time looking at these flowers

Beautiful. Gardeners love Comfrey and grow it as a green manure. I think this one is Russian Comfrey.

Now I am seeing weird geometric patterns everywhere.

Okay that is just Ribwort Plantain.

Come on Fizz, let’s go see the Bluebells.

The wood is beautiful and peaceful. Birds are singing and it is still and warm. It would be very easy to fall asleep here.

Stupid dog, look at the pretty flowers.

Leaving the wood (I will do a separate post on Bluebells) the next flower that we see is Wild Arum.

Not really a flower but you know that. (it’s a fly trap)

We headed back through the fields towards the farm.

The Dandelions are all spent now, any yellow that you see in the field is Buttercups.

Here we found our final flower of the day.

Red Clover.

And that was the end of our flower hunt.

Tomorrow is another day.

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…..