Showing posts with label Homepatch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homepatch. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

local patch lockdown: some plants

The end of three weeks of Coronavirus lockdown early morning walks around the same route. After a slow start, when spring seemed reluctant to release its grip, suddenly everything is coming into leaf and now there are more flowers opening every day. 

This Pulmonaria is a garden throw-out, dumped with some garden waste, and has established itself as a large patch of flowers on the road verge. Tt has been flowering since mid-March. 

















The first blackthorn blossom appeared in mid-March and by early April the hedgerows were looking lovely.


















There is one large wych elm tree on my route, that has escaped Dutch elm disease and by early April it was in full bloom.


















There are a lot of Prunus species in the hedgerows along the route and I'm guessing that these are all cherry-plum


















This one looks like blackthorn, but it's a small tree. Blackthorn rarely grows to these proportions.


Silver birch catkins began to bloom in early April and by mid-April the leaf buds were beginning to burst


















Wild cherry in bloom - one of the finest of all our native flowering trees

























Male (above) and female (below) sallow, flowering





















Female flowers of an unidentified willow


Ash in full bloom. It will be three or four more weeks before the leaf buds burst. This is always the last tree to come into leaf and the first to lose them, in September.

Lots of gorse in the hedges around the route and also some good gorse scrub - excellent, prickly nest sites for birds


















The hawthorn hedges began to show the first signs of new leaves in late March


Rowan leaf buds burst very early and are already showing well developed flower buds


The colt'sfoot that has been flowering since mid-March is now going to seed

White dead-nettles and greater stitchwort flowering on the road verges in mid-April


















Not many fungi at this time of year, but these are old, withered specimens of yellow brain fungus Tremella mesenterica growing on a moss-covered dead stem of gorse.


An attractive example of turkey tail fungus Coriolus versicolor

Not sure about this one, but I think it might be an old specimen of hairy bracket Tremetes hirsuta





















Wednesday, April 1, 2020

Local patch lockdown 1: bird watching


We've been confined close  to home for nearly two weeks now, and with the Coronavirus lockdown in place we only leave home very early in the morning, when no one is around, for the regulation exercise walk. At that time of day we see very few people and we all pass one another at a safe distance, with just a cheery greeting.















We are fortunate because there is a network of footpaths and lanes on the edge of our little market town, that start just a couple of hundred yards from our front door.

















Some of the lanes like this one, known locally as the Mile Lonnen, have old hedgerows and trees but large areas of land here were opencast coal mined about 25 years ago, and have slowly been recovering. When the mining finished they restored field boundaries with miles of new hedges and dry stone walls and planted shelter belts of trees that are now well developed and form wildlife corridors. They also left a large pond.

Walking the same route every morning has a great deal to recommend it, because you soon get to notice small changes, especially at this time of year when spring is gathering pace.  

One of the delights has been the realisation that there is so much bird life in these edgelands, close to home. So here is a photographic record of sightings in the first week of lockdown.























Blue tit in a larch plantation























Bullfinch feeding on cherry plum flower buds
















Soaring buzzards, above a conifer plantation that is a probably their nest site




















Chaffinch
















Curlews, that feed in the fields here on their way to nest sites on fellsides in Weardale

















Goldfinch














Great tit














Heron





















House sparrow























Tree sparrow





















Some fine aerial displays by lapwings
























Robin in full song
















Skylarks making song flights soon after sunrise
























Song thrush


















More willow warblers arriving every day



















Counted six pairs of  yellowhammers. The combination of hedges, broad road verges and pastures suits them well
























Numerous dunnocks, aka hedge sparrows
















Rooks feeding on leatherjackets (cranefly larvae) in the pastures 








































Jackdaws on a farmhouse chimney pot

Also seen but not photographed: sparrowhawk, magpie,carrion crow, starlings, coal tit