Goldfinches and sunflowers on the Durham coast

Earlier this month, the largest flock of goldfinches that I've ever seen congregated on the Durham coast. There must have been well over 200 birds, feeding on seeds of the limestone flora on the cliff top above Blast beach. Most seemed to be eating meadowsweet seeds, but there was also a large store of knapweed and hemp agrimony seeds for them to feed on. Many of the birds hadn't moulted into full adult plumage yet and were quite hard to spot on the ground, but when they all took to the air at once they were a magnificent spectacle.   

Further along the coastal path, near Hawthorn dene, two fields have been sown with a wild bird food crop, including fodder radish, quinoa (below) and sunflowers which will provide food for finches and buntings later in the winter, when the supply of wild flower seeds runs low. Last winter similar crops attracted large flocks of linnets.

Nettle and meadowsweet galls

These strange swellings on leaves and leaf petioles of stinging nettle are the work of a gall midge called Dasyneura urticae, whose larvae develop inside the pouches. The midge lays its eggs on the leaf upper surface and when the larvae hatch they irritate the plant tissue on either side of the the groove in the leaf ribs, which grows over them forming a protective pouch lined with nutritive tissue. When the larvae are fully developed they escape through a slit in the gall wall and fall to the ground, pupating in the soil. 

You can find some excellent photos of the midge and its larvae at this web site

These are gall midge galls of another species of the same genus, Dasyneura ulmaria, on the leaf of meadowsweet Filipendula ulmaria. The galls and life cycle of the insect are broadly similar but in this case the midge lays its eggs on the underside of the leaf and there is only one generation each year.

All photos taken at Romaldkirk in Teesdale on 25th. September.

More photos of plant galls here.

St.John's Chapel, Weardale

It was only a little over a fortnight since we'd taken our regular circular walk around St.John's Chapel in Weardale but, when we visited again on Saturday, the intervening period of almost dawn-to-dusk sunshine had transformed the landscape. All the early summer flowers, like the wood cranesbill, had run to seed and perfect haymaking weather meant that all the meadows had been mown. 

Even though this was only July, it seemed as though the summer is slipping by and it felt, as they say around here, 'proper back-endish'.

Harebells and crested dog's tail grass beside Harthope burn

Marsh woundwort in flower beside a ditch at the bottom of Chapel Fell

The frothy blossom of meadowsweet, once used for flavouring mead (the name has nothing to do with meadows, it refers to mead).

Monkey flower Mimulus guttatus in the gravel beside the river Wear. Thirty years ago, when I first saw it on this spot, this alien plant from the western United States was much commoner along the river than it is now - it seems to have gone into decline.

Rushes flowering on the slopes of Chapel Fell. For much of the year these are dull plants but for a brief period, when they flower, they look very attractive in the sunlight (double-click for a clearer image)

Timothy Grass Phleum pratense, flowering in corners of meadows that the mower missed. Very similar to meadow foxtail Alopecurus pratensis, but that flowers in spring and this flowers in mid-summer.

A most heartening sight - one of twelve freshly emerged small tortoiseshells on creeping thistles, on the flanks of Chapel Fell. These butterflies seem to be doing very well around here this year - we had seven at once on the Inula flowers in our front garden this weekend.

Spot the fish: a trout, keeping station in the sunlit river below a waterfall, catching whatever the river delivers and only given away by its shadow - the fish's back is a very close match for the colour of the underlying rock.

Up on Chapel Fell the lapwings have finished nesting and are now forming flocks with their juveniles.

Teesdale

Today's Guardian Country Diary describes a walk from Forest-in-Teesdale to Winch Bridge near Bowlees, along a popular stretch of the Pennine Way on the south bank of the river Tees. The 'forest' in question is the location of the juniper forest that covers much of the fellside south of High Force waterfall. It's full of wonderfully gnarled, wind-pruned trees that have a fragrance of gin if you crush their foliage between finger and thrumb.

A little further down the hill there's a sweeter kind of fragrance, when you come to the Sphagnum bog, which I guess covers about an acre - and last week was full of scented bog asphodels at the peak of flowering.

 Vast numbers of these flowers were in bloom - a better display than I have ever seen before. Teesdale is rightly famous for its rare spring gentians, but in summer the asphodels are a stunning spectacle too.

The Latin name for the plant is Narthecium ossifragum, alluding to the fact that animals were once believed to develop brittle bones if they grazed on this plant - ossifragum means 'bone breaking'. The low calcium levels in these boggy soils are a far more likely cause of any skeletal problems in grazing animals.

Further down the path the meadows beside the river are full of greater burnet .....

.... and meadowsweet, while on the rocky islands in the river ...

... the rather rare shrubby cinquefoil is in bloom ....

.... with its egg yolk-yellow flowers. In winter, when the river rises (especially after rapid snow-melt up on the fells) these shrubs are completely submerged but their roots penetrate deep into the fissures in the rocks, anchoring them in the current.

Some of the best floral displays are in the pastures near Winch bridge, full of betony ....

... and devil's bit scabious (click for a larger image, to see this more clearly).

All of these flowers are a major attraction for butterflies, like this newly-minted female common blue.

The appearance of these fine Boletus toadstools were a reminder that autumn is on the horizon.

The continuity of the wonderful flora in the pastures along this stretch of Teesdale really depends on carefully managed grazing, and the quote from a  farmer inscribed under Keith Alexander's scultures describes what would happen if the grazing stopped: "It reverts to scrub. When it's gone, it's lost".

Ripon Canal

The Ripon Canal, one of the most northerly in England, came within a whisker of being filled in the late 1950s, but now it has been beautifully restored.

It runs almost from the centre of the city over just 2.5 miles to its junction with the River Ure, through three locks and this elegant bridge.

We detoured here on our way back from Norfolk to Durham, and found a fantastic display of wild flowers along the canal bank walk and in the canal itself.

White water lily

Yellow waterlily (a.k.a. brandy bottles)

 

Valerian

Meadowsweet

Meadow Crane'sbill

Amphibious bistort

Mare'stail

Marsh woundwort

..... and with all those flowers, plenty of butterflies too - like this comma.

Well worth a visit if you're in the area and fancy a short but very enjoyable canal-side walk.......

Scratch and Sniff Botany

The Weardale Way footpath that runs from St.John’s Chapel to Cowshill passes through some delightful riverside locations, including this bridge over the river Wear at West Blackdene (bottom photo), with an interesting riverbank flora along the way. Meadowsweet Filipendula ulmaria is in full bloom now. I can never pass this plant without crushing a leaf between finger and thumb – the sap has the distinctive antiseptic aroma of a healing ointment called Germolene (can you still get it?), which was the standard treatment for grazed knees when I was a kid. I probably reeked of the stuff through my formative tree-climbing years. The scent is strongest in the young foliage of meadowsweet, particularly in spring. The other wonderful aroma that we encountered along this walk was the fragrance of fragrant orchid Gymnadenia conopsea. Most orchids lack a distinctive scent – they put all of their energies into elaborate flower structures instead – but this is a species that you could identify with your eyes shut after just one sniff. The scent seems to attract long-tongued bees and butterflies that extract nectar from those long nectar spurs behind the flower. These were particularly fine specimens – probably the tallest that I’ve ever encountered.