Rambling brambles

There is something very stealthy about the way that brambles move around. The shoot in the photo above has used its prickles to grip the far side of the mossy wall, then extended its growth until it reached the top of the six foot barrier and is now undulating along this side of the wall. 

Eventually that long shoot will bend under its own weight, towards the ground....

..... and when it touches the soil this will happen - adventitious roots will form.

Now, securely anchored and with an additional supply of mineral nutrients and water, a new, long, arching shoot is beginning to form and soon the whole process will begin again. Constantly conquering new territories, bounding across the landscape.

Fruity

It looks like being a very poor year for brambles up here in Durham but it was a different story down in North East Lincolnshire at the weekend, where the blackberry bushes at the back of the sand dunes at Cleethorpes local nature reserve were laden with fast-ripening fruits.

The scrubby vegetation at the back of the dunes here is dominated by sea buckthorn, which also carried a fine crop of ripening berries, that look particularly attractive against the shrub's silver-grey foliage. Birds never seem very interested in these berries, which often are still untouched well into winter. The same can't be said for the elder berries here, which were being consumed rapidly by large, noisy flocks of starlings.

Many of the juvenile starlings were in their transitional plumage, still bearing traces of their first set of brown feathers but rapidly moulting into their smart spotty winter attire.