a fox in the woods

we have never seen a fox in the woods before, and very rarely see foxes by day at all, probably because the pack scares them off. Unfortunately the photos are blurred even with the mighty Nikon because it was a very grey day and the light was poor. Even so, the flash of red is what you see. Spot gave chase for about 5 microseconds before returning to his usual buffoonery.

here we go again

winter ends with a long sigh, and the first breaths of the New Year are the gallant little snowdrops, and frog spawn, risking the perils of a sharp frost to be first in the struggle for new life.

yellow brain fungus

the yellow brain fungus (tremella mesenterica) which certainly looks more mesenteric than cerebral, growing on fallen birch. One book says edible, and another says inedible; who do we believe?

Rezare

the hamlet of Rezare, with the holy well to the left. In the lower picture you can see Bodmin moor in the background. The pointed hill is called Sharp Tor, to the right is Kilmar Tor, and between them is Twelve man moor

pond life

beautiful colours from deep in the woods on a still, sunny day

honesty

we would like to thank the person who found the tripod connector for the camera and placed it on a molehill by the river bank in the sure and certain knowledge that we would see it sooner or later which we did today during a long damp trudge with the pack plus visiting labrador, Alfie, and Dennis the menace, a collie from Newbridge.


It seems that President elect Obama is looking at buying a labradoodle, or a portuguese water spaniel; forget the poodle and the duena mutt, have a Cassie, the perfect lurcheriever. She never moults, she is very intelligent, and she has attitude, available now.


and good in snow. Comes wet or dry, but usually wet.




for more pics of us in the snow see November 2005. Three years blogging? Must be mad.

let the trumpets sound

sorry about the lack of new photographs, but the weather has turned cold, damp and grey so walking has become an exercise in wet coats and muddy paws. I always find the period after Christmas very dreary, and February is the dreariest month of all.

Why is it that ecologists and greens are so elitist and unfriendly? I know humanity is the problem, and we are busily eating the planet, but we are also the only solution. If we head back to some false, imaginary, Elysian past, women will be the main sufferers; the life of unremitting toil will return. What Spot and I try and do is to share the joy of the world around us in the hope that more people will learn to value and cherish it. Should we worry that blogging and googling is supposed to keep kettles boiling? And maybe we do not hear enough about the qualifications and reservations that often follow statements of doom. And Venus is a lot closer to the sun, and only rotates about once every 8 months, so it is not a model of where we are heading.

We have to embrace change without alienating people, and we have to take all of humanity with us if anything is to change.

more exotic ice images. The top picture shows concentric circles of transparent and ordinary ice, and of course even if the magic has worn off the pet twig, there is still plenty of action down on the forest floor.

gold on blue

It might seem garish, but the blue feeder seems to attract goldfinches. The arrangement may work so well because it reminds them of thistle flowers, with the blue container below the seeds giving them the impression that they have found an enormous thistle. The blue is probably very vivid in UV, and is acting like a lighthouse. They definitely think they have found a new motorway service station. Other birds seem to avoid the feeder. Behind is the new installation for watching the birds feeding which is fed directly into our PC, allowing many hours of pleasure. We are considering setting up a rabbit watch to provide even more canine amusement, ... and hedgehog watch ... and ... twig watch .....

owls and tits

coming back late last night we saw two owls fly silently past followed by a blood curdling screech (check the link) ... barn owls out hunting. We would really like to get a picture of owls but we never see them in the day time, so for the time being this pic, from yesterday, of a long tailed tit will have to do. Also lots of interesting twigs (see below).

no frost and it flowers

our pet twig photographed last night, with the frost flower developing. There is no frost on the ground, and this is consistent with what happens in the woods (see below). It is some property of cold air on bare wood that has been in woods. I don't think the explanations that have I read so far quite hold up. It is not the woods themselves, or the cold alone.



Spot (bottom literally left) says he will lose the will to live unless we change the subject.

frost flowers

At last I have some more information. This sort of ice formation is called frost flowers (see link and Wiki), and is rare, and has never been reproduced in controlled laboratory conditions (according to the source). In fact, it seems highly likely to me that the critical factor is that it happens on water logged wood. Oh, the joy of science. We shall see.

Spot is yawning.

He wonders why there is no tag for calling a post boring

the plot thickens

soft rime on a piece of wood, that had rime on it yesterday and was brought back from Inny woods, and spent last night on the lawn. The formation of rime is not due to location in a wood or near to a river, therefore. It doesn't seem to form on other bits of wood lying around, but we will put that to the test next. Boring but all in the interests of scientific curiosity.

no rime or reason, mystery solved

at long last definitive proof that ice is ice (see earlier pics). And Spot says it melts in his mouth and tastes just like water. The ice formation is very distinctive. It occurs on twigs and small branches on patches without bark. It is very localised and it does not occur on all bare surfaces. I would have thought it should have a local name like Jack Frost's beard, Christmas rime, or St Nicholas's mushrooms. We have brought back a frost covered bare branch and placed it in a sheltered spot in the estate to see whether it happens here. Further research suggests this is a particular form of soft rime, possibly related to the unusual location in woodland in a sheltered river valley.

New Year's Eve

a star to guide us by, Venus sitting by the newish moon, maybe this conjunction indicates next year will be a happier one for us all

more red things

is it midday in Penzance, or New York? The end of a cold fine day is marked by a misty surreal sunset (much the same as last year at this time). Even though I am not that old, I reckon that in my lifetime winter has become very dry, and we have a new season, the monsoon season, that runs from May to September.

classic robin photo

a very friendly, and chubby, robin helping us with our garden chores today

this large grey heron was seen over Carthamartha fleeing the scene, but I doubt that herons top and tail fish, I am sure they swallow them whole

Harriet finds her Christmas lunch

Harriet found and consumed the head of a salmon, and then found the tail about a mile away and consumed that on the way home. No fish as big as this swims in the Inny (it would run aground). All sorts of explanations spring to mind, but I think the most likely explanation is that someone had salmon for Christmas Eve supper, and something has scavenged the remains. Fox? No waste around here.

at the rock face

intricate and mysterious imagery from the quarry at Kit Hill. It looks like a natural (wild) version of a Japanese garden, or vice versa

a welcome visitor

a goldfinch, fat from eating thistle seed, pausing to pose. A fugitive from the flock.

the evidence accumulates

four days later the twig is bare, not a sign of a fungus or lichen. It was a cold morning but not frosty. It seems increasingly likely to me that this is ice, but I am puzzled why we only see it in areas of deciduous wood, and why I have never seen ice in this form before. A question for the New Scientist

ice fungus

at almost the same time of year last year, and under similar very frosty conditions, we found these peculiar looking excrescences on dead twigs and branches in the woods (see link for more pictures). It puzzled me at the time that I could not find anything remotely similar in the (many) reference books in Spot's library when it was so very distinctive. After much searching, we have found a similar picture on Google images, at the University of British Columbia botanical forum (link). There it is suggested that this is in fact ice, not a fungus at all. This is certainly consistent with its sporadic nature in cold weather, and it looks just like wispy snow. Can this be true? If so, finding it out is yet another demonstration of the phenomenal information power of the internet, and Google in particular.

rapt attention

heavily disguised and almost invisible in the winter canopy, a buzzard watching Spot hare about in the early morning frost.

parasol

a delicate little mushroom looking very like a Japanese parasol, one of the many mycena species.

flocking together

I think the birds in the pages below may well be gulls, seen above today gathering in a field. The collective name for gulls, a flock, seems very appropriate.

more mooning about

flocks of large birds flying south, in great wide V's, plus the occasional straggler("wait for me"). It is difficult to identify them, possibly curlews. They came in wave after wave, like images from world war 2.

Jupiter, Venus and Us

I know, it just looks black but there is Jupiter, Venus (below the moon) and the moon hanging out together, setting over our little village. I knew there was something strange going on up there. Thanks to Spike and the Laurel Cottage crew for pointing out this wonderful spectacle.

more fungi

some sort of bracket fungus, as usual it remains unidentified.

an old bridge

an interesting relic ... these pictures show the remnants of an old bridge of some sort. The stone footings suggest it must have been quite substantial at one time although as far as I can tell there is no bridge marked on the OS map at this point. It is in the deepest part of the woods and looks more than the work of a few boys having fun.

more progress at Beal's Mill

and now the joists are up, and the new flood barrier is looking good. New owners' daughter was almost swallowed up by the mud but was rescued with the loss of only one boot.

on the subject of interesting things 4

two Mary Stork figure paintings, and one figurative sculpture derived from one of her paintings, a William Scott (artist's proof), three Raku figures from the Rudge production line, one John Pollex jug (picked for the image of Nashwan), two lamps from Trago Mills (the most extraordinary store ever, even for Cornwall), and some bric a brac (priceless objets)

on the road to Luckett

on the road to (the bottomless pit of) Luckett, taken for no other reason than to observe the pleasing contrasts between greens and browns.

starling leaves

They look like leaves that should have fallen by now, but are in fact flocks of starlings assembling before embarking on the aerial pyrotechnics that liven up the winter days. They are very noisy; I am sure they are simply chattering away excitedly about feather cleaning, wing tips and holiday spots.

on the subject of interesting things 3

a stunning sculptural (assemblage) work by John Howlin, made from an infant's crib, and representing the night sky seen from behind bars, and an ominous date (it is called Casement 2, and is one of a pair). It is hard to convey the solidity and strength of this work in only two dimensions

autumn colour 3

in the woods, and an out of season (completely) rhododendron (ponticum) flower, giving the woods a feel of the jungle