easter island comes to Bodmin moor

carved out of the granite, quarry on Bodmin moor

and fieldfares too

one of a tired flock, fresh in from the continent

starlings return

more from Giverny

autumn colours

all blogged out

no, not a scene from the valley but an image of the stunning beauty of Monet's lily pond at Giverny which we visited on our recent travels via Santander, Haro, Alquezar, Rodes, Apchat and Chevreuse. It is reassuring somehow to see how similar our own beautiful valley can be to Giverny. And to realise that Monet was truly the father of digital photography.

Giverny

Kit Hill Quarry (!)

What with the wind and rain, poorly knees and Harriet managing to cut her hind leg badly it is time to take a break from blogging for a bit.

If you are visiting the blog for the first time there are many pictures of the Tamar valley and its flora and fauna within the blog, best viewed by using the labels in the list on the left hand side of this page, or by searching on a specific word or phrase.

We will be back when we are all strong enough to go for a proper walk!

woundwort and hawkweed

hedge woundwort flowers through to October and is often this deep purple. At this time of year most flowers seem to be yellow or purple. Below is a common but striking flower the brilliant yellow narrow leaved hawkweed.

a sawfly (or hover fly ... more research required) eating the pollen off the anthers of some late flowering wild honeysuckle

damsons

it has been a bumper year for wild plums. These are growing in the hedgerow at the bottom of our garden. The plums are called damsons, possibly because they originate in or around Damascus, and were introduced to Britain by the Romans (see Wikipaedia).

carletta comes to visit

Carletta came all the way from Maine to visit us. As you can see she was very easy to train, and we quickly had ourselves eating out of the palm of her hand. The woods and meadows are a bit drab at the moment, but it was nice to have a visitor. Anyone else for a guided tour? (please bring own biscuits).

and a late comma

and a late comma, with very pretty markings on the border of its wings. This is the second generation, and usually they are darker. I thought this specimen was lighter but when I checked for earlier images it is actually darker which may be why the markings on the edge of the wing show up more clearly.

field full of scabious

the meadows are full of scabious. I think this is devil's bit scabious, rather than field scabious, Devon in the background. The scabious in these meadows seems quite variable and comes in two distinct colours, dark blue purple and pinkish, and some in between.
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a seed is born

himalayan balsam spreads its seeds by exploding the seed pod when it is touched. The fragment is the remnant of the coiled spring after it has released the seed pod. Great fun, but very invasive.

more green from the valley

everywhere seems to be a very luscious green at the moment. This is taken at one of our favourite places to take a dip before the serious business of the long walk begins. A tree has fallen into the river adding to the sense of lush vegetation on the river; sometimes with the birds singing in the canopy it feels almost like a tropical jungle.

goldenrod

goldenrod (an american import) and willowherb (rosebay) seed heads, described as tall and aggressive (!), is this fair I ask myself. Sun has shone for 9 consecutive days, this is a record.

and a swim in the Lynher

the light shining through the trees along the banks often creates these beautiful dappled scenes

on the moor

it has been a lovely warm clear blue-skyed day today and there is no where better to enjoy the day than up on the moors. The standing stones are the Hurlers.

It is that time of year again, the martins are getting ready to go, the lanes are as overgrown as they get before the hedgerows are shorn, and the sloes are abundant.

scorpionfly - drunk and disorderly

this odd looking creation is a female scorpion fly (Panorpa communis), lacking the scorpion like tail of the male, but looking like a horse from the Andromeda galaxy. Its habits are fascinating (see link). This one was clearly inebriated and was unable to stay upright on the leaf. I suspect it had been at fermented fruit juice. They are primitive insects and may have given rise to all other flying insects.

traveller person's wort

our first proper walk for almost 4 weeks, wading through mud, swimming, eating bur docks, and generally looning about. This little plant is gipsywort which only seems to grow in one marshy patch locally. It is a member of the mint family although it has no obvious scent (or use). The flowers in the meadow have almost gone, except for some scabious (plus hover fly),




and knapweed (plus bee, ?) although now that I look closely at the picture it could be yet another bumble bee mimic, a hoverfly called criorhina floccosa or berberina,

a very small common blue

a very small blue butterfly, which I thought might be a small blue, but on closer inspection it is a female common blue, feeding on its favourite plant, bird's foot trefoil. The small blue caterpillar feeds mainly on kidney vetch (qv) of which there is none locally as far as I know.

little owl

A great treat was in store for us last night when we returned home. There on the gate post was a small owl. Dazzled by the headlights it sat quite still with a large worm in its mouth for at least a minute, no more than 3 feet away from us, before loping off into the dark of the giant sycamore trees above the duckpond. I always say always carry a camera precisely for these moments, but do I? Of course not. It appears very probable that it was a little owl (link), it certainly was very small, about 9 inches high. I am not sure which type of owl starred in Winnie the Pooh but it reminded me very much of the line drawings in the books. Perhaps all owls look wise when perched on a gatepost. Poor weather and immobility have meant few opportunities for photographs, so we are reduced to an exciting picture of slug dating.
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cooking apples

we are not the only ones who like the taste of these cooking apples. The tree is a graft from a much older tree that was the victim of honey fungus about ten years ago, and is now cropping extremely well. I know it is difficult to like wasps but they are very useful.

only 184 species to go

oh the joys of hoverflies and having the definitive guide to them (Stubbs and Falk), no longer do we need to misidentify everything as "bee". This is eristalis interruptus (or something quite close), taking a shower on some angelica. Only another 184 species or so to go.

wall brown

He is still confined to the house, so we are unable to go on our usual long and exciting walks, and are reduced to photos of things in the garden. This restless butterfly is usually difficult to photograph because it rarely stays still for very long, but here it is warming up in the morning sun getting ready for a good day's fluttering.

tortoiseshells

the common but very pretty tortoiseshell butterfly, distinguished from the rarer large tortoiseshell by the heavy black scaling around the body. There have been an amazing number of butterflies around in the last few days. Something must be going right.

eyes in the back of your head

another close up of the hover fly. What interested me was the little shield between the two compound eyes with three little raised spots. These are called ocelli (from the latin ocelus or eye). Their function is a bit of a mystery, but they may be associated with the fly's ability to orientate itself in 3 dimensions when flying (see link). Isn't life interesting.

How long will it last ...

up on Bodmin moor, looking towards Kit Hill (just visible in the background), surrounded by the ruins, puts me in mind of Ozymandias and all his works.

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level moors stretch far away.

I am sure I have had this thought before up on this ancient and much abused landscape. Apologies for the liberties, "sands" in the original is much better because of the connotation with remorseless time.

white tailed bee

what would we do without knapweed. This handsome chap-ess is the white tailed bumblebee, bombus lucorum. It is common, but we have never noticed white tailed bumblebees before.

8 August:- now that we have had a closer look, most of the bees around here have white tails, which shows how unobservant we are. The bee above is particularly striking.

blue butterflies at last

these are the first blue butterflies we have seen this year. Both are common blues, the top is the female. The sun has brought them out, but the heavy constant rain of the last 6 weeks seems to have had a very bad effect on numbers locally.

Greenscombe meadows

at the top is a local rarity, Cornish bladderseed, an umbellifer so named for the shape of the seeds as seen at the top left, and beneath is a photo of the brilliant red berries of Guelder rose before the birds take all the berries.