the fall of Spring

two images of Spring today (in fact you can just see the blaze of red to the right of Spot's house in the picture below)

Venterdon

Spot's house from Holmbush woods, looking North across the valleys of the Inny and Tamar, with Duchy Agricultural College to the left. Below is a picture of Spot in front of the ruins of the mine works at Holmbush which used to be a source of tin, copper and arsenic (hence the lack of vegetation under the trees) and is now a world mining heritage site.
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cherry blossom breakfast

a coal tit tucking into a peanut breakfast. It reminds me of those beautiful oriental paintings on fine porcelain vases.

and as soon as they are back

they start building again, maybe this one built the nest last year, or maybe it was born at this site. For more about house martins see this link

ash springs to life

Ash is a particularly badly behaved horse who is in the field next door to us. Spring juices are running in his veins and he has spent most of the day chasing rooks and rabbits in his field. And he doesn't like having his photograph taken or anything/person in his space (defined as the whole field and all surrounding fields).

magnolia magic

the magnolia tree and the cherry are all in full blossom. This is usually the signal for an unseasonal storm and gale force winds, but we will enjoy them while they are still on the tree.

the darling buds of ... May

mayflower (cuckoo flower, milkmaids, smocks, Virgin Mary etc etc) has been about for a couple of weeks, so we know May is here.

no flies on our lichen

the bee like fly on our guardian lion is (probably) the drone fly, a large hive bee mimic.


It was very attracted to the lion for some reason, possibly to do with the lichens growing on the stone.

four dogs and a butterfly

the colourful upper surface of the wings of the orange tip makes it stand out in sharp contrast to the very effective leaf camouflage on the underside of the wings. There were a lot of butterflies about today including a peacock, speckled woods and various whites. Perhaps this year will be better for them all than last year. The title of this blog? You try wild life photography with this lot.

another returnee, chiffchaff serenading the moon

another late spring migrant, the chiff chaff, named for its unrelenting incessant call

they are back now

our local population of swallows and martins arrived back today. What a pleasure to see Nature's clock still ticking and all's well with the world. Only 4 days later than last year, so the volcanic ash couldn't ground these long distance air travellers.

The eyes are the window of the soul

Psyche is usually portrayed with the wings of a butterfly, and has come to represent the soul, so I wonder what this early speckled wood is thinking when it looks me in the eye.


Oh, for a nice piece of flowering blackthorn? And black it is.

i

the old duck and angler

I feel this would be a good name for a pub ...if only, as seen down on the Tamar today above Latchley

black bee (aka spring flower bee)

and amongst the lungwort (pulmonaria) growing in our garden we saw this little jet black bee with two very full pollen baskets. As usual with the Internet it is possible to identify just about anything and this is the Spring Flower bee (see link). It never ceases to amaze me what you can see when you start looking properly.

wood anemones

most of the time wood anemones are a soft white, but occasionally you find flowers blushed with pink like these, and they look very pretty in amongst the white.

Inny foot

Spot at the point where the river Inny enters the Tamar, wondering why it is called Inny foot, and whether this is a good example of having one's foot in one's mouth. And below, it was a long way home.

on the forest floor

wood anemones and daffodils, and a few celandines, flowering in profusion on the floor of ancient woodlands.

stellata

the magnolia stellata is fully out and looking very exotic.

like a flock of penguins

more from the purple toothwort archive: why do these strange flowers look so like a bunch of penguins or a crowd of monks?

we are not the only ones

who think Spring has arrived

it's here

the celandines are out everywhere, this marks the proper start of Spring. And it's a lovely dry sunny day.

daring buds of April

a horse chestnut bud bursting with energy, and below, the first sign of this year's magnolia stellata emerging.

Easter Sunday

the Easter bunny hunt over, Harriet catches her breath amongst our native daffodils, and wishes everyone a Happy Easter. Meanwhile the purple toothwort is taking over the world.

hedge dogs

carefully camouflaged hedge dog watching the rabbits but easier to see than the courting couple below.

whitebells

no bluebells yet but these "whitebells" are appearing everywhere in our garden

still only almost there

and so we wait with baited breath for things to begin to grow, and some warmth in our old bones. Last year our magnolia stellata was in full bloom by now, but it is still only at the bud stage this year. My heart sank when I heard that someone is once again predicting a hot dry summer. This will be the fourth or fifth year in a row that the same prediction has been made (Spot's entire life time has been spent in the rain it would seem); apart from the fact that we have had extremely wet summers for ages now sooner or later they are bound to get it right by chance alone. Please stop predicting hot summers. And here is a cheerful thought from James Lovelock.

mass hatch

despite the long cold period, there has been a mass hatch of frog spawn in the last few days. These tadpoles are mostly still in clumps, I guess because they are feeding off the last remnants of the protein in their egg sacs.

catkin cascade

making up for lost time, the wood anenomes are coming out with the water dogs and daffodils

there at last

well, that didn't take long.

almost there

a bit more warmth and our native daffodils will be out, meanwhile Spot and Harriet are practising a concept quite new to them, cooperation.

even more browner things

Has Spring failed? Not quite. In fact when we looked back over Spot's private archives going back to 2000, several Springs have been like this, although never so dry. And if you are wondering how long a sparrow might stay on a feeder full of peanuts larger than the mesh, I know a man who has an answer.