easy to hear but hard to see

a sky lark singing with all its might, barely visible against the clouds (it is a tiny speck right in the centre of the top picture) and brought a bit closer by the zoom. Unfortunately, our new trick of taking fast photos at very high ISO values doesn't work so well with our old camera.

purple orchids

early purple orchids have appeared in large numbers on the drive into Duchy College. It looks as if it might be a good year for orchids even though we couldn't find any at all on Thursday in Greenscoombe meadows. The little blue flower is germander speedwell, and there is some sorrel about to flower

cloudy Tamar

a quiet day on the Tamar, and below the inaptly named grey wagtail, foraging by the side of the road rather than by fast running streams where they usually live.

small body big voice

a male wren singing his heart out, and very loudly too for such a small bird

lady's smock or cuckoo flower or mayflower or...

two pictures of the local variants of the cuckoo flower (aka lady's smock etc). As I have described before the normal mayflower is a simple but pretty flower with four petals. these variants are double flowers or hose in hose varieties said by Richard Mabey in Flora Britannica (page150) to be common in parts of Devon.

Below is a picture of marsh marigolds (aka Kingcups, Mayflower, May-blobs, Mollyblobs, Pollyblobs, Horseblob, Water-blobs, water-bubbles, Gollins, the publican (? by whom). Mabey (see above) states that it one of our oldest native plants surviving the glaciations and flourishing after the last retreat of the ice, in a landscape inundated by glacial melt waters. It feels today as if the next ice age is about to start.

bluebells and ramsons

as promised everything is flowering at once this year. The woodland floor is covered with bluebells, ramsons (our wild garlic) and wood anemones, mixed up with stitchwort, and toothwort, and yellow archangel and everything else. The butterfly feeding on the ramson is a male green veined white, in fact the 'green' is a mixture of yellow and black scales. This is the first of two generations that will fly during the year, and it tends to be darker than the later generation presumably reflecting changes in the foliage

before the canopy closes in

this is about the latest in the year we will be able to see who is singing in the trees before the leaf canopy closes in for the summer. Blue tit on top, and gold finch below.

I like diggin'

Cassie has been doing her best to keep true to her Cornish mining heritage

and it's getting greener

the canopy is gradually closing in and turning green (see same spot a bit earlier this year)

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.