a few things we haven't seen locally 1

we are back from our holidays in the Charente region of France. As always the French country side was bursting with rare and wonderful sights. This is a lizard orchid, (himantoglossum hircinum), so named because the flowers are said (fancifully some would say) to resemble a small lizard with a long tail (the very long lower spur of their four lobed lower lip) although the close up of the flower does bear a passing resemblance to an escaping skink. And they smell like old goats, which is not dissimilar to Spot himself on a good day.

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holidays

Spot is going on his hols for a bit, we'll be blogging again when he gets back. Have fun.

this year's first comma, along, all of a sudden, with lots of other species. It must be the warm weather.

working for a living

like a scene from the Auvergne, and just to prove we are very rural, a picture of one of my cousins (aka wolf according to Babe) driving newly shorn ewes and their unshorn lambs via Anvil Close to pastures new.

dragonflies and robins

the top two pictures are close ups of the a female dragonfly (broad bodied libellula) which is quite common around here but always impressive when you see one. The bottom picture is of some ragged robin and visitor. Usually there is a lot of ragged robin in the marshy meadows by the Inny, but this year it is very sparse.

more blue than green

the startling blue flowers of green alkanet, with the white eye in the centre, surrounded by the paler blue of field and germander speedwell.

more missed opportunities

the bright yellow flower of cow-wheat, with its peculiar collar of hairs like a fur stole, and favoured food of the heath fritillary (none seen yet this year) and below the pretty flower of bastard balm, favourite food of bees.

on the road today

hedgerow painting by Mother Nature, and below the mysterious innards of the comfrey flower. (Linnaeus, the great cataloguer and botanist, was famous for his interest in things scatological, and the interiors of flowers are really very lascivious, but it is hard to find anything meaningful in comfrey's latin name, symphytum officinale ....unless it is a subtle reference to, well only doctors and physiotherapist will know).

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some speckulations

a young mistle thrush learning to sing (above), and a speckled wood butterfly resting after mortal combat with another male (they are very territorial).

sylvan settings

little stream running past New Mill and along Broadgate lane. Not sure what the red flower is but it looks like a garden escapee.

and the relic daffodil

one solitary multi headed white daffodil, surviving from when the meadows were used to grow daffodils many years ago. Again I like the sense of the meadow crowding in on this lone specimen. Diversity is everything.

and some orchids

marsh orchid (top) just coming into flower, and heath spotted orchid below. Sorry Carletta, we were 10 days too early. I like these photos because they hint at the tangle of life in the meadows.

common as blue

a nice close up of a common blue butterfly (male) sitting on a ragged piece of the head of plantain. This is a very petite butterfly.

hungry chicks

We had a crowd of juvenile starlings and their parents in the garden this afternoon. The juveniles are much lighter than their parents and bigger (at least fluffier) and very demanding.

long tailed tits

long tailed tits are small birds and are all tail, as this picture shows. They are very shy of humans but very sociable with each other going around in family groups chattering away (si si).

domesticated bugle

a pretty picture of domesticated bugle grwoing in our garden along with some Spanish bluebells, welsh poppies, elephants' ears and a saxifrage ... is there anything English in our Cornish garden?

early silver y

This is the earliest in the year that we have seen a silver y moth. They are usually immigrants from europe, and the spring invaders give rise to a second generation in the autumn. This moth flew in a swift and extremely erratic manner that was very difficult to follow.

Nocturnal visitors

Spot welcomes a hedgehog to the grounds of OH. This is the first hedgehog we have seen for a very long time and it is reassuring to know they are still around in our very hedgehog friendly garden (minus canine companions).By coincidence in the Spring edition of Wild Cornwall, the magazine of Cornwall Wildlife Trust, which has only just arrived, there is a request for sightings of hedgehogs to be reported to the Cornwall mammal Group (see link). So we have reported it and in doing so learnt our OS coordinates.

lanes of rivers

these images from the river Lynher below Golberdon today are very reminiscent of the lanes with their luminous tones of green. The midges are forming in great clouds as the day warms up.

black legs, bluebells and trout

It has been very warm weather this weekend and the bluebells in our woods are at their peak. And, for the very first time we have actually managed to photograph a brown trout in the Inny.
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Waiting for one of these (a demoiselle or blue agrion) to land on its head.


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too hot to stand

Cash, dreaming of lying in a field of buttercups. He sometimes gets up and does riding for the disabled.

almost done buildin'

it has been hard work (see here for the start of this year's work) but both nests are now restored and no doubt soon we will be woken every morning by the raucous sound of many hungry chicks demanding to be fed. The air is full of very busy house martins.

queen anne's lace

cow parsley is out everywhere, and for a short time looks quite pretty (and fluffy hence one of its folk names) although umbellifers are not usually so attractive and many are extremely poisonous.

easy to hear, easy to see

a yellowhammer (probably a male, but with a very rusty chest), calling attention to itself with the characteristic call "bit of bread and butter and cheeeeEESe" except the call can be quite variable and this one missed off the cheese. His mate was nearby, and usually they feed away from the nest. Like many birds they have been badly affected by the use of herbicides and other changes in farming practice

morning glory

The lanes feel beautiful now with the larks above and the morning sun.

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)