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.