interior landscapes (moss Spot)

It looks like an oriental landscape of woods and rocky escarpments, in fact it is the small landscape of a moss covered wall

keeping up with the longs

the first, rather tattered looking speckled wood of the year. These butterflies over winter as caterpillars or chrysalides, so this must be a newly hatched butterfly. It has certainly seen some rough times already.

witches broom

witches broom is a common sight locally, and is the result of a fascinating and ill understood process whereby bacteria harness and corrupt the growth pattern of plant cells, see link. This occurs at a deep metabolic level and may help us to understand the way genes control growth and development... of such simple things are advances made.

chiffchaff

Small but very noisy, chiffchaffs are easy to detect on bare branches where they make their incessant and tuneless call, chiff chaff chiff chaff .

we're back

The swallows are back. I saw two last Friday (11/4). Usually these early birds fly on, but this year they are already investigating the nest they built last year in our neighbour's porch, and flying around the house (hence photo). I think this is the earliest that I have recorded them returning since 2005. There are some beautiful views now just before the leaves open and the canopy closes in.

on Weir Quay

It was a lovely sunny morning, and the cherry tree in front of Cleave farm was in full blossom. Usually at this time of year we get gales as the trees come into bloom just in time to be blown away.