two is a surprise

Spot often finds one hedgehog in the garden, and has learnt to leave them alone, but this is the first time we have seen two at the same time. Our garden has become very hedgehog friendly (apart from the occasional unwanted move to another location by Spot) probably because we do not use slug pellets, and there are plenty of wood piles to provide shelter.

rainbow days

 red, green, yellow and blue, everything is appearing

 a tortoiseshell on ragged robin

  a small skipper on campion

 a female beautiful demoiselle (not that she needs to be told)

a yellow crab spider

 

the first common  blue of the year

and brown, black and white too.

fresh speckled wood

trouble

rarities

One of the great pleasures of walking repeatedly through the same places is the gradual accumulation of knowledge of what is in the environment, and learning to notice the subtle differences between seemingly similar things. There is only one place in the parish, as far as I know, where the rare pink variety of wild bugle grows, and this year there is only one flowering stem, but there it is! (With the normal bluer variety shown below for comparison).

we're still here

A pair of blackbirds have decided to nest in the wisteria by the front door. This allows me to get very close without disturbing the female who is sitting (somewhat stoically) on her eggs despite the constant comings and goings, barking and general shenanigans around her. With any luck we should be able to watch events develop.

columbine

wild aquilegia, or columbine in the Tamar valley. Garden varieties tend to have smaller nectar horns and paler colours. The flowers really are this vivid lilac blue. Columbine comes from the latin for dove because the nectar horns are supposed to look like five doves together.

black bryony

this rather magnificent climber is black bryony, the only native member of the yam family. It climbs by curling invariably in a clockwise direction (how does nature do this?). It is much more prominent in the autumn when it is covered in bright berries of varying hues (see bottom photo), but I have never seen it in flower before. I think the reason is that the little 6 petalled green-ish flowers are very inconspicuous.