Blog Archives - Cumbria Naturally

Leighton Moss

28/7/2018

Speckled wood

Bird watching at Leighton Moss is the perfect way to spend a hot day. The coolness of bird-hides looking out onto Morecambe Bay, the susurration of the reed beds and the leafy shade of trees is delightful.
Long seed-capsules of greater willow-herb split to release parachute seeds drifting away on the lightest breeze. Codlings and cream the flower is called- codlings, rosy-pink apples.
Butterflies all about us as we walked. Maybe speckled wood, maybe not.

Where is our Jet Stream?

26/7/2018

Ragged meadow brown, Scout Scar 26 July

The bliss of a gentle breeze as temperatures soar, again. Wisps of alto-stratus against the blue. We'll swelter this afternoon, but we know our good fortune to be in Cumbria.
Weather maps show Atlantic fronts massing off- shore, but they melt away and come to nothing. A brief shower of the finest rain.
In town, the River Kent has vile-looking clots of algae and looks sick, its current sluggish. It smells stale.
Meanwhile, United Utilities, will at last introduce a hose-pipe ban at the beginning of August. When will they have robust procedures in place, toward the conservation of water, toward protecting our environment ?

Butterfly versus spider

19/7/2018

Meadow brown alights on scabious 18 July

A meadow brown alights on a scabious, hoping for nectar. It's in for a shock.
I took a sequence of photographs, unaware of the drama unfolding before me. Only subsequently, in editing images, did I begin to work it out. So here's the sequence.
Stems of grass frame the butterfly. Look closely at those seed-heads on the left. In summer, long stems of grasses are woven into spiders' nests, and traps for the unwary. Watch the position of the butterfly and see how it changes.

Butterfly hot-spot, with small skipper

18/7/2018

Small skipper, Scout Scar. 18 July

A glimpse of small skipper was enticing. Two days later this golden butterfly appeared once more on the sunny slope where scabious grew thick. A brood had hatched and was on the wing. As sunlight broke through alto-cumulus cloud butterflies spun a web around me, in courtship dance, in a feeding frenzy. This patch of scabious must be a rich source of nectar, a butterfly hot-spot. I am all involved in the butterfly experience so I settle into stillness and the magic all about me. No need to seek further, here and now is everything. I am silent, my shadow scarcely stirs, I am so still it's as if I am become invisible.

Scout Scar in gold ochre

15/7/2018

Scout Scar escarpment 14 July

Summer's heat-weave has burnished Scout Scar escarpment. Hot limestone has cooked the grasses. The season powers through fast.
Ten days ago, there were drifts of yellow hawkbit and dark green fritillaries fed on their nectar. Now the flowers are gone, leaving parachute seed-heads ready to catch the breeze. Scabious are everywhere, with knapweed and carline thistle attracting bumble bees. There are days when butterflies luxuriate, sipping nectar in a leisurely way.

Lingmoor Trilogy: to the heather

11/7/2018

Lingmoor heather 6 July

A juvenile dipper was food begging in the beck, its red gape wide. It was not unexpected, the dipper is often seen at Elterwater.
The flora of heather moorland is perhaps my favourite and as we climbed up to the Lingmoor Ridge there were flowers I hoped to see. Yellow stars of bog asphodel aplenty, although they fade fast in the heat-wave. But where was the bog pimpernel, those tiny pale pink flowers found where water trickles off the fell and into the becks. Where was the water? We found none until we reached about 250 metres.

Lingmoor Trilogy: distracted by flowers

11/7/2018

Blea Tarn and the Langdale Pikes 6 July

Flora followed water as we came off Lingmoor. Where water had been. The bed of the beck was stone-dry but water had followed its channel and the yellow stars of bog asphodel grew thickly in every boggy hollow. A blaze of bell heather in deep purple adorned the banks of the beck. Ericas intermingled, cross-leaved heath, heather and bell heather resplendent. Sundews grew angry red in pale sphagnum moss where the merest hint of water sustained them. Distracted by a wealth of flowers, I strayed from our descent line.

Lingmoor Trilogy: Blea Tarn Flora

10/7/2018

Sneezewort on the shore of Blea Tarn

Early July and the season of aquatic flora on the Lake District tarns. Blea Tarn is surrounded by a boggy sump, with becks draining off Lingmoor and Side Pike, from the Wrynose Fells. Seeking a shady spot for lunch, we sat on a bench looking north across the water whose surface was stippled with a mass of tiny flowers. Was it water lobelia? Too far off to be sure, even through binoculars. I went down to the water's edge for a closer look and discovered a wealth of flowers in a spot I had previously overlooked.

Skeggleswater in extreme weather

10/7/2018

Skeggleswater 7 July

Out in the open, a searing sun and high humidity. I evaporate in a shower of dripping and trickling sweat. Bare arms protest. Factor 50 isn’t enough. Water weighs heavy in our rucksacks but will it last? I'll shrivel up like the sphagnum moss of the boggy sump about Skeggleswater. Sphagnum moss made of water, now unmade.

Life follows water and flowers of bog asphodel and cross-leaved heath appear closer to the tarn. A rutted track is fringed with blood-red clots of sundew with tiny white flowers, sundew in dried-out sphagnum moss.

Fell walking through a heat wave

9/7/2018

Carline thistle Scout Scar 8 July

Carline thistle would not look our of place in the desert. Their spiny outer casing resembles the burnt-out vegetation I remember from an October visit to Crete after a summer scorching. The first week in July, the ground is parched and scorched from relentless heat and carline thistles open up, offering nectar to bees.
A small tortoiseshell nectars on thistle, all hot colours.
Dark red helleborine are at their most beautiful, amongst the limestone clitter and beside larch trees. The air is fragrant with resin and with herbal hints from the flora of limestone grassland.

4th July on Scout Scar

4/7/2018

Fritillary on scabious

Fritillaries shot through with sunlight are nectaring on scabious, on yellow hawkbit and hawkweed. A dusky fluttering butterfly alights on hot limestone clitter and turns to stone. Drifts of flowers in stillness and heat. Birds fall silent, the breeding season almost accomplished.
The early morning lacked promise: a blaze of sun in a monochrome sky, the fells smothered in haze and parched grasses crisp and crunching underfoot. Flora burns out fast in the heat-wave that goes on and on. An interlude of butterflies was respite.