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Scout Scar 1st August

1/8/2020

Scout Scar escarpment is the perfect spot for watching rain clouds flow east from the fells, across the Lyth Valley, toward you - and here comes a squall. The wind roars, lashing trees, and the temperature drops. Rain and hail, perhaps. The sun is gone, light fades and the raven calls in a deep gurgle. A kestrel rides the wind, wind-hover, against dark clouds.
Trying to spy out autumn gentian and frog orchid in poor light, hoping to identify birds drained of all colour, is a challenge. On such rainy days you may find solitude and the weather is volatile and thrilling.

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Holker Hall Gardens

30/7/2020

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An outing to Holker Hall Garde3ns! A scenic drive through landscapes I've known this millenium, but out of reach this spring and summer, until today. A first visit to these lovely gardens, and so memorable.
Herbacerous borders are fragrant and drenched with raindrops. Fragrances of exotic and unfamiliar flowers. Then the morning brightens and the sun appears, bringing forth butterflies that flutter over the border of delicate flowers about the lawns.

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Brimstone Butterfly, Autumn Gentian, Harebell

24/7/2020

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Female Brimstone butterfly

Being in the moment is the best thing, In deep.

In the moment and mindful of all that has gone before, here in this place, for me and my friends, for others over time, over centuries as our stories interweave.

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Yarrow, Milfoil, Achillea millefolium

19/7/2020

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Yarrow, Milfoil, Achillea millefolium

For everything a season. So where are the hawthorn berries? I could find none yesterday on Scout Scar and Helsington Barrows- so I shall persevere. Has the crop failed? Blackthorn has green sloes and juniper has green berries- juniper whose fragrance I love.
And if the hawthorn crop of berries has failed up here, what happened- or did not happen?
There are floral motifs of the season. Deep purple betony amongst the bracken, thyme, lady's bedstraw and yarrow. No idea where the name yarrow comes from. Yarrow, milfoil, Achillea millefolium for its feathery leaves. I like its compact flower-heads in shades of pink and white and patterns as its buds form and burst into flower. Today, a moment of perfect symmetry.

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Scout Scar and Helsington Barrows: July flora

17/7/2020

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Yarrow, Achillea Millefolium, Milfoil

Rain, pervasive light rain and the fells are gone.
A rabbit. A linnet in an ash tree. Swifts silent in cloudy skies. A raven croaks. Jackdaws call.
On Helsington Barrows there's betony, thyme and self-heal, a raindrop palette of purples. And fragrant lady's bedstraw. Yellow flowers of hawkweed close against the rain. The elliptical leaves of mouse-ear hawkweed pale and mouse soft, mouse-ear hawkweed, Hieracium pilosella. The tiny petals of fairy-flax close tight to a fleck of whiteness.
A morning of close-ups since the fells are lost in rain-cloud, butterflies are sheltering from the rain. The lush green of mid-July after rains, after drought.

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And Tree Pipit

15/7/2020

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Sunlit cloud over the Coniston Fells

When dark clouds gathered it took a while to enter into the spirit of the morning, its own spirit, not mine. I heard linnet and redpoll in the scrub, busy rearing their young broods. And a meadow pipit with a beak stuffed with insects gave a constant warning call to his nestlings, waiting for me to be gone. Somehow they can call without losing the insects they've caught. I try to make out what the pipit brings to its brood for breakfast but the light is too poor. It's so dark I can see little but if I stick it out something brighter will surely come. A metaphor for our times.

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Lapwing and Scout Scar

12/7/2020

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The Langdale Pikes under louring cloud

Where was the promised brightness? Louring cloud over Scout Scar threatened heavy showers. I thought of heading home when I heard lapwing and followed their call through a scrub of hawthorn and gorse until I reached a dry stone wall topped with a double strand of barbed-wire. Finding a spot where I could see into the pasture beyond, I searched amongst summer flowers lush after rain, their constant calls guiding me to lapwing parents with two chicks.

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Flora of limestone grassland: Scout Scar and Helsington Barrows

11/7/2020

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Anthill with flowers of thyme

This July weather is so unsettled it's hard to know what the day may bring. Saturday was predicted to be sunnier but the day was overcast and cloudy. Few birds or butterflies on the wing But rain brings forth flowers and we delighted in the flora of Heslington Barrows.
Insect populations diminish and the numerous anithills of the yellow meadow ant are not the floral hotspots they were some decade or more ago. So we linger over an anthill thick in flowers of thyme with a mass of purple betony close by

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Dark Green Fritillary, Common Blue and Cinnabar Moth Caterpillar

6/7/2020

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Dark Green Fritillary nectaring on thistle

It's so clear I can make out the distant waterfalls of Stickle Ghyll and the gloomy cleft of Dungeon Ghyll. Pools of light and shadow over the Langdale Pikes. My heart is in the fells . A day of vistas and Sunday’s strong winds ease through the morning.
‘I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows.’ Butterflies will choose a sunny glade, a sheltered spot where warm air lingers over flowers rich in nectar, Their favourite bramble and thistle are on today's menu.
A hint of blue at my feet, like the petals of a flower. A long stem of seeding blue moor grass, not petals but wings.

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Stonechat and fledglings

2/7/2020

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Fresh flowers after late June downpours: betony

A glimpse of secret lives- that's the best there is, a thrilling glimpse. If we hope for more we delude ourselves. Wildlife has its own imperatives, distinct from ours.
In early spring, I listened to a stonechat singing and his display flight won him a mate.. Through the season I've followed their progress. Alarm calls alert me to their presence and I always stop to see what I might discover. And on a morning of louring cloud with interludes when the sun broke through, here they were with their brood. I knew they were raising a family but this was my first glimpse.

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Scout Scar 1st August

Holker Hall Gardens

Brimstone Butterfly, Autumn Gentian, Harebell

Yarrow, Milfoil, Achillea millefolium

Scout Scar and Helsington Barrows: July flora

And Tree Pipit

Lapwing and Scout Scar

Flora of limestone grassland: Scout Scar and Helsington Barrows

Dark Green Fritillary, Common Blue and Cinnabar Moth Caterpillar

Stonechat and fledglings

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