Deer on a Kentmere crag Wildlife watching in Kentmere, we're being watched. Deer pause on a crag topping a fell-side of foxgloves. Their short tails suggest they're red deer. A large, pale bird flies over the crags and away. A kestrel hovers above Tongue Scar where Rough Fell ewes and mature lambs seek shade beneath the trees and in the shadow of the barn wall as the mid-day sun beats down on us all.
In water-tracks, in ditches and in wet fell-sides are the bog plants and mosses I love,
In water-tracks, in ditches and in wet fell-sides are the bog plants and mosses I love,
Lesser spearwort, Ranunculus flammula, is of the buttercup family. It is named for its spear-like leaves and is found in water-tracks and wet ground beside the blue flowers of water-forget-me-not. Yellow-star flowers of bog asphodel are fresh and looking good. Bog pimpernel is flowering but hard to find. I remember the flower in abundance beside Kentmere Reservoir. Carnivorous butterwort leaves resemble pale green stars and the single flower is mauve. Tiny dark specks on the leaves are trapped insects. Sundew lurk in sphagnum moss, sunlight glistening on sticky droplets on the tip of each hair, droplets which entrap insect prey, the leaf closing tight to envelop and digest it. Sphagnum mosses are vital to the ecology of blanket bog and of the fells, for carbon sequestration, toward flood prevention, and where the saturated moss grows in gullies, as a fire-break when wild fires take hold deep in the peat.
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