Limestone fern on clitter ‘ I’ve heard the cuckoo and was coming to knock on your door and tell you,’ he said, confirming its usual haunt.
Spring migrants arrive and I’m all ears. The essential rhythms of spring, Nature as we know and love her. I cannot find the cuckoo but redstart are back, in tentative song.
On Saturday, intermittent showers all day. Mud poached by the Welsh Black cattle had baked hard, now rain gives a superficial softness. The air is saturated with moisture, like a sauna.
Spring migrants arrive and I’m all ears. The essential rhythms of spring, Nature as we know and love her. I cannot find the cuckoo but redstart are back, in tentative song.
On Saturday, intermittent showers all day. Mud poached by the Welsh Black cattle had baked hard, now rain gives a superficial softness. The air is saturated with moisture, like a sauna.
A linnet sings by a patch of flowering gorse. Willow warbler are settling in, everywhere. A green woodpecker calls in flight. A kestrel rises on thermals. Early purple orchid show. There's fresh limestone fern on rafts of limestone clitter. Where is this elusive cuckoo? Keith heard it by chance, as he was walking. I'm on the case and I can't find him- but if he's there, I shall. Meanwhile----
On the dip slope of Scout Scar, juniper bushes with ancient trunks twist and writhe into sculptural form. A flash of Lib Dem orange on heart-wood. 22nd April 2007 I heard the cuckoo and found Gymnosporangium clavariiforme everywhere on juniper and pictured it on the cover of About Scout Scar. To-day, after heavy showers, the fungus rehydrates and looks gelatinous. Those orange spore tubes are called telial horns. Its spores are wind--borne and infect hawthorn, abundant on Scout Scar. Hawthorn is its secondary host, intrinsic to its life cycle. The fungus is spectacular on juniper, does more damage to hawthorn.
Thanks to a Natural England botanist friend for ID on Gynosporangium clavariiforme
Season Songs in April, somewhere high in the canopy a wood warbler is singing loudly. Like a sixpence spinning on a marble slab. I search fresh oak leaves in the tree- tops but he blends in perfectly. A brimstone butterfly flits through the glade, a small bird darts low and attempts to snatch a butterfly. There are male orange-tip butterflies but they will not settle, fluttering rapid-winged over flowers of garlic mustard and off into the bramble. I spend an hour watching male orange-tip butterflies and I ponder why they come close but do not settle.
The mis-match of what I saw and heard and what I can show is amusing-frustrating. So, orange-tip butterflies from 8 May 2017, As Bottom the weaver says in Midsummer Night's Dream
The eye of
man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen
man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive,
nor his heart to report, what my dream was.
Nick Bottom, who melds the rustic with the sublime. Like my idyllic wood warblers high in the canopy whilst the patch of garlic mustard flowers is where all the local dogs frequent!
Thanks to a Natural England botanist friend for ID on Gynosporangium clavariiforme
Season Songs in April, somewhere high in the canopy a wood warbler is singing loudly. Like a sixpence spinning on a marble slab. I search fresh oak leaves in the tree- tops but he blends in perfectly. A brimstone butterfly flits through the glade, a small bird darts low and attempts to snatch a butterfly. There are male orange-tip butterflies but they will not settle, fluttering rapid-winged over flowers of garlic mustard and off into the bramble. I spend an hour watching male orange-tip butterflies and I ponder why they come close but do not settle.
The mis-match of what I saw and heard and what I can show is amusing-frustrating. So, orange-tip butterflies from 8 May 2017, As Bottom the weaver says in Midsummer Night's Dream
The eye of
man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen
man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive,
nor his heart to report, what my dream was.
Nick Bottom, who melds the rustic with the sublime. Like my idyllic wood warblers high in the canopy whilst the patch of garlic mustard flowers is where all the local dogs frequent!
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