St Johns Swifts - watch this space!

While it is nothing to do with our wild flowers, a group of us have been watching the swifts in Hartland and endeavouring to provide new nesting sites with several 'specially designed swift boxes. A couple of years ago new boxes were put up around St John's in the Square and a nest box camera was purchased with the help of the Sustainable Development Fund via North Devon AONB. The camera was put into just one of the nest boxes and this year we appear to have some exciting activity in this box.
The video clip is not brilliant quality - the camera has slipped a little on its anchor and the outside light over-exposes the adult bird who is sitting in the box by the entrance.
But if you have waited all this while for something to happen, it is very exciting news indeed! Watch this space...

Hemlock water dropwort

Our most poisonous plant is in flower along many verges; while we might think that this is a brute of a plant and unwanted in such numbers, it supports a huge variety of nectar feeders from butterflies and bees to flies and beetles. Here is a small selection caught on camera today.

Lovely feedback!

I took a small group of carers (from 'Space4U') out yesterday and despite the wind and rain in the middle of the walk, I received this lovely feedback today. Its good to know!

"I would like to thank you officially for your wonderful guided tour.  I would happily recommend it.  The rain and wind only spoiled it a bit I think.  We got home in one piece quite shattered but all feeling very rested from our usual burdens of care.  I really think that the combination of physical and mental exercise which your tour provided combined with the beautiful and restful scenery was a real winning combination and I for one was so enthralled and engaged on so many levels that there was not much room for my daily routine to come to the fore.  So altogether, I think it was a highly successful outing for us". CY

Woodland flowers

The woods are just bursting with flowers - that lovely blue-purple haze of bluebells, the fresh green of beech leaves, twayblade orchids, shy wood sorrel and the delicate pignut.

Twayblade in bud

Wood Sorrel

Pignut flowers unfolding

If you go down to the woods today...

...you're in for a big surprise...
Suddenly everything is in flower, from the last of the wild daffodils to the first bluebells and early purple orchids. 

Today I saw violet, wood sorrel, wood anemone  celandine, stitchwort  ramsons, speedwell, hairy bitter cress, bluebells and orchids all within the space of a few feet. Some of the wetter bits are clothed in golden saxifrage and the marsh marigolds are just coming into flower too. I suspect spring will really be just that - a tight coil of flowerings which explodes and is gone within weeks. We'll have to be quick to make the most of it now.

Day-flying bat

Despite the cold temperatures, the sunshine has brought out enough insects for one Noctule bat to emerge from hibernation. We had a lovely sighting in our garden yesterday in full daylight. It made it so much easier to identify.

I wasn't quick enough for a photo, but here is one from the BBC's website + link.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Common_Noctule

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Bumblebees and wild daffodils

Today has been one of those rare days when there was nothing I absolutely had to do AND the sun was shining!

I decided to do my first beewalk of the season (a survey of bumblebees for the BBCT); this necessitates a slow walking pace with much stopping, looking and listening. Indeed listening if often most valuable - the hum of a bumblebee is unmistakable...

buff-tailed BB Queen

My listening took my eyes skywards today - the first willow catkins are out, and this is where all the bumblebees were. In some cases I counted more than 10 queens on these catkins, mostly buff tails which tend to be one of the earliest bees out.

The wild daffodils are all in full flower and the rain last year seems to have suited them; I have never seen so many lining the river on the way down to Speke's Mill Mouth.

















When you have a day off, or even the odd hour, you suddenly feel very tired...and so I lay on the grass on the meadow looking out to sea. Above a buzzard circled and below I could hear the waterfall and the waves. On the wind the sweet smell of gorse. And not a soul in site. Perfectly lovely!

Some uplifting sights on January 5th

A short walk along the lanes and woodlands in the dry (!) today, revealed:

Snowdrops along the river,

In the damp woods, new fronds of the hard shield fern,

and leaves of wild garlic.

Fructose 'beard' lichen blown off trees

and the tree lungwort in fruit.

Opposite-leaved golden saxifrage just in bud covering the soaking woodland floor.

 Along the field edge, straggly red campion, lending sudden colour,

 

and the ubiquitous hogweed...

Delightful harbingers of spring along the hedges; the barren strawberry

  the lesser celandine or pilewort

and, of course, the primrose