Outdoorsy Shite Top Trumps: March

[Slubberdegullion]

Flora or Fauna.

Extra points for a photo.

Handicap will apply to those in Forrin. Monthly win will not automatically go to, for example, a Cougar spot. The Cougar will need to be doing something awesome, like fighting a bear or doing sudoku.

How very exciting. Where was it? We will go to the Farne Islands in May to look at all the lovely lovely puffins with beaks full of fish and get pecked by angry terns. Farne Islands in the breeding season is about the naturiest I get. It makes me feel like I am IN a David Attenborough programme. It is fantastic. So many fearless nesting seabirds, of several varieties.

Where?! If you were at a puffin rescue centre I may have to withdraw my provisional "Oh WOW!"

On the sea. In Cornwall.

Oh lovely. I've been gardening. I've seen worms.

Worms are lovely Very useful creatures. What did you plant?

I saw more wretched sparrows. All this moving to the country, and there is less bloody wildlife variety than there was in a city.

Mostly I was wrestling with monster plants that have terrorised all the delicate and lovely plants out of my flowerbeds. I dug up a tonnage of mint that had escaped its underground shackles, i.e. its sunken pot, and I untangled a gordian knot of clematis from a sobbing choked honeysuckle. I daren't actually plant anything because newbie plants get such a flaming that they just disappear.

I'm going to have a season of being the terminator and then buy some stuff.

Mint is a bastard.

Arf at Northey's wretched sparrows.

So just the one puffin, eh? And were there witnesses? Eh? Eh?

Haven't seen puffins for years - last time I did was on Handa Island. Amazing.

Today:
song of the skylarks (common enough but always a joy)

Wild garlic - well, nowt unusual about that except that it was right at the top of an exposed hill, not in its usual damp woodlands. This odd location was achieved by it being in the microclimate of a gryke.

And best yet - tonight just as the sky was that wonderful shade of dark blue, bats. Presumably pipistrelles, as that's what we get summer-roosting in our soffits. But I've just looked them up and they should be hibernating till the start of April so surely bats in Lancashire in March should get some good points?

One puffin, yes. Two witnesses. And a photo (which is sadly shit).

Cranes top puffins by a mile.

What's a gryke, Grimma?

:o

And a soffit?

I think they are something to do with fascias

I am mentally picturing some sort of eaves accoutrement.

I am lost on a gryke though.

The Soffit and Gryke could be a pub couldn't it? A nice country pub with mad old Will sitting in the corner.

Or it could be a nasty skin condition of cattle.

Shall I just google?

Here we are. You really do learn something new every day.

Oh.

But how could they cast a shadow for wild garlic to grow in? Or was it growing actually inside the gryke?

I guess they would be inside the gryke. I imagine that due to the limestone dissolving, the gap would widen and deepen over time, allowing soil to get a purchase and stuff to grow.

Grimma, tell us if we're barking up the wrong tree here, won't you?

That Grimma, taunting us with her geological vocabulary and then vanishing.

Sorry, I had mother stuff to do. It being mother's day and all y'know.

Soffits are the equivalent of eaves on modern houses, and a favourite place for pipistrelles to roost under in summer. They don't get into the loft so they're very welcome (even if they do drop batshit in the sidealley).

Grykes are (as I think you've deduced, well done) the gullies between clints (blocks of limestone) in limestone pavements. Always worth looking into a gryke as they really are microenvironments - moist and sheltered and of course ideal for lime-lovers whereas most upland soils are rather acidic.

Ah well, you're talking to two childless women here, you see.

Hope you had a good day :)

Our barrenness leaves us free to compete over exciting nature spots ALL DAY :)

How's them sparrers?

Really I need an emoticon to cover smiling, but wryly and with an undercurrent of despair, all on the face of an otherwise gung ho outdoorsy nature lover.