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.

Following on from AIBUquatada, a PERFECT sunny spring weekend and just now more stars in the sky than I could fit in a bucket.

AND I didn't lure them there with bacon . Night all, happy spring spotting to you everyone.

Loads of ladybirds on our outdoor cyclamen today. Has anyone else noticed the number of dead ladybirds on the paths/roads?

Not even seen a lamb here yet. The bluebell leaves are up but no sign of flowers yet. I always thought bluebells flowered in May.

Fabulous warm weekend - horses out without their rugs, even on top of the Pennines.

Saw my solitary lapwing again two pied wagtails this morning.

Yesterday when DH and I were sat in the garden in the sunshine, we heard the crows/rooks making a real clamour. I looked up into the perfect blue sky and there were about 200 of them, wheeling and diving high above us, cawing and shrieking. We thought they were on a thermal or among a swarm of insects, but then I spotted a hawk of some sort flying among them. Whether it was just passing and the rooks decided to bully it, or if it was indeed trying to catch one I don't know, but the display was fabulous and went on for about 10 minutes.

We don't have any sheep round here. Having grown up in Wales I really miss them - I realise the raised eyebrows that could cause.

I used to hear their little baaas in the field behind the house when I slept with my window open And the thought of that late snowstorm on Exmoor at Easter in 2000 which killed 600 lambs still fills my eyes with tears :(.

Bluebells do flower in May. Proper British ones that is.

Can't believe you've no lambs yet - though I suppose if I had to pick one word to describe Saddleworth moor it would be 'bleak'. The corvid display sounds spectacular!

My spots today dogwalking- heron flying up from the towpath, the flip of a fish tail, lots of tortoiseshell and one peacock butterfly and forget-me-nots (odd, not flowering in my garden yet).

I too saw a jumping fish today for the first time this season! I thought of posting it here but then I felt uncertain about whether it counted as a seasonal spot. It does, though, doesn't it? They jump when the weather is warm? Is it to get more oxygen into the water? Or is that some bizarre guess that someone presented to me as fact?

Tra la laaaa Spring spring SPRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING

[not a spot]

Qatada they do it because they are full of JOY. SPring joy. fish Joy.

For Ariel some Welsh sheep and lambs about half an hour ago

Saw a pair of White Egrets today by the river, lovely.

aw lovely losty mint sauce mint sauce mint sauce

Thank you LIW

I remember the first time I saw a Little White Egret was in the US in about 1989. I thought they were most exotic. That's just about when they started colonising the UK as it happens - now we see them quite frequently on the Lancashire coast. Once (not this month!) we saw a Great White egret too.

I think my fish jumping was sort of seasonal - dog was hot, dog stuck nose into canal, fish jumped out of his way

So hot today went without my bobble hat. One of the pet lambs over heated, I thought She'd had it but an afternoon zonked out in the shade improved things and She was much better for her last feed.
There were a few bats about as well, we had a bat survey man round last week and he said it was too early and they would come back in a few months, lots more buzzy news and the first swarm of midges as well.

Ooh bats - not seen our bats yet - but that is normally a high summer event for us.

Some might say Saddleworth Moors are bleak.

Others might say atmospheric.

Just saying.

Still no lambs. Just a dead fox .

And a pheasant, hurring across the field, when he spotted mad spaniel. The spaniel failed to spot him [stupid] so he needn't have bothered.

Ooh - badger in my garden, every evening for the last few nights at about 10.30 eating all the bread and dried fruit we put out for him?

English bluebells! A few strands in a bank of what I think are wood anemones.

I love violetwellies' "So hot today went without my bobble hat." The phrase keeps popping up in my mind and it sounds so quintessentially Britain that it really should form part of the Olympics opening ceremony.

It could be: violetwellies in bobble hat and shorts, her legs all red and chilly; then hordes of synchronised London schoolchildren in the shape of clouds parting to reveal a vast circle of children wearing pallid yellow to represent the sun. Violetwellies would wipe her brow and snatch of her bobble hat theatrically; and children representing all sorts of Slightly Impressive Wildlife could creep out to be Top Nature Spots. MNHQ can liaise with the Olympics Committee to chose the best wildlife based on our spots in this thread.

With cows, to symbolise the killer instincts of athletes.

Think how baffled we would make the other nations.

Oh yes. In fact I have thought of a new event - how fast can you run while being chased by bullocks. First one to gate-vault the fence gets the gold.

First of those enormous bees that don't have stripes but do have orangey red bottoms. Dog of low IQ was thinking about eating it.

The English Pentathlon, we can call it. Bullock-fleeing; speed dash to shelter at the starting signal of a thunderclap; rucksack lifting; umm....

Welly removal

Good thinking. A game of skill, that one.

Jump from standing start over sequence of cow pats arrange as olympic rings

Making daisy- chains

I am quite brimming with happy feelings at the imagined Olympic ceremony and violetwellies and the bobble hat thematic section.

We'll be lucky if we even get a sniff of anything a bit country. It'll be all yoof in daygo Lycra giving it all that with drumnbass and strobe lighting