Nature Notes

[ErrolTheDragon]

There's a gardening thread which may overlap with this one but I thought people might like to share nature sightings as the season changes. What we see if we can get out for a walk, plants coming into leaf and bloom, creatures in the garden, birds flying overhead - whatever.

Yesterday along the canal: busy wrens, 3 butterflies (tortoiseshell I think). Lots of Lords and Ladies arrow-shaped leaves. A little bank of primroses, lots of celandines and some wood anemones. Yellow iris leaves starting to shoot up in the edge of the canal.

Can anyone help me identify this please?

Have you got a better picture @thirstquenching? Its a bit blurry. Could be an orb spider but I'm not sure

Sorry about the quality here is another one. Found in a pond along side newts and leeches

Sorry, freshwater invertebrates are not my strong point.

No worries was just curious

A walk of two halves today, first battling the wind around Haytor on Dartmoor where one brave skylark was trying to fly and we saw lots of wild goals. Then we dropped down into Yarner wood and saw thousands of these ants eastdartmoorwoods.org/2021/03/12/wood-ants-the-world-beneath-your-feet/

All the hides were closed though which was a shame.

Argh autocorrect. Wild goals should say wild foals

I’m impressed you managed to get out on Monday @blackteaplease. It was absolutely awful weather here and has been every day since!

I managed a very quick walk yesterday and saw a huge group of herons, all gathered on the sheltered side of a small island in the sea. I know they’re quite sociable birds when nesting, but have never seen them gathered together like that outside of their heronries. May be they were feeling the cold too!

It was heavy showers with sun in between and were were lucky to go out in a dry patch. I did also have a garden playdate stopped by hail on Saturday!

I've never seen more than one heron at a time, I always assumed they were solitary birds.

I spotted the first flowering hawthorn of the season (or at least that’s what I think it is. Feel free to correct me!)

Is your thing the tadpole stage of a newt, thirstquenching ?

Wood and water avens are coming out now in the woods by the river. There's usually some hybrids of the two as well.

Yeah could be 🤔

Those leaves look hawthorny @Crazzzycat but I can't tell if it's common or Midland from the photo.

I've moved my desk in my bedroom and have a view over the fields now. I've been watching the swallows forage over the field and today saw a roe deer passing by.

There's my 'learn something new every day' - I'd never realised there was more than one type of hawthorn.

There’s two different types of hawthorn?! I checked the Woodland Trust website, and apparently midland hawthorn is very uncommon in Wales. So my guess would be that it’s the common type, but I guess you never know! 🤔

I think you may have just explained why my DH, born and raised in the Midlands, has for years insisted that there’s something “not quite right” about the hawthorn blossom here. It’s quite possibly a different type than the one he would have seen when he was growing up. Mystery solved!

Sounds like moving your desk was a great move @blackteaplease. Always good to have something nice to look at. My desk has a view of the bird feeders. Lovely, but also very distracting

Years ago I did a masters in vegetation survey and assessment and that snippet stuck in my brain. My botanical skills are not so hot nowadays due to lack of practice.

@Crazzzycat the woodland trust have a really good tree app. You can search by name or by feature and it has details on bark, leaves, fruit and overall info.

Also as an aside, if you see any rarities when out and about consider sharing the information with your local records centre to widen ecological data and knowledge.

I had an app on my old phone where you just took a picture of a flower, leaf or bark and it would identify it. Pretty accurate aswell. It was called Plantnet plant identification

If I need to ID a plant, I'd rather trust the MN Gardening thread - there are a few people there who demonstrate that human intelligence and observation can still beat AI

Today along the canal I saw 4 Reed warblers and heard quite a lot more. Two pairs of swans, and lots of ducklings. Also there were a couple of lapwings an an oystercatcher flying over again.

There are a family of Canada geese with 5 goslings on the canal now, in addition to the numerous ducklings - one set of 11.

Got out for a lovely 40min walk during walk today. There was loads of birds and thats all I could hear. Seen a couple of squirrels aswell. The sun was just out and was heating up the grass so there was that lovely damp earth smell in the air. A treat for all the senses today

We slightly misjudged our walk and got soaked legs - fortunately we both had sufficient Goretex on our upper halves. But later in the afternoon the rain was really torrential, with thunder and hail too.

You are a fount of knowledge @blackteaplease! I will check out those apps, although I think the chances of me finding any unusual plants are still quite slim.

I’m doing better on the unusual birds. I’m a volunteer recorder for the BTO, so the unusual bird sightings I stumble across on my walks at least go somewhere!

Right, back to the nature observations...
I’m seeing a lot of whimbrels at the moment. According to the RSPB only about 500 pairs breed in the U.K., so my guess is that these birds are on their way to the Shetlands, Faroes and further north. It’s great to see that there are so many around at the moment.

Meanwhile the skies here are starting to get fuller and fuller with swift’s, swallows, house and sand martins. I’ve also seen the first bats in my garden. We just need the weather to warm up a bit now!

We've had a couple of red legged partridges in our garden a few days ago, and yesterday I saw some on the towpath. Today, no sighting but one was chuntering away behind a hedge.

But the best new arrivals were 4 fluffball cygnets on their nest, with one parent in attendance and the other assiduously on guard.

I spend far too much time at my desk but at least I can spot nature whilst working. Not much to report today due to the rain, just a few sparrows and wren.

My pink clematis and white clematis are both full of buds. I trained the two of them to grow together last year so this will be the first time they have flowered together ❤