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.

Egg number two in this morning.

Obviously the next boxes I ordered weeks ago have also arrived.....🙄

Nest boxes even!!

I mean I've put them up but it's a bit late now 🤣

Our white cherry in full bloom. The flowers didn't survive a frost and wind and rain last year, so we are cherishing it this year.

Footprints in the field behind our house. Deer and fox (we think)

we are in a big city, but near a park with woodland. our bird spotting this week has included: chaffinches, goldfinches, blue tits, great tits, thrushes, mapgies, robins canada geese, blackbirds, mallards, and a heron.

We've seen butterflies the last couple of days but moving too fast for me to tell which - reddy-brown so maybe peacock/tortoiseshell/admiral?

And the blossom is just starting.

What a joy this evening has been.

Pheasants, skylarks, a buzzard on a fence post. Felt so very glad to be alive.

I saw groups of goldfinches on my walk this morning

They're called "charms", AnneKipanki

A charm of goldfinches.

Isn't that just the most delightful collective noun?

Three robins eggs in the nest.

I hope they make it....

That made me curious to see if there is a collective noun for bumbarrels (ie long tailed tits) - apparently it's a zephyr

thewritepage.uk/12th-september-2017-zephyrs-herds-casts-parliaments/

Wow ! Some lovely names for groups of things.

First bluebells.

I didn't know "zephyr" Errol - many thanks.

A zephyr of bumbarrels - certainly has a ring to it. ]grin]

GuyFawkes

You have a huge responsibility to ensure that plenty of soil is dug up now so the parents can get worms and insects. No good deed goes unpunished . . .

A zephyr of bumbarrels - certainly has a ring to it

I wonder if we can manage to smuggle that into other threads?

What?

Sort of "My SIL and her kids arrived unannounced like a zephyr of bumbarrels and ate all my biscuits"?

or

"My mates are always urging me to eat loads of cake. I think it's because I'm a svelte size 6, and they - well, they're hardly a zephyr of bumbarrels . . . "

Or

"I'm fed up with my NDN - she thinks her precious kids are a zephyr of bumbarrels, whereas they are closer to an intrusion of cockroaches. . . "

We keep reptiles. These robins have fresh lo e mealworms daily!

You'll have them spoilt!

(I might be over to borrow a cup of mealworms myself if I can't get a shopping delivery . . . )

Ah, mealworms are plentiful online. Apparently they're edible but....no, thanks!!!

Can't have the poor geckos and robins going hungry though. They love 'em, as do the blackbirds.

We had a bat flying round our garden yesterday evening about this time, I'm keeping an eye out in case it comes back again tonight.

The cow parsley and hawthorn in the field behind my house is right on the verge of the buds bursting into flower, I reckon another day or two.

Dried mealworms give me the shivers - ugh!

Dried mealworms don't seem quite as dead as they ought to be when you tip them out.

Haha ours are alive and very wriggly! Many reptiles only take live food. Ours included

We had a bat flying round our garden yesterday evening about this time, I'm keeping an eye out in case it comes back again tonight.

Many years ago, when we got bats round here (haven't seen any for years), DS used to fire live mealworms into the air with a catapult . . .

Thank you for sharing all your nature sightings. It's lovely to read how the natural world remains unchanged, while we humans are in such flux.

Reading this thread has reminded me to dust off my remote night camera to see what wildlife we have around the place. Last year we realised we had a regular hedgehog visiting, resulting in my Christmas/birthday presents being a hedgehog feeding station and a predator proof hedgehog house. The former has certainly been in use by slugs (yuk) and mice I think.

Gardening today - my blue (& White) bells are just coming out, and I saw an orange tip butterfly.

4 eggs in the best today.

Must order more mealworms in a few weeks, hungry mouths to feed!