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The great outdoors

Here you can find advice on camping, outdoor activities and walking in the UK and abroad.

Original poster

Nature Notes

817 replies

ErrolTheDragon · 25/03/2020 07:55

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.

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AnneKipanki · 16/04/2020 18:27

Some sort of Cherry, I think .

WombleOfThigh · 16/04/2020 20:25

The green one is willow, I think, when the 'pussy willow' has developed further. I understand willows have separate male and female flowers, too.

GuyFawkesDay · 16/04/2020 21:00

Stitchwort here too, in the wooded areas.

Nature Notes
GuyFawkesDay · 16/04/2020 21:01

Stitchwort is gorgeous here too

Nature Notes
GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman · 16/04/2020 21:04

One is deffo a fruit tree of some sort. It's the other that is puzzling me. It's in a fairly dry location, not where I'd expect to find a willow but I'll go and look, Womble.

GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman · 16/04/2020 21:07

Ash, possibly a goat willow. Not a variety I've come across before. It wasn't in the best of health.

AnneKipanki · 17/04/2020 14:07

Plum ?

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ErrolTheDragon · 17/04/2020 15:02

Lots more cuckoo flower out today. Garlic mustard is in flower, and cow parsley just starting - that seems early, given that although we have lots of blackthorn in blossom, the hawthorns are in leaf but not flower here.

Saw a heron overhead and the lapwing again. Also, in a tiny patch of oak wood, some bluebells and a hare!Grin

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GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman · 17/04/2020 15:11

Anne, it was an ID of the leafy pic that I was after. I agree that the blossom is some sort of wild fruit tree - iirc from previous years, it's a cherry.

Lovely long walk today. DD and tasted the miners lettuce (from well off the path) and pronounced it good. The oaks are mostly well into leaf round here and I saw a patch of hawthorn just in flower.

SchadenfreudePersonified · 17/04/2020 19:17

DD saw a tiny herd of three roe deer when she took her enormous dog out today. Two sprang away quite quickly, but the third just stopped and scratched its ear and they watched each other for a few moment before it sauntered off.

Nature Notes
SchadenfreudePersonified · 17/04/2020 19:17

(I think it's a roe - it is isn't it?)

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ErrolTheDragon · 17/04/2020 19:31

Yes, it looks like a roe - so pretty.
The farmed red deer stags we're passing on our 'new normal' walk are developing nice velvety knobbles - it will be interesting to see how fast they grow.

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beela · 18/04/2020 08:39

What a wonderful thread Smile

I have learnt that there is a rather beautiful pair of pheasants living in a field that we have been walking past regularly.

I love the fact that we are going on the same walks more regularly and so notice new things that we wouldn't if we just walked there once a month. The creatures that are almost always there, or the changes day by day in the plants. I have also loved getting more familiar with the comings and goings in our back garden, as I am sitting at the kitchen table trying to wfh.

GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman · 18/04/2020 09:08

Definitely a roe. We get roe, muntjac and fallow round here, and apparently Chinese water deer are on their way.

I saw masses of birds this morning - heron, egret, pheasant, shelduck, mallard, blue tits, green woodpecker as well as all the usual suspects like woodies and crows. I think I also saw a cuckoo in flight - longer wings and tail than a woodie and a different type of flight. I certainly heard one.

Photos of lichen and cowslips.

Nature Notes
Nature Notes
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ErrolTheDragon · 18/04/2020 15:42

We realised there was a way to access a local small river path which would fit the 'Driving to countryside and walking (where far more time is spent walking than driving).' Criterion for reasonableness. And even fewer people than walking through the village , mainly because no bikes. (I don't mind bikes, but the road through the village is a cycle route)

At one point the side of the little valley is absolutely covered with bluebells, I'll have to take a photo next time we go there. They seem particularly intense blue this year. Lots of wild garlic starting to flower, butterburr emerging, yellow deadnettle.

At one bend in the stream there was a grey and a pied wagtail, and lots of swallows swooping over.

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ErrolTheDragon · 19/04/2020 12:49

We left early and went to the same place again and walked further. There were some wonderful patches of marsh marigolds, and as we got closer towards the moors we heard the bubbling call of curlews. Bracken is starting to unfurl its fronds.

I forgot to take any photos - I've a bad habit of stowing my phone in my pack and forgetting about it.

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AnneKipanki · 20/04/2020 19:56

Keep it in your pocket @ErrolTheDragon. I found the rabbit again. Photo would not download just now .

GuyFawkesDay · 20/04/2020 20:09

All of a sudden lots of baby rabbits here!!! They were all over the place this morning vwhen I was out running!

SchadenfreudePersonified · 21/04/2020 14:53

Same here, GuyFawkes - the cats are bring the poor little bugger back by the bucketload!

chorusline79 · 21/04/2020 15:07

On our walk with the kids yesterday we saw 2 swans on the river, a heron and a slow worm. We also heard woodpeckers in the trees. Kids were excited about the slow worm, as it's the first time we had seen one.

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ErrolTheDragon · 21/04/2020 16:48

It's great when kids experience these things for the first time, isn't it. I remember DD being alarmed by her first slow worm, till she saw it put out a non-forked little tongue.

I heard a curlew on my local village/field walk today, which I wasn't expecting.

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WombleOfThigh · 21/04/2020 17:13

The hawthorn is in bud up here in the NE.

Nature Notes
GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman · 21/04/2020 20:59

I went for an evening walk. Saw a hare, a buzzard, sundry pheasants and partridges, and lots of rabbits. And a rabbit which looked as if the buzzard had had it for lunch: very mangled.

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ErrolTheDragon · 22/04/2020 14:30

Our walk today included a bit of the towpath - saw a swan nesting, no sign of her mate which is unusual.

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Artinsurance · 22/04/2020 20:58

We've seen the foxes run through our garden 3 times during daylight today. Normally we don't see them till after dark.

We also saw a jay in next door's garden. They don't appear in the garden very often at all but it picked a dock leaf and flew off with it so hopefully they are nesting nearby.