Nature Notes: the 2022 edition

[ErrolTheDragon]

Happy New Year to all nature lovers!
The
Please join us to add your observations throughout the year. Urban or rural, there's always something going on throughout the year, even if it's a bit quiet right now.

IME the best 'plant identification app' is the MN gardening board. There are a few posters who are very knowledgeable, able to look at the shapes of stems and arrangement of leaves to rule possibilities in or out.

B&M have a great selection of outdoor bird food just now. Good value aswell

Lots of butterflies in the last couple of days - brimstones yesterday, some tortoiseshells, a peacock and a comma. I heard my first chiffchaff of the year today, and spotted some wood anemones a couple of days ago. Lots of violets now, including a clump of white ones. Also coltsfoot in a few places - I'm a bit baffled I can't ever remember seeing it before.

Nice haul @Thirstquenching! I bet your birdies will be pleased.

I find these local variations in when things start appearing fascinating @ErrolTheDragon. I heard my first chiffchaff two weeks ago, but the butterfly count so far this year is zero.

I don’t know if anyone picked this up in the news, but there was a massive fire in one of my favourite nature reserves at the weekend (Parkgate on the Wirral). I visited it only last week and watched owls and marsh harriers hunt across the marshes. I can’t quite believe that so much of that has now been destroyed by some careless teenagers 😔

The red kite I saw last week was back again this afternoon. It flew even closer to my house today than it did last week. My goodness, they are BIG birds!

My garden is also getting daily visits of a sparrow hawk at the moment. As far as I can tell, he’s not had much luck hunting in my garden, but that doesn’t stop him from trying. I’m always struck by how quiet it is, right after he’s been. All the little birds stop singing for a good quarter of an hour and even the jackdaws stop making a racket. It’s all a little bit eerie 😬

I was gallivanting around the bogs of Kildare yesterday on my bike from sun up until after night fall. I saw brimstone butterflies in the bogs and when dusk fell there were bats hunting above my head along the lanes. Spring is definitely here. I was in the west of Ireland ten days ago and everything still looked very wintry.

My granddaughter and I heard and then saw two bald eagles sitting on top of a highrise apartment building. It was their call that I recognized and caused us to look. They were sitting there, regal as could be, one on either side of a cell phone tower thing. Then they started flying rather majestically around above us. There was another raptor as well, perhaps a hawk or osprey. It did not have the white head.

Quite an amazing sight. Granddaughter was worried about our little dog,

I suspect the eagles are starting to nest nearby. We have an urban forest behind our building and are near the ocean.

We are hearing about a lot of urban coyote activity. I heard a report (multiple hearsay) that a group of coyotes are pretending to invite larger dogs to play and then attacking them when they come near.

I am a bit nervous taking our dog out at night as they have snatched little dogs even on leash.

Today's walk was local lanes we've not used much since they saved our sanity in the strict lockdowns 2 years ago. Animal life included red deer (farmed but still beautiful creatures), a peacock which honked like a goose , and some proper wildlife - a running hare.

DH walked right by a Northern Flicker that was sitting on the trail this morning. They are quite big and tap on trees like

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_flicker

A big spotty woodpecker?!

Yup, big snd spotty!☺️

And for Pete's sake.

The dog and I spotted lots of American robins, a junco, a a tree full of twittering bushtits this morning.

I was out in the garden at work and it was full of insect life. Butterflies, bees, ladybirds and a shield bug. Was so nice to get some sun ☀️

I saw a young hare in the lane by my house this week too @ErrolTheDragon.

Now the sun has reached my frosty devon valley the pond skaters have returned, I've also seen lots of fluffy bumblebees. The verges have moved from snowdrops to daffodils and primroses, and hedges are starting to come into leaf. No signs of any reptiles yet though.

I'm down visiting my daughter - lots of walking in the town and the riverside meadows. Honesty and cowslips adding to the spring flowers, lots of swans, some herons and roosting cormorants. More unexpectedly, a yellow wagtail and a water vole in a sidewater right next to where we were walking - we got a good look before it did a neat dive and disappeared

Wow, spotting a water vole is very cool

Yes, DD spotted it, and was surprised - she'd not realised water voles were so much larger than field voles (we sometimes have those furries at the bottom of our garden). But fortunately it was so close that we could be 100% sure what it was, definitely not a rat.

The skylarks are back on the Dublin Mountains

A splash of bright red moving in my back border betrayed the presence of a fine cock pheasant nearly but not quite hidden in the undergrowth. He's just come out onto the lawn, but not close enough for a photo. He's standing rather gormlessly now.

I've seen a few pheasants this week and today a blubell in the verge on the school run.

The cherry trees around Vancouver are literally bursting into bloom.

I’ve been watching the jackdaws stripping the fluffy seeds off the big cardoon plant I have in the garden. I think they use them to line their nests, based on the fact that they cram as many as they can into their beaks before flying off. It’s popular with the sparrows too.

A neighbour's white cherry is in full bloom; the pink ones in the area are budding up but not out yet. The change from unseasonal warmth back to quite wintry weather may halt them awhile, I would think. Which is good for prolonging the hanami season. (I don't party under my neighbours' trees, just enjoy a bit of quiet contemplation)

Our plum tree has flowered as have a few in the local area and they are lovely. Woken up to -5 this morning so I'm not sure when our flowering cherry will bloom.

Yesterday a heron passed over the garden on the way back from the nearby stream and decided to perch at the top of our oak tree. I don't think I've ever seen a heron in a tree before.

Turns out herons nest in trees, who knew?

www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/birds/herons-egrets-spoonbill-and-crane/grey-heron#:~:text=Herons%20nest%20in%20colonies%20called,about%20one%20and%20half%20months.