Missed It!

I was layed up for all of Saturday, and most of Sunday, with a migraine, so I missed out on all the beautiful weather and the photographic opportunities, but I did manage a few shots yesterday evening when my migraine had nearly cleared: a European Goldfinch above and a Greenfinch below.  Both taken in early evening sunshine.

I shall sneak in one of my own ducks enjoying the evening sunshine while floating on the pond:

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.  I will catch up with everyone's blogs when my eyes are a little less delicate.

Just Glorious!

What started out yesterday as thick mist, quickly turned to thin mist, and then burnt off completely, leaving us with a beautiful sunny day.  We did have very light hazy cloud for part of the day, but that just made it less hot and didn't detract at all from a relaxing and enjoyable slumber in the garden.   Bees buzzed, and the occasional butterfly flitted past.  Swallows babbled from the telegraph wire, and then swept low over me, and on into my garage where they have decided to make use of a nest that they have ignored for over ten years. Ants, both black and orange, accompanied me on the blanket, along with numerous spiders and the odd fly.  It was wonderful to feel the sun on my back.

If you are going out for a walk this weekend, keep a look out for the larvae of the Bloody-nosed Beetle.  They can be seen munching away on plants at this time of year.  Such delightful looking creatures that make me think of soft liquorice sweeties.

They get their name from the adults habit of exuding a red fluid from the nose when picked up.  I am told that it tastes disgusting, but I am not about to try it to find out for myself!

Have a good weekend everyone!

Noises Of Nature

Yellow Rattle, the beautiful wildflower,  is now in bloom.  This delightful little plant is a semi-parasitic grassland annual.  It looks beautiful along the verges, but wouldn't be a flower that would be welcomed on farm land due to its ability to drastically reduce a grass crop, being said to reduce a hay yield by up to 50 percent.  It is to be welcomed though where wildflower diversity is sought, as it opens up the sward and leaves gaps for new seeds when it dies back at the end of the season.

The individual flowers always make me think of a screaming parrot, and when the plant is looked at from a distance, it does have the look of individual birds stuffed into sacks with just their heads peaking out, perhaps  giving them something to scream about!

It derives its name from the noise made by the seed heads when ripened: the green 'bladder' behind the flower becomes paper like, and the seeds rattle around inside.  This tends to happen around the middle of July onwards.  When this plant used to be common on farm land it also had the name of Hay Rattle, as it gave warning to a farmer that the hay was ready to cut. Sadly, gone are the days of wild flower hay, and now we see mainly monocultures of ryegrass.  Though these monocultures might give better yields, they are disastrous for wildlife, and also are not good for the health of stock, as the mixed herbs were beneficial to the health of the animals that grazed them.   We hear so much now about TB in cattle, and have in the not too distant past had the terrible tragedy of Foot and Mouth, a tragedy of the governments making.  For over a hundred years now farmers have been campaigning for better understanding of disease in farm animals, and some of those farmers showed just what could be achieved solely with good diet and herbs.  If you are interested in getting a better understanding of these subjects, then it is well worth reading the books by F Newman Turner, Albert Howard and Robert Elliot.  The following website has Elliot's and Howard's books available as a free download: http://www.soilandhealth.org  Turner's books have now gone back into print, so are no longer available there, but his work carried on from Elliot's and he dedicated his time to curing cattle that would otherwise have only been fit for slaughter, including TB cattle.

A view from my bedroom window this morning.

The mist gets thicker!!  But all is not lost because I just heard a Cuckoo: wonderful!!!  I had given up hope of them arriving here this year.

And glancing through the window again, the sun is trying to show his face.

The sun has got his hat on! Hip, hip, hip hooray!  The sun has got his hat on and he's coming out to play!  I had better go and find the sun tan lotion! :-) 

Cuckoo!  Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

Damp, Dank And Dark!

Well, that was yesterdays weather anyway: a day of low misty cloud that blocked out the view of the surrounding fields; the sort of weather that makes you feel you should be in bed rather than up and outside working.  It stayed that way all day, and by six o'clock the goats were queuing up to come in from the field. This is a view from my bedroom window, looking towards the east.  As you can see there isn't much to see other than mist.

This sort of weather always makes me want to watch Hound Of The Baskervilles with Basil Rathbone: one of my favourite films.  It is the sort of weather for traipsing across Exmoor on mysterious and dangerous escapades. 

Today the mist is so thick that I can barely see the hedgerow.  The heatwave is supposed to arrive tomorrow, but seeing is believing: I have been let down by the Met Office far too often in the past to trust them! :-)

The day before yesterday, while we had a little sunshine, I photographed the eggs of the Dock Beetle: Gastrophysa Viridula.  They are easily spotted on the undersides of Dock leaves.  No wonder the female was so bloated with eggs this size.

   The adults were still busying themselves mating. 

This is a beetle that they are using as a natural control of Dock on farm land: farmers are being encouraged to breed their own supplies and then release them where needed. If you are new to my blog there are more images and info on this beetle here: http://myworldinphotosandwords.blogspot.com/2010/05/good-year-for-insects.html

P.S. Many thanks for everyones visits and comments; they are much appreciated, as I get great pleasure out of photographing the world around me, and it is nice to know that others enjoy the photos. :-)

Ramsons

When I moved to this property there were no Ramsons growing on the land, so I set about locating some and planting it up.  Everyone thought that I was mad: they all said that I would be overrun with the stuff, as it supposedly spreads quickly wherever it is planted.   I wanted it not just for its beauty, but also for its medicinal purposes, so it was a risk that I was willing to take.  I planted up four patches of it, and then I waited hopefully for it to spread sufficiently for me to harvest regular supplies.  Ten years later the clumps have only doubled in size, and as they were tiny clumps I still don't have enough to harvest.  My land is obviously not to its liking, despite the fact that I catered to its needs with the planting situation.  At least though I do have some to photograph, though sadly their blooms never last long. 

P.S. We are now back to winter: thick low cloud, strong winds and chucking it down. I knew it was too good to last! What would the British do without the weather to complain about?!  LOL

Another Beautiful Day!

I am beginning to worry: we have had mainly dry weather for over a month now, and for the past three days the weather has been just glorious.  In previous years when this has happened, it has then rained continuously all summer.  Please Gods, do not let that happen again this year!  I just couldn't stand another cold, wet, miserable summer; a summer where the woodburning stove is burning as much as in the winter, either that or we sit and shiver.

Oh well, while the sun is shining I am making the most of it, as are the insects.  

I have seen quite a few Ladybirds this past few days.

This delightful hoverfly: Leucozona Lucorum seems to have had a good year, with plenty of them about on the Cow Parsley.  It isn't one that I have spotted before, and being so distinctive, and quite large, I am sure that I would have done if they had been as plentiful on previous years.

This warm weather has made all the difference to the Bluebells attractiveness to bees: they are being worked continuously by the Bumblebees and the Honey Bees.  I wonder whether this is one of my bees?

On a depressing note, my Buzzard has been scared off by a bird-scarer that has been put in the field of barley next door: every so often it lets off a bang that sounds like a bomb going off.  Understandably the Buzzard has decided that this is no place to be.  I had actually been thinking that Mr Buzzard was in fact a Mrs, due to the fact that it now comes at irregular times and not every day, eating quickly and then disappearing rather than sitting around for a while.   I wondered whether it might be sitting on eggs.   A few years back a Buzzard reared young in a tree not far from me, and once the youngsters could fly they came daily to my bottom field.  I manage the land organically and it teems with voles, shrews and insects: an ideal nursery.  I had hoped that once again this year the youngsters would be brought here, but that won't happen if they are continually scared off.

A Good Year For Insects

This year seems to be going well for insects, which makes a pleasant change, as the last three have, in general, been terrible, with very few insects to be seen.  The only exception were butterflies last year that had a fantastic breeding season: I had never seen so many in this area and was spoilt for choice when it came to photographing them.  

The photo above is of Gastrophysa Viridula a leaf-beetle.  I came across a group of them that were mating on a patch of Dock. The female becomes grossly enlarged with eggs.  Below is a top view of one: handsome creatures.