An autumn distraction

Tags

bindweed, bryony, Candide app, CNN, convolvulus, Covid, Covid-19, cow parsnip, crabapple, Dog rose, field maple, Glastonbury Tor, hedge woudwort, Hogweed, hornbeam, jackdaw, longtailed tit, magpie, Millfield Prep, Priority postbox, sheep, Somerset Wildlife Trust, Teasel, US presidential election

It was Stressful Wednesday, and I had been obsessing with the rolling news half the night (less than four hours’ sleep) and all day until lunchtime. It was gorgeous outside, and I hadn’t done my little there-and-back walk from my house for a very long time. I wondered if it was possible to distract myself for an hour or so.

It was. I can honestly say that I did not give the US presidential election a single thought all the time I was out.

Down to the end of my road,

through a small passageway to my left, up the lane to the main road where the prep school is situated, and back again. Views and details.

There were children, parents and a dog in the playground, to the left of this view.

Dog rose hips in among the ?privet.

Hogweed aka cow parsnip

I spent a few minutes trying to capture hedge reflections in the puddles at the side of the road. This is the only vaguely successful image.

So I raised my eyes to the lane ahead, and thought that they’d soon be flailing the hedges.

In theory there is a right of way up to Glastonbury Tor from this stile, but I’ve never seen anyone take it.

I’m always intrigued by this old tree. Has someone just put an old crate in its hollow trunk for stability, or has it some more interesting purpose? Sadly two other, much younger, trees have succumbed to the recent winds. And there is an apple trapped in the wire netting round the nearest tree!

Mixed feelings about convolvulus/bindweed, but here it’s pretty

Jackdaw in crabapple

Hooray. When last I passed by here, this right of way was completely overgrown and impassable. To be taken another time.

To my untutored eye none of the ash trees on this walk has yet been affected by ash die-back, but it’s a very serious threat in Somerset. The Somerset Wildlife Trust has asked people not even to visit four of its reserves in the east of the county, and at its online AGM this morning the CEO said that she thought that 90% of its woodland would be affected within 10 years.

Field maple supporting bryony fruit

Yup, ‘they’ have started trimming the hedges.

Still, it does mean that views like this are revealed.

An unprepossessing gate, softened by teasel.

Magpie in ash tree

I zoomed in to look at the top of the Tor. Quite a lot of people (and there were more on its sides).

Will the ponies be in the field?

No.

I tried to catch a long-tailed tit on these twigs, but it flew off. But I thought I would include the picture as a sort of abstract – and found that, top left, I had indeed captured the long tail and a wing.

Good to see cars in the staff car park of the school,

and even better to hear the cries of small children playing, not, as they were in the spring and early summer, absent during this lockdown.

Will the Open Event happen?

Victorian postbox in the wall of the school at the junction with the main road. I wondered what a Priority postbox was, and found once I was home that it’s related to Covid testing – more info here.

Time to turn round.

The signs are presumably channelling parents as part of Covid-safe measures.

From now on, I was facing the low autumn sun.

Glastonbury Tor not zoomed. There are little human dots up there.

The sun highlights a flooded field – I am surprised there are not more, given the rainfall we have had recently – and some telephone wires.

I was intrigued by this very new fencing on either side of this track, which on first glance appeared to be creating two paths. A closer look made me realise that in fact it was protecting new hedging. I waited for the sheep to be ushered into the right-hand field, and for the ‘shepherd’ to come back to his van, to my left. From him I learned that in fact this was his project. Living in town, he owned nine acres, and was putting native hedging around the three fields, for the benefit of wildlife. 600 metres so far. Brilliant!

I stood and listened to these sheep tearing at the grass – quite soporific.

According to my Candide app, this is Hedge woundwort.

Common dogwood

It’s only 3pm, but shadows are long at this time of year.

For some reason, a toffee apple came to my mind as I looked at this tree.

I’m back at the bottom of my road again.

And the hornbeam in my own garden’s not bad!

I started this post early on Saturday afternoon. I broke off about three pictures ago to watch CNN, and caught the moment the result was announced. Stressful Wednesday was worth it!

Wildlife in the garden, part 2

Tags

comfrey, comma butterfly, gatekeeper butterfly, hornbeam, hornet mimc hoverfly, Orange hawkbit, scabious, verbena bonariensis

More August photos. When I let ‘the meadow’ grow, it was interesting to see the flowers that the grasses produced.  Here are just two of them:

Here’s a spider nursery in the long grass:

Bumble bee on Verbena bonariensis, spreading the pollen.

Wood pigeon taken from, rather than in, my garden, though I suspect there was a nest in my hornbeam as I once found a broken egg underneath it. (Bella, cat, licked it up later.)

Mallow

Comma butterfly on v.b. You can just make out the little symbol for which it is named on its back wing.

Small tortoiseshell on v.b. The whole plant is not the most attractive, being very spindly, but the insects love it and the small flowers are very pretty.

Gatekeeper on …? I planted it but I can’t remember what it is. Possibly Burning bush, Dictamnus albus.

My lavender is right at my feet where I sit for coffee on nice days. I took many tens of photos of insects on it this summer.

Gatekeeper and friends on eryngium

My neighbour Sue gave me this Orange hawkbit to plant in my meadow. It flourished and I hope it will have offspring next year. Being of the dandelion family, the insects love it. I find that it is also called Fox and Cubs.

You don’t see grasshoppers until you move around in the long grass, at which point they start living up to their name.

Honeybee on scabious.

Two gatekeepers on eryngium

I have to admit that I was a little afraid when I first saw this, 2 cm long, though hornets are not in fact very aggressive. But I was relieved when further research introduced me to the Hornet mimic hoverfly, of which this is fine example. It’s on water mint at the side of my pond.

This micro-moth is on lavender. It is no more than 6 or 7 millimetres from nose to tail.

Arachnophobes alert. There will be a couple more photos of spiders at the end of the week…

This is comfrey. Some weeks previously the plant had been in tatters. I could have prevented that by removing the larvae of the tiger moths which were munching away at its leaves, but I preferred to wait and enjoy the beautiful moths that would emerge later. To my great pleasure the plant fought back once the larvae had had their fill, grew three times as big and flowered again.

Here are a few of the plants in my pond.  Not strictly wildlife, but placed with wildlife in mind.

Pontederia (lanceolata I think)

I just fell for this at a garden centre a couple of years ago, and I can’t find it in any of my books. Any help with the name would be appreciated.

This is about 2 metres tall. I think it’s a verbascum, but I’m not sure.

It is clear that I am not very good at retaining the names of cultivated plants.

Young sparrows caught red-beaked

A wren thinking of getting in on the act.

My three feeders all hang from my hornbeam at about 8 feet off the ground. This is good because the tree’s bark is very smooth and the cats cannot climb up it. This is a little bad because the light is poor where they hang, and clear photographs are difficult to obtain.  That’s my excuse anyway.

Blue tit

 

Some of those dozens of hungry sparrows

Back to the last flowers of the very popular lavender.

Female Common darter I think. Definitely a dragonfly – wings open and considerably larger than damselfly.

Final post on this subject in another couple of days’ time, when we get to September.