A Spring walk …

Tags

Alexander Hood, Brown-banded carder bee, Butleigh, Buzzard, comfrey, Compton Dundon, Cow parsley, cowslip, Dandelion, Dundon Hill, English bluebell, Glastonbury, Glastonbury Tor, Greater Hawks-beard, Herb Robert, Hood Monument, Pendulous sedge, Polden Way, primrose, ransom, Samuel Hood, speckled wood, vetch, wild garlic, Wych elm

… in the Compton Dundon, Somerset, area.

A friendly dog – which didn’t bark! The Hood Monument right.

I was going Butleigh-wards. And when I turned round from taking this photo…

… I was concerned I might have delightful but unwanted company, but he returned home.

Well, I like dandelions.

Cow parsley

A dandeliony thing, Greater hawks-beard I think.

Comfrey

Hart’s tongue fern (TH)

Pendulous sedge. It’s very pretty, but it’s wicked in my garden, seeding itself everywhere. And it seemed, sadly, to have done so on this walk. There was far too much of it, everywhere, in my view.

Nearing the (physical) high point of the afternoon.

I was tempted to go off at a tangent but didn’t.

The Hood Monument

The top of the monument reflects the activity of Samuel Hood, 1724-1816, local boy made good. His younger brother, Alexander, was also an Admiral, but I know of no monument to him.

In memory of
Sir Samuel Hood
Knight of the most Honourable Order of the Bath
and nominated Grand Cross thereof
Knight of St Ferdinand and of Merit
Knight Grand Cross of the Sword
Vice Admiral of the White
and Commander-in-Chief of His Majesty’s Fleet
in the East Indies

View from the plinth, looking north. If it weren’t for the trees on the left, I could have seen my house. (It would be possible to see my house if one were allowed to climb to the top of the Monument, as I can see the latter from my front window.)

Wych elm, I think

Continuing downwards, I came to my kind of stile

Glastonbury and its Tor.

I had a choice at this point, to walk along a very busy road, or to enter a wood, where three years ago I had found carpets of bluebells.

There were no bluebells where I expected to find them. Either my memory was faulty or they had been stripped out. Or they had been suppressed by the acres of sedge that seemed to be everywhere. After a long while I did find some, but not in the swathes that I expected.

But happily they were English bluebells, with not a Spanish bluebell in sight, then or for the rest of my walk.

The wood felt magical and I found myself envious of the owner.

Impossible not to be aware of a great low-flying bird across my path. It settled in a tree to my left.

A buzzard!

Just look at that beak and those talons!

Then it flew off, to a much higher and much further tree, not yet covered in foliage.

Only on examining and enlarging my photos was I able to see that the tree, a cherry of some sort presumably, had blossom, a nice contrast with the fierceness of the bird.

My Ordnance Survey map indicated that this was, (in Gothic lettering so it was ancient), the ‘New Ditch’.

This inadvertent sculpture pleased me.

There are still many primroses around.

The steps are part of the Polden Way, quite recently established, but mine was the bridleway to the right

It looked easy and smooth

From the path I could just see an inaccessible mass of white flowers in green. As I suspected, they did turn out, thanks to the zoom on the camera, to be wild garlic, aka ransoms.

What promised to be a smooth and easy path was not always. Those ruts are 18 ins (45 cm) deep!

I was not tempted to swing from this beautiful tree, but zoomed in on a yellow sheen on the field.

It was a sheen of cowslips.

Herb Robert

The trouble with butterflies is that they flit about so. This was the best I could do to catch the Speckled wood.

All afternoon there had just been the odd sample of vetch, but towards the end I came across a bankful of the plant, with a co-operative bee.

And, as I only noticed once home, an ant as well. (Brown-banded Carder bee)

Nearly back to my car, this is the back of the local hostelry, with Dundon Hill behind. It has a Gothic lettering fort on it.

A very pleasant afternoon. And other than on the first road, I didn’t meet a soul.

Return to Aigas 8

Tags

Aigas, Arctic skua, eider, Gairloch, Golden eagle, greenfinch, grey wagtail, Loch Ewe, Meadow pipit, oblong-leaved sundew, primrose, red deer, red-breasted merganser, roe deer, Round-leaved sundew, sea eagle, sedge warbler, Slavonian grebe, Strathconon

The two final days at Aigas in one post.  Accounting for Thursday will very be short. We drove over to the West Coast of Scotland, to the Loch Ewe and Gairloch areas, returning by way of Loch Maree.  Here are a couple of views we saw on the way there, and a very short video.

From these it can be seen that the weather was not exactly ideal, and I have already indicated that I was not well-equipped with bad weather gear.   Having had our lunch we walked along the seashore for a while, in a howling gale, hoping to see sea eagles.

The sea and the grass show how windy it was, and I chickened out again, being absolutely frozen, and made my way back to the bus.

It was quite a time before my colleagues returned and I hoped they were having luck with the eagles.  They weren’t, but they did see a ‘bonxie’, an Arctic skua, which was a plus.

On the way back to Aigas, we had two unexpected sightings at the same place.  The stop was for reasons of nature other than wildlife, and we weren’t expecting to see anything special, but to our surprise we saw there a large group of eider duck, and a red-breasted merganser, swimming on the sea.

This is only part of the group of eider

Red-breasted merganser

And it was a treat to see a greenfinch, that increasing rarity in our gardens because of a rapidly spreading disease.

Friday was our last day, and was spent along Strathconon.  A pleasant morning:

Roe deer

Meadow pipit

Meadow pipit with insect

Red deer

An after-lunch stroll:

Round-leaved sundew. Each trap is no more than a centimetre across

Primroses -in June!

There are both round-leaved and oblong-leaved sundew here

Grey wagtail

The very same making photos easier

But the best was yet to come.   I wasn’t able to get pictures of an osprey perched in a tree, because sadly someone had not understood the instruction to keep within the outline of the bus when we got out, so it was spooked and flew off.  But I had been able 30 minutes earlier to get a few pictures of – at last – two golden eagles!  Sadly, in terms of wildlife the fact that we saw two of them flying around was not a good thing, because it meant there were no chicks on the nest to be looked after by one parent. But it was a thrill for us.

View from a bridge…

… which was really a hydro-electric barrage

The afternoon’s sightings were completed much nearer our base by some Slavonian grebes and a sedge warbler.

Sedge warbler

 

A last drive back to Aigas through the Highlands

Up very early on the Saturday morning for the 8.55 flight from Inverness to Bristol.  What will be the next photographic experience I post here?  At present I have no idea!