FINCHES

 I haven't heard or seen a chaffinch this year, although they are supposed to be one of our commonest British birds.   

Bullfinches are more secretive and used to be persecuted by fruit farmers because they eat the buds on apple and pear trees.  They used to be heard near the Thornbury community compost site.

Greenfinches were also common but have suffered lately.  

The RSPB website says: 

Greenfinch populations declined during the late 1970s and early 1980s, but increased dramatically during the 1990s. A recent decline in numbers has been linked to an outbreak of trichomonosis, a parasite-induced disease which prevents the birds from feeding properly.

But this week I heard a greenfinch twittering and wheezing near the skateboard park in Thornbury.  Hooray !  

Maybe I have just been unobservant.  Has anyone else had better finch-luck ?

A NAVEL ENCOUNTER

Wall Pennywort (Umbilicus rupestris) is also known as Navelwort because the circular, penny-shaped leaves are joined to the stalk in the centre, making a 'dimple' or 'navel' in the middle.  

The greenish tubular flowers are on a long vertical spike.  In a sunny position they may get a pink tinge and the leaves may turn red.

It grows on walls, cliffs and stony ground, mainly in Wales, south western England and Northern Ireland. I saw a lot of these along the path from St Mary's Church down towards the fields.

 

BROWNIES

1st Thornbury Brownies came to the woods.  

The first group luckily had a sunny evening - here at the Viewpoint

and at the old ash tree near the footbridge

The other group had slightly damper weather

But enjoyed it nonetheless

BLACK BRYONY

Just thought you might be wondering 

what this rampant climber with the heart-shaped leaves is.

It climbs over hedges and banks, up an old-mans-beard stem or here up a rose stem.

It's black Bryony (Dioscorea communis) and is poisonous so no munching.  It prefers woods and needs both male and female plants to produce the tempting red berries.  

Black Bryony is in the Yam family and no relation at all to White Bryony which has divided leaves and is in the cucmber family.  White Bryony is also a climber and produces skeins of red berries in the autumn.

WARBLERS

The four warblers you might expect to hear at Filnore Woods are chiffchaff, blackcap, willow warbler, whitethroat and lesser whitethroat.  I do believe I heard a garden warbler once but I'm not sure.

I can certainly identify the chiffchaff because it sings its name

and the blackcap - there are several singing at the moment, sounding a bit like a blackbird but with out the sneeze at the end.  

The less commonly heard willow warbler has a plaintiff little song on a descending minor scale, like a feather drifting to earth.  It looks very like the chiffchaff.

But whitethroats, lesser whitethroats and the rest are a bit harder.

There's some good stuff n youtube if you want to find out more.

PAINTED LADY

Painted Lady butterflies arrive from Southern Europe and North Africa each summer and this is one of the first to be spotted in 2021 by butterfly enthusiast, Alan Watts.

Photo: Alan Watts 

The eggs are laid on thistles for preference but also nettles or mallows.  The butterflies breed and thrive in the summer but are completely killed off in a British winter and we have to wait for the next immigrants to arrive the following year.

It is amazing (and I hesitate to use this over-used adjective carelessly) that such flimsy-looking creatures can fly so far. 

 Sometimes there are only a few but in some years, such as 2009, there are millions. 

 If you have read 'Wilding' by Isabella Tree about the farm at Knepp in Sussex where they decided to let nature take control, you will recall how their acres of invasive, three foot high creeping thistle were destroyed by the 2009 invasion of Painted Ladies.

BUTTER AND NUTS

An excellent year for meadow buttercups.

If you venture into the field behind the field behind the Mundy Playing Field (need to give it a name - maybe the tobogganning field) there is not only a feast of buttercups but also of Pignut.

Pignut is a much smaller relative of Cow Parsley - only about a foot or 18" tall (30-45cm).  It's called pignut because each plant has a little tuber on its roots resembling a hazel nut.  Pigs like them and so do people.  Try one.

[but don't try just any umbellifer as some of them have sap which can irritate the skin and some are deadly poisonous]

You can check it's a pignut plant you are looking at by finding the small, divided leaves on the stem.

This one even has some cuckoo spit on it as a bonus.