Happy May Day

Tomorrow is May 1st and the hawthorn is in bloom.

May blossom along the branches like sleeves.

'Now is the month of maying

When merry lads are playing

Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-lah

Fa-la-la-la-lah   la-lah

Each with his bonny lass

Upon the greeny grass

Fa-la-la-la-lah

Fa-la-la-la-la-la-lah

Fah  La-lah  La-lah'

Sing it before breakfast.

Click to hear the King's Singers rendition

Queen Anne's Lace

Queen Anne's Lace aka Cow Parsley

Abundant in fields, on road verges and in woodlands

Each stalk branches into several smaller stalks and again into smaller flower stems.  
The outside petal of each flower is longer than the rest. 

When you pass a large crop of it the distinctive fragrance flows over you.

Chestnut candles

Horse Chestnut or Conker trees light up with a myriad of upstanding flowers like candles.

This one is by the cemetery

Another small tree in the Mundy Field

Get a close look at the flower if you can.  The white petals are speckled with red and yellow.

Tree flowers

In my last post I mentioned the flowers on oak and elm trees and here are some others.

These on the large white willow by the stream below Warwick Place

Outside the St Peter's Hospice shop in the High Street you can see the birch flowers.  The male catkins are now drooping while the smaller upright ones are the females, which will fatten up with seed to feed the birds in winter

The Lawson Cypress is a north American tree so not native, but it is very common in gardens in all its varieties, usually forming an upright conical tree.

The female cones are already forming 

but earlier the tree was rusty red with small, red male catkins.

Close up you can see the remains of the red male flowers at the ends of the leaves.

The flowers on sycamore hang down in chains

Male flowers at the bottom and females at the top.  You can see the helicopter seeds forming near the top already.

 Male and female flowers of ash form on separate trees.  

 The female flowers are already pollinated and developing into the seeds called ash keys.

Spotting oaks and elms

Sometimes you can recognise a tree species from a distance.  At this time of year the oak is a more yellowy green than most.

Close to, the bark is distinctive.

And even before the leaves are fully open, notice the male catkins

You don't see a lot of mature elm trees since the 1970s invasion of Dutch Elm Disease, but this specimen is still proudly gracing the Leisure Centre car park.

The tiny, tufty, red flowers are over now but there are bunches of winged seeds on the tree.  When they ripen and fall they are like pale green confetti scattered over the ground.

St Mark's Day

25th April is St Mark's Day and around this date is the heyday of the St Mark's Fly.  These black, hairy flies drift about in rough grassland and along woodland edges, usually in large numbers, looking for mates.  I met a lot today on a deserted Thornbury Golf Course.

Photo: Paul A. on RSPB website forum

After mating and laying eggs the adults all die after about a fortnight on the wing .  The larvae feed in decaying vegetation, leaf mould and compost heaps through the winter and pop out again as adults pretty well on time the following year.

Photo: Friends of Northaw Great Wood

They are quite harmless although the drifting flight with long legs dangling can put some people off.  But because they feed on nectar they are important pollinators of fruit trees - so applaud them.

Brown hare

Saw a hare yesterday in a field off the Pithay near Kington.  It was about 100 metres away but went all shy when we stopped and stared.  It sped away on its long legs and disappeared.

Photo: countryside info.co.uk 

Warblers

You know when spring is really here when the warblers arrive.  Here are three of the commonest, all heard in the Mundy Playing Field, at Filnore Woods and probably in your garden too.

The first to arrive is the chiffchaff.  They are hard to see but the song is just like the name - 'chiff chaff chiff chaff chiff chiff chaff' with the occasional chuff thrown in.

The next commonest is the blackcap, the nightingale of the north.  It's like a blackbird in a hurry that doesn't know how to stop.

This video by Maurice Baker shows a blackcap singing, male and female (with a brown cap) feeding, and the two different alarm calls for an aerial predator like a sparrowhawk, and for a predator on the ground, like a fox or a cat.

Maurice also has another attractive video with willow warbler songs, which are rather wistful I always think.  These are not so common locally. They prefer woodland near water with birch willow and alder trees.  They look almost identical to chiffchaffs but the song could not be more different.  Many thanks to Maurice Baker for these videos.

Cherry

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide

Now, of my threescore years and ten

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score

It only leaves me fifty more

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.

Poem: A. E. Housman;      Tree : Mundy Playing Field

Daisies

Daisies are so common but so jolly, 

opening up in sunny weather.

Their name means day's eye.

Best Exotic Marsh Marigold Hotel

Our hilltop pond is drying up now but was full of water in February and would have made an excellent hotel for frogs, frogspawn and eventually tadpoles, but unfortunately no frogs have visited since 2014.

Those little patches of yellow flowers, barely visible in the picture, are marsh marigolds like these in my garden pond.

Lamb's tongues

Lamb's tongue plantains are also known as ribwort because of the 'ribs' along the leaves, which are really veins.

If cut down its leaves lie flat so that it survives mowing or grazing.  Researchers in Norway have found lots of its pollen in neolithic excavations and taken this as an indication that grazing animals were part of neolithic life. 

Gardeneners can either dig it out of their lawns or settle for the rosette of leaves and enjoy the flowers.

The seedheads on their long stalks can be used in a game a bit like conkers, or the stalks can be wound round the fingers and the head flicked off while you chant "Molly 'ad a dolly and 'er 'ed popped off."  If you want to try it ask a junior age child.

Earthy Blues

Two small, blue flowers growing close to the earth in hedgerows and on banks: 

Germander Speedwell.  There are more than 20 species of speedwell in Britain but this is the prettiest with the biggest flowers.  It has a white ring in the centre with darker blue radiating outwards.  Also known as birdseye speedwell.

Ground Ivy, which is in no way related to ivy and the lobed leaves don't even look like ivy, but like speedwell it shines out from low down on the ground. 

I found both of these at the edge of the Mundy Playing Fields.

Orange and white

If you see a white butterfly now in April, it is most likely a female orange tip.  Only the males have orange tips to their wings and the Large White and Small White, often referred to as cabbage whites usually appear later in the year. 

female                                   male

And if you see either of them perched, 

the beautiful pattern on the underneath of their wings is distinctive.

Males just flit around to any flowers feeding on nectar but the females seek out the two food plants that their caterpillars need, and lay their eggs on them one at a time.

 Lady's Smock, Cuckoo Flower or Milkmaids and Garlic Mustard or Jack-by-the-Hedge

Butterfly photos: Alan Watts

Hawk versus dove - warfare on the lawn

An extract from an account by Peter Blenkiron, one of our volunteers who lives in Alveston.  I've added a photo by a Dutch photographer.

On my return to the back garden, I was about to step on the lawn when I noticed a white dove about fifteen feet away, apparently struggling to get to its feet with an injured wing.

The struggle was probably due to the female sparrowhawk perched on the dove’s back with its talons sunk into the lower body. I froze, wondering why I never have a camera when I need one.

The hawk was shielding the dove with its wings and bent down to start plucking, which was a bit previous as the dove was still quite lively.

The hawk shifted to get a better grip and the dove exploded into the air in a blizzard of white feathers and tore past me with the hawk in hot pursuit, passing within a yard of me at lower than waist height.

The dove was jinking desperately but hit the patio door at a shallow angle and dropped among the large pots in front of the window, with the hawk stalking around the pots trying to get at it.

I didn’t want to interfere so retreated to the far end of the garden.

A little later I went back to see if I could find out what had happened.

The dove was in under a bush, the hawk apparently having abandoned it, but when I went closer there was some sudden movement and I was fixed by the glare of a fierce yellow eye guarding the kill and retreated.

The hawk was plucking the dove under the bush for around an hour, all that is left there now is a cushion of white feathers, with possible some inedible bits, feet and bill perhaps, remaining.

A sparrowhawk has been a regular visitor to the garden over the winter, but it is usually a male that I see, perched on the fence under cover and eyeing the bird table and feeders.

Photo by  ijsselstein.groei.nl

Filnore Woods

As I have been away for a bit and have been self-isolating since my return, this morning was the first time I visited Filnore Woods since 24th January.  Today with the sun creating dappled shade and blackcaps singing, the place was a delight.

In the grassland there are loads of cowslips

Bluebells and the last of the primroses in the clearing near post 10,

where for the first time since the founding of Filnore Woods I found some wood anemones.

There are more bluebells in clearings in the woodland

and near post 17,

Looking up you can see trees in flower such as this Norway maple,

the last of the blackthorn,

and the startlingly ornamental bird cherry

Red dead nettle and white dead nettle

The two deadnettles try to look like stinging nettles so that we don't pick them 
but they don't sting.