WHITE CAMPION

 Very similar to Red Campion - but white!  They are actually distinct species, both common throughout Britain.  But White Campion seems to be rarer in our area.

I actually took these photos in Dorset at the weekend.

RED CAMPION

A bit late now but I hope you managed to see and enjoy some red campion flowers along a hedgerow or the edge of a wood.

They come out as the bluebells are going over and can last into July

 

WHO'S BEEN EATING MY APPLES AND BEANS ?

I've been noticing a lot of shrivelling on one of my apple trees

Looking closely I saw a number of ants on the leaves, and a lot of old, dead skins.  Could the ants be causing it?

Well indirectly yes.  They place sap-sucking aphids on the leaves so that they can milk them for the sweet-tasting honeydew that the aphids exude.  Here's a flock of pink and purple aphids sucking away and a couple of ant 'shepherds' in attendance.

But as well as these villains there are also heroes.  That knobbly black character in the photo below is a young ladybird larva.  Ladybird larvae just lurve munching aphids.  Keep it up, guys.  

BTW the ladybird larvae would not be there if the apple trees were sprayed with insecticide to kill the aphids.

Further down the garden my broad beans have been covered in blackfly, another species of aphid.  And here there are more ladybird larvae at work.  These are grey with yellow spots.  Can you see two in this photo?

One up high

and one a bit lower.

 

Bee-yutiful

Near the Krunch cafe at the skateboard park there is a small patch of land where the fertile topsoil was scraped off leaving the subsoil exposed.  Low fertility favours wild flowers because the grass is less vigorous and doesn't overwhelm them. 

For a couple of years now, amateur naturalist Simon Harding has spotted the flat leaf rosettes of bee orchids and this year three of them have flowered.

The flowers slightly resemble a particular female bee and even smells like one (a bee told me).  Male bees attempt to mate with the flower and get covered in pollen which they then transfer to another bee orchid flower.

They probably evolved together, the bee and the flower, but unfortunately that particular species of bee is very rare in the UK so both bee and flower end up rather frustrated.  Bee orchids have to self-pollinate in this country.  

In the Mediterranean region the solitary bee Eucera longicornis does pollinate bee orchids.

All Photos: Simon Harding

 

LET THERE BE LIGHT

 The slope up to the memorial lime trees at Filnore Woods had become very muddy and slippery, what with the wet weather and all the feet of our increased numbers of visitors.  

Looking up the slope, it's not looking so bad now but the encroaching vegetation shading the path inhibits new grass growth and prevents the path drying out after wet weather.

Our trusty volunteers cut back the dogwood on the left and the brambles on the right to make the path wider and lighter.  Cut material was incorporated into a dead hedge on the left.

And here below are the views downhill:

before

during

and after

The job is not finished yet.  When the nesting season is over at the end of summer, we shall need to cut the brambles back even further, and some of the overhanging tree branches too.

Photos: mostly Eric but the 'during' ones are mine.

A BIRD'S FOOT IN YOUR BACON AND EGGS

This pretty grassland flower is Bird's Foot Trefoil

In this photo you can see the seed pods beginning to form in that bird's foot shape.

Usually yellow, it is sometimes tinted with orange, which gives it one of its many alternative names - Eggs and Bacon .

My mum always called it Tom Thumb.

It often forms rounded clumps among the grass.

 

POPLAR HAWKMOTH

This is the most widespread and frequent hawkmoth in Britain so you may well meet one.

It's usually this grey-brown colour but can be orangey-buff.  The distinctive feature is the way the hindwings protrude from the forewings when the moth is at rest. If it is disturbed it will flash a bright red-brown patch on the underwings.

Also there is the white mark on the forewings to help you identify it.

Photo: Sarah Watkins

The bright green caterpillars feed on many species of poplar and willow.  They pupate underground through the winter and the adult moths emerge in May-July but do not feed at all !

 

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.

 

WHITE UMBRELLAS

The branching stems of Cow Parsley each carry an umbel (like an umbrella) of white flowers.  

 But each umbel is made up of a dozen or so smaller umbels, and each of them carries half a dozen individual flower stalks.  The flowers themselves are not symmetrical with some petals longer than others.  Altogether a wondrous, complex structure.

WILD SERVICE TREE

Post 10 is now painted on a young oak tree halfway along the Valley Woodland path.

If you take a few paces downhill from here you come to one of our rare native trees, 

the Wild Service Tree.

It's recognisable by its five pointed leaves and, at this season, by its white panicles of flowers.

These are the forerunners of the brown berries that form in the autumn and used to be made into a drink called 'chequers'.  This is probably why so many pubs are called The Chequers.

Photo: Wikipedia

 

SLIPPERY CHARACTER

Found this character dozing in the lid of my food waste bin.  I thought at first it might be a leopard slug, the largest slug in Britain but decided after consulting a few sluggish websites that it was a Green Cellar Slug (Limacus maculatus).  The blue/grey tentacles are a diagnostic feature.

It nipped along pretty speedily when I put it on the patio.

Apparently they don't eat live plant material so not a problem for gardeners.  They like lichen on walls and dead plant material so quite good for tidying up in the garden.  They are often found in compost heaps and compost bins.