There was a Song Thrush on Redland Green this afternoon.
As usual, House Sparrows were chirruping from the tightly clipped evergreens in a front garden of Greendale Road. In fact front garden hedges are where I normally see House Sparrows. It seems to me that the obnoxious practice of concreting over front gardens for (even more) car-parking is likely to be a contributory factor in the serious decline of House Sparrow numbers.
Tuesday, 22 April 2008
7/4/08 – A COUNTRY LANE NEAR KELLAWAY AVENUE, AND THREE FOXES
The large patch of Field Madder in the lawn at 53 Kellaway Avenue is still flowering strongly.
A long pathway between a sports ground and allotments, running parallel to Kellaway Avenue, has the feel of a country lane about it. Near the inconspicuous alley leading to it from Kings Drive are some English Elm suckers, now with fresh new leaves.
A plant of an ‘escaped’ Spotted Deadnettle (Lamium maculatum) was noted under the large willow on the left. It was accompanied by the related White Deadnettles and Hedge Woundwort.
Tall hedges flank the lane either side, with some Prunus in flower. Bramble, nettles, Cow Parsley, Traveller’s Joy (Clematis vitalba), Garlic Mustard, Lesser Celandine and Cuckoo Pint added to the rural feel at this time.
As dusk began to fall a crescent moon, and dark rain clouds with a thin orange sky below made a fine sight.
An adult fox was seen at the junction of Longleat Close and St. Margaret’s Drive. A second was running along Owen Grove, too busy with its nose to the ground to realise I was there. A third was seen crossing the Henleaze Road end of Fallodon Way.
A horrible orange glare from completely undirected lights around the by now closed Henleaze Junior School, and the lit-up powered roll-over advertising hoarding recently erected on the North View side of Waitrose, touched raw nerves on two of my bigger bugbears – light pollution and energy profligacy. Come on people, it’s 2008, you know the score …...
A long pathway between a sports ground and allotments, running parallel to Kellaway Avenue, has the feel of a country lane about it. Near the inconspicuous alley leading to it from Kings Drive are some English Elm suckers, now with fresh new leaves.
A plant of an ‘escaped’ Spotted Deadnettle (Lamium maculatum) was noted under the large willow on the left. It was accompanied by the related White Deadnettles and Hedge Woundwort.
Tall hedges flank the lane either side, with some Prunus in flower. Bramble, nettles, Cow Parsley, Traveller’s Joy (Clematis vitalba), Garlic Mustard, Lesser Celandine and Cuckoo Pint added to the rural feel at this time.
As dusk began to fall a crescent moon, and dark rain clouds with a thin orange sky below made a fine sight.
An adult fox was seen at the junction of Longleat Close and St. Margaret’s Drive. A second was running along Owen Grove, too busy with its nose to the ground to realise I was there. A third was seen crossing the Henleaze Road end of Fallodon Way.
A horrible orange glare from completely undirected lights around the by now closed Henleaze Junior School, and the lit-up powered roll-over advertising hoarding recently erected on the North View side of Waitrose, touched raw nerves on two of my bigger bugbears – light pollution and energy profligacy. Come on people, it’s 2008, you know the score …...
4/4/08 – SOME INTERESTING GRASS VERGES
I’d not looked at the fairly wide grass verges in Cairns Road, Redland, outside of Cairns Court, in daylight hours before. They were quite species rich, with the usual things like White Clover, Daisies, Creeping Buttercup and Ribwort Plantain, but also Lesser Trefoil, Black Medick, Field Madder, Common Cats-ear, Mouse-ear Hawkweed and a fair amount of Parsley Piert mixed in with Common Whitlow Grass.
Monday, 21 April 2008
3/4/08 – A PEACOCK AND FIGHTING BLACKBIRDS
A Peacock butterfly was disturbed from a Choisya shrub in Devonshire Road this sunny afternoon. Two blackbirds were so engrossed in chasing each other round my front garden that at one point they came within two feet of me on the ground.
1/4/08 - COVERING THE ANGLES IN WESTBURY PARK
This evening there was an Angle Shades moth in the bathroom.
30/3/08 - RAILWAYS, RECORDERS, RUE-LEAVED SAXIFRAGE
Coming back from London today I saw my first definite Red Kite a quarter of a mile east of Cholsey station and another probable just east of Didcot. This highlights the fact that a certain amount of recording can be done even at 125 mph, and that locations away from stations can be pinned down fairly accurately using the line-side mileposts – or more accurately quarter mile posts. Those on the Great Western line are yellow and mark quarter miles with either spots or some other symbol. So we have 93, 93 above *, 93 above **, 93 above ***, then 94 and so on. In this case the distances are from Paddington. Unfortunately they aren’t marked on OS maps, or you could quickly convert them to a grid reference.
I am particularly interested in heathland vegetation, and at this time of year Gorse and Broom can easily be identified at high speed. But so can things like wild Primroses and Marsh Marigold. At slower speeds around stations less flambouyant things can be recognised. There was a Brimstone at Chippenham station, and there’s a stand of at least 18 Stinking Hellebores just west of the old goods shed at Bath.
Once back in Bristol I walked across the centre of town to attend the excellent BRERC Recorder’s get-together at the Wills Memorial Building, then onward to Westbury Park.
A recent newspaper article had flagged up the decline of Coltsfoot and Scarlet Pimpernel. The former was in flower in the open-air car park behind the Empire and Commonwealth Museum at the old station (as was Alexanders and Common Whitlow Grass) and on the ‘triangle’ around Portwall Lane. The latter was growing around the base of a tree near the WMB, along with a Weld seedling and Lesser Swine Cress.
Wishing to check something around St. Michael-on-the-Mount, I headed home up St. Michaels Hill. There was a swathe of the very small Common Whitlow Grass (actually a member of the Cabbage family) in flower in the cobbles all the way up the raised pathway that is on the left as you ascend the hill. At the top, on the other side, some Oxford Ragwort was in flower.
The most interesting find was of the small Rue-leaved Saxifrage (Saxifraga tridactylites), a species I’d not seen before. The leaves are distinct, being narrowly three-lobed, with a long thin section below the branching point. One was spotted in flower between the pavement and the brick wall surrounding the slightly incongruous ‘modern’ development bounded by Paul St., Little Paul St. and Myrtle Rd., near the bus stop on St. Michaels Hill. There were 7 more round the corner in Paul Street, also in the narrow crack between the brick wall and pavement. The Flora of the Bristol Region describes this species as ‘uncommon’, with between 7 and 9 records (you can’t tell from the small size of the maps which side of the gorge two of them were from) within the Bristol City boundary.
I am particularly interested in heathland vegetation, and at this time of year Gorse and Broom can easily be identified at high speed. But so can things like wild Primroses and Marsh Marigold. At slower speeds around stations less flambouyant things can be recognised. There was a Brimstone at Chippenham station, and there’s a stand of at least 18 Stinking Hellebores just west of the old goods shed at Bath.
Once back in Bristol I walked across the centre of town to attend the excellent BRERC Recorder’s get-together at the Wills Memorial Building, then onward to Westbury Park.
A recent newspaper article had flagged up the decline of Coltsfoot and Scarlet Pimpernel. The former was in flower in the open-air car park behind the Empire and Commonwealth Museum at the old station (as was Alexanders and Common Whitlow Grass) and on the ‘triangle’ around Portwall Lane. The latter was growing around the base of a tree near the WMB, along with a Weld seedling and Lesser Swine Cress.
Wishing to check something around St. Michael-on-the-Mount, I headed home up St. Michaels Hill. There was a swathe of the very small Common Whitlow Grass (actually a member of the Cabbage family) in flower in the cobbles all the way up the raised pathway that is on the left as you ascend the hill. At the top, on the other side, some Oxford Ragwort was in flower.
The most interesting find was of the small Rue-leaved Saxifrage (Saxifraga tridactylites), a species I’d not seen before. The leaves are distinct, being narrowly three-lobed, with a long thin section below the branching point. One was spotted in flower between the pavement and the brick wall surrounding the slightly incongruous ‘modern’ development bounded by Paul St., Little Paul St. and Myrtle Rd., near the bus stop on St. Michaels Hill. There were 7 more round the corner in Paul Street, also in the narrow crack between the brick wall and pavement. The Flora of the Bristol Region describes this species as ‘uncommon’, with between 7 and 9 records (you can’t tell from the small size of the maps which side of the gorge two of them were from) within the Bristol City boundary.
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