Just to cheer everyone up on yet another dull day, here are some more crocuses from our garden. This is a particularly nice little clump which has been there quite a few years and which I’ve photographed several times before.
Category Archives: natural history
[7/52] Crocuses
Week 7 entry for 52 weeks challenge.
Our lawn and fruit border are full of crocuses, mostly in shades of purple. I know we’ve planted some, but they must be spreading as I’m sure (like these in the fruit border) they’re in places we wouldn’t have planted them. And they seem to be doing well despite the waterlogged clay soil of the lawn.
Squirrel
There’s a Grey Squirrel sitting almost in the top of our Silver Birch tree. It has been there since about 1015 this morning. It is now 1545-ish and beginning to get dark. Apart from turning round two or three times it has been stock still, as if asleep. I find it hard to believe that a healthy squirrel would choose to sleep for this long in broad daylight, in the open, in the rain and in the top of a bare tree being blown hither and yon by a freezing wind. Maybe it is ill and dying. If so it can’t be long before either it falls out of the tree or the carcass is taken away by the crows. This is (a crap photo of) the fellow at about 1030, soon after I first spotted him …
… and he’s still there!
Interesting times we live in. We’ll have lions whelping in the streets next!
Pink Tulips
Just something to cheer up a dull January weekend …
Swoose
Swoose, Wool (Dorset), 24-Oct-10, originally uploaded by Dave Appleton.
Swoose? No I’d never heard the word either until today. But then I saw birder Dave Appleton’s superb image (reproduced above) and followed the link to his website where he describes a bird which is a hybrid of a swan and a goose … hence a “swoose”. In fact he is describing this bird; publishing several sets of photographs of it; and documenting its history.
Now I didn’t know either that swans could cross-breed with geese. (That’s two things I’ve learnt today!) But, although it is extremely rare, apparently swans and geese can interbreed. As Dave explains the offspring don’t usually survive to adulthood. However the bird pictured is known to have hatched in 2003 and was photographed by Dave last October, possibly having successfully bred itself.
Following the story on Dave’s website, it seems that the parentage of this bird is pretty well authenticated short of someone managing to get samples and do the DNA profiling. I hope that it is possible to get the DNA profiling done; the results would be extremely interesting to those interested in birds but also, I imagine, to academic zoologists. And it would be interesting too to see if the bird’s proposed parentage is correct. If nothing else this is an interesting puzzle and I’d like to say “thanks” to Dave for making all this information available.
Of course, there’s another rather interesting and deeper legal puzzle here. All Mute Swans (our native, resident British species) belong to the Queen and are as such protected. Geese however appear to be protected only during the closed season (February through August) and are thus treated as game birds like duck). But what is a Swoose? Is it a swan or a goose? Were these birds to become common and a pest (very unlikely, I know) I feel sure this would be a most interesting legal debate. Just don’t anyone dare go and shoot the bird in the meantime because …
Whatever the bird actually turns out to be it is a most handsome and interesting creature which deserves a lifetime of quiet observation and protection.
Barn Wowl !!
This just leaves me stunned! It is probably the most spectacular shot of a Barn Owl I’ve ever seen. The colours and the detail are just out of this world. Nigel Pye, the photographer, specialises in birds and particularly Barn Owls. Despite my years as an amateur photographer I just don’t know how you take pictures like this. Guess that’s why I’m not a pro.
Quotes of the Week
I’ve been reading quite a bit over Christmas, so this week there’s a good selection of quotes; something for almost everyone here …
In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these.
[Paul Harvey]
If people turn to look at you on the street, you are not well dressed.
[The Economist; unknown author and date]
You can’t prove that there isn’t a magic teapot floating around on the dark side of the moon with a dwarf inside of it that reads romance novels and shoots lightning out of its boobs but, it seems pretty unlikely, doesn’t it?
[Kurt Hummel]
A bird is an instrument working according to mathematical law, which instrument it is in the capacity of man to reproduce with all its movements but not with as much strength, though it is deficient only in power of maintaining equilibrium.
[Leonardo da Vinci, The Flight of Birds, 1505]
Newton saw an apple fall and deduced Gravitation. You and I might have seen millions of apples fall and only deduced pig-feeding.
[Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher; Letter to the Times, 12 January 1920]
All dog-lovers must be interested in Lieutenant-Commander Elwell-Sutton’s account of his white whippet which insists on singing to the accompaniment of his (or, may I hope, his young son’s?) accordion – presumably one of those gigantic new instruments, invented, I think, in Italy, which make noises as loud as those made by cinema organs, and rather like them. This dog’s taste is low; but a musical ear is a musical ear.
[Sir John Squire; letter to the Times, 11 January 1936]
They [18th and early 19th century Quakers] became a bourgeois coterie of bankers, brewers and cocoa-grocers.
[Mr Ben Vincent, letter to the Times, 13 March 1974]
[The correct] forking technique is called the Continental method. It’s the method used in Europe as well as anywhere else that the British have killed the locals.
[Scott Adams]
Alice: Would you please tell me which way I ought to walk from here?
Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where –
Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you walk.
Alice: – so long as I get somewhere.
Cheshire Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if you only walk long enough.
[Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland]
Fox Tracks in the Snow
Not a terribly good picture as it was taken in a hurry to a waiting taxi, but there were lots of fox tracks in the snow through our front garden and along the pavement. And yes they are fox: you can just see impressions of the claws (which rules out cat, which would be smaller too) and they are too narrow for dog.
Interestingly they usually go over our neighbour’s low brick walls between gardens (there’s a nice trail of tracks and snow knocked off the walls) rather than go round the end of the wall which is only 3 yards away – and yes, I have seen Mr Reynard do this!
Like them or not they are an incredibly efficient rubbish disposal system. Last night Noreen put out the bones from Sunday’s oxtail casserole. No sign of the bones this morning, just lots of Reynard tracks.
Not a Remembrance Day Poppy
Something to cheer everyone up a bit on this dull, grey, wet and windy November week.
Having spent the summer outside on the patio enjoying sun and rain our Hibiscus has recently been brought into the kitchen for the winter and is sending out new shoots and leaves and is still flowering!
Prospect Cottage Garden
Another images from our recent visit to Rye.
This is a detail from the garden at Prospect Cottage, the late Derek Jarman‘s home at Dungeness. The stone circle is probably just under 3 feet across and is built on the natural gravel surface.