line
robin

Pecking Order

Wednesday 23rd August 2000, West Yorkshire

next day nature diary previous day back
line
Nature Diary     Rocks     History     Workshop     Links     Home Page    
line


starlingstarlingstarlingstarling

young starling feeding on elder berries FIRST ONE arrives, then two, soon fourteen Starlings crowd onto the bird table. Within minutes the pile of breadcrumbs is gone. There's a certain amount of bluff to establish pecking order, even in this free-for-all. There are a few dark adults but these are mainly juveniles in their half-and-half plumage; pale brown jacket and star-spangled waistcoat.

I get a brief respite from the continuing errands of getting the latest book into print and decide that, instead of sitting at my computer working on the next one, I'll have a few hours of pure indulgence, sketching in the garden.

seedpods of broomdodder?As I sketch the Broom, to illustrate the observation about its 'exploding' pods for Sunday's diary, I notice that one of the fresh green branches has fine white threads hanging from it. At the end of each thread hangs a tiny capsule. It appears to be a fungus, which has already infected some of the lower branches of the plant, which look sooty and are scattered with little white flecks like cigarette ash. I guessed at first that it was dodder, but that is a parasitic flowering plant and this looks much more like a fungus.


Richard Bell
Richard Bell,
wildlife illustrator

E-mail; 'richard@daelnet.co.uk'

line
Next day    Previous day   Nature Diary   Wild West Yorkshire home page
line