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Curled Dock is just like the equally common Broad-leaved variety, except for the 'crisped margins', as the Keble Martin Flora puts it. Creeping Thistle spreads underground and forms straggly groups.
By the way, in an attempt to make navigation easier, I'm trying out a new page arrangement. Please let me know if there are any problems. Richard Bell, |
HORSES ARE ALWAYS curious about who's in the next field and who's coming down the lane, so the paddock next to the stables, which is not in use at the moment, is framed by plants that colonise disturbed ground.
Mayweed forms a snowy swathe of daisy-like flowers along the line of the electric fence which divided the paddock when there were two horses in it.
There are rosettes of Dandelion leaves and a few plants of Hedge Mustard, growing rather lower here than it does in the hedges and verges, with its one inch long pointed pods that make me think of green barbed wire.
For many birds nesting must now be over. Large flocks have descended on the valley. There are twenty-plus Mistle Thrushes in the large grassy field where we saw the hares. About as many Greenfinch in bushes along the boundaries, with some Chaffinches and Goldfinches.
If you're like me and you find 'little brown birds' a bit of a problem, an immature or female Redpoll will have you stumped. Brown above, brownish below. I have the greatest difficulty picking out a reddish patch on the breast, (although Barbara picked it out on some of the birds we saw). The very similar looking Linnet has definite white patches on the wings and tail, which I certainly couldn't make out on these birds. A close relative of these two, the Twite, is duller and even less distinct than either of them. And it is common in farmland in the summer.
Herons are normally silent hunters. Not this evening. Two of them were very noisy on the little rush-fringed pool. The call is described as a harsh 'kark', it sounded more like a fox calling to me.
A Wren attracts our attention to a nest resting on a girder under the old canal bridge.