Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, Thursday 6th May 1999
A LAPWING chases a Kestrel from a valley-side field. The Kestrel flies to a power line pole and sits it out until the frantic Lapwing looses interest.
Purple Honesty, a garden escape, looks well, clustered around the native May blossom (Hawthorn). Add a few umbels of Cow Parsley for vertical structure and it makes a grouping that a garden designer might set up.
Some Bracken fronds are orange ochre at their tips. When I look closely I discover a Soldier Beetle and a small brown spider sharing the temporary accommodation offered by the lyre-shaped tip of the frond.
Foxtail, a tall grass in the verges, has flower heads the colour and shape of a fox's brush.
It is overcast, humid and warm. On a canal-side track dozens of St Mark's-flies are paired up, locked together end to end. She has a tiny head compared with the male's, with its large, panoramic eyes. The unattached males continue their up-and-down dance. In the city one hapless male has found his way into the in-store toilets of a do-it-yourself outlet.
A LAPWING chases a Kestrel from a valley-side field. The Kestrel flies to a power line pole and sits it out until the frantic Lapwing looses interest.
Purple Honesty, a garden escape, looks well, clustered around the native May blossom (Hawthorn). Add a few umbels of Cow Parsley for vertical structure and it makes a grouping that a garden designer might set up.
Some Bracken fronds are orange ochre at their tips. When I look closely I discover a Soldier Beetle and a small brown spider sharing the temporary accommodation offered by the lyre-shaped tip of the frond.
It is overcast, humid and warm. On a canal-side track dozens of St Mark's-flies are paired up, locked together end to end. She has a tiny head compared with the male's, with its large, panoramic eyes. The unattached males continue their up-and-down dance. In the city one hapless male has found his way into the in-store toilets of a do-it-yourself outlet.